AWOL

As this is the first English Corner to appear in the Hua Hin Citizen Journal, we thought it quite appropriate to give a brief history and etymology of the phrase that was the name of our printed predecessor, along with the thought process and the other possibility that was considered back in the heady days of 2008.

So lets begin with the origin and actual meaning of the first similar phrase, Absent Without Leave; ‘Leave’ simply means permission, although rarely used in that way now. The earliest reference found with that meaning comes from Mr. Rushworth’s Historical Collections, Volume VI, 1646 to 1648, published 1708:

The same day the Peers call’d over their House, and order’d, That the Lords, absent without Leave, or just Excuse, be fin’d £100 a Man.

The variation AWOL originated in the US military, as an acronym for ‘Absent Without Official Leave’. This is much later than ‘absent without leave’. H. L. Mencken, in The American Language, 1945, states that it originated during the [American] Civil War, but without hard evidence:

“[In the Confederate Army] absences of short duration were often unpunished and in other cases offenders received such trivial sentences as reprimand by a company officer, digging a stump, carrying a rail for an hour or two, wearing a placard inscribed with the letters AWOL.”

The earliest documentary evidence dates from the First World War – and many might be pretty forgiving of going AWOL given the harsh conditions and high death toll of trench warfare. The term seems to have first been applied to American servicemen, in newspaper reports of the time; for example, this piece from The New York Times, July, 1919:

The prize “A.W. O.L.” performer of the American Expeditionary Force has been discovered. He is Private Jack Engleton of Ambulance Company 1, Second Divison. Engleton has been absent without leave almost two years, having been away from his division during the entire period of its fighting activities in Europe.

So why was this chosen as the name for a weekly newspaper in Thailand? The team at the time ultimately deferred to the ‘boss’ who came up with the idea, preferring it to the other suggestion – “The Soi” – that had been put forward. The thinking was that the ‘expats’ living here at the time, and possibly how any foreigner living abroad is seen, had/have abandoned their birthplace without permission of either their family or the rest of the nation. It is quite likely that attitude has changed in recent years, as many people from western nations are dissatisfied with their own country, for a variety of reasons, so that expats who made the move twenty-plus years ago might now be seen as visionaries rather than ‘deserters’!