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Updated: May 2, 2025
But after a few months Father Rheumatism got him and he was sent to Blighty; the air in the wake of his stretcher was blue with curses. Old Scotty surely could swear; some of his outbursts actually burned you. No doubt, at this writing he is "somewhere in Blighty" pussy footing it on a bridge or along the wall of some munition plant with the "G. R," or Home Defence Corps.
Yours always and ever, CON. January 6th, 1917. MY DEAR ONES: I have just seen a brother officer aboard the ex-London bus en route for Blighty. How I wished I could have stepped on board that ex-London perambulator to-night! "Pickerdilly Cirkuss, 'Ighbury, 'Ighgate, Welsh 'Arp all the wye." O my, what a time I'll have when I meet you!
So for two years through their bandages they watch the train pull out for Blighty, while the damage which was done them in the fragment of a second is repaired. At a Base Hospital you see something which you don't see at a Casualty Station sisters, mothers, sweethearts and wives sitting beside the beds. They're allowed to come over from England when their man is dying.
I thought you would be safely in old Blighty by this time," he added, shaking him warmly by the hand. "Oh, you couldn't work that game on me, colonel," said Barry cheerily, going round the group of men, who gave him an eager welcome. "You thought you had shipped me off, just as the fun was starting, but I got on to you." "Well, I'll be darned," said Major Bayne. "How did you find out?"
"Julie's turn," cried Elsie. "No," she said; "they know all my toasts." "Not all," said Donovan; "there was one you never finished something about Blighty." "Rhymes with nighty," put in Tommy coolly; "don't you remember, Julie?" It seemed to Peter that he and Julie stood there looking at each other for seconds, but probably no one but Tommy noticed.
Everywhere I looked I saw rows of Tommies on stretchers, some dead to the world, and the rest with fags in their mouths. The main topic of their conversation was Blighty. Nearly all had a grin on their faces, except those who didn't have enough face left to grin with. I grinned with my right eye, the other was band-aged. Stretcher-bearers came in and began to carry the Tommies outside.
I had been to France before in 1916, during the Battle of the Somme but not as an officer; in 1916 I was a private in the Royal Fusiliers, and I had received orders to return to "Blighty" in order to proceed to an officer cadet battalion at Gailes, in Ayrshire, before I had been able to see what a front-line trench was like. So this, then, was my first experience of war my "baptism of fire."
But, new or old, not a man but realised that by evening the roll of the regiment would have many gaps; new or old, not a man but realised that his name might be one of those gaps. Just the luck of the game; perhaps nothing, perhaps a Blighty, perhaps . . . It is well without doubt that the lower the intelligence the less the imagination.
We had a most successful and sumptuous dinner on Christmas Day, the whole N.-E. of France having been ransacked for geese and turkeys. On New Year's Day Lieut.-Colonel J.M. M'Kenzie went home sick, and Major D.D. Ogilvie assumed command. Educational training in the forenoon and sports in the afternoon was the order of the day, and everyone looked forward to demobilization and Blighty once more.
Snatches of conversation about Broadway and a girl in Newark floated back, and I tried to work up ambition enough to sing out and ask where the chap came from. So far I hadn't had much pain. When we landed in a regular dressing station, the M.O. gave me another going over and said, "Blighty for you, son."
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