16-bit colour representation

[beertje]

This has me a bit stumped...

I'm trying to extract pictures from a file. So far I'm successfully
retrieved the header and what I think is the colour for each pixel.
Here's the description:

"""
3) The picture data format:
The color information is 15 bit data stored in 16 bit. This means the
most
significant bit is unused. The data is stored line for line in little
endian Intel format starting with top left edge to bottom right edge.
This
is normally called chunky format.

Bit  0.. 4	blue value
Bit  5.. 9	green value
Bit 10..14      red value
"""

So I've got a list of 16-bit numbers, but how to extract RGB info from
those I'm a bit lost. I thought at first I should convert the decimal
(say 23294) into a binary (say 0101101011111110) into something like
this:
blue: 01011
green: 01011
red: 11111

But encountered two problems: First, I don't know what the best way is
to do this conversion, but more importantly I don't see how every
colour could possibly be represented like this. 65535 is presumably
white, but converting this into chunks of 5 gives me a 31, 31, 31, a
dark shade of grey.

I guess I'm on the wrong track completely?

I'm a bit unsure about how to treat what the guide calls 'UWORD'...

Here's the full guide: http://lists.kde.org/?l=kde-games-devel&m=105548792026813&w=1#2
(16-bit PC cards)

Thanks alot.