"Shrapnel" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and this layer is always thickest when I am bound for distant parts. "I mean every word of it, I tell you, Dev." Dev, like Dunny, is a misnomer; my name is Devereux—Devereux Bayne. "Don't you risk your bones enough with the confounded games you play? What's the use of hunting shells and shrapnel like a hero in a movie reel? We're not in this war yet, though we soon will be, praise the Lord! And till we are, I believe in neutrality—upon ...
— The Firefly Of France • Marion Polk Angellotti
... used where the ground is so difficult or cover so limited as to make it desirable to take advantage of the few favorable routes; no two platoons should march within the area of burst of a single shrapnel[2]. Squad columns are of value principally in facilitating the advance over rough or brush-grown ground; they afford no material advantage ...
— Manual of Military Training - Second, Revised Edition • James A. Moss
... which loop-holes had been cunningly contrived for the French sentries who must watch through the night for signs of Hun activity. Over the rear wall of the trench was another built-up wall of sand-bags. This parados, as it was called, is intended to give protection against shrapnel, which often burst just after passing over a trench. Thus the parados prevents a back-fire of the bullets carried in the shrapnel shell, which otherwise ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys with Pershing's Troops - Dick Prescott at Grips with the Boche • H. Irving Hancock
... night, as men famished and athirst in a pit listen to the toil of rescuers. Almost the last thing that Peter remembered was that the moon came up before the sun had set. The rapid-fire battery was at work on a hot smoky hill, the shrapnel and larger pieces still higher, and the great masses of infantry moving below among the wind- driven hazes of the valley, their long necklaces, of white puffs, showing ...
— Red Fleece • Will Levington Comfort
... like Ruskin and many other of the nineteenth-century philosophic artists, idealised warfare. His warriors are not clad in khaki; they do not crouch behind muddy earthworks. They are of the days before the shrapnel shell and Maxim gun; they wear bright steel armour, wield the sword and lance, and by preference they ride on horseback. Indeed, they are of no time or country, unless of the house of Arthur and the land ...
— Watts (1817-1904) • William Loftus Hare
... world, unless they were in overwhelming force, could hardly hope to cross a clearing that was swept by the fire of six hundred rifles, two machine-guns, and three Hotchkiss cannon hurling canister or shrapnel. ...
— Campaigning in Cuba • George Kennan
... better to see their visitors. The battle waxed fierce, and when re-inforcements came galloping to the assistance of the Boers it looked as if the Light Horse must be worsted. But the artillery was behind them, and from it was belched forth a hail of shrapnel which compelled the re-inforcements to draw rein and "pant to the place from whence at first they flew." Our guns away back at the Reservoir also contributed to this result. Thus it was that the task of evicting ...
— The Siege of Kimberley • T. Phelan
... and at all points the opposing armies came into contact. The Bulgarian gunners had very carefully taken all ranges on the ground over which the Greeks had to advance, and at first their shrapnel fire was extremely damaging. The Greeks, however, did not wait to fight the battle out according to the usual rules of warfare—by endeavoring to silence the enemy's artillery before launching their infantry forward. Phenomenal rapidity characterized the Greek tactics ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 21 - The Recent Days (1910-1914) • Charles F. Horne, Editor
... August of the previous year I had such a broad view that if a shell were to explode anywhere along the front of five miles it would have been visible to me, and I saw not a single burst of smoke from high explosive or shrapnel. Apparently the Germans never expected to undertake any offensive here. All their energy was devoted to defensive preparations, without even an occasional attack over a few hundred yards to keep in their hand. Tranquillity, which amounted to the simulation of a truce, ...
— My Second Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... the mountings, sniffin' the mornin' cool, I climbs in my old brown gaiters along o' my old brown mule. The monkey can say what our road was — the wild-goat 'e knows where we passed. Stand easy, you long-eared old darlin's! Out drag-ropes! With shrapnel! Hold fast — 'Tss! 'Tss! For you all love the screw-guns — the screw-guns they all love you! So when we take tea with a few guns, o' course you will know what to do — hoo! hoo! Jest send in your Chief an' ...
— Verses 1889-1896 • Rudyard Kipling
... hidden, dug in, posted in many an odd corner, laid upon the enemy from many a crevice in the ground and many a convenient hollow. Indeed, already the sharp snap of those soixante-quinze had begun to punctuate the air, and shrapnel-bursts could be seen above the evergreen tree-tops upon the snow-clad slopes, and over hollows where the enemy were massing. But now, as the enemy cannonade died down a little, and that torrent of shells which had been hurtling upon the French ...
— With Joffre at Verdun - A Story of the Western Front • F. S. Brereton
... before the end, when he was feeling the strain upon him to be heavier than he could bear; after a word or two about the war—he had volunteered to go to the front as a chaplain—he said, "So I am staying here as usual; but the incessant demands on my time try me as much as shrapnel and bullets." That sentence seems to me to confirm my view that he had not so much sacrificed as devoted himself. He never gained a serene patience; I have heard him over and over again speak with a sigh of his correspondence ...
— Hugh - Memoirs of a Brother • Arthur Christopher Benson
... from the once bullet-swept water's edge to the slight shelter of a sand-bank, and walk by the narrow sap into "Shrapnel Valley," still strewn with old water-bottles and broken rum-jars, by a trench then to "Monash Valley," and there probably you start coveys of partridge, which abound now in great numbers, or you start the silver fox or ever-present ...
— Europe—Whither Bound? - Being Letters of Travel from the Capitals of Europe in the Year 1921 • Stephen Graham
... things there passed through the desolate sanctuaries, and down an aisle past pillars pitted with shrapnel, a sad old woman, sad even for a woman of North-East France. She seemed to be looking after the mounds and stones that had once been the cathedral; perhaps she had once been the Bishop's servant, or the wife of one of the vergers; she only remained ...
— Unhappy Far-Off Things • Lord Dunsany
... directions, then a roll of smoke, a flash, a cracking bang, a gun runs back, and intently-watching eyes presently see a small cloud of smoke over the top of a distant kopje, and a faint, far-away crack announces that the well-timed shrapnel is searching the rocky ridges; then bang, bang! bang, bang! and the rest quickly follow, firing in turn and now and again in twos or threes. Then it's "limber up" and forward, and their attention is paid to another little range further on. Soon, having cleared several ...
— A Yeoman's Letters - Third Edition • P. T. Ross
... and countrymen, if the wise and learned philosophers of the older world, the first observers of nutation and aberration, the discoverers of maddening ether and invisible planets, the inventors of Congreve rockets and shrapnel shells, should find their hearts disposed to inquire, What has America done for mankind? let our answer be this:—America, with the same voice which spoke herself into existence as a nation, proclaimed to mankind the inextinguishable ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... vicinity. The Huns in charge of the anti-aircraft defences stationed about the target direct huge beams of numerous searchlights toward the sky and an intense barrage is put up above and around the target by the Hun batteries. The air is filled with shrapnel from bursting shells at the altitude at which the machine is flying, for the Huns have accurate instruments which gauge the altitude of an aeroplane from the sound vibrations of its engines. The aviators, ...
— Night Bombing with the Bedouins • Robert Henry Reece
... Their shout gave Khumel Khan his notice that the price of a hundred murders was overdue, and he chose to make payment where a V-shaped cliff enclosed a small, flat plateau and not more than a dozen could ride at him at a time. His companions scattered much as a charge of shrapnel shrieks through the rocks, but Khumel Khan knew well enough that he was the quarry—his was the head that by no conceivable chance would be allowed to plan fresh villainies. He might have run yet a little way, but he saw the uselessness, ...
— Rung Ho! • Talbot Mundy
... placidly. "That's Paula's luck. She's tough to kill. Why, I've had her under shell-fire where she was actually disappointed because she didn't get hit, or killed, or near- killed. Four batteries opened on us, shrapnel, at mile-range, and we had to cover half a mile of smooth hill-brow for shelter. I really felt I was justified in charging her with holding back. She did admit a 'trifle.' We've been married ten or a dozen years now, and, d'ye know, sometimes it ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London
... bringing artillery, with fevered lips, to roar forth shrapnel in Trafalgar Square; why not Gatling guns? The artillery did not come for very shame, but the Guards did, and there were regiments of infantry in the rear, with glittering bayonets to prod folk into moving on. All about these ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies
... many weeping Irish mothers knew later. They gathered behind walls or flickered across the open in shouting masses, and were pot-valiant in artillery. It was expedient to hold a large reserve and wait for the psychological moment that was being prepared by the shrieking shrapnel. Therefore the Mavericks lay down in open order on the brow of a hill to watch the play till their call should come. Father Dennis, whose duty was in the rear, to smooth the trouble of the wounded, had naturally managed ...
— Life's Handicap • Rudyard Kipling
... "we must. I have been thinking a great deal lately that some kind of shrapnel shell or explosive bomb would be a most splendid innovation in their warfare. Then there are breech-loading rifles and those with magazines that I must hasten to study out and learn to reproduce as soon as we ...
— Pellucidar • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... hack us through and through; The chilled steel bolts are swift! We have emptied the bunkers in open sea, Their shrapnel bursts where our coal should be." And he ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... German occupation, was mined, so that it could be instantly destroyed. I found my little garden rather neglected, for the man who looks after it had been "mobilized" and is now lying in a hospital at Bordeaux, getting over a shrapnel wound in the leg. The place nevertheless was full of pears, peaches, figs, green corn, American squashes, beans, tomatoes, and no end of roses, gladioli, tobacco plant, hollyhocks, heliotrope, dahlias, morning-glories, ...
— Paris War Days - Diary of an American • Charles Inman Barnard
... short hours—a day or two longer—and we should be plunged into battle. A bullet for one, shrapnel for another, dysentery for a third, a bayonet or death ...
— At Suvla Bay • John Hargrave
... again about his wound, and began feeling his hair. "It's not there," he said. "Guess I got it all over my hands. They got me this time. Shrapnel, in the body. Don't waste time on me. Some other fellow may have ...
— The Cow Puncher • Robert J. C. Stead
... thought anything more of it—I mean, connecting the dream with the ill-luck—but in the South African campaign there were quite remarkable instances. You see, at such times when you are playing hide-and-seek with shrapnel, officers and men get very chummy when we do get a spell for a talk. The Tommies give us their confidences, and ask us all kinds of strange questions about religious and ...
— War and the Weird • Forbes Phillips
... took place across open ground swept by both shrapnel and machine-guns, and the men just seemed to ...
— From the St. Lawrence to the Yser with the 1st Canadian brigade • Frederic C. Curry
... periscope we watched the tin back-plates, worn by our men for the enlightenment of artillery observers, twinkling under the dust and smoke. Some other Manchesters were lending a hand in the battle already, and were struggling under heavy shrapnel fire to gain a footing in the trenches immediately to the north of the sector to be assaulted by the Brigade on the morrow. Then gradually the firing sank. By 4.45 P.M. there was a distinct lull. One of our Companies (C Company) under Captain G. Chadwick, was sent as reinforcements. ...
— With Manchesters in the East • Gerald B. Hurst
... good and plenty," exulted Frank, as he washed up a scratched shoulder that had been struck by a splinter of shrapnel. ...
— Army Boys on the Firing Line - or, Holding Back the German Drive • Homer Randall
... ground after stooping at the lordly stag—but this crashing avalanche of shale with the king of the forest atop was too much for them, and they went down the "hill" into the nothing and the far distance that lay, so to speak, almost at one's feet, like a spatter of shrapnel. ...
— The Way of the Wild • F. St. Mars
... prefer bullets or shrapnel, early in the campaign or late, a la carte or table d'hote, morning or—" ...
— The Last Shot • Frederick Palmer
... chance, and by 3:30 in the afternoon a third of the enemy, with the exception of a force that lay hid in bushy hollows on the east bank between the two posts, were in full retreat, leaving many dead, a large proportion of whom had been killed by shrapnel. ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... rain—but it was too late. We could not sink into the earth fast enough. The Boers had got the range of the trench to a nicety, and the shells burst over us now with a horrible methodic precision. Several men were hit, and there was no reason why the enemy should cease to rain shrapnel over us until we were all killed. As we were absolutely powerless to do anything, I put up the white flag. All I could do was to thank Providence that the enemy had no quick-firing field guns, or, though "we had not been long," we should have ...
— The Defence of Duffer's Drift • Ernest Dunlop Swinton
... almost to the canal which was some distance away. The situation of the 1st Corps was excellent, and the artillery positions were well chosen. From where we stood we could observe the effect of our fire. It was very accurate, and shrapnel could be seen bursting well over the enemy lines and holding his advance in complete check, whilst the German fire was by no means so effective. The infantry were defending their position a long way down the slope with great determination and ...
— 1914 • John French, Viscount of Ypres
... time there was in the public mind, which is quite of full feminine agility, a strong prejudice against the use of fire-ships. Red-hot cannon-balls, and shrapnel, langrage, chain-shot, and Greek-fire—these and the like were all fair warfare, and France might use them freely. But England (which never is allowed to do, without hooting and execration, what every other country does with loud applause)—England must ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... fire during the rest of the night. Next night we were due to leave for the forward trenches at dusk to carry on, having had our usual entertainment in the afternoon from the Germans, when suddenly they began throwing shrapnel at our trench. For about half an hour it was all over us, and I'm blest if I know why nobody was hit. It was the overhead cover, I fancy, that saved us this time. We came out like a lot of rabbits when it was over and ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume III (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... brought his vessel about, but while she was still rolling in the trough of the sea with her sails flapping, an 8-inch shrapnel shell came hurtling through the air from the water-battery, a mile and a ...
— The Boys of '98 • James Otis
... well within sound of the guns. A German Taube was shelled as it came over our firing line yesterday. One man was lying on his back asleep with his hat over his eyes, when a piece of shrapnel from one of the "Archies" hit him in the stomach—result: one blasphemous, indignant casualty. From the road I can see one of the observation balloons, a queer sausage-shaped airship. We may be moved up into the thick of it at ...
— "Crumps", The Plain Story of a Canadian Who Went • Louis Keene
... the train; but his position was so nearly desperate that he was unwilling to surrender any chance. He found a smart young sergeant and six men of the Royal Wessex Light Infantry seated in a third-class carriage. They wore shrapnel helmets, and their rifles were propped up between ...
— Lady Bountiful - 1922 • George A. Birmingham
... yards dashed up the rough stony slope in front, very few Boers remained. Most of them were already in the saddle, galloping off to Graspan, their next position. The unwounded Boers who did remain remained—nearly all of them—for good; rifle bullets and shrapnel and shell splinters are deadly enough, but deadliest of all is the bayonet thrust. So much tissue is severed by the broad blade of the Lee-Metford bayonet that the chances of recovery are often very slight. As volunteer recruits ...
— With Methuen's Column on an Ambulance Train • Ernest N. Bennett
... exhibited at the exposition in London the first cannon made of cast steel; now they turn out more shells and shrapnel in a week than were used at the whole battle of Koeniggraetz (Sadowa), which lasted from eight o'clock in the morning till four o'clock in the afternoon on July 3, 1866. The queen of this, the greatest factory of destructive ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier
... so—mere uncontrollable instinct which takes the form of a sort of desperateness at facing the thousand chances of death before they have lived. They don't know it isn't actual fear of bullets and shrapnel. Sometimes they're afraid it's fear and it makes them sick at themselves and determined to grin and hide it. But it isn't ...
— Robin • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... his horse to one of the posts, and sat down with us by the fire. The shell-fire had quieted down, and we dozed off, glad of the interlude. Suddenly a shell burst close beside us. The poor beast, waiting patiently for his rider, was hit in the neck by the shrapnel, but hardly a sound escaped him. In war, especially, one cannot help admiring the stoicism of horses, as compared with other animals. One sees examples of it on all sides. Tread, for instance, on a dog's foot, and he runs away, squealing. A horse is struck by a large lump of shrapnel ...
— Life in a Tank • Richard Haigh
... could see; the machines came, sometimes whole truck-loads of them, damaged in every way he had ever seen before, and in new ways not dreamed of in Kumme's bicycle-shop—tyres torn to shreds by fragments of shrapnel, frames twisted out of shape by explosions, and nasty splotches of blood ...
— Jimmie Higgins • Upton Sinclair
... of houses lay out, like a bit of tripe, with the sunshine in their square hollows. Suddenly a band began to play up the hill among some trees; and an officer of local Guards in the new steel anti-shrapnel helmet, which is like the seventeenth century sallet, suggested that we should climb and get a better view. He was a kindly man, and in speaking English had discovered (as I do when speaking French) that it is simpler to stick to one gender. His choice was the feminine, ...
— France At War - On the Frontier of Civilization • Rudyard Kipling
... his bayonet pointing straight out in front of him. Some had been running with such elan that in falling their shoulders had fairly plowed into the soft ground. They had nearly all been killed by shrapnel fire, which in most cases had killed cleanly. We found one, however, who had been badly mashed by a shell which had burst in the ground at his feet, making a deep, oblong hole six feet long into which his shattered body had fallen. ...
— The Note-Book of an Attache - Seven Months in the War Zone • Eric Fisher Wood
... they finally took us in; for we were foreigners, and the Military Revolutionary Committee had promised to protect the dwellings of foreigners.... On the top floor the manager showed us where shrapnel had shattered several windows. "The animals!" said he, shaking his first at imaginary Bolsheviki. "But wait! Their time will come; in just a few days now their ridiculous Government will fall, and then we shall ...
— Ten Days That Shook the World • John Reed
... unexpected moments in odd places, and Boche planes paid regular visits, dropping bombs, always, however, receiving a bombardment from our "Archies". But on the morning of July 14th, after a night of more than the usual amount of artillery fire, shells began to fall all around, not to mention the shrapnel exploding overhead; this state of affairs continued throughout the whole morning. "No. 2" Section in camp was well protected by a high cliff, but "No. 3" was not so fortunate and had to be moved. All the horses had been taken to another spot, and ...
— Through Palestine with the 20th Machine Gun Squadron • Unknown
... the forehead and saw only a red blur. I wiped them dry with my sleeve and looked again. The broad back in front of me was covered with mud. Impossible to distinguish the color of the tunic. But the shrapnel helmet above it was—French! I was in French hands. If ever I live long enough in one place, so that I may gather a few possessions and make a home for myself, on one wall of my living-room I will have a bust-length portrait, rear view, of a French brancardier, mud-covered ...
— High Adventure - A Narrative of Air Fighting in France • James Norman Hall
... his pal was eating a bit of bread and cheese when he was knocked over: "Poor chap, he just managed to ask me to tell his missus." "War is rotten when you see your best pal curl up at your feet," comments another. "One of our chaps got hit in the face with a shrapnel bullet," Private Sidney Smith, First Warwickshires, relates. "'Hurt, Bill?' I said to him. 'Good luck to the old regiment,' says he. Then he rolled over on his back." "Partings of this kind are sad enough," says an Irish Dragoon, "but we've ...
— Tommy Atkins at War - As Told in His Own Letters • James Alexander Kilpatrick
... left; there was no road to the one on my right.[6] I came across a lot of disheartened stragglers retreating up the hill. I went a little farther and saw our own firing line a quarter of a mile ahead. There was a bit of shrapnel flying about, but not much. I struck back up the hill and came upon a crowd of fugitive infantry men, all belonging to the 13th Brigade. At last I found General Cuthbert, the Brigadier of the 13th, sitting calmly on his horse watching the men pass. I asked him where the 15th was. He ...
— Adventures of a Despatch Rider • W. H. L. Watson
... mind, the door opened and the landlord appeared, apologizing for the raid as if it had been an accident of his kitchen. We must have no fear. All danger was over. The avion—only one!—had been chased out of our neighbourhood. The noise we heard now was merely shrapnel fired by anti-aircraft guns. We would not be disturbed again, that he'd guarantee ...
— Everyman's Land • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... Field-Marshal Nature. Marshal Nature had an army that the Old Guard had never confronted. His herald was Frost, and his aid-de-camp was Zero. One of his army corps was Snow. His bellowing artillery was charged with Lithuanian tempests. Hail was his grape and shrapnel. The Emperor of the French had never studied Marshal Nature's tactics—not even ...
— Notable Events of the Nineteenth Century - Great Deeds of Men and Nations and the Progress of the World • Various
... 1914, 'my great admiration for the splendid work the Royal Flying Corps is doing for my Corps from day to day. Nothing prevents them from obtaining the required information, and they frequently return with rifle or shrapnel bullets through their aeroplane or even their clothing, without considering such, to them, ordinary incidents as worth mentioning. To-day I watched for a long time an aeroplane observing for the six-inch howitzers for the Third Division. It was, at times, smothered ...
— The War in the Air; Vol. 1 - The Part played in the Great War by the Royal Air Force • Walter Raleigh
... motor fail him, and has been obliged to land on hostile soil; with the result that he has been made prisoner. But with dual-engine machines it has been found that, when one motor has failed mechanically, or has been put out of action by shrapnel, the remaining unit has been sufficient—though the machine has flown naturally at a reduced rate—to enable the pilot ...
— Learning to Fly - A Practical Manual for Beginners • Claude Grahame-White
... "Wait till the shrapnel is falling around you; wait till great pieces of jagged shell mow men down on your right and on your left. Still we have stuck so far, and we must stick to the end. Still, from a military standpoint," and here ...
— Tommy • Joseph Hocking
... fortitude with which his uncle met it. Those early weeks of nineteen hundred and seventeen were black ones for many. The grim Moloch War demanded more and ever more victims. Thousands of gay, brave, high spirited lads like Ted were mown down daily by shrapnel and machine gun or sent twisted and writhing to still more hideous death in the unspeakable horror of noxious gases. It was all so unnecessary—so senseless. Larry Holiday whose life was dedicated to the healing and saving of men's bodies hated with bitter hate this opposing force which was ...
— Wild Wings - A Romance of Youth • Margaret Rebecca Piper
... nearer to the hedges of stone behind which an inveterate foe with grim joy saw a soldier fall to his soft-nosed bullet; while far down behind these men of a forlorn hope there was hurrying up artillery which would presently throw its lyddite and its shrapnel on the top of the hill up where hundreds of Boers held, as they thought, an impregnable position. At last with rushes which cost them almost as dearly in proportion as the rush at Balaclava cost the Light Brigade, Byng's men reached the top, mad with the passion of battle, vengeful in spirit ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... in the least concerned with his affliction. A civilian with the toothache could not expect the consideration of a hero with a shrapnel wound. Moreover, this was her first appearance in the role of hostess at a large party, and she fluttered about ...
— Quin • Alice Hegan Rice
... our artillery began firing from the hill-crest immediately in front of where our men were camped. Several of the regiment were killed and wounded by the shrapnel of the return fire of the Spaniards. One of the shrapnel bullets fell on my wrist and raised a bump as big as a hickory nut, but did not even break the skin. Then we were marched down from the hill on a muddy road through thick jungle towards Santiago. The heat was great, and we strolled into ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... Hicks, Jr., indignantly. "You and I, Theophilus, would give a Rajah's ransom just to hear the fellows whoop it up for us like that, and it has no more effect on that sodden hulk of a Thor than bombarding an English super-dreadnaught with Roman candles! Howsomever, Coach Corridan exploded a shrapnel bomb ...
— T. Haviland Hicks Senior • J. Raymond Elderdice
... all had a chance to finger it. The young captain seemed quite proud of it and bore it off with him to the dining room. It was what remained of a bomb, and had been loaded with slugs of lead and those iron cherries that are called shrapnel. A French flyer had dropped it that afternoon with intent to destroy one of the German captive balloons and its operator. The young officer was the operator of the balloon in question. It was his daily duty to go aloft, at the end of a steel tether, and bob about ...
— Paths of Glory - Impressions of War Written At and Near the Front • Irvin S. Cobb
... raise the body, bearing it to one side, for the major, mindful of the precious moments, yells to "swing the guns and pass the caissons." In a minute, the heavy Parrotts of De Gress are pouring their shrapnel into the faces of the Union troops, who are, three hundred yards away, forming for a rush to ...
— The Little Lady of Lagunitas • Richard Henry Savage
... a curious incident occurred! A falcon, hovering over the heads of our burghers in the sluit, was hit by a bullet from one of the shrapnel shells and fell dead to the ground in the midst of the men. It was already half-past four, and we began to ask ourselves how the affair would end. At this juncture I received a report from a burgher, whom I had placed on the eastern side of the mountain to watch the movements ...
— Three Years' War • Christiaan Rudolf de Wet
... opportunity of getting thence to the Zambesi. Leaving Natal, he found his way to America, and at Boston he enlisted in the Federal army. The service was as hot as could be. In one battle, two men were killed close to him by shrapnel shell, a rifle bullet passed close to his head, and killed a man behind him; other two were wounded close by him. His letters to his sister expressed his regret at the course of his life, and confessed that his troubles were due to his disobedience. So far was he from desiring ...
— The Personal Life Of David Livingstone • William Garden Blaikie
... drill is the most important thing that every soldier must first be made to learn. For it alone teaches military obedience, soldierly subordination, discipline. It alone can give that unity which preserves a company from utter demoralisation if one of your horrible new-fangled shrapnel bursts among them. But for drill the cowards would turn tail without further ceremony, and take to their heels; and in the end even the brave ones would follow them. It is the drill that teaches them to stay on and ...
— 'Jena' or 'Sedan'? • Franz Beyerlein
... lay in a trench. The shells were bursting around him; the bullets and shrapnel were whistling through the air; the roar of the guns shook the ground. He was going down into the valley of the shadow of death. Knowing that he must pass over to the other side, he reached into his pocket with ...
— Heart Talks • Charles Wesley Naylor
... cheer greeted him as he passed along the line, inspiring the men by his presence. Thus for half an hour the two lines stood face to face in deadly conflict; at length the general directed a battery to be placed in a commanding position, and the shells and shrapnel were seen to work fearful havoc in the rebel ranks. The gray line wavered; then back through the cornfield and over the fences the confederates rushed, seeking shelter from the terrible storm, under cover of the woods, on the other side of the field. "Forward!" ...
— Three Years in the Sixth Corps • George T. Stevens
... explosive variety. He bursts into a conversation. He scatters labials, dentals, and gutturals in all directions. He is a war-time talker,—boom, burst, bang, roar, crash, thud! He fills the air with vocal bullets and syllabic shrapnel. He is trumpet-tongued, ear-splitting, deafening. He fires promiscuously at all his hearers. He rends the skies asunder. He is nothing if not vociferous, stentorian, lusty. He demolishes every idea in his way. He ...
— Talks on Talking • Grenville Kleiser
... signing his death-warrant, he thought. But he said: "Take you, Icarus. They will fly away with you. You will become a cavalier of the clouds, a toreador of the aerial arena, an archangel soaring among the Eolian melodies of shrapnel. I envy, I applaud, but I cannot emulate. The upper circles are reserved for youth and over musty tomes I have squandered mine. I am thirty-two by the clock and I should hie me to the grave-digger that he may take my measure. And yet if I could—if I could!—I would like to be one of the liaison ...
— The Paliser case • Edgar Saltus
... He is a man thirty-five years of age. He was wounded by a shrapnel ball in the groin early in the spring, but is now at the ...
— A Volunteer Poilu • Henry Sheahan
... nicety when we reached the spot. There were trenches for us men, but no place of safety for our horses nearer than this long and narrow donga which ran from within our lines towards those of the Boers. So some of us galloped them thither, six-in-hand, amid the whine of shrapnel and the whistle of shot. I remember the man next me being killed by a shell with all his team, and the tangle of flying harness, torn horseflesh, and crimson khaki, that we left behind us on the veldt; also that a small red ...
— Raffles - Further Adventures of the Amateur Cracksman • E. W. Hornung
... their progress. There was no place for their storage more suitable than that portion of his studio-laboratory which was above ground; and the situation of his house in regard to air attacks, bombs, shrapnel seemed to him far more favourable than the upper rooms at the College of Surgeons. That great building was often endangered because of its proximity to the Strand and Fleet Street; and the Strand and Fleet Street, being regarded by the Germans as arteries ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston
... going on continually, and I lift my eyes from the sheet at each report, to see the puffs of smoke two or three miles off. The Germans have been firing salvoes of four shots over a little village where the French batteries are stationed, shrapnel that burst in little puffs of white smoke; the French reply with explosive shells that raise columns of dust over the German lines. Half of our regiment have left already for the trenches. We may go tonight. We have made a march of about 75 kilometers in four days, and are now on the front, ...
— Poems • Alan Seeger
... a hail that might have been shrapnel, or stones and gravel—Ruth did not know. The hood sheltered her. She was on the far side of ...
— Ruth Fielding at the War Front - or, The Hunt for the Lost Soldier • Alice B. Emerson
... sea, from our vast battle-fields. They will read of Cats' Homes, and Anti-Vivisection Societies, and Homes of Rest for Horses, and a hundred such institutions, and they will find contributors to these institutions stirring not one finger when hundreds of thousands of men writhe under hails of shrapnel, and crowds of homeless women and children fly in terror before the unavoidable calamities or the superfluous brutalities of war. They will see a generation shaken and shuddering as the ghastly picture is daily unfolded before it, and they ...
— The War and the Churches • Joseph McCabe
... Poso, Grimes' battery had been put in position and had fired a few shots at a blockhouse on San Juan Hill, distance 2,600 yards. Using black powder, which created a cloud of smoke with every shot, the battery was readily located by the foe, and the shrapnel from their guns was soon bursting among our forces. The second shot from the Spaniards wounded four of the Rough Riders and two or three of the regulars, while a third killed and wounded several Cubans. As a matter of course there was a rapid movements of the troops ...
— The Colored Regulars in the United States Army • T. G. Steward
... developed phases of the war. Of the total strength of the A.E.F., the number gassed was about six per cent., wounded by rifle and machine-gun fire about one per cent., wounded by high explosive one and a half per cent., shrapnel wounds three percent., and bayonet wounds less than one half per cent. But although enemy gas caused more than 70,000 casualties, yet of these only one and a half per cent. were fatal, while the total number of deaths for all types of casualties was thirty per cent. Thus against ...
— by Victor LeFebure • J. Walker McSpadden
... an awful noise like the worst clap of thunder you ever heard close to your ears, then the smoke covered everything and you could hear the shot going through the air like a giant rocket— The shots they fired at us did not cut any ice except a shrapnel that broke just over the main mast and which reminded me of Greece— The other shots fell short— The best thing was to see the Captains of the Puritan and Cincinnati frantically signalling to be allowed to fire too— ...
— Adventures and Letters • Richard Harding Davis
... strolled about with restless yet quiet energy. There has been no flash and glitter of military uniforms on the Zone since the French sailed for home, but every one knew "the Colonel" for all that, the soldier who has never "seen service," who has never heard the shrapnel scream by overhead, yet to whom the world owes more thanks than six conquering generals rolled ...
— Zone Policeman 88 - A Close Range Study of the Panama Canal and its Workers • Harry A. Franck
... sinks to an inaudible whisper, and even Aeschylus shrivels before that cataclysm of Promethean fire; that celestial monsoon. It stirs the heart like the rustle of a silken gonfalon dipped in gore, like the whistle of rifle-balls, like the rhythmic dissonance of a battery slinging shrapnel from the heights of Gettysburg into the ragged legions of General Lee. I have counseled my contemporary to be calm; but by Heaven! it does stir my soul into mutiny to see a lot of intellectual pismires, who have secured ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... ceased firing shrapnel and were using solid shot. When their Gatlings also ceased, I guessed that it might be that the guns were jammed. If I were right and if one avoided the solid shot by approaching the barricade obliquely, ...
— Captain Macklin • Richard Harding Davis
... was a dark night, and as we stumbled along in single file, we could see the Towers of Ypres smouldering with a dull red glow to our left, while the salient front line was lit up by bursting shells and trench mortars. Our route lay past Shrapnel Corner and along the railway line to Zillebeke Station, and was rendered particularly unpleasant by the rifle fire from "Hill 60" on our right. The railway embankment was high and we seemed to be unnecessarily exposing ourselves by walking along the top of it, but as ...
— The Fifth Leicestershire - A Record Of The 1/5th Battalion The Leicestershire Regiment, - T.F., During The War, 1914-1919. • J.D. Hills
... and wept, or sought to study With hopeless gaze the uninstructive stars, Hopeless because the very skies were muddy; I only saw a red malicious Mars; Or pulled my little compass out and pondered, And set it sadly on my shrapnel hat, Which, I suppose, was why the needle wandered, Only, of course, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, June 20, 1917 • Various
... Bulgarians was very good indeed; they had an excellent field-piece, practically the same field-piece as the French army. Their work was very fine with regard to aim and to the bursting of shrapnel, and their firing from concealed positions was also good. But I never saw enterprising work on their part; I never saw them go into the open, except during a brief time at Chatalja. They seemed to dig themselves in behind the crest of a hill, ...
— Bulgaria • Frank Fox
... Hitherto the men knew little of the nature or use of guns, but now glimmerings of the mystery surrounding artillery fire soon dawned. The men learnt the natures of German shell, and the difference between shrapnel and high explosives and what targets the enemy generally selected. Facts like these were explained to them by the "real soldiers" of the Regular units to which they were attached. On relief the Battalion marched back to Oblinghem once more, where it stayed a week or two, and later in ...
— The Story of the "9th King's" in France • Enos Herbert Glynne Roberts
... fled. But before they could possibly have reached the end of the path another gun spoke, the report being immediately followed by an explosion, accompanied by a terrible outburst of yells and shrieks. Amid these I believed I heard the sharp patter of shrapnel on the face of the cliff, while other yells arose from the party who had been attending to the business of keeping up the supply of burning faggots above ...
— The First Mate - The Story of a Strange Cruise • Harry Collingwood
... the sand dunes was what the war artists on English illustrated weeklies try so hard to show. The French batteries were using shrapnel on the German trenches, the shrapnel leaving puffs of white smoke in long, uneven lines; and the Germans were keeping up their steady pounding of contact shells, with a short red flash after each explosion. The firing of the guns on both sides gave the effect ...
— World's War Events, Vol. I • Various
... experienced from the regular battalions to which the attachments were made. The units of the Battalion not doing attachment duty were used for working parties in the trenches and suffered several casualties. No. 2 platoon, right flank company, specially suffered, being caught by shrapnel fire on the Bethune-La Basse road, ten N.C.O.'s ...
— The 23rd (Service) Battalion Royal Fusiliers (First Sportsman's) - A Record of its Services in the Great War, 1914-1919 • Fred W. Ward
... gate was tottering, but it still held by the upper hinges. A few more blows and it must surely fall. But those blows were never struck. Again Soa sprang backwards, and the roar of the gun was answered by the screams of the slavers as the shrapnel ploughed through them. ...
— The People Of The Mist • H. Rider Haggard
... are employed for dismounting the defender's pieces, which he covers as much as possible behind the parapet. Heavy howitzers destroy the materiel, while shrapnel, falling nearly vertically, and bursting among the men, render all operations impossible upon ...
— Scientific American Supplement, Vol. XXI., No. 531, March 6, 1886 • Various
... undestroyed over the dead-line, the Brooklyn follow with hers, the Mobile gunboats rake the four with a fire they could not return, and behind them Fort Morgan and the other ships rend and shatter each other, shroud the air with smoke and thresh the waters white with shot and shell, shrapnel, canister and grape. And then they saw their own Tennessee ignore the monitors and charge the Hartford. But they beheld, too, the Hartford's better speed avoid the fearful blow and press on up the channel and the bay, ...
— Kincaid's Battery • George W. Cable
... loose. The woods are a mass of whistling shell and shrapnel. Every time the big twelves go off the flash lights up the entire camp like a flashlight picture, then the ground heaves and tumbles like old Lake Michigan ...
— America's War for Humanity • Thomas Herbert Russell
... great wolf-dog listened with exemplary patience. He would have preferred action, but not unlike many human beings who strive to appear profound under a broadside of philosophical eloquence, applauding each bursting shrapnel of platitudes by mentally wagging their tails, Chance wagged his tail, impressed more by the detonation than the substance. And Chance was quite a superior dog, as ...
— Sundown Slim • Henry Hubert Knibbs
... cloud of floury dust arose. A bottle of bovril embedded itself quietly there without damage, and a tin of Bath Oliver biscuits beat a fierce tattoo on one of corned beef. Innumerable dried apricots from the burst package flew about like shrapnel, and tapped at the tins. A jar of prunes, breaking its fall on the flour, rolled merrily out into the middle ...
— Miss Mapp • Edward Frederic Benson
... as our line appeared in the open—indeed, before it left the woods the confederate artillery opened with shell and shrapnel; the carbineers and sharpshooters joined with zest in the fray and the man who thinks they did not succeed in making that part of the neighborhood around Yellow Tavern an uncomfortably hot place, was not there ...
— Personal Recollections of a Cavalryman - With Custer's Michigan Cavalry Brigade in the Civil War • J. H. (James Harvey) Kidd
... amongst them, probably a five or six inch field howitzer. One of them was in the act of catching a great mine as we drew up level with her. Some 250 yards from us was the Inflexible slowly coming out of the Straits, her wireless cut away and a number of shrapnel holes through her tops and crow's nest. Suddenly, so quickly did we turn that, going at speed, the decks were at an angle of 45 deg. and several of us (d'Amade for one) narrowly escaped slipping down the railless decks into the sea. The Inflexible had signalled us ...
— Gallipoli Diary, Volume I • Ian Hamilton
... the Zafir, mortally wounding a Soudanese soldier, and two struck the Fateh. After the long-range bombardment had continued for about an hour the gunboats moved forward opposite to the enemy's position, and poured a heavy and continuous fire of shrapnel and double shell into all the forts, gradually subduing their resistance. The fugitives from the batteries, and small parties of Baggara horse who galloped about on the open plain between the works and the town, afforded ...
— The River War • Winston S. Churchill
... an instance of an observer taking control of a plane and effecting a good landing after his pilot had been killed," said Mason. "He came down not a long way from an airdrome where I was stationed. A bit of anti-aircraft shrapnel caught the pilot in the back. It did not kill him instantly, but he was not long in succumbing to his wound. He had just energy enough left, after he realized that he was very badly hurt, to tell his observer that he was going off. Before he actually relinquished control of ...
— The Brighton Boys with the Flying Corps • James R. Driscoll
... came here specially to see him, and he told me that he should certainly recommend him for the V.C. Your husband was a brave man and did brave things; he gave his life to save another's. He was wounded with shrapnel in the head and spine as he was crossing No Man's Land. The officer to whom he was attached as orderly had been hit in one of the shell-holes, and your husband crawled out of his trench in full view of the enemy's line, and brought him back. It was on the return journey that he received his ...
— More Tales of the Ridings • Frederic Moorman
... earth-shaking booms came from different points as the airship dropped her deadly cargo. Shrapnel fell on the congested house-tops with a peculiar hiss and thud and ambulances rumbled over ...
— Submarine Warfare of To-day • Charles W. Domville-Fife
... which followed has not often been paralleled. About a hundred and fifty burghers rushed out of the ditches, streaming across the veld upon foot to the spot where their horses had been secreted. Rifles, pom-poms, and shrapnel played upon them during this terrible race. 'A black running mob carrying coats, blankets, boots, rifles, &c., was seen to rise as if from nowhere and rush as fast as they could, dropping the various things they carried as they ran.' One of their ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle
... through his cheek; the chin which had so offended his father's artistic eye—what was left of it—was entirely hidden by the bandage. The chill which he had taken, with the loss of blood, and the shock of a shrapnel wound in his side, made recovery impossible, the nurse said. While they stood beside the bed waiting for him to open his eyes, the nurse told them of his having taken off his coat to cover a ...
— The Next of Kin - Those who Wait and Wonder • Nellie L. McClung
... initiated by the "Fighting Twenty-Fifth." Before proceeding further, let me describe a trench. They are all transversed, because if a shell or bomb should burst in one part of the trench the transverse prevents the spread of the shrapnel. A communication trench is usually to connect the trenches together, and sometimes these trenches are a mile long reaching from the front line to some part behind the line where it is comparatively safe to walk ...
— Over the top with the 25th - Chronicle of events at Vimy Ridge and Courcellette • R. Lewis
... occasionally, we were told to thin out our ranks so that if a shell fell among us our casualties would be light. From then on, we marched about eight or ten feet apart in single file on each side of the road. We were ordered to wear our steel helmets as a protection against shrapnel. Some did not see the need of doing this, but most of us were glad to take the precaution. We crossed several narrow gauge tracks on our march, and saw trains carrying supplies of all kinds to the battle front. ...
— In the Flash Ranging Service - Observations of an American Soldier During His Service - With the A.E.F. in France • Edward Alva Trueblood
... all took place on the rolling surface of the Cosmagnon Alps—closed in by the barrage fire on both sides under the dazzling sky, but with the world below completely shut off by Monte Pasubio's crown of clouds. Shrapnel and shell disappeared in the ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume VI (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... staff, and moved farther along the trail, stopping again to gaze at the shadowed valley below while I mused on the centuries it had seen and the brief moment of a man's life. Standing thus, I was like to lose my own, for suddenly I heard a whirr like that of a shrapnel shell on its murderous errand, and at ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... day had been hurled into Verdun itself during the battle, Stubbs was informed by the French officer, upon one day as many as 750 having been counted; but the average was 300. As the two stood there a French aeroplane was attacked by a German gun, shrapnel bursting all around as the machine turned from the German positions and darted ...
— The Boy Allies At Verdun • Clair W. Hayes
... Stevens, after I returned from beyond the corn-field, was that at which it had been proposed to place one gun, under cover of the adobe hut; run it out by hand; fire, and run it under shelter again to reload. By this means, a few rounds of grape, canister, and shrapnel, could have cleared the roof of ...
— Company 'A', corps of engineers, U.S.A., 1846-'48, in the Mexican war • Gustavus Woodson Smith
... and almost touching the cot on which the speaker writhed in his death agony lay another man apparently in a profound stupor. He wore the uniform of a private soldier and his eyes were bandaged. His face had been torn to pieces by shrapnel, fragments of which had blinded him. At that instant he came out of that stupor. Perhaps the familiar words recalled him to himself. He moved his hand slightly. The sister saw his lips tremble. She ...
— And Thus He Came • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... is a thrill in war, as all must own, The tramplin' onward rush, The shriek o' shrapnel and the followin' hush, The bosker crunch o' bayonet on bone, The warmth of the dim dug-out at the end, The talkin' over things, as friend to friend, And through it all the blessed certainty As this war's working out for you an' me As we would have ...
— "Over There" with the Australians • R. Hugh Knyvett
... batteries reply. The infantry rolls its volleys. The hill and the hollow are enveloped in clouds of smoke. Wood's, Dresser's, Willard's, and Taylor's batteries open,—twenty-four guns send their grape and canister, shrapnel and shells, into the gray ranks which are vainly endeavoring to reach the top of the hill. The Rebels concentrate their fire upon Wood's battery and the First Nebraska, but those hardy pioneers from beyond the Missouri, some of them Rocky ...
— My Days and Nights on the Battle-Field • Charles Carleton Coffin
... minute. In fact, he's overdue. He's a balloon busting fool, and no one can stop him. He has nine of them to his credit and every time he goes out he comes back with his plane in shreds and just barely holding together. You'd think it would cure him, but he eats shrapnel. Has two planes to his credit, but he doesn't go in for planes. He cuts formation exactly like you used to, Shrimp, and goes off high, wide and lonesome, looking for sausages. He got one just this morning, ...
— Aces Up • Covington Clarke
... the shells, The rifles' clatter Where the bullets patter, The rattle, rattle, rattle Of the mitrailleuse in battle, And the yells Of the men who charge through hells Where the poison gas descends. And the bursting shrapnel rends Limb from limb In the dim Chaos and clamor of the strife Where no man thinks of his life But only of fighting through, ...
— The Red Flower - Poems Written in War Time • Henry Van Dyke
... came to advance. In a storm of shrapnel, bullets and flame, the British host swept down again upon the foe. The Germans gave desperate and deadly resistance. They fought hand to hand, with bayonets and clubbed muskets and grenades. It ...
— The Flag • Homer Greene
... limes like grapeshot, in all their syrup and stickiness, slap into my face—a stray one spinning with a sloppy whit into Jacob Bumble's open mouth as he sang, like a musket—ball into a winter turnip; while a fine preserved pineapple flew bash on Isaac Shingle's sharp snout, like the bursting of a shrapnel shell. ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... the old battlefield, and I came across a great wilderness of white chalk—not a tuft of grass, not a flower, nothing but blazing chalk; apparently a hill of chalk dotted thickly all over with bits of shrapnel. I walked up it, and suddenly found myself on the lip of the crater. I felt myself in another world. This enormous hole, 320 yards round at the top, with sides so steep one could not climb down them, was ...
— An Onlooker in France 1917-1919 • William Orpen
... shrapnel pellets and bits of shell casing, and with the true instinct of a globe-trotter, thought already of mementoes to take home. His tourist tendencies, however, soon evaporated, for he was sent round on a fatigue to the landing, whence he returned a sweating, blowing trooper, with a handleless, ...
— The Tale of a Trooper • Clutha N. Mackenzie
... a long, long trail that's leading To No Man's Land in France Where the shrapnel shells are bursting And we ...
— Joy in the Morning • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... the Nawine river; and taken up a position to command the ford there, by which the fugitives from the stockade must cross, on their way to join the centre. As the crowd of frightened men issued from the jungle, and poured across the ford, the artillery opened upon them with shrapnel, and completed their discomfiture. All thought of joining the centre was abandoned and, re-entering the jungle, they scattered; and the greater portion of them started for their homes, intent only on avoiding another contest with their ...
— On the Irrawaddy - A Story of the First Burmese War • G. A. Henty
... no man's pets, and there is no explaining them. The fools will graze contentedly with shrapnel and high explosives bursting all about them, but go into a panic at the sight of a piece of paper in broad daylight. And when they think they see ghosts in the dark they act like the Gadarene swine, only ...
— The Lion of Petra • Talbot Mundy
... Women's Reserve Ambulance Corps in England was spurned. Now—they wear shrapnel helmets while working during the ...
— Mobilizing Woman-Power • Harriot Stanton Blatch
... naval use, but the military arm is also provided with anti-balloon guns, which have great range and can throw a three-pound shell at any high angle. Some of these guns use incendiary shells, intended to ignite the gas in dirigibles. There is another type that explodes shrapnel. In addition to these, rifle fire is apt to be effective, in case of ...
— A History of The Nations and Empires Involved and a Study - of the Events Culminating in The Great Conflict • Logan Marshall
... at San Pedro Macati, Captain Dyer, who commanded a battery of 3.2-inch guns there, suggested that if I wished to investigate the effect of shrapnel fire I could do so by visiting a place on a neighbouring hillside which he indicated. Acting upon his suggestion, I set out, accompanied by my private secretary, who, like myself, was clad in white duck. The Insurgent sharpshooters on the other ...
— The Philippines: Past and Present (vol. 1 of 2) • Dean C. Worcester
... original kind of march—I suppose a battery of howitzers never before found itself mounted upon cars, ready to open fire at once and bang away into the offing with shrapnel or into the bushes with canister. Our line extended a half-mile along the track. It was beautiful to stand on the bank above a cutting and watch the files strike from the shadow of a wood into a broad flame of moonlight, every rifle sparkling up alert as ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 44, June, 1861 • Various
... than once, as shrapnel and pieces of shell flew by. Now and then he covered his eyes with one hand to shut out the horror of dead and torn men lying on either side of his path, but in spite of the shells, in spite of the deadly nausea that assailed him at times, he went on. The rush of air from ...
— The Forest of Swords - A Story of Paris and the Marne • Joseph A. Altsheler
... be shells, shrapnel and solid shot. We may not have a battle this week or next week, but a big one is bound to come some time or other and then if any section of the Northern artillery shows uncommon deadliness and precision we'll know that ...
— The Shades of the Wilderness • Joseph A. Altsheler
... up at her, his long face working with emotion—the face of an intellectual, with that deep scar on the temple, where a fragment of shrapnel had struck him on the first ...
— Helena • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... groans and outcries of the wounded. Then from overhead came a savage rush and shriek, a flash of light that showed vivid even amidst the confusion of light, a harder, more vicious crash than all the other crashing reports, and the shrapnel ripped down along the line of the German trench that erupted struggling, hurrying ...
— Between the Lines • Boyd Cable
... boom night an' day; She sees the shrapnel burstin' black; The sweaty columns march away, The stretchers bringin' of ...
— Mr. Punch's History of the Great War • Punch
... been lying with his battalion in a trench when a German aeroplane was sighted. It had hardly passed by when showers of shrapnel descended, and the Germans, in that grey- green so hard to see, were coming on as thick as locusts. Then the orders came to fall back, and he was hit as his battalion made another stand. He had crawled a mile across the fields in the night with a bullet ...
— My Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... but even as it hit the floor Brion was jumping forward. He caught it with the side of his foot, kicking it back into the dark opening of the tunnel. Telt hit the ground next to him as the orange flame of an explosion burst below. Bits of shrapnel rattled from the ceiling and ...
— Planet of the Damned • Harry Harrison
... the guns — because, for each tiny square on the German side of the lines, there was a battery or a couple of batteries behind the French front, whose business was solely to sweep that square with high explosive shells, gas shells and shrapnel, ...
— The Boy Allies with Haig in Flanders • Clair W. Hayes
... that a balloon would run of being riddled by bullets, shrapnel, or pom-poms has not been taken into account, and as to the estimate of this risk there is some difference of opinion. The balloon corps and the artillery apparently approach the question with different bias. On the one hand, it is stated with perfect truth that a free balloon, ...
— The Dominion of the Air • J. M. Bacon
... The mincemeat shrapnel had proved fairly destructive, but the turnip marmalade didn't seem to of developed much internal energy. All of them jars of marmalade proved to be what they call "duds." But you bet enough had gone up to make a good battle sketch. ...
— Ma Pettengill • Harry Leon Wilson
... grape, canister and shrapnel, sir! Horses in lather, guns on the wheel and bayonets set. We'll bivouac in the camp of the enemy on the night of the ...
— Andrew the Glad • Maria Thompson Daviess
... turned upon the Germans. An almost solid sheet of flame issuing from the French rifles marked the curve of their trenches. Almost at once the French artillery caught the range of the advancing troops; the air was filled with the roar of the bursting shells and the sad-sounding whing-g-g of flying shrapnel. ...
— Fighting in France • Ross Kay
... explosive, which was set off after a certain trigger or spring or firing pin (according to the type used) was released by the thrower. The explosive blew the grenade to bits, and it was scored, or crisscrossed, by deep indentations so that the iron would break up into small pieces like shrapnel. The grenades could be carried in a pouch or in the pocket, and were harmless as long as the ...
— Ned, Bob and Jerry on the Firing Line - The Motor Boys Fighting for Uncle Sam • Clarence Young
... that made our hearts sick. We had seen American boys white and unconscious. We had seen every available room in the great evacuation hospital crowded. We had been told that a hundred surgical cases were in the hospital, mostly shrapnel wounds, and that every available doctor and nurse was working night ...
— Soldier Silhouettes on our Front • William L. Stidger
... always find handy, told him plainly who he was, explicitly what "Standard Oil" was, and exactly who and what I was. I opine that about either assault there was nothing dignified, generous, or refined, but in stock-exchange battles one has not time to scent shrapnel. The immediate result of this interchange of deckle-edged[7] insults was to daze the public. "Standard Oil" attacked and actually replying; Rogers assaulting Lawson and Lawson sending back worse than he got—almost anything might happen next. It was right here I got to Rogers' solar plexus. I ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... nearly up to date with the fighting. By December, Bloch, who had seemed utterly discredited in August, was justified up to the hilt. The world was entrenched at his feet. By May the lagging military science of the British had so far overtaken events as to realise that shrapnel was no longer so important as high explosive, and within a year the significance of machine guns, a significance thoroughly ventilated by imaginative writers fifteen years before, was being grasped by the conservative ...
— What is Coming? • H. G. Wells
... officer at the double-periscope yelled over to us that the French were bringing up reinforcements through the communicating trenches. The Lieutenant of Artillery ran over to the field artillery and showed them the beautiful target. Soon after that a few of our shrapnel burst over these positions. Bang! And the enemy was gone. Suddenly a ball of red fire appeared in the first French trench. This meant—shells fall ahead of trenches; place shots further back. Just then, over a front of one and a half kilometers, a whole brigade of Frenchmen rose from the ...
— An Aviator's Field Book - Being the field reports of Oswald Boelcke, from August 1, - 1914 to October 28, 1916 • Oswald Boelcke
... an oriflamme of anger. He was a whirlwind of fury before whose raging any small or timid man must have shriveled. The eyes that shone out under the heavy lashes as he paced the place, with clenched hands, were batteries raining shrapnel of wrath. ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck |
