baksheesh

In the Middle East or southwest Asia: a bribe or tip.

What an honour to think that I am to be elevated to the throne, and to bring the seat in Parliament as backsheesh to the sultan!

As we rode into Magdala not a soul was visible. But the ring of the horses' hoofs roused the stupid population, and they all came trooping out—old men and old women, boys and girls, the blind, the crazy, and the crippled, all in ragged, soiled and scanty raiment, and all abject beggars by nature, instinct and education. […] [O]ut of their infidel throats, with one accord, burst an agonizing and most infernal chorus: "Howajji, bucksheesh! howajji, bucksheesh! howajji, bucksheesh! bucksheesh! bucksheesh!" I never was in a storm like that before. As we paid the bucksheesh out to sore-eyed children and brown, buxom girls with repulsively tattooed lips and chins, we filed through the town […]

A minor wound that necessitates the evacuation of a soldier from the combat zone for medical treatment.

When we had made the boys as comfortable as possible and given them fags, of which our Padre seemed to have an inexhaustable^([sic]) supply, they were quite cheerful, and joked about “backsheesh” wounds.

Clearly the preferred wound, it ranked in seriousness between a 'buckshee' or 'baksheesh', a slight would that merely took a man out of the line for a short time, and a 'N.Z. smack', which meant being invalided back to New Zealand, usually disabled for life.

To bribe with a baksheesh.