One of the many words connected with war which came into the English language from the French in the seventeenth century was _parade_, which means the showing off of troops, and came into French from an Italian word which itself came from the Latin word _parare_, "to prepare." Another of these words which has been much used in descriptions of the battles of the Great War, and especially in the "Battle of the Rivers" in the autumn of 1914, is _pontoon_. Pontoons are flat-bottomed boats by means of which soldiers make a temporary bridge across rivers, generally when the permanent bridges have been destroyed by the enemy. The word is _ponton_ in French, and comes from the Latin _pons_, "a bridge." Most words of this sort in French ending in _on_ take the ending _oon_ in English. Thus _ballon_ in French becomes _balloon_ in English. _Barracks_ also comes from the French _baraque_, and the French had it from the Spanish or Italian _barraca_ or _baraca_; but no one knows whence these languages got the word.
The word _bombard_, also much used during the Great War, came into English at the end of the seventeenth century from the French word _bombarder_, which came from the Latin word _bombarda_, an engine for throwing stones, and which in its turn came from the Latin word _bombus_, meaning "hum." Even a stone hurled with great force through the air makes a humming noise, and the "singing" of the bombs and shells hurled through the air became a very familiar sound to the soldiers who fought in the Great War. The word _bomb_, too, comes from the French _bombe_.
The words _brigade_ and _brigadier_ also came from the French at this time. So, too, did the word _fusilier_, a name which some British regiments still keep (for example, the Royal Fusiliers), though they are no longer armed with the old-fashioned musket known as the _fusil_, the name of which also came from the French, which had it from the Latin word _focus_, "a hearth" or "fire." It is curious how the names of modern British regiments, not even carrying the weapons from which they have their names, should take us back in this way to the days of early Rome.
The word _patrol_, which was used very much especially in the early days of the Great War, has an interesting origin. It may mean a small body of soldiers or police sent out to go round a garrison, or camp, or town, to keep watch; or, again, it may mean a small body of troops sent on before an advancing army to "reconnoitre"--that is, to spy out the land, the position of the enemy, etc. The word _patrol_ literally means to "paddle in mud," for the French word, _patrouille_, from which it came into English in the seventeenth century, came from an earlier word with this meaning.