I asked the doctor to take my fingers off; he refused

My hand was a ghastly sight; two of the fingers were hanging by a piece of skin, all the palm was shot away and most of the wrist. For the first time, and certainly the last, I had been wearing a wrist-watch, and it had been blown into the remains of the wrist. I asked the doctor to take my fingers off; he refused, so I pulled them off myself and felt absolutely no pain in doing it.

A.C. de Wiart, Happy Odyssey (1950), 64