Orwell provides one of the best accounts ever written of what it is like to be badly wounded by a bullet and expecting to die soon. He knew he had been shot, but could not tell where. When informed that it was a neck shot, “I took it for granted that I was done for. I had never heard of a man or animal getting a bullet through the middle of the neck and surviving it.” Blood dribbled from a corner of his mouth. He assumed that a carotid artery had been severed, which would mean that he had only a few minutes to live. “My first thought, conventionally enough, was for my wife. My second was a
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