"Machine gun" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... desire to become a humble, contented tiller of the soil, or handy-man about a tchaikhan, anything, in fact, of a strictly peaceful character. Were I a hostile trooper with a red jacket, and a general warlike appearance, and the bicycle a machine gun, though our whooping, charging cavalrymen were twenty instead of two, they would only charge once, and that would be with their horses' crimson-dyed tails streaming in the breeze toward me. The Shah's soldiers are gentle, unwarlike creatures at heart; there are probably no soldiers ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... speed one of our planes shot toward one of the German planes and seemed almost to ride on top of it, all the while pouring into it a stream of machine gun bullets, the smoke of which we could see. When they separated, ours rose but the German shot downward, evidently out of control, and we held our breath in anxious joy as we watched him drop two thousand feet or more. Then as he ...
— The Fight for the Argonne - Personal Experiences of a 'Y' Man • William Benjamin West
... a trench in your backyard, fill it half full of water, crawl into it, and stay there for a day or two without anything to eat, get a lunatic to shoot at you with a brace of revolvers and a machine gun, and you will have something just as good, and you will save your country a ...
— Toaster's Handbook - Jokes, Stories, and Quotations • Peggy Edmund & Harold W. Williams, compilers
... ensign rested one hand on the barrel of a machine gun in the launch's bow. Instantly the Germans began to move forward, only their four officers remaining near the ...
— Dave Darrin After The Mine Layers • H. Irving Hancock
... carronade^, culverin^, basilisk; falconet, jingal^, swivel, pederero^, bouche a feu [Fr.]; petard, torpedo; mitrailleur [Fr.], mitrailleuse [Fr.]; infernal machine; smooth bore, rifled cannon, Armstrong gun^, Lancaster gun, Paixhan gun, Whitworth gun, Parrott gun, Krupp gun, Gatling gun, Maxim gun, machine gun; pompom^; ten pounder. small arms; musket, musketry, firelock^, fowling piece [Fr.], rifle, fusil^, caliver^, carbine, blunderbuss, musketoon^, Brown Bess, matchlock, harquebuss^, arquebus, haguebut^; pistol, postolet^; petronel; small bore; breach-loader, muzzle-loader; revolver, repeater; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... sung them a sweet, low lullaby, crooning a song 30 with which mothers on the shores of all the seven seas had once rocked them to sleep—only now the sound of heavy firing, dull booms of the cannon, and the spit and nervous drum of the machine gun, made its song as futile and indistinguishable as the whisper of a child in the roar of ...
— Story Hour Readings: Seventh Year • E.C. Hartwell
... of the boys were so weary from their long "hike" that they wrapped up in their overcoats, lay down on the ground and went right to sleep. We remained three days here waiting for orders. We were near the front, could hear the guns all the time and the occasional rattle of a machine gun. When our orders did finally come, we were told to march back over part of the same route we had come and we finally stopped close to Novient. It was here that we saw our first action and it was here that we finished our education in the work that we were ...
— In the Flash Ranging Service - Observations of an American Soldier During His Service - With the A.E.F. in France • Edward Alva Trueblood
... out, the Lieutenant woke up first, exploded noisily and detonated the Field Officer who in turn detonated the Colonel. In the words of my batman—"They went orf one, two, three, Sir, for orl the world like a machine gun, a neighteen-pounder and an How-Pop-pop! Whizz-bang! ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Sept. 5, 1917 • Various
... but some are bound to be practical. This field gun, for instance. The genius who could have hit on that is capable of inventing anything. Why shouldn't I devote my life to spreading the Dix inventions over the earth? It's a colossal idea. Not one invention, but fifty—from a corkscrew to a machine gun. It's better than Sypher's Cure, ...
— Septimus • William J. Locke
... terror that fell upon the airmen was the discovery that, even at close range, the machine gun bullets failed to penetrate the shells. The force of the impact whirled the beetles around, drove them together in bunches, sent them groping with weaving tentacles through the air—but that ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science February 1930 • Various
... any, assistance was afforded by higher formations. An occasional night alarm also ordered by higher authorities discomforted everyone and did little good. Recruits were sent to Sandwich for musketry, and the Battalion assisted in digging trenches, machine gun emplacements and other defensive works on the inland side of the canal, originally constructed by French prisoners during the Napoleonic Wars, and which skirted Romney Marsh. Half the Battalion—that is four companies—was sent to assist with the London Defences near Ashford, ...
— The Story of the "9th King's" in France • Enos Herbert Glynne Roberts
... and for the first time a hint of interest touched the mask of his face. "To the bow, the rifle," he said softly, "to the rifle, the machine gun, to the cannon, the big bomb. The defense can be far worse than the first weapon. So you think that in these towers there may be things which shall be to the Reds' machines as the bomb is to the cannon of ...
— The Defiant Agents • Andre Alice Norton
... Officer.—... So let me repeat and impress upon you, men, that the rifle is an effete weapon—extinct as the—what-you-call-it bird. It played its part, a good part, in the South African War, but we who observed what the machine gun did then and foretold its immense development [he was just nine years old at that time] knew that the rifle would soon be in the museums along with the bows and arrows. Pay attention, Private Jones. The Lewis Gun, the weapon of opportunity, is a platoon in itself. I don't know what ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, April 25, 1917 • Various
... day, at dawn, he went out with eighty men to an outpost that had been an abandoned farm. It was rather a forlorn hope. They had one machine gun. At nine o'clock the enemy opened fire on them and followed it by an attack. The major in charge went down early. At two Cecil was standing in the loft of the farmhouse, firing with a revolver on men who beneath him, outside, were ...
— Love Stories • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... the trenches we were under a heavy rifle fire, and as we advanced this became more and more intense, with machine gun and shrapnel fire added. The ground was perfectly flat and open with no form of cover to be obtained, and our casualties soon became very heavy. We continued to advance till we got to within about 150 yards of the enemy's trenches, but by this time our ...
— Letters from Mesopotamia • Robert Palmer
... up a hot fire upon the bush that they supposed was concealing the sniper the company-commander ordered Bela Moshi to turn a machine gun upon the position that Wilmshurst ...
— Wilmshurst of the Frontier Force • Percy F. Westerman
... the young trainees stumbled into the headquarters area bleeding profusely from a deep gash on his cheek. Between lung-tearing gasps he told how the machine gun, intended to serve as the base of fire for the attacking platoons, had been captured by a Red patrol before it could be set up. They were being led off under the supervision of a referee when he tumbled into a ravine and in the confusion made ...
— I Was a Teen-Age Secret Weapon • Richard Sabia
... aircraft increased, the Corps machines engaged in them needed protection and it was realized that the best method of protection was the development of the air offensive. This was rendered possible by the adaptation of the machine gun to the aeroplane. Early in 1915 the invention of the "synchronizing gear" enabled a machine gun to fire through the propeller, and by the end of 1915 fighting in the air became the general rule. The first squadron, ...
— Aviation in Peace and War • Sir Frederick Hugh Sykes
... the club and of the theatre had thrown themselves far over the railings and were all looking in the same direction and waving their hats and cheering loudly, and he heard above the shouts of the people the regular tramp of men's feet marching in step, and the rattle of a machine gun as it bumped and shook over the rough stones. He gave a shout of pleasure, and Kirkland and the two boys ran with him up the slope, crowding each other to get a better view. The mob parted at the Palace gates, and they saw two lines of blue-jackets, spread out like the sticks of a fan, dragging ...
— Soldiers of Fortune • Richard Harding Davis
... might have been created at that very moment in the sky. The Frenchman—for it was an aviator from the parc at Toul, since killed at Verdun, poor fellow—swooped beneath his antagonist and fired his machine gun at him. The German answered with two shots of a carbine. The Frenchman fired again. Suddenly the German machine flopped to the right and swooped down; it then flopped to the left, the tail of the machine ...
— A Volunteer Poilu • Henry Sheahan
... through deep mud, skidded, recovered, fell into holes, and kept on. My attention was so focused upon driving that I saw little else but the road ahead, though once at an exclamation from Mademoiselle Froissart, out of the corner of my eye I saw a machine gun mounted and apparently intact. The motor was toiling, but in my soul I blessed its regular noise that told me all was well. Leaving the wood we came to what appeared to be a large rough clearing. There were no trees—only ...
— Where the Sabots Clatter Again • Katherine Shortall
... to the maximum both in efficiency and in strength, for it can not be made in a hurry. At present both infantry and artillery are too few in number for our needs. Especial attention should be paid to development of the machine gun. A general service corps should be established. As things are now the average soldier has far too much labor of ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... walked over to within 60 yards of the barrage. At 7.30 the barrage lifted and we rushed the front line defences, destroying the garrison, in and out of dug-outs. I have few definite memories from the time we first saw the Germans to the time the machine gun swept us down outside the Liepzig Redoubt. It became evident that we, who were working up between two communication trenches, after two or three rushes, that further advancing was impossible without support. We waited for our own reserve waves ...
— The Seventeenth Highland Light Infantry (Glasgow Chamber of Commerce Battalion) - Record of War Service, 1914-1918 • Various
... petrified; then the great arm was thrown with a movement quick as lightning round both Ala and Juba as they clung to the upright! My heart shot into my mouth, but before the animal could haul in its prey, a series of terrific reports rattled like the discharge of a machine gun at my ear. The monstrous arm released the victims, and waved in agony, breaking the thick, clammy branches of the vegetation, and the vast head disappeared. Edmund had fired all the ten shots in his automatic pistol with a single pressure of the double trigger and an unvarying aim, directed, ...
— A Columbus of Space • Garrett P. Serviss
... 1st County of London Yeomanry, to give the regiment the name by which it is officially known, though the men almost invariably use the much older Territorial title) and the 21st Machine Gun Squadron, held the long ridge from El Buggar to hill 630. There was a squadron dismounted on hill 630, three troops on hill 720, the next and highest point on the ridge, and a post at El Buggar. At four o'clock in the morning the latter post was fired on by a Turkish ...
— How Jerusalem Was Won - Being the Record of Allenby's Campaign in Palestine • W.T. Massey
... scantling, he retreated upon the feet of those behind. They let go also. Plooie slid forward to the ground. Madame Tallafferr's bony finger (backed by the sparkle of an authoritative diamond) swept slowly around a half-circle, with very much the easy and significant motion of a machine gun and something of the effect. A subtle suggestion of limpness manifested itself in the mass before her. Addressing them, she raised her voice not a whit. ...
— From a Bench in Our Square • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... but a small one and the explanation simple. Gabriel was not talking at that moment, it is true, but he was expecting to talk very soon, to talk a great deal. He had just come into possession of an item of news which would furnish his vocal machine gun with ammunition sufficient for wordy volley after volley. Gabriel was joyfully contemplating peppering all Orham with that bit of gossip. No wonder he was happy; no wonder he hurried along the main road like a battery ...
— Shavings • Joseph C. Lincoln
... a little of what was before them: "If wounded, 'Blighty'; if killed, the Resurrection." Then "over the top." He was last seen alive rallying his men, who had wavered for a moment under the heavy machine gun and rifle fire. He carried the waverers along with him, and was found that night close to the trench, the winning of which had cost him his life, with his platoon sergeant and a few of his men by ...
— A Student in Arms - Second Series • Donald Hankey
... look on their faces that would certainly have put any Hun to flight. Between the files stood an unmistakable gipling sergeant with a crimson face and a bristling little chestnut moustache, talking like a machine gun. ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... had married. She had been a bit extravagant and fond of her glass, but when he left her to rejoin the regiment, he had had no anxieties. She did not write often, not being very well educated and finding difficult the composition of letters. A machine gun bullet had gone through his chest, just missing his lung. He had been two months in hospital. He had written to her announcing his arrival. She had not met him at the station. He had tramped home with his kit-bag on his back—and the cracked ...
— The Red Planet • William J. Locke
... force that Gen. Ian Hamilton estimated Canada could send as her whole contribution to a great war. This was Hughes' answer to Hamilton. Not only were the men Canadian—if not many of them Canadians—but their uniforms, boots, kits, rifles, horses, tents, artillery, machine gun batteries, army waggons, cook waggons, engineering outfits and munitions, were as far as possible produced in Canada. Troop trains and transport steamers were Canadian. The money that paid for the army was Canadian. The pay of officers and men was Canadian. ...
— The Masques of Ottawa • Domino
... like that of a machine gun as the Hawk's engine spun the propeller, and then, after a little run across the sod, it mounted into the air, carrying Tom ...
— Tom Swift and his War Tank - or, Doing his Bit for Uncle Sam • Victor Appleton
... seriously sick or actually die. I know this is true because I remember my own youth and besides, why else would young people so glibly ride motorcycles or, after only a few months of brainwashing, charge up a hill into the barrel of a machine gun. Or have unsafe sex in this age of multiple venereal diseases. Until they get a little sense, vitamin supplements help to counteract their inevitable and unpreventable use of recreational foods. Vitamins are the cheapest ...
— How and When to Be Your Own Doctor • Dr. Isabelle A. Moser with Steve Solomon
... carrying a pilot and an observer, and has a maximum speed of 40-50 miles per hour. If required it can further be fitted with an automatic gun for defence and attack. The third craft is essentially a fighting machine. Owing to the introduction of the machine-gun which is fixed in the prow, with the marksman immediately behind it, the screw is placed at the rear. The pilot has his seat behind the gunner. The outstanding feature of these machines is the high factor of safety, which attribute has astonished ...
— Aeroplanes and Dirigibles of War • Frederick A. Talbot
... 1200 cavalry, and twelve guns had advanced from the Kauwukah system of defences to attack our outpost line on the ridge. They heavily engaged hill 630, working round both flanks, and brought heavy machine-gun and artillery fire to bear on the squadron holding it. The Royal Flying Corps estimated that a force of 2000 men attacked the garrison, ...
— How Jerusalem Was Won - Being the Record of Allenby's Campaign in Palestine • W.T. Massey
... back into the Frying Pan, of Courtenay's voice shouting again to "Stand clear," of a knot of men scrambling and heaving at something, and then of a deafening "Rat-tat-tat-tat," and the streaming flashes of a machine-gun. It stopped firing after a minute, and Rawbon, flattened back against a corner of the trench wall, heard an explanation given by a gasping private to Courtenay and another mud-bedaubed officer who appeared ...
— Action Front • Boyd Cable (Ernest Andrew Ewart)
... extract from a life of twice the length. Alan Seeger had barely passed his twenty-eighth birthday, when, charging up to the German trenches on the field of Belloy-en-Santerre, his "escouade" of the Foreign Legion was caught in a deadly flurry of machine-gun fire, and he fell, with most of his comrades, on the blood-stained but reconquered soil. To his friends the loss was grievous, to literature it was—we shall never know how great, but assuredly not ...
— Poems • Alan Seeger
... enemy, lying in ambush by the thousand, opened up its machine-gun fire. Demetrio's men fell ...
— The Underdogs • Mariano Azuela
... boat smelling of iodoform, through a cabin window of which a doctor was peacefully eating dinner. Boxes and sacks were piled near the wharf, and from over behind the hills, with startling nearness, came the nervous Crack... crack... crack-crack-crack! of rifle and machine-gun fire. ...
— Antwerp to Gallipoli - A Year of the War on Many Fronts—and Behind Them • Arthur Ruhl
... learned that it is the rarest thing in the world for an airplane to be brought down by guns from the ground. I suppose I have seen several hundred thousand shots fired at them and have yet to see one hit by a shell from an "Archie" and only one by machine-gun fire from the ground. The majority of planes destroyed are shot down by machine guns in combat ...
— The Emma Gees • Herbert Wes McBride
... we trotted into the square, Tupac running along by my horse's head. It was covered with groups of people all talking and looking and pointing about them, and on the terrace before the cathedral there were two companies of soldiers, one at each end, drawn up behind a machine-gun. ...
— The Romance of Golden Star ... • George Chetwynd Griffith
... invented the German submarine; an American invented the German torpedo; an American invented the German machine-gun; an American invented the Murphy button, the yellow ...
— The Blot on the Kaiser's 'Scutcheon • Newell Dwight Hillis
... try our luck," explained the lieutenant who was to lead Ned, Bob, Jerry, and their comrades, numbering half a score, out on a night raid. "There's a German dugout not far from here, and near by a machine-gun nest, and if we can get close enough to rush it, and capture those we don't kill, we may make it possible for a big forward movement—if the information we get is of the right sort. So get ready. Gas masks, hand grenades—rifles will be in the way—automatic pistols, of ...
— Ned, Bob and Jerry on the Firing Line - The Motor Boys Fighting for Uncle Sam • Clarence Young
... more pleasant. Thousands of feet below us, for example, were the artillery craft, which darted backward and forward across the lines as from their height of vantage they ranged and registered for the guns. On push days these same buses were to be seen lower still, well within range of machine-gun bullets from the ground, as they crawled and nosed over the line of advance and kept intelligent contact between far-ahead attacking infantry and the rear. Above the tangled network of enemy defences roved the line photography machines, which provided the Staff with ...
— Cavalry of the Clouds • Alan Bott
... the order received at Belfast at 5.30 P.M. on the 4th, the 15th Brigade started mobilizing on the 5th August 1914, and by the 10th was complete in all respects. We were practically ready by the 9th, but a machine-gun or two and some harness were a bit late arriving from Dublin—not our fault. Everything had already been rehearsed at mobilization inspections, held as usual in the early summer, and all went like clock-work. On the 8th we got our final orders ...
— The Doings of the Fifteenth Infantry Brigade - August 1914 to March 1915 • Edward Lord Gleichen
... had been inflicted upon them at the other end of the defile that it was not until one of the Maxims opened fire upon them that they could be persuaded to stay their precipitate flight. But the sharp, thudding, hammer-like reports of the machine-gun, and the stream of lead that began to play upon them and thin their ranks, soon brought them to a halt, when, flinging down their arms, they cried for quarter, which of course was at once given them. Then, ...
— The Cruise of the Thetis - A Tale of the Cuban Insurrection • Harry Collingwood
... 'stended order. We wur several yards apart, just loike we was when a section of us recruits wur put through platoon drill, when I fust jined the Army an' sergeant made us drill with skipping-ropes a-stretched out so as to get the spaces. And there wur a machine-gun in that there house—you know how they sputters. It cut down us poor chaps loike a reaper. Jacob Scaplehorn wur nex' me and I 'eerd 'un say 'O Christ Jesus' as 'e went over like a rabbit and 'e never said no more. 'E wur a good man, wur Scaplehorn"—he added musingly—"and ...
— Leaves from a Field Note-Book • J. H. Morgan
... war; and yet at Gutenstein sixty men with three machine guns, under Lieut. Maglaj, a Slovene from Carinthia, kept 1500 men at bay from 9 a.m. till 3.30, after which they slowly withdrew until the fighting ceased at six; a corporal and two men of a machine-gun detachment were cut off and concealed themselves in the shrubs of a defile. Suddenly they heard a German company come down the road, singing as they marched. The three men opened fire—the Germans in ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 2 • Henry Baerlein
... unconscious of their proximity. I began filming once more. The first lot of men, or rather the remainder of them, had disappeared in the haze and smoke, punctured by bursting shells. What was happening in the German lines I did not know. Other men were coming up and going over the top. The German machine-gun fire was not quite so deadly now, but our men suffered badly from shell-fire. On several occasions I noticed men run and take temporary cover in the shell-holes, but their ...
— How I Filmed the War - A Record of the Extraordinary Experiences of the Man Who - Filmed the Great Somme Battles, etc. • Lieut. Geoffrey H. Malins
... And then her pen, in the virulence of its volubility, would rush on to the discussion of individuals, to the denunciation of an incompetent surgeon or the ridicule of a self- sufficient nurse. Her sarcasm searched the ranks of the officials with the deadly and unsparing precision of a machine-gun. Her nicknames were terrible. She respected no one: Lord Stratford, Lord Raglan, Lady Stratford, Dr. Andrew Smith, Dr. Hall, the Commissary-General, the Purveyor—she fulminated against them all. The ...
— Eminent Victorians • Lytton Strachey
... his left leg, moved over to the seat at the controls. Altamont gathered up the two cups, the stainless-steel dishes, and the knives and forks and spoons, going up the steps over the shielded converter and ducking his head to avoid the seat in the forward top machine-gun turret. He washed and dried the dishes, noting with satisfaction that the gauge of the water tank was still reasonably high, and glanced out one of the windows. Loudons was taking the big helicopter upstairs, for a ...
— The Return • H. Beam Piper and John J. McGuire
... prescription drug stores; automobile- ambulances rigged with stretchers and first-aid kits; automobiles for carrying ammunition and capable of moving at tremendous speed for tremendous distances; automobile machine guns or machine-gun automobiles, just as suits you; automobile cannon; and an automobile mail wagon, all holed inside, like honeycomb, with two field-postmen standing up in it, back to back, sorting out the contents of snugly packed pouches; and every third ...
— Paths of Glory - Impressions of War Written At and Near the Front • Irvin S. Cobb
... has made an interesting contribution to the literature of the present war in his account of service, which covers the experience of a young officer in the making and on the battle front,—the transformation of an artist into a first-class machine-gun officer. He covers the training period at home and abroad and the work at the front. This direct and interesting account should serve to bring home to all of us an appreciation of how much has to be done before troops can ...
— "Crumps", The Plain Story of a Canadian Who Went • Louis Keene
... as to say he used to be a Boche pilot in that fuss across the big water," continued Perk, reflectively, as though certain memories of the long-ago had awakened in his brain—recollections that breathed of action, staccato machine-gun fire, exploding shells, and the terrible odor of gas that had poisoned so many of his ...
— Eagles of the Sky - With Jack Ralston Along the Air Lanes • Ambrose Newcomb
... had been digging for perhaps an hour when hell broke loose. They'd seen us. All about was a storm of machine-gun and rifle bullets, and we dropped on our faces, the diggers in their trench—pretty shallow it was. As for the covering party, we simply took our medicine. And then the shrapnel joined the music. Word was passed to get back to the trenches, and we started ...
— Joy in the Morning • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... altitude and so pieced together that the whole was a complete picture of our sector of front. We spent hours over this one. Every trench, every shell hole, every splintered tree or fragment of farmhouse wall stood out clearly. We could identify machine-gun posts and battery positions. We could see at a glance the result of months of fighting; how terribly men had suffered under a rain of high explosives at this point, how lightly they had escaped at another; and so we could follow, with a certain degree of accuracy, what ...
— High Adventure - A Narrative of Air Fighting in France • James Norman Hall
... more manifold as the war progresses. "Spotting" for the artillery far behind the enemy's lines; "searching" for ammunition dumps, for new dispositions by the enemy of men, material, and guns; attacking a convoy or bodies of troops on the march; sprinkling new trenches with machine-gun fire, or having a go at an aerodrome—any wild form of aerial adventure might be included in the diary of the ...
— The Mastery of the Air • William J. Claxton
... patience of the army, to the recital of the exploit that had won the War Cross for him, but there was a peculiar glint in his light eyes. As Smith drew to a conclusion, Pinkey slowly lifted his leg, stiffened by a machine-gun bullet, over the horse's ...
— The Dude Wrangler • Caroline Lockhart
... fired off her remarks, as was her wont, with the vigour and precision of a machine-gun. There was always a delightful definiteness both about her ideas and the expression ...
— The Vision of Desire • Margaret Pedler
... the locomotive were completely covered in with plating, except that the leading one was pierced in front for the muzzle of a machine-gun, and the second at ...
— The Light That Failed • Rudyard Kipling
... two youths won fresh laurels, and both were well on the way to be recognized "aces" by the time Pershing's army succeeded in fighting its way through the nests of machine-gun traps that ...
— Air Service Boys Over the Atlantic • Charles Amory Beach
... bombing machine, a huge three-seated biplane with great spreading wings and a powerful engine. This was a most formidable looking machine in which one passenger sat out in front mounted in a sort of machine-gun turret. The big biplane was fast, in spite of the heavy armament it carried, its three passengers and its arrangement for carrying hundreds of ...
— The Brighton Boys with the Flying Corps • James R. Driscoll
... and months can look forward with anything but apprehension to another winter of war. No man who has attacked across the inferno of the shell-and-bullet-swept "neutral ground," or has hung on with tight-clenched teeth to the battered ruins of the forward fire trench under a murderous rain of machine-gun and rifle bullets, a howling tempest of shells, an earth-shaking tornado of high explosives, can but long for the day when Peace will be declared and these horrors will be no ...
— Raemaekers' Cartoons - With Accompanying Notes by Well-known English Writers • Louis Raemaekers
... were quickly at their quarters, and every gun in the ship was promptly trained upon the position indicated by Douglas. It was too dark to enable the gunners to aim with precision, but the sound guided them to some extent, and suddenly a perfect volcano of machine-gun fire broke out on board the Blanco Encalada, followed by a hoarse scream of agony from the torpedo-launch. An iron bucket was partly filled with paraffin and this was lighted as a flare, throwing a lurid glare over the sea and disclosing plainly to view a couple of rapidly approaching ...
— Under the Chilian Flag - A Tale of War between Chili and Peru • Harry Collingwood
... Machine-gun tactics, a knowledge of which is so necessary for all junior officers, is a special feature ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... remained for nearly three weeks. Brigade Headquarters, the Machine-gun Company, and some A.S.C. were already in the village—ominous ...
— The Story of the 2/4th Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry • G. K. Rose
... the plan was by lucky accident. Lieutenant (now Lieut.-Col.) John T. Thompson, Ordnance Department, who was in charge of the Ordnance Depot at Tampa, accidentally met the would-be machine-gun man, and was promptly buttonholed over a dish of ice cream. Thompson was himself a young man and a student. His department placed an insuperable obstacle in the way of himself carrying out a plan which he, also, had conceived, and he was keen to see ...
— The Gatlings at Santiago • John H. Parker
... hurry to get home, seems to me as unintelligent as it is unnecessary. Like all Italian drivers, moreover, our chauffeur insisted on keeping his cut-out wide open, thereby producing a racket like a machine-gun, which, though it gave warning of our approach when we were still a mile away, made any attempt at conversation, save by shouting, out ...
— The New Frontiers of Freedom from the Alps to the AEgean • Edward Alexander Powell
... broken for a light word or a jest. From the darkness behind them a German flare soared up and burst, throwing up bushes and shattered buildings, sandbag parapets, broken tree-stumps, sticks and stones in luminous-edged silhouette. A machine-gun burst into a stutter of fire, the reports sounding faint at first and louder and louder as the muzzle swept round in its arc. 'Ssh-sh-sh-sh,' the bullets swept overhead, and No. 2 Platoon halted and crouched low in the ...
— Between the Lines • Boyd Cable
... positions, capturing the Linge summit to the left and the Barren to the right. The Germans, however, firmly retained their hold on Schratzmannele. They caught the exposed French flanks with a stream of machine-gun fire and forced the chasseurs to retire to sheltered positions lower down the slopes. Two days later the French made another attack, and for quite a month, judging from the contradictory "official" reports, these peaks changed hands about twice a week. The ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume IV (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)
... peered through the darkness to the shore. Indeed, it seemed that the enemy had left this shore unguarded. But the Turks are wily soldiers. They allowed the boats to near the shore, then opened up a murderous rifle and machine-gun fire. ...
— The Kangaroo Marines • R. W. Campbell
... a majority of the window panes broken, the barracks bore marks of having been the target for machine-gun bullets. The exterior walls were pitted with holes. Battery D was not in camp long before the members knew the story of the Russian revolt that had been staged at La Courtine during the days of Russia's exit from the war. When Russia withdrew from the fighting Camp La Courtine ...
— The Delta of the Triple Elevens - The History of Battery D, 311th Field Artillery US Army, - American Expeditionary Forces • William Elmer Bachman
... man or a man in great danger reviews his past. I didn't. I spent those few minutes wondering when the machine-gun fire would come. ...
— A Yankee in the Trenches • R. Derby Holmes
... how the same vapor that issued from the pot bubbling on Martina's fire could be harnessed and made to draw a hundred wagons at once upon the old-time steel-railed highways; how a child's hand on the crank of a machine-gun might hurl invisible death among a regiment of men and put even an army to flight. Steam and gunpowder and electricity, what wonderful ideas were connoted in the words! The very names thrilled him with ...
— The Doomsman • Van Tassel Sutphen
... a Tsar," said the Count to me. "But he must be terrible. What the Russian people need is cruelty—not machine-gun bullets and shells, but cruelty. They do not mind dying. The ...
— Europe—Whither Bound? - Being Letters of Travel from the Capitals of Europe in the Year 1921 • Stephen Graham
... half-platoons in file. A battalion of Gurkhas was deployed on our left, and the third battalion of the brigade was formed up in rear of the Gurkhas. The main attack was thus to be delivered on a narrow front of five hundred yards, the machine-gun company being held in readiness to support the assaulting battalions as occasion offered. The first-line transport with the reserve ammunition halted near the culvert through which we had crossed the railway, but both our reserve ammunition and our Aide Post were brought ...
— With a Highland Regiment in Mesopotamia - 1916—1917 • Anonymous
... molecules of the air in the room were so besieged by the beat of drums, the blare of trumpets, the crackle of lightning, the rumble of heavy machinery, the squawks and shrieks of horns and whistles, the rustle of autumn leaves, the machine-gun snap of popping popcorn, the clink and jingle of falling coins, and the yelps, bellows, howls, roars, snarls, grunts, bleats, moos, purrs, cackles, quacks, chirps, buzzes, and hisses of a myriad of animals, that each molecule would have thought that it was being shoved in a hundred thousand different ...
— Anything You Can Do ... • Gordon Randall Garrett
... one great forlorn hope—swarmed on to the mole, over the splintering gangways, while her guns roared defiance at the huge German batteries. The ground swell made the Vindictive roll and racked her breaking gangways terribly. The storm of German shells and the hail of machine-gun bullets seemed almost to be sweeping everything before them. An officer awaiting his turn on deck asked, "What are all those men lying down for?" and was answered, "All dead, Sir"; killed before ...
— Flag and Fleet - How the British Navy Won the Freedom of the Seas • William Wood
... trenches, but were promptly ejected by a supporting company of the 9th Royal Scots. After a second short artillery bombardment the Germans again attacked about 5.15 P.M., but were again repulsed by rifle and machine-gun fire. A third bombardment followed, and this time the Germans succeeded in gaining a trench—or rather what was left of it—a local counter-attack failing. However, during the night the enemy were again driven out. The trench by this time being ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 5, August, 1915 • Various
... known that the Bolshevist thugs, when tired of using the rifle, the machine-gun, the cord, and the bayonet, expedited matters by drowning their victims by hundreds in the Black Sea, in the Gulf of Finland, and in the great rivers. Submarine cemeteries was the name given to these last resting-places of some of Russia's most high-minded sons and daughters.[283] It is not ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon
... the corridor. The tiny company, beating their path with criss-crossing shafts of white, forged ahead. They thrashed the shadows with their beams, probing each inch of water—clearing their way even as a tank hoses machine-gun bullets before its clumsy body. Their former slender chance ...
— Astounding Stories, February, 1931 • Various
... vibrations of any alcoholic breath within five miles, and indicates on a sensitive dial the exact direction and distance of the breath. It was only too evident that the search for Quimbleton was going forward with fierce system. In the shelter of an old barn they heard a cork-popping machine-gun going off rapidly. This was one of the most atrocious ruses employed by the chuffs in their search for conscientious drinkers. The gun fires no projectile, but produces a pleasant detonation like the swift and repeated drawing of corks. Set up in ...
— In the Sweet Dry and Dry • Christopher Morley
... the headquarters company and some fifty in the machine-gun company, the rifle companies on this September day averaged about seventy men. Nor had a full complement ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys with Pershing's Troops - Dick Prescott at Grips with the Boche • H. Irving Hancock
... along roads lying under gun range of the enemy. But this matter would be different; this experience would widely differ from any they had undergone. This meant going out into the open to walk up against machine-gun fire and small-arm fire. So each one ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb
... empty his magazine with almost machine-gun quickness. There was a short pause, and down the broken steps he leaped, ...
— The Metal Monster • A. Merritt
... Frobisher. "What are you about?" But Drake either could not or would not hear; he kept on his way, regardless of the hail of rifle and machine-gun bullets which flicked the water into foam all ...
— A Chinese Command - A Story of Adventure in Eastern Seas • Harry Collingwood
... good, honest swig. The bullets pinged around us, although I saw a German officer—a decent young fellow—try to keep his men from shootin'. But he couldn't hold 'em in, so I hoisted Tom on my back an' started for our trenches. Got there, too, you know, jest as a machine-gun over to the right started spoutin'. It didn't matter my droppin' Tom in the trench an' tumblin' after him. The boys buried him decent while the sawbones was cuttin' what was left of my arm away, an' puttin' me to ...
— Mary Louise and the Liberty Girls • Edith Van Dyne (AKA L. Frank Baum)
... workmen made eight ammunition boxes a day. Nor could they be persuaded into making more. A young Swiss, who could not speak English, was set to work, and in the first day he made fifty boxes. In the same firm the skilled union hands filed up the outside handles of one machine-gun a day. That was their stint. No one was known ever to do more. A non-union filer came into the shop and did twelve a day. A Manchester firm found that to plane a large bed-casting took union workmen one hundred and ninety hours, ...
— War of the Classes • Jack London
... posts of officers, noncommissioned officers, special units (such as band or machine-gun company), etc., in the various formations of the company, battalion, or regiment, ...
— Infantry Drill Regulations, United States Army, 1911 - Corrected to April 15, 1917 (Changes Nos. 1 to 19) • United States War Department
... vestments consisted simply of a stole worn over my cassock. Helmet and mask lay easily within reach at one side. The firing, meanwhile, was terrific—high explosive shells shrieking overhead and bursting on every side. Rifle and machine-gun bullets added their shrill tenor notes to the orchestral ...
— The Greater Love • George T. McCarthy
... eastward. The smoke already extended far away to the east and west—to the Byfleet pine woods eastward, and to Woking on the west. The road was dotted with people running towards us. And very faint now, but very distinct through the hot, quiet air, one heard the whirr of a machine-gun that was presently stilled, and an intermittent cracking of rifles. Apparently the Martians were setting fire to everything within range ...
— The War of the Worlds • H. G. Wells
... extreme bloodiness of modern warfare under some conditions, and its bloodlessness under others. Here, out of a total of something under a thousand casualties seven hundred were incurred in about five minutes, and the whole day of shell, machine-gun, and rifle fire only furnished the odd three hundred. So also at Ladysmith the British forces (White's column) were under heavy fire from 5.30 to 11.30, and the loss again was something under three hundred. With conservative generalship the losses of the battles of the ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle
... you had? Who you been with, and how many years?" He snapped the questions at Jimmy with the rapidity of machine-gun fire. ...
— The Efficiency Expert • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... hall outside the Senate lobby. She paused for a moment. From the hall she could look down the broad, main stairway which conducted to the rotunda. The rumble of trucks had attracted her attention. Soldiers were moving a machine-gun; they lined it up with two others that were already facing the great doors of the main entrance. She had half hoped that her father was in the rotunda, using his influence and his wisdom, now that the mob was threatening the building outside those great ...
— All-Wool Morrison • Holman Day
... it could be taken, but that they could take it. And they did take it, as the first hill had been taken, by sheer pluck and dauntless determination. In vain did the Spaniards hurl forth their deadliest fire of machine-gun and rifle. The grim American advance was as unchecked as that of an ocean tide. Finally it surged with a roar like that of a storm-driven breaker over the crest, and dashed with resistless fury against the crowning fortifications. In ...
— "Forward, March" - A Tale of the Spanish-American War • Kirk Munroe
... He caused a small separate cabin to be extemporized for myself and Lin Wong, and looked to our comfort in other ways. My friend Lin, I should say, had received a nasty graze on the ribs of the right side from one of the machine-gun bullets, but otherwise was all right, though in a very chop-fallen condition at being made prisoner. He and I were allowed more liberty than the other captives, and apart from the detention ...
— Under the Dragon Flag - My Experiences in the Chino-Japanese War • James Allan
... The explosions from the bombs were terrific and the flashes lit up the whole sky. We took refuge behind trees as shrapnel from our anti-aircraft guns rattled down in the roadway and the "ping" of machine-gun bullets startled our ears. ...
— The Fight for the Argonne - Personal Experiences of a 'Y' Man • William Benjamin West
... was not in his place, but the interests of the Home Department did not suffer in the hands of the Under-Secretary. Sir HAMAR GEEENWOOD rattles out his replies with the speed and accuracy of a machine-gun, and has a neat formula for dealing with "supplementaries": "All these further Questions are covered by ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, May 21, 1919. • Various
... The machine-gun crew had gone under to a man, doing their best to the last. I think Sergeant Whitehead went with them, too; at least he was near there a short time before, and I never saw him or any of the gun crew again. The only living soul near that spot was Royston, dragging himself out from under ...
— The Escape of a Princess Pat • George Pearson
... was perfectly all right. It rattled off from beginning to end like a machine-gun, and must have caused enormous casualties. Only I thought Auntie Joe might be one of the casualties. I thought it might put her out of action as a hostess for a week or so. You see, for me to publish such an onslaught on new titles in the afternoon, and then attempt to dine with the latest countess ...
— The Title - A Comedy in Three Acts • Arnold Bennett |
