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.