"A blighty hit! Don't you know what that is? It's from the song they sing now, 'Carry Me Back to Blighty.' Blighty's England. I think it's a Hindustani word that means home, but I won't be sure about that. Anyhow, a blighty hit's not bad enough to keep you in France, but bad enough to send you to England. Those are the slow injuries that aren't so very dangerous.
"Next to getting to Blighty a fellow wants a cigarette. I never saw a man hit so bad he couldn't smoke. I saw a British 'plane coming down one day and the tail of it was red. The Germans fix up their machines like that, but I knew this wasn't paint on a British plane. He made a tiptop landing, and when he got out we saw part of his shoulder was shot away and he had a hole in the top of his head. 'That was a close call,' he said, and he took out a cigarette, lighted it and took two puffs. Then he keeled over."
The little major and I got out to stretch our legs at a station platform, and I noticed that salutes were punctiliously given and returned. "I suppose," I said, quoting a bit of misinformation somebody had supplied, "that out at the front all this saluting is cut out."
"No, sir," said the little major sternly. "Somebody told that to the last batch of recruits that was sent over, but we taught 'em better soon. They don't get the lay of it quite. It isn't me they salute; it's the King's uniform. Of course, I don't expect a man to salute if I pass him in a trench; but if he's smoking a cigarette I expect him to throw it away and I expect him to straighten up.
"You've got to let up on some things, of course. There's shaving now. I expect my men to shave every day when they're not in the line, but you can't expect that in the trenches. Naturally, I shave myself every day anyhow, but I'm lenient with the men. I don't insist on their shaving more than every other day."
When I got to the château where the visiting correspondents stay I found the officers at mess. There were four British officers, a Roumanian general, a member of Parliament, a Dutch painter and an American newspaperman. As at Verdun the conversation had swung around to literature. It all began because somebody said something about Shaw having put up at the château when he visited the front.