My long soldier’s training was my salvation now. I doubt whether without it I should have known just what to do and have done it with the promptness and precision of a man used to obeying military orders. At any rate, once I realized my condition, once I had looked upon my red, smashed hand, the slit sleeve and the flesh all torn beneath it, I immediately reached with my serviceable hand into the little pocket in the inside of my jacket for the precious vial of iodine.

Subconsciously I lifted the bottle with the idea of pulling the cork out with my teeth—good, strong, wholesome teeth they had been—when I realized the maimed condition of my mouth. Then you may believe I hesitated. But I did not dare risk the loss of any of that fluid. I must get antiseptic on my wounds. Here I was on the wrong side of No Man’s Land and in full knowledge of how much mercy I might expect from the Germans if I issued a call for help that would disclose a scout in their territory and beside that scout the dismembered bodies of their own dead. Again, if I lost the contents of this magic vial I must face the ordeal of dying in agonies of raging, infected wounds—die like a wounded rat in the enemy’s country. It would not do to risk breaking the vial against a stone in the hope of transferring most of its contents to my wounds. There was only too little of the fluid as it was.

So, red and torn as my mouth was, the upper jaw broken, I put the cork to my lips determined to stand whatever shock of pain the effort must cost me. I did not know it then, but curiously enough when this wound came to be examined it was found that although the shock of the back-blast had broken my upper jaw and cracked or blown away all the teeth in it, my lower jaw and teeth were intact. There wasn’t a tooth injured. I don’t remember exactly, but this escape of my under jaw in the explosion indicates that I had probably opened my mouth to utter some yell or taunt at my enemies as we fought.

Well, somehow, I got that cork between what was left of my teeth, closed on it and drew it. Hurt? I was blind with pain in the process. My one good hand shook and I all but dropped the bottle. But then, I was in such a whirl of pain anyway that the shock of more could not possibly destroy me.

I could not lift the right arm or move the hand of which I now observed that the entire thumb and base of it down to the wrist had been blown off. But while holding the bottle of iodine in my good hand, I managed to bare the entire wound from the torn sleeve and shirt sleeve that clung to it. I poured the biting iodine carefully all over the wound. It stung poignantly, but there had come over me a certain desperation that seemed to give me unlimited power to resist pain, made me in an astonishing degree impervious to it.

The arm was bleeding in gouts and I knew this had to be stopped and stopped quickly or it would not take many minutes to make a dead man of me. Already I was beginning to experience a daze of weakness. So I had to go through another agonizing ordeal.

I got out my handkerchief and again employing my wounded mouth to aid my serviceable hand, tied the handkerchief around my arm in the manner of a tourniquet—a performance in which I had expert training and practice—made a final loop, found a knife in my pocket, inserted it into the loop and though my arm throbbed excruciatingly in appeal for gentleness, turned the lever relentlessly until I knew the flow of blood must be greatly checked if not entirely stopped.

Now you must not think this took me any great time. I did it shakily but in greatest haste. For common sense gave its warning that the explosion of the bomb in territory near their batteries must soon bring investigators. And what I knew they did to soldiers they caught in their man-traps I knew they would as certainly do to me if I was found—just cold-bloodedly and in Hun fashion slay and mutilate me. I heard the grumblings and sharp mutterings of men coming up from a dug-out. And when I say in Hun fashion I mean something horrible—more horrible than even the world has yet learned.

And in that most crucial moment of my life, I leaped out of the trench and in the same instant I saw my savior. I hope it is all right to call a mud-hole a savior. There it was behind a clump of ragged bushes. I like to reflect now that it was one of the shells from our own guns as they sought out this battery of the enemy that had made for me this refuge.

I stumbled and plodded for this mud-hole. Most gratefully I sank into it. I threw myself into it fully, a dead weight, that I might sink the deeper into it. I didn’t in the least mind the pain to my wounds that the fall cost me. I then began with all the speed I could muster, slapping the mud all over me as in happier days at the ocean side, I had buried myself in the hot, dry sands.