We all love Orwell. He was an orator to say the least. I find his descriptive style makes his account of this event riveting... so today I'll let him write....
~~Jah Bless
George Orwell Wounded by a Fascist Sniper -- 20 May 1937 -- By George Orwell
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....
Britain's Own "Big Brother" Eyed Orwell
Associated Press WriterLONDON Sep 3, 2007 (AP)
George Orwell's left-wing views and bohemian clothes led British police to label him a communist but the MI5 spy agency stepped in to correct that view, the writer's newly released security file reveals.
The secret file that MI5 kept on the author from 1929 until his death in 1950 is being declassified Tuesday by the National Archives.
It reveals that in contrast to the fictional "Big Brother," the cruel and all-seeing secret police of Orwell's classic "1984," MI5 took a surprisingly benign view of the writer.
Orwell savaged the totalitarianism of Stalin's Russia in "Animal Farm" and "1984." But he was also a socialist who railed against inequality in earlier works such as "Down and Out in Paris and London" and "The Road to Wigan Pier."
The documents show Orwell whose real name was Eric Arthur Blair attracted the attention of police in 1936 for alleged "communist activities in Wigan." Then 33, he had gone to the mining town to research a book about working-class life in northern England.
MI5 had already been watching Orwell since 1929, when he was a struggling journalist in Paris, attempting to write for left-wing publications.
In 1942, Orwell drew police interest again while working for the Indian service of the British Broadcasting Corp. A report by a sergeant named Ewing of Special Branch, the British police intelligence wing, said Orwell had "advanced communist views, and several of his Indian friends say they have often seen him at communist meetings."
"He dresses in a bohemian fashion both at his office and in his leisure hours," police noted.
The file shows that MI5 took no action against Orwell over Ewing's report. In a note, an MI5 officer named W. Ogilvie reveals that he phoned Special Branch to ask why Ewing had described Orwell as having "advanced Communist views."
A police inspector replied that the sergeant felt Orwell was an "unorthodox communist."
"I gathered that the good Sergeant was rather at a loss as to how he could describe this rather individual line," Ogilvie wrote. "It is evident from his recent writings ... that he does not hold with the Communist Party nor they with him," he added.
The Special Branch files on Orwell were released by the archives in 2005. MI5's response had been secret until now. It was declassified as part of a phased release of MI5 files under the Freedom of Information Act, which was passed in 2005.
Other documents in the file reveal MI5 did not consider Orwell a security risk. In 1943, it was asked whether Orwell should be accredited as a journalist with Allied armed forces headquarters. "The Security Service have records of this man, but raise no objection to his appointment," was the reply.
A year earlier MI5 had approved Orwell's wife Eileen as suitable for employment with the Ministry of Food.
Despite his lifelong socialist views, in 1949, a year before his death at 46, Orwell gave the government a list of people he thought were Stalinist sympathizers or "fellow travelers."
The declassified file includes photographs, Orwell's passport application and a 1936 Special Branch summary of his career, which began conventionally education at the elite Eton College and service as a colonial police officer in Burma before taking a radical turn.
Special Branch notes that he "eked out a precarious living" as a freelance journalist and moved to France to research "Down and Out in London and Paris."
~~Jah Bless
