Writing Again

Working on the novel more in my head last night. I managed to get a new chapter started, but I stopped to do a little online research. What does a flash-bang grenade look like? I mean, what is it like to have one land at your feet and go off a split second after you've looked down at it?

Thankfully this is something I've never experienced first hand. I haven't experience being shot either -- though I have had a gun in my face twice. So, what can I do but imagine? Well, George Orwell did get shot in the neck and wrote about it. Here's a link. I'll quote it here in case that link goes dead in the future:

Roughly speaking it was the sensation of being at the center of an explosion. There seemed to be a loud bang and a blinding flash of light all around 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.

Wait. Is that unattributed in the page to which I linked?? Well that won't do! Where the hell is Orwell supposed to have written that? Let me see...

Well, here's the link to which the person above linked: http://www.rjgeib.com/thoughts/soldiers/george-orwell-shot.html

Again, in caset the 'source' vanishes, I'll include the text here (at any rate, it isn't text belonging to the author of the page but supposedly to Orwell so fair use and all that):

I have 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 corner 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 center of an explosion. There seemed to be a loud bang and a blinding flash of light all around 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 open, 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 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 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 I was done for. I had never heard of a man 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 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 violent resentment at having to leave this world which, when all is said and done, s 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 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 prisioner 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, finger 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.

Why doesn't anybody on teh interwebs ever bother to source anything? Or even check to see that it was indeed written by the person to which it's attributed before quoting it?

Okay, let me google a snippet of the passage and see if I can verify it anywhere else. How about this random partial sentence: "The leaves of the silver poplars which, in places, finger our trenches brushed against my face?"

Google-ize the thing. Nope. The only return is the page to which I linked above!

Okay, I'll google-ize "Orwell shot in neck" next and see what happens. Hey, don't laugh if I look like a total illiterato right now. I didn't write a doctoral thesis on Georgie boy now....

Here's one of the returns:
http://wesclark.com/jw/orwell_gunshot.html

Well, okay, now I'm getting somewhere. It looks like the source of this piece is Eyewitness to History, edited by John Carey. I think I've read that, actually. If I recall correctly, there's something in there about a public execution in Turkey where a man is tied to a barrel and has a large stake sledg-hammered into his anus and through his body until it exits at his shoulder.

Let me check for that book at Amazon.com... Ah. Here it is:


Okay, yes. I remember having this book so many years ago! Yes, this book came out right after I graduated from high school. Okay, so is there a piece in this book written by George Orwell titled something like, "The Spanish Civil War: Wounded by a Fascist Sniper, near Huesca, 20 May 1937?"

Oh well, for that I'll have to wait until I can get my hands on a copy -- or else verify some other way and read the story in the book itself.

For now, I'm off on a tangent again and should be getting back to work.

So where was I? Oh, yes, I was writing a chapter last night -- or early this morning -- where the fab four of the novel are in Sunni's apartment and the bad guys come in for a visit....