In the Great War, the unprecedented and widespread use of telephones and rudimentary radio telephone transmitters for command and control brought forth the problem of misunderstanding what the person on the other end was trying to yell into his primitive device, especially during the noise and confusion of combat, and thus led to the practice of spelling out words and substituting codes for letters of the alphabet. This continues to the present day, although the code set has changed several times, and the current version was first promulgated in 1956. Here’s the 1914-18 table:
| Letter | British Army | British Navy |
| A | ACK | APPLES |
| B | BEER | BUTTER |
| C | C | CHARLIE |
| D | DON | DUFF |
| E | E | EDWARD |
| F | F | FREDDY |
| G | G | GEORGE |
| H | H | HARRY |
| I | I | INK |
| J | J | JOHNNIE |
| K | K | KING |
| L | L | LONDON |
| M | EMMA | MONKEY |
| N | N | NUTS |
| O | O | ORANGE |
| P | PIP | PUDDING |
| Q | Q | QUEENIE |
| R | R | ROBERT |
| S | ESSES | SUGAR |
| T | TOC | TOMMY |
| U | U | UNCLE |
| V | VIC | VINEGAR |
| W | W | WILLIAM |
| X | X | XERXES |
| Y | Y | YELLOW |
| Z | ZED | ZEBRA |
James Patton
James (“Jim”) Patton BS BA MPA is a retired state official from Shawnee, Kansas and a frequent contributor to several WW1 e-publications, including "Roads to the Great War," "St. Mihiel Tripwire," "Over the Top" and "Medicine in the First World War." He has spent many hours walking the WW1 battlefields, and is also an authority on British regiments and a collector of their badges. An Army Engineer during the Vietnam War, he does work for the US World War 1 Centennial Commission and is affiliated with the WW1 Historical Association, the Western Front Association, the Salonika Campaign Society and the Gallipoli Association.
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