Gunshot
wounds. We read about ‘em all the time in Civil War books. Some of us have
experienced it, most haven’t. Ever wondered what it’s like? Here, a great
author describes the experience. – Jonah
George Orwell’s Gunshot Wound
From Eyewitness to History, edited
by John Carey
The Spanish
Civil War: Wounded by a Fascist Sniper, near Huesca, 20 May 1937
George
Orwell
I had been
about ten days at the front when it happened. The whole experience of being hit
by a bullet is very interesting and I think it is worth describing in detail.
It was at
the comer of the parapet, at five o'clock in the morning. This was always a
dangerous time, because we had the dawn at our backs, and if you stuck your
head above the parapet it was clearly outlined against the sky. I was talking to
the sentries preparatory to changing the guard. Suddenly, in the very middle of
saying something, I felt - it is very hard to describe what I felt, though I
remember it with the utmost vividness.
Roughly
speaking it was the sensation of being at the centre of an explosion. There
seemed to be a loud bang and a blinding flash of light all round me, and I felt
a tremendous shock - no pain, only a violent shock, such as you get from an
electric terminal; with it a sense of utter weakness, a feeling of being
stricken and shriveled up to nothing. The sandbags in front of me receded into
immense distance. I fancy you would feel much the same if you were struck by
lightning. I knew immediately that I was hit, but because of the seeming bang
and flash I thought it was a rifle nearby that had gone off accidentally and
shot me. All this happened in a space of time much less than a second. The next
moment my knees crumpled up and I was falling, my head hitting the ground with
a violent bang which, to my relief, did not hurt. I had a numb, dazed feeling,
a consciousness of being very badly hurt, but no pain in the ordinary sense.
The American
sentry I had been talking to had started forward. 'Gosh! Are you hit?' People
gathered round. There was the usual fuss - 'Lift him up! Where's he hit? Get his
shirt open!' etc., etc. The American called for a knife to cut my shirt open. I
knew that there was one in my pocket and tried to get it out, but discovered
that my right arm was paralyzed. Not being in pain, I felt a vague
satisfaction. This ought to please my wife, I thought; she had always wanted me
to be wounded, which would save me from being killed when the great battle
came. It was only now that it occurred to me to wonder where I was hit, and how
badly; I could feel nothing, but I was conscious that the bullet had struck me
somewhere in the front of my body. When I tried to speak I found that I had no
voice, only a faint squeak, but at the second attempt I managed to ask where I
was hit. In the throat, they said, Harry Webb, our stretcher-bearer, had
brought a bandage and one of the little bottles of alcohol they gave us for
field-dressings. As they lifted me up a lot of blood poured out of my mouth,
and I heard a Spaniard behind me say that the bullet had gone clear through my
neck. I felt the alcohol, which at ordinary times would sting like the devil,
splash on to the wound as a pleasant coolness.
They laid me
down again while somebody fetched a stretcher. As soon as I knew that the
bullet had gone clean through my neck I took it for granted that I was done
for. I had never heard of a man or an animal getting a bullet through the
middle of the neck and surviving it. The blood was dribbling out of the corner
of my mouth. 'The artery's gone,' I thought. I wondered how long you last when
your carotid artery is cut; not many minutes, presumably. Everything was very
blurry. There must have been about two minutes during which I assumed that I
was killed. And that too was interesting - I mean it is interesting to know
what your thoughts would be at such a time.
My first
thought, conventionally enough, was for my wife. My second was a violent
resentment at having to leave this world which, when all is said and done,
suits me so well. I had time to feel this very vividly. The stupid mischance
infuriated me. The meaninglessness of it! To be bumped off, not even in battle,
but in this stale corner of the trenches, thanks to a moment's carelessness! I
thought, too, of the man who had shot me - wondered what he was like, whether
he was a Spaniard or a foreigner, whether he knew he had got me, and so forth.
I could not feel any resentment against him. I reflected that as he was a
Fascist I would have killed him if I could, but that if he had been taken
prisoner and brought before me at this moment I would merely have congratulated
him on his good shooting. It may be, though, that if you were really dying your
thoughts would be quite different.
They had
just got me on to the stretcher when my paralyzed right arm came to life and
began hurting damnably. At the time I imagined that I must have broken it in
falling; but the pain reassured me, for I knew that your sensations do not
become more acute when you are dying. I began to feel more normal and to be
sorry for the four poor devils who were sweating and slithering with the
stretcher on their shoulders. It was a mile and a half to the ambulance, and
vile going, over lumpy, slippery tracks. I knew what a sweat it was, having
helped to carry a wounded man down a day or two earlier. The leaves of the
silver poplars which, in places, fringed our trenches brushed against my face;
I thought what a good thing it was to be alive in a world where silver poplars
grow. But all the while the pain in my arm was diabolical, making me swear and
then try not to swear, because every time I breathed too hard the blood bubbled
out of my mouth.