Differences between US and UK English are particularly pronounced in informal and idiomatic language. There are lots of idioms that are used in one variety but not the other, for example go pear-shaped (to fail or go wrong) is used in British but not American English and strike pay dirt (discover something valuable) is American but not British.

However, there is also a potentially more confusing set of idioms, where the British and American versions are very similar but have important differences, so that using the wrong version could sound very odd. This post looks at some of these.

Some, such as the idiom in the title of this post, come about because of general UK/US vocabulary differences. The icing (UK)/ frosting (US) on the cake, is something that makes a good situation even better. Similar differences account for the idioms a skeleton in the cupboard (UK)/closet (US & UK), which means an embarrassing secret and throw a spanner (UK)/ (monkey) wrench (US) in the works, meaning to do something to prevent something succeeding:

It was a great trip, and seeing the gorillas was the icing/frosting on the cake.

Before he’s appointed, we need to make sure there are no skeletons in his cupboard/closet.

We were ready to open the restaurant before Covid threw a spanner/wrench in the works.

Some idioms start from very similar ideas but are phrased slightly differently in the two varieties. For instance, while Brits might refer slightly mockingly to a man or boy who is liked very much as a blue-eyed boy, Americans would call him a fair-haired boy, and while someone who looks very pleased with themself looks like the cat that got the cream in British English, they are like the cat that ate the canary in American English.

As far as Mum was concerned, Alex was her blue-eyed/fair-haired boy and could do no wrong.

She came rushing in, looking like the cat that got the cream/ate the canary.

Similarly, when Brits wouldn’t touch something with a bargepole (wouldn’t go near it or become involved in it), Americans wouldn’t touch it with a ten-foot pole, and while a big fuss about a small problem is a storm in a teacup for Brits, it is a tempest in a teapot for Americans. When Brits spend so much time thinking about small details that they miss something very important, they can’t see the wood for the trees, while Americans use forest in that phrase:

The deal is far too risky. I wouldn’t touch it with a bargepole/ten-foot pole.

I’m hoping that our current financial problems are just a storm in a teacup/tempest in a teapot.

I was so busy concentrating on minor design faults, I couldn’t see the wood/forest for the trees.

There are of course many more common idioms with UK/US differences, but I hope this post has drawn your attention to the issue.

I’m surprised every year that is isn’t treated as a significant opportunity to thank the people who work for and with you.

The people I work with aren’t all in the U.S.; here’s my message to them this year:

This is Labor Day Weekend in the U.S.

Labor Day is a widely-celebrated American holiday. For many, the day marks the end of summer and the beginning of the school year. But beyond the opportunity for indulging in barbecues and poolside gatherings, Labor Day holds significant historical weight. 

Many of us work. We don’t need a holiday to remind us what work is and the difficulties and rewards that come with it. But through the course of a typical year, we don’t often get the opportunity to reflect on why we do our jobs the way we do, where our current workers’ rights came from, and the price that many people paid to secure those rights for us today. And that’s well worth remembering. 

Happy Labor Day!

Thank you for your hard work, dedication, and your many contributions to Adept’s growth and goals. We’ve achieved a lot together in the past year, but without you, Adept wouldn’t be the business it is. 

I’m grateful every day for the people I work with, and this Labor Day is no exception.

I’m surprised every year that is isn’t treated as a significant opportunity to thank the people who work for and with you.

The people I work with aren’t all in the U.S.; here’s my message to them this year:

This is Labor Day Weekend in the U.S.

Labor Day is a widely-celebrated American holiday. For many, the day marks the end of summer and the beginning of the school year. But beyond the opportunity for indulging in barbecues and poolside gatherings, Labor Day holds significant historical weight. 

Many of us work. We don’t need a holiday to remind us what work is and the difficulties and rewards that come with it. But through the course of a typical year, we don’t often get the opportunity to reflect on why we do our jobs the way we do, where our current workers’ rights came from, and the price that many people paid to secure those rights for us today. And that’s well worth remembering. 

Happy Labor Day!

Thank you for your hard work, dedication, and your many contributions to Adept’s growth and goals. We’ve achieved a lot together in the past year, but without you, Adept wouldn’t be the business it is. 

I’m grateful every day for the people I work with, and this Labor Day is no exception.

The article “Perils of Liberation: Crossfire Outside Stalag III-C,” published by The National WWII Museum, vividly recounts the frequently overlooked experiences of Allied prisoners as they were liberated from Stalag III-C. As World War II came to a close, these prisoners found themselves caught in the crossfire of advancing Soviet and American forces, leading to a complex and perilous struggle for survival amidst the chaos of shifting frontlines.

It is a terrible truth about the end of World War II in Europe that thousands of men, women, and children perished shortly before or even immediately after their liberation from German captivity. Such was the case of the American prisoners of war from Stalag III-C who fell, tragically, during a firefight between German guards and Soviet troops.  

Constructed by Polish prisoners of war, Kriegsgefangenen-Mannschaftstammlager III-C, or Stalag III-C, a German prisoner-of-war camp near the village of Alt Drewitz bei Küstrin, near the junction of the Oder and Warthe Rivers about 50 miles east of Berlin, had been in operation since June 1940. Thanks to the late Geoff Megargee and his team of researchers at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, we know a great deal about the composition of its prisoner population.[1]  Behind the camp’s barbed wire and guard towers was a multinational group of men. At various points, the German army confined there prisoners of war from Poland, France, Yugoslavia (primarily from Serbia), the Soviet Union, Italy (after September 1943), as well as British and American inmates. By December 1944, the number of prisoners at Stalag III-C reached over 38,000; over 2,000 were from the United States. Work in labor detachments had been the norm for most of the men.

STALAG III-C: CONDITIONS AND EVACUATION

Before early 1945, the Germans had generally followed the Geneva Convention in terms of the treatment of American, British, and French prisoners. As was common, they treated the Soviets in the camp quite viciously; as many as 12,000 of them died in Stalag III-C. In 1941–42, Gestapo agents had often pulled out of the ranks of the Soviet POWs professed Communists or those identified as Jews and sent them to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp, where most were executed by the SS.

Conditions greatly worsened for the inmates during the winter of 1944–45. Like in so many of the German armed forces’ prison camps, overcrowding and food shortages came to plague Stalag III-C. At the same time, distance to the front lines to the east steadily dwindled.

On the morning of January 31, 1945, a Wednesday, the personnel manning Stalag III-C decided it was time to evacuate. Delays by the prisoners would no longer be tolerated. Sounds of Soviet artillery fire had become distressingly close for the Germans; for their Allied captives, the shelling signified that the Red Army had finally arrived to liberate them.

Indeed, men of Marshal Georgy Zhukov’s 1st Belorussian Front had drawn near, moving rapidly toward Alt Drewitz bei Küstrin since the launching of the massive Vistula–Oder Offensive on January 12. Soviet forces had swept across Poland, taking Warsaw and Kraków, as well as liberating Auschwitz-Birkenau on January 27. Now they were pouring into German territory, bringing the fighting home, in brutal fashion, to the country that had unleashed World War II in Europe. And Zhukov’s troops had closed in, unwittingly, on one of the many POW camps erected by the Wehrmacht in eastern Germany.

Despite efforts by American prisoners to slow down the evacuation, German guards forced the prisoners to move out of Stalag III-C on the morning of January 31. Later, one survivor recounted how the Germans put them in columns of 500. It was a bitterly cold day to march, five weeks into a winter that was one for the proverbial history books. The POWs and captors would make it only a few miles before catastrophe ensued.

These Americans came from many different units—including the 82nd Airborne Division, the 30th Infantry Division, and the all-Japanese American 442nd Regimental Combat Team. From all their diverse backgrounds and wartime experiences, they had hoped to be freed by the Soviets prior to a long and frigid march westward. What actually happened to them reminds us of the perils of liberation.

AMERICAN POWS CAUGHT IN THE CROSSFIRE

Having covered only a short distance, the columns of prisoners soon found their way blocked by tanks: a Soviet spearhead, stunning Germans and prisoners alike by the rapidity of its advance, stood in their path. Thanks to the Red Cross, the POWs wore new uniforms and coats. But these acquisitions unwittingly made them targets. The Soviets, believing they had stumbled across a mass of German soldiers, opened fire on the head of the column. Panic resulted.

Under fire, the Germans could not maintain control over all the men in their charge. Some of the American prisoners headed straight for the Soviets’ position, desperately trying to identify themselves as Americans. Others sought refuge in nearby fields. A third group stayed in German hands.

The incident was a bloodbath. Several of the men who had made it to the fields were cut down, helplessly, in the crossfire. On the next day, the Germans counterattacked with air support, dropping antipersonnel “butterfly bombs” and successfully driving the Soviets back. Some US prisoners taken in by the Soviet unit succumbed to wounds from the German air strikes. Stalag III-C and most of its prisoners stayed for the moment in German control. 

Over the next few several weeks, the entire surrounding area was totally devastated. The Red Army finally liberated Stalag III-C on March 12, 1945, just over a month before Joseph Stalin launched the offensive to seize Berlin. Some reports indicated the freed inmates completely destroyed the camp structures.

Joseph Beyrle, an American paratrooper from the 101st Airborne Division who had escaped from Stalag III-C, actually fought with a Soviet armored unit. His story, as incredible it is, is really the only connection the US public has to the existence of this POW camp.

Those Americans who managed to join the Red Army force on January 31 and survive underwent their own odyssey. Many of them first went to Poland, then journeyed on to the USSR itself. Via Odessa, the Ukrainian port city, they returned to US control.  

After the war, the American Graves Registration Command, or AGRC, investigated what had transpired on January 31 and the days that followed. By then, the area around Stalag III-C was now part of Poland; Küstrin had become Kostrzyn nad Odrą, and Alt Drewitz became Drzewice. Neither the Polish residents nor the officials AGRC personnel interviewed knew much, if anything at all, about Stalag III-C or the incident. The Polish local government denied them access to some grave sites, and reliable information was hard to come by. 

AGRC teams did determine that 22 American POWs were killed and almost 50 were wounded in the incident; the actual number might be higher. For decades after the war, several of the deceased remained classed as “unrecoverable” as their remains could not be located despite prodigious work undertaken by AGRC in the immediate postwar years.      

What befell the American prisoners from Stalag III-C in late January and early February of 1945 is illustrative of just how dangerous conditions still were even as Adolf Hitler’s so-called Thousand-Year Reich fell to pieces. 

The article “Perils of Liberation: Crossfire Outside Stalag III-C,” published by The National WWII Museum, vividly recounts the frequently overlooked experiences of Allied prisoners as they were liberated from Stalag III-C. As World War II came to a close, these prisoners found themselves caught in the crossfire of advancing Soviet and American forces, leading to a complex and perilous struggle for survival amidst the chaos of shifting frontlines.

It is a terrible truth about the end of World War II in Europe that thousands of men, women, and children perished shortly before or even immediately after their liberation from German captivity. Such was the case of the American prisoners of war from Stalag III-C who fell, tragically, during a firefight between German guards and Soviet troops.  

Constructed by Polish prisoners of war, Kriegsgefangenen-Mannschaftstammlager III-C, or Stalag III-C, a German prisoner-of-war camp near the village of Alt Drewitz bei Küstrin, near the junction of the Oder and Warthe Rivers about 50 miles east of Berlin, had been in operation since June 1940. Thanks to the late Geoff Megargee and his team of researchers at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, we know a great deal about the composition of its prisoner population.[1]  Behind the camp’s barbed wire and guard towers was a multinational group of men. At various points, the German army confined there prisoners of war from Poland, France, Yugoslavia (primarily from Serbia), the Soviet Union, Italy (after September 1943), as well as British and American inmates. By December 1944, the number of prisoners at Stalag III-C reached over 38,000; over 2,000 were from the United States. Work in labor detachments had been the norm for most of the men.

STALAG III-C: CONDITIONS AND EVACUATION

Before early 1945, the Germans had generally followed the Geneva Convention in terms of the treatment of American, British, and French prisoners. As was common, they treated the Soviets in the camp quite viciously; as many as 12,000 of them died in Stalag III-C. In 1941–42, Gestapo agents had often pulled out of the ranks of the Soviet POWs professed Communists or those identified as Jews and sent them to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp, where most were executed by the SS.

Conditions greatly worsened for the inmates during the winter of 1944–45. Like in so many of the German armed forces’ prison camps, overcrowding and food shortages came to plague Stalag III-C. At the same time, distance to the front lines to the east steadily dwindled.

On the morning of January 31, 1945, a Wednesday, the personnel manning Stalag III-C decided it was time to evacuate. Delays by the prisoners would no longer be tolerated. Sounds of Soviet artillery fire had become distressingly close for the Germans; for their Allied captives, the shelling signified that the Red Army had finally arrived to liberate them.

Indeed, men of Marshal Georgy Zhukov’s 1st Belorussian Front had drawn near, moving rapidly toward Alt Drewitz bei Küstrin since the launching of the massive Vistula–Oder Offensive on January 12. Soviet forces had swept across Poland, taking Warsaw and Kraków, as well as liberating Auschwitz-Birkenau on January 27. Now they were pouring into German territory, bringing the fighting home, in brutal fashion, to the country that had unleashed World War II in Europe. And Zhukov’s troops had closed in, unwittingly, on one of the many POW camps erected by the Wehrmacht in eastern Germany.

Despite efforts by American prisoners to slow down the evacuation, German guards forced the prisoners to move out of Stalag III-C on the morning of January 31. Later, one survivor recounted how the Germans put them in columns of 500. It was a bitterly cold day to march, five weeks into a winter that was one for the proverbial history books. The POWs and captors would make it only a few miles before catastrophe ensued.

These Americans came from many different units—including the 82nd Airborne Division, the 30th Infantry Division, and the all-Japanese American 442nd Regimental Combat Team. From all their diverse backgrounds and wartime experiences, they had hoped to be freed by the Soviets prior to a long and frigid march westward. What actually happened to them reminds us of the perils of liberation.

AMERICAN POWS CAUGHT IN THE CROSSFIRE

Having covered only a short distance, the columns of prisoners soon found their way blocked by tanks: a Soviet spearhead, stunning Germans and prisoners alike by the rapidity of its advance, stood in their path. Thanks to the Red Cross, the POWs wore new uniforms and coats. But these acquisitions unwittingly made them targets. The Soviets, believing they had stumbled across a mass of German soldiers, opened fire on the head of the column. Panic resulted.

Under fire, the Germans could not maintain control over all the men in their charge. Some of the American prisoners headed straight for the Soviets’ position, desperately trying to identify themselves as Americans. Others sought refuge in nearby fields. A third group stayed in German hands.

The incident was a bloodbath. Several of the men who had made it to the fields were cut down, helplessly, in the crossfire. On the next day, the Germans counterattacked with air support, dropping antipersonnel “butterfly bombs” and successfully driving the Soviets back. Some US prisoners taken in by the Soviet unit succumbed to wounds from the German air strikes. Stalag III-C and most of its prisoners stayed for the moment in German control. 

Over the next few several weeks, the entire surrounding area was totally devastated. The Red Army finally liberated Stalag III-C on March 12, 1945, just over a month before Joseph Stalin launched the offensive to seize Berlin. Some reports indicated the freed inmates completely destroyed the camp structures.

Joseph Beyrle, an American paratrooper from the 101st Airborne Division who had escaped from Stalag III-C, actually fought with a Soviet armored unit. His story, as incredible it is, is really the only connection the US public has to the existence of this POW camp.

Those Americans who managed to join the Red Army force on January 31 and survive underwent their own odyssey. Many of them first went to Poland, then journeyed on to the USSR itself. Via Odessa, the Ukrainian port city, they returned to US control.  

After the war, the American Graves Registration Command, or AGRC, investigated what had transpired on January 31 and the days that followed. By then, the area around Stalag III-C was now part of Poland; Küstrin had become Kostrzyn nad Odrą, and Alt Drewitz became Drzewice. Neither the Polish residents nor the officials AGRC personnel interviewed knew much, if anything at all, about Stalag III-C or the incident. The Polish local government denied them access to some grave sites, and reliable information was hard to come by. 

AGRC teams did determine that 22 American POWs were killed and almost 50 were wounded in the incident; the actual number might be higher. For decades after the war, several of the deceased remained classed as “unrecoverable” as their remains could not be located despite prodigious work undertaken by AGRC in the immediate postwar years.      

What befell the American prisoners from Stalag III-C in late January and early February of 1945 is illustrative of just how dangerous conditions still were even as Adolf Hitler’s so-called Thousand-Year Reich fell to pieces.