Talk to some teenagers sometime. You will discover that they are totally unaware that F*** and S*** were once simply not heard on American streets, in stores, on the radio and TV. They were heard only in pool halls and some lower-class bars, and other more disreputable places. There probably WERE many soldiers who went through WWI and even WWII without saying these words. Americans under 40 or so simply have no idea of the horror with which previous generations of Americans viewed four-letter words.
"There probably WERE many soldiers who went through WWI and even WWII without saying these words."If you go even further back, to the WBTS (for example), the soldiers seem downright genteel. And this at a time when the horror and danger of war were exponentially greater than in modern times.
U.S.Grant, a general from a time when generals were routinely exposed to fire in the front lines, was once at a gathering where an officer was about to start a risque joke, prefaced with, "Since there are no ladies present . . ." General Grant cut him short: "But there are gentlemen present."