Green’s Dictionary of Slang

(orig. US milit.) things are really fucked-up.

1944		P. Kendall Dict. Service Sl. n.p.: tarfu . . . everything fouled up.
1955		S.V. Baum ‘From “Awol” to “Veep”’ in AS XXX:2 103–4: Derivative terms reported in popularity among government workers included [...] tarfu (’things are really fouled up’).
1992		R. Marcinko Rogue Warrior (1993) 224: Even the lowliest dogfaces of WWII knew that. ‘How’s it going, soldier?’ SNAFU, they’d say [...] or TARFU — Things Are Really Fucked Up.
2001		S. Dutch ‘Printing’ on University of Wisconsin 🌐 These were just a few of a host of World War II acronyms, including: tarfu: things are really f***** up.