“DIGGER.”

Hawera Star, Volume XLIX, 5 September 1929, Page 9

“DIGGER.”

ORIGIN OF THE TEIRAf. SYDNEY, Aug. 23. Since the Returned Soldiers’ League endeavoured recently, but without success, to solve* the problem,, there has been quite a spirited controversy in Sydney as to the origin of the term “Digger,” as applied to Australian and New Zealand soldiers who were in the Great Push in Europe. Captain “Charlie” Beau, official historian of the A.1.F., is authority for the statement that the word, said to have - been used originally among guru diggers in the north of New Zealand, but this does not seem very convincing, because common among the soldiers in 1917, displacing the terms “cobber” and “mate,” and coming, during the third battle of Ypres, to denote an Australasian private, much as “Tommy” denoted a British soldier.

Others contend that the term “Digger” originated in Australia long before the war, among men outback. One man says that it was a sergeantmajor of Liverpool camp in New South Wales who established the popularity of the word when he assembled squads, before putting them on trencli diggings, with the command, “Come on,* you diggers!” The probability is that the sergeantmajor’s command was in slightly more colourful form than that.