A million-dollar wound or Blighty wound is military slang referring to a type of wound received in combat which is serious enough to get the person sent away from the fighting, but is not fatal, nor will it leave the person permanently crippled. This was referenced in the 1994 film Forrest Gump referring to Tom Hanks' character being shot in the buttocks and getting sent home from the Vietnam War.
In the book, Max Allan Collins also explains that it was originally called the "Hollywood wound".
A similar concept is the Blighty wound, a British reference from World War I.[1]
Joseph Heller uses the expression in his 1961 novel Catch 22 when his hero, Yossarian, suffers a leg wound and calls it a million-dollar wound.
science fiction author Dean Whitlock wrote a 1987 short story titled "The Million-Dollar Wound" about a future war in which, as the conflict progresses, increasingly severe wounds are and prosthetically repaired, until eventually, the only way for a soldier to be sent home is to die.
References[]
- ↑ "Blighty Wounds". http://www.firstworldwar.com/atoz/blightywounds.htm. Retrieved 2007-03-26.
The original article can be found at Million-dollar wound and the edit history here.