British soldiers in France have developed a terminology that is plain to them, but confusing to civilians. They speak of “Blighty,” for example, and of “Gone West.” These two terms express hopes—Blighty meaning home; in common acceptance, home for rest and recuperation. “Gone West” means gone from the east with its conflict to the refuge of death, where peace waits in the glory of sunset.

“Blighty” is of Hindu origin. British officers in South Africa who had served in India used the word, which is an Anglicized form of the Indian word “vilayti,” meaning European. Englishmen being about the only Europeans the natives knew, its application narrowed down to England only; and the army fell into a way of using it as a synonym of home. When the troops from India came into action early in the war, their wounded were sent to the nearest English great hospital, at Brighton, just across the channel. The consonance of Brighton and vilayti or Blighty was so close that these men used their own word as a matter of course, and in this way it floated into general use.

It has acquired a new sense of late. Casualties intermediate to those too severe for removal and those that can be treated in field hospitals, are sent to England—to Blighty—and are themselves called Blighty, meaning wounds that get a man home. Lieut. Siegfried Sassoon has woven the idea into a plaintively whimsical bit of verse which he calls