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 350
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 1920
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ARMY MEDICAL LIBRARY
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• •  • ••
■ • ••>•? .  I 
QlrjriHltttaH <grri?ting0--192U
  Just before Christmas, 1917, /  was serv-
ing with the l\Oth Field Ambulance  of  the
British Army.   We  were billetted in  a tiny
village, far behind the lines, in a Rest Area.
We arrived in a  snow storm and for two days
were without our equipment and almost with-
out food.  There was nothing to read; there
was little to do.  I picked up some scraps of
paper on which  I wrote this story.

  May you have a very Merry Christmas and
a Happy New  Year!   And may peace be
everlasting!

                Cordially,
-" 1S3 
 
BLIGHTY
      THE large gambling casino on the white
        pebbly shore  front of the  Normandy
village shines brightly in the crisp winter sun-
shine.   Within, the  long  tables  with their
spinning  wheels and clink of chips on the
green cloth are no more.  For the big casino
is now  a hospital  for  wounded Tommies.
Rows of  low  iron  beds, covered with white
counterpanes  under  which comfortably lie
the wounded men, fill the main floor, rise in
tiers on the raised platforms along the walls,
and  spread out on  the uncurtained  stage.
Some of the beds have clumsy wooden appar-
atus over  them from which are suspended an
arm  or a  leg as the case may be, held in un-
sightly position by ropes, pulleys  and coun-
ter-weights of bags of sand.
   Sergeant Sam Deaver, of a Canadian Regi-
ment, occupied  a  bed  over  in one corner.
There  was  nothing particularly  noteworthy
about him except the perpetual air of cheer-
Page One 
BLIGHTY
fulness  on his broad  heavy  face, and  the
position of his right leg, which was held in
bandages in an iron frame a few inches above
the bed covering.
   Two  ward  screens  covered  with  cotton
sheeting  surrounded the  bed next to him.
"That poor Bo must be in a bad way,"  he
thought,  for  it was only  when  dying that
patients were  hidden from their  fellow suf-
ferers by sombre  screens.
   Deaver tried to raise himself up enough by
his handstraps suspended on either side from
the wooden apparatus enclosing  his bed, to
see around the corner  of the screen.   He
couldn't get far enough over, try as he might.
   A groan and mumbled unintelligible words
came to me from  behind the enclosed  bed as
I passed it on my way to Sam Deaver.
   "Good morning," I said,  as I drew  my
chair up close to Sgt.  Deaver's  bed.  "How
are you this morning?"
   "Fine and fit, and hope you are the same,"
he answered.  "Have a cigarette, Doc?"
   "Don't mind if I do." I took one with him,
and reflected whether I should be smiling and
wanting to smoke a cigarette if I were  ly-
4
Page Two 
BLIGHTY
ing in bed  as  he was.  For it was only five
days  before that Deaver had had to have his
leg refractured  and  set properly.
   "Why  are  you  so happy this  morning,
Deaver?" I asked, as I looked into his happy
smiling face.
   "Got my ticket  to Blighty,"  he replied,
puffing on his cigarette contentedly.
   "So at last  you've  got your ticket.   I pre-
sume that means that in a few weeks you will
leave us.   Tell me, Deaver, why are you all
so keen on Blighty?"
   He closed his eyes for a moment, and then
opened them dreamily.
   "Did  you  ever  hear  the   song  called
'Blighty?'"  he laughed.
   "Well, here's the  chorus, well as  I can
remember it:
    " 'Take me back to dear old  Blighty;
      Put me in a train for dear old London town;
      Take me over there, drop  me anywhere,
      Liverpool,  Leeds or Manchester—where I don't
           care.
      I should like to see my best girl—
      Cuddling up  again we soon shall be.
      Whoa!  Hi-te-tiddley highty,
      Hurry  me home to Blighty;
      Blightly is the  place for me.'"
Page Thr 
BLIGHTY
   "Ain't  much  of a song, is it?"  he said.
"But it's got the pep alright, and means a lot
to the boys.  But it ain't all that Blighty
means."   He narrowed his eyes as he  looked
at me.
   "Ah, Blighty," he  resumed.   "Can  you
reckon what the word means?  Three years
of fightin'  in this Godforsaken land, with
nothin' to think  of but somethin' to  eat, how
to keep yer rifle  from rustin', and how to
keep yourself from gettin' shot.  Three years
of man's  hell!    Never in  my life  did I
think war was  like this—stickin'  in  dirty,
stinkin' trenches, with mud up to yer  knees,
day  in and  day out;  with  nothin' to do but
watch for  a  damned old Boche.  Then—back
to the rest areas!  More dirt, more filth, and
yer toes stickin' through yer boots—and no
more boots.  Sleepin' in  barns  night after
night, wid rats for company, and the smell of
manure to soothe yer to sleep.  Many a night
I wished  for a  Blighty—a nice little bullet
wound through the arm or  leg.  But none
would come my  way  until  I got this."   He
pointed to his fractured leg.
   "But, you're  a  Canadian,  Deaver.   Why
°atfe Four 
BLIGHTY
does going to England make you so happy?"
I asked.  "I can well understand a man who
lives  in  England wanting  to  get  there—to
get home, to see his friends.   But why a
soldier  from  Canada or Australia or New
Zealand  cares whether he goes  on or  stays
at the Base, in a nice,  warm,  comfortable
hospital,  I  don't  understand."
   He looked at me disgustedly.
   "Huh, easy to see you ain't never been out
to the front," he replied.  "Did you ever live
wid  the clothes on  yer  back for a whole
month ?  Did you ever go without a  bath until
yer skin  was so caked wid mud  that you
couldn't  see  the pink of  it?   Did you ever
have them burly jaspers—polite people call
them cooties—walking all over you until you
couldn't sleep of nights?  Did you  ever have
the rats play tag in yer bed when you needed
sleep so bad you couldn't keep yer eyes open?
No;  you haven't.
   "Do you know what Blighty means, Doc?"
he asked,  after  he finished  his nauseating
questions.
   "No,"  I  answered.   "I  have heard  all
sorts  of  explanations,  but  I don't think I
Page Five 
BLIGHTY
ever heard the right one."
   "Well, I'll tell you."  He hunched himself
on one elbow, and relapsed into a half dreamy
state again before  he replied.
   "Blighty is  the  Hindu word for Paradise
—at  least, so  I'm  told, and England means
Paradise  to  any British soldier, no matter
where he hails  from.  I ain't partickler about
England, and it ain't England itself we think
of.  It's  what Blighty  stands for.  I  ain't
sayin' we  ain't comfortable here, but when
you get to England you're further away  from
France,  and can't get back  quick, either.
The English Channel  ain't very wide, but
there's somethin' beyond it that spells—home.
There's people dressed up like people there,
wid regular clothes on.
   "Maybe when we are working  hard in the
trenches,  freezin' to  death inch by inch, we
thinks of Paradise—of  Blighty.   We see
ourselves  across the Channel in  nice  com-
fortable billets, with  real beds. We feel the
nice,  white sheets  around us.   We see  nice,
pretty girls  runnin'  'round and feedin'  us
cigarettes and grub—there ain't no true vision
of grub, only it ain't bully beef and biscuits.
Page Six 
BLIGHTY
I thought so much of Blighty before I came
here that I wished to be wounded or killed
—when I went over the top the last time."
  "Tell me about that, Deaver," I said.
  "Aw, it ain't nothin'," he  answered.   "I
didn't  do nothin', but them other boys what
didn't  come back was heroes.
  "Well,  as long as you  wants to hear it,
here goes:
  "One dark morning we was all sittin' in a
little narrow trench," he resumed.   "A  full
platoon.   We was all tired and  hungry. You
see we had only been out of the line three
days when we was called back to help out in
another push which  didn't succeed.  I re-
member what Jim Rooney and  Tim Blakes,
my pals, what  stood on both  sides of  me,
said—
  "'Ain't this a hell of a war!' says Tim.
'Gorblimey, if I don't gets my  Blighty  this
time I  ain't never goin' to get it.'
  " 'I  knows you wants yer Blighty mighty
bad, Tim,' says Rooney, on the  other side of
me.  'So  do I.   I been in this  war nigh on
three  years  and ain't been  scratched,  and
some as calls me lucky,  but this time I goes
Page Seven 
BLIGHTY
back for sure.'
   "Do  you call  that  courage?   Naw, that
ain't courage, it's just desperation.  Every
man in  that platoon  was  dog-tired, and
knowed that the only way to get comfort was
to get a Blighty, and get away from the dirty
mess for a little while anyway.
   "They all  wants to  go over the top.   We
was nervous  and cold.   We  wasn't nervous
from fear, but because we  had to wait until
that zero hour, when  our  guns  would bang
away and cover us.  They calls it a barrage.
   "At last the time come and our boys, with
a lot of others, jumps on the parapet, halts a'
minute, and then  runs  through  the opening
in our wire.  We are  only allowed to  go a
certain  distance till the barrage lifts, you
know.   So when we gets there, we lies down
on our bellies and waits, and then we goes for-
ward again.  We gets!  to the Boche wire be-
fore he  discovers  us,  and  then  Hell is  let
loose.  The machine gunners  turn on us, and
the boys is mowed down somethin' awful, and'
then the Boche rifles  begin  to  crack.   We
gets through the wire, kills a few Boches with
our rifle butts, bayonet a few more and cleans
Page Eight 
BLIGHTY
the trench out  wid bombs.   Oh, it was  a
lovely sight—maybe.  Dead Boches is every-
where, some wid their feet stickin' up in the
air, and others buried on top of one  another.
   "Our boys hadn't been saved none neither.
They was lyin' all  over No Man's Land, but
we still had enough to  go on.
   "Our  C. C.  (Company Commander,  you
know) yells to us to carry on, and no sooner
does he get the words out of his mouth than
he crumbles up—like  a caterpillar. We looks
for our  second in  command, a little  fellow
who ain't  had to  shave more than once  or
twice.   He's  there alright, and takes us up
to the second Boche trench. I ain't been hurt
yet, and there are  a  few other  fellows what
is whole, and so we  takes the second  trench
—that  was our objective.   When  I looks
around I  don't see  no Boches.  They has
all scampered.  But  I  don't see none  of our
fellows either.  I  suppose they was all dead
or wounded—the little leftenant what leads
us, he ain't to be seen  neither.
   "I wonders what to do, and then decides to
 get back.   I  ain't gone  more than  to  the
 first trench we captured when I hears a whiz,
Page Nine 
BLIGHTY
         somethin'  snaps, and I  falls over into the
         trench wid my right  leg  all twisted out of
         shape.
           "I must of  been  unconscious  for some
         time, for when I wakes up, it is dark, and the
         stars are  shining.  Everything is quiet, and
         I  wonders where I am,  and tries  to move.
         My  leg pains me somethin' terrible.  I kind
         of guess  I must be in a  Boche trench.  It
         was  so quiet I wanted to holler.
           "I makes up my mind  somethin' must  be
         done for  my  leg,  and looks  at  it,  lifts it
         gently,  and turns it round so that the toes
         points up  again.  I nearly faints with pain.
         When I  puts  out my hand, I am fortunate
         in finding a Boche rifle which I  place along
         the leg for a splint, and then I gets my first
         aid dressin' out, and takes my belt off, and
         ties  the rifle to my leg.   I must  have suf-
         fered some, 'cause I went  unconscious again.
         I don't know for how long.
           "I wakes up wid a start. I feels somethin'
         fingerin'  me.
           " 'Hey,' I yells,  'git the hell out of here.'
         You see,  I thought it was rats.
           "Ts  it  you,  Jock?'   I  hear  someone


Page Ten 
BLIGHTY
whisper.  I knows by the voice it is one of our
men, and asks  him for water.
   "He  creeps  near me,  and  hands me a
canteen.
   "I was never so thirsty in my life, but I
just takes  enough to make me comfortable,
and hands the bottle  back.
   " 'Thank God  for  that water,'  I  says.
'What's  yer name?'
   " 'Johnny Latham—London,'  he  answers
in  a weak voice.  'What  d'you go by?'
   " 'Sgt.  Sam Deaver—Canadian,'  I  an-
swers.
   "We must have fell asleep  then.
   "I wakes the next mornin' feelin' kind of
bad.   The  sun is  out.  I looks  'round me.
There is  my  friend  of the  night  before,
stretched out on a pile of  dead Boches, sleep-
in' his head off, as peaceful as if he was in
London  town.   It ain't time for the trench
to smell  bad yet, but the sight was somethin'
awful.
   "Latham didn't look as though he was hurt
none.  His limbs was whole, and he  didn't
have a mark anywhere.  He was  a pale little
sinner, with a face the size of  a penny.
Page Eleven 
BLIGHTY
  "I  wakes him after a while.
  " 'Say, Bo, ain't you got nothin' to eat?'
I says.
  "He rubs his eyes sleepily,  same as if he
was in bed, and then gets up wid a start  and
a shudder when  he sees where he was,  and
what he was lyin' on, and then—he begins to
cry.
  " 'Cut out the weeps, man,' I said, 'It don't
do no good.  I knows  you ain't a full-grown
soldier by the looks of you.  It's a shame they
has to  make  infants  come  to war.   What
you  bawlin'  for, anyway?   This  ain't  no
wake.'
  "He cries more and more until I  got wor-
ried  from the amount of water comin' from
his  eyes.
  "'Ain't  you  a soldier?' I  says, soothin'
like.  'Soldiers don't cry—perticklerly when
they is nice and safe like us.'
  " 'I ain't cryin' cause I'm  a soldier,' he
blubbered.  'It's 'cause I  ain't a soldier—
leastways I wouldn't be here if I was.   Oh,
I wish I could die.   I  wish I could die.'
  " 'Shut up,' I  yells.
  " 'I ain't a soldier.   I ain't a soldier,' he
Page Twelve 
BLIGHTY
keeps on cryin'.  T  goes over the top 'cause
they made me, and 'cause I wanted a Blighty,
and—then  I comes to this trench, and dives
in—and  stays  here.   I wants a Blighty to
send me back home.  When they goes over the
top again,  I stays here.  I'm a damned cow-
ard, I am,  and Gorblimey, I don't  care.  I
wants to die!'   And he cries some more.
   "I looked at him  kind of disgusted-like.
   " 'Well,  never mind, Bo,' I says, 'You gets
your wish this time,' I says.  'Yer're goin' to
die alright, there ain't nothin' else to do. We
are  the  only  livin' beings  in this trench.
We  ain't got no food nor  water, and I  only
got  one  leg.  Of course, we might get some
roast beef  and ice cream off the dead Boches
in here,  and we might get trimmin's such as
asparagus  and  cucumbers out in No Man's
Land tonight.   We  might, I say, if  I was  a
whole man.  Don't  think  I'm  expectin' any-
thing from you except dyin',  but I thought
I'd tell you, so you  could die easier.'
   "All that day we lies quiet.   No one came
near us.  The dead Boches was beginnin' to
steam some, but that didn't bother us.
   "When it comes dark, my friend begins to
Page Thirteen 
BLIGHTY
look in his canteen.   There ain't no  more
water.  And then he feels out on the body,
and gets a canteen and a box  of biscuits.  He
was pretty lively  actin' for a  man  what
wanted to die.
   "I didn't disturb him none. After a while
he  comes  over and divides with  me.
   "He looks more cheerful after eatin', and
then he tells me how he didn't want to go to
war, and  was conscripted.   He was  always
afraid of  a  fight, and this was his first time
in the trenches.  When it was time to go over
the top the  Sergeant  has to  boost him  over.
He hoped he'd get a Blighty, so he could go
home  for  good, and afore he knows it, he is
in this trench, sound and whole.
   " 'And now,' he says, 'I don't know what to
do.  I knows  I'm a coward,  I do.'
   "I didn't feel sorry for him, only ashamed
that our country had to  take such men  into
the Army.
   "A coward, did I say?  H'm funny what
kind of cowards some  men  are.   I  knows
Generals  what's  afraid  of rats,  and  other
men what's  scared of burglars—men what
didn't know what  fear was when it came to
Page Fourteen 
BLIGHTY
facin' the enemy.  Johnny Latham maybe—
was  a coward  afore I met him, but some
things as I'll mention to  you will show  you
the stuff some cowards is made of.  The Vic-
toria  Cross wasn't good enough for him.
   "The trench was gettin' somethin' awful in
a few days, and the food and water was gone.
Latham  begins to want to  live, and, what's
more, he began to play nurse to me.   He  sees
that  my leg is  comfortable, and every  few
minutes  asks if  there ain't  somethin' he can
do for me. Then, without my even suggestin'
it, he begins to clean up.   He  gets hold of
all the dead Boches, and  piles them over in
one corner, then he gets any blankets, or any
other coverin' he can, makes  a bed for me, and
moves me over  to it—me,  a big, husky brute
what is twice his size. At night I hears him
movin'  'round,  and then I  sees he  is  liftin'
those dead Boches over the top.
   "I ain't sayin' nothin' to him, just watchin*.
Later he comes  to me, and  gives me the last
sip of water.
   "Must a  !beeni about  midnight  when I
wakes.
   " 'Say, Bo, where are  you?'  I asks.
Page Fifteen 
BLIGHTY
   "There ain't no answer.  I wonders where
Johnny is, and I must a been watchin' about
two hours when I hears a scrap'n' noise, and
finally a head and shoulders appears over the
top of the trench, and Johnny falls down near
me wid his arms full of biscuits,  bully beef
and a couple of canteens.
   " 'Where you been?' I asks.
   " 'Been out robbin' the dead,' he says. 'We
needs the stuff, they don't.'
   "And before he eats a bit he spreads out
a feast for me.
   "For four long weeks Latham stayed with
me in that trench.  Every  day he would tell
me stories of the life of London, and I'd tell
him of myself and Canada.  I finds out he was
a messenger of  some kind afore the war.  He
was  very fond of his parents,  and  would
write them letters on scraps of paper and put
them in his pocket for future delivery.  Every
night, as soon as it was dark, he would crawl
out on his belly into  No Man's  Land, and
bring us enough to eat.
   "Most of the time things was  very quiet.
I don't know why no one wanted that trench.
We would  hear the fightin' around us, and
Page  Sixteen 
BLIGHTY
we  would see star  shells and verilights, but
not a Boche or a Britisher came near us.
  "As I  says, we was  pals for four long
weeks, and then one night Johnny went out—
and he never came back.  I  ain't never seen
him since.  All I can say is he was the bravest
little coward I ever saw.
  "By  this  time  my leg was  considerably
mended.   It was knittin' next to the  splint,
but it wasn't quite straight.   My toes pointed
out about forty-five degrees.  I  didn't have
much pain, but every time I tried  to stand,
my leg wouldn't hold me up.
  "Since Johnny was gone, I didn't have no
way to get  food or water.  I still had three
cans of 'bully' left  and one canteen of water.
I reckoned how long they would  last me.
  "I don't  know how, but I kept  alive for
two weeks.  My water gave out in a week, and
I was dyin' for somethin'  to drink.  It was
fortunate that it rained every night.  I would
lie on my back, open my mouth  and let the
rain drop in. I managed to collect a few drops
in a canteen, too, by placin' it in a side of the
trench where the rain was runnin' down.
  "Them  was two  weeks of agony.  Durin'
Page Seventeen 
BLIGHT?
 the  day I  tried crawlin'  round the trench,
 and at night I would look  up at the sky, and
 dream and try to work out how I was to  get
 away.  I often thought of Johnny Latham.
 I wondered where he was—wondered whether
 he was just wounded, or whether he had been
 killed.  I hope he was killed. There's a place
 for him in Heaven,  I'm sure.  Then I'd fall
 asleep, and not wake up again  until I'd hear
 the barrage fire in the  mornin'.
   "There ain't much more  to tell.  One night
 I creeps over the top, and slowly makes  my
 way on my belly, draggin'  my bum  foot after
 me, until I gets to our barbed wire.   A bullet
 passes over me, and I knows then  I've been
 seen.
   " 'For God's  sake,'  I yells, in  a hoarse
 whisper, 'I'm a Kanuk, let  me come through.'
  "It  is  quiet again, and  so I creeps along
 until I fall into the trench.
  "I don't remember what  happened; I must
of been all in.   I feels  myself  bein' carried,
and hears someone say  somethin' about skin
and bones—meanin' me, I suppose.
  "The rest ain't interestin', Doc, but when I
comes through, I prays for Blighty—and now
Page Eighteen 
BLIGHTY
I  got  my ticket.
   "Blighty—that is a wonderful word.   I
ain't carin' how it's spelled,  or  anythin'—
I  knows  what it means.  And when I  get
there, I hopes I'll never leave Blighty again,
 cept to that real home across the seas."
   Deaver turned over on his side and reached
toward the white enamel table beside him for
another  cigarette.
   There was a groan from the next  bed, be-
hind the red ward screens, and an inaudible
mumble,  which  became  louder, as the poor
tortured man, lying there delirious,  tried to
make himself heard.
   Gradually he quieted down, and his ravings
became  more distinct.
   "Deaver, Deaver," he  kept on repeating;
"Sergeant,  Canadian—I  want's  a Blighty.
I'm a damned coward, I am.  I ain't a soldier.
I wants to go home—home," and the moaning
ceased.
   "My  God,"  cried Deaver, as  he  flopped
back on the bed his face pale, his eyes bulg-
ing,  "It's him !"




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