Million-dollar wound


"Million-dollar wound" or "Blighty wound" is military slang for a type of wound received in combat which is serious enough to get the soldier sent away from the fighting, but neither fatal nor permanently crippling.

Description

In his World War II memoir With the Old Breed, Eugene Sledge wrote that during the Battle of Okinawa, the day after he tried to reassure a fellow United States Marine who believed he would soon die,
A similar concept is the Blighty wound, a British reference from World War I.

In popular culture

In the film adaptation of Forrest Gump, the titular character received a million dollar wound. He was shot in his backside during his service in the Vietnam War, which left him sidelined from combat for months. It was a very fitting example of a million dollar wound: Shot in a fleshy region of the body that could sustain it, received no permanent or prolonged injury from it, and removed from combat for a lengthy period of time. Given his below-average intelligence, he took the expression "million dollar wound" seriously, and said that "the Army must keep that money, 'cause I still ain't seen a nickel of that million dollars".