"Shrapnel" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... extremity of the branches among which the formicary is constructed, the defenders, projecting their terminal segments as far into space as possible, eject formic acid in the direction of the enemy. Like shrapnel from machine guns, the liquid missile sweeps a considerable area. Against the sunlight it appears as a continuous spray, and should one infinitesimal drop descend into the eye the stoutest mortal will blink. Attacks are made singly and in detachments. Heroes actually hurl ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... or less hollow, and loaded with a charge of explosive. Besides this it has an apparatus for setting off the bursting charge. It weighs 1 pound 5 ounces approximately, and 4 ounces of this is high explosive. The shell being of serrated cast-iron, an explosion will scatter a sort of shrapnel over an area equal to three times the height. No more need be said of the effectiveness of such a weapon. Among rifle grenades the Mills is also the standard more or less, although the French make great use of a rifle grenade that fits over the muzzle of the rifle, fired by ball cartridge, ...
— Military Instructors Manual • James P. Cole and Oliver Schoonmaker
... for here Breckenridge and Siegel met. Moore occupied an elevation north of New Market. Now in place of the thundering cannon and rattling musketry we were listening to a medley of bird notes that fell thick as shrapnel around us. The vast hills covered with their leafy verdure of summer; the rich valley spread below us made radiant by the beauty of the descending sun and a light rain; voices rising on the misty air from the valley ...
— See America First • Orville O. Hiestand
... 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, though torn and bleeding from her foe's broadside, while her ...
— Kincaid's Battery • George W. Cable
... Slipping and stumbling, cursing and cheering, the Devons crept forward across the sodden grass. Many of the bravest, among them Chisholme, went down on that plain of death. Far beyond the level veldt there were something like 800 feet to climb in the face of Mauser and shrapnel. At length, however, the top of the ridge was reached. There stood the three guns that had wrought such havoc, now silent among the corpses of the frock-coated burghers ...
— Sir John French - An Authentic Biography • Cecil Chisholm
... continued ten yards when another A.P.M. tripped him up. "That cap is a disgrace, Sir!" he barked. "I know it, Sir," the Babe admitted, "and I'm awfully sorry about it; but that hole in it only arrived last night—shrapnel, you know—and I haven't had time to buy another yet. I don't care for the style they sell in those little French ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Oct. 24, 1917 • Various
... 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 and the demands it made on him; yet he was always faithful to a relation ...
— Hugh - Memoirs of a Brother • Arthur Christopher Benson
... over the dead town of Poperinghe, where flash after flash of bursting shrapnel proclaimed a Boche aeroplane. They saw him dive at a balloon—falling like a hawk; then suddenly he righted and came on towards the next. From the first sausage two black streaks shot out, to steady after a hundred feet or so, and float down, ...
— Mufti • H. C. (Herman Cyril) McNeile
... proportion these supplies were to assume. The purchase of these works would have deprived the whole munition industry of its main support. Similar proposals have repeatedly been worked out by us, as, for example, the proposal to amalgamate the whole shrapnel industry of the United States. The fear, well grounded in itself, that such an arrangement was scarcely within the bounds of practical politics and could have been got round, could be ignored. In case of disputes ...
— My Three Years in America • Johann Heinrich Andreas Hermann Albrecht Graf von Bernstorff
... Correspondents. But there is a mistake somewhere; either there are not enough Germans to go round, or else they—Headquarters, you know—simply hate the idea of throwing the flower of the British Army into the full glare of the shrapnel. Anyhow, we haven't actually been engaged yet, though our Private Smithson has collected three bits of shrapnel and a German rifle; and we have all heard artillery fire (off). Which makes us think that these rumours of war aren't just a scare ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, December 9, 1914 • Various
... 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 answered, ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... tribesmen reeled back from the terrible army they had assailed, leaving a quarter of their number on the field—the faith of the survivors was unshaken. Only those who had doubted had perished, said the Mullah, and displayed a bruise which was, he informed them, the sole effect of a twelve-pound shrapnel ...
— The Story of the Malakand Field Force • Sir Winston S. Churchill
... 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 ...
— Personal Recollections of a Cavalryman - With Custer's Michigan Cavalry Brigade in the Civil War • J. H. (James Harvey) Kidd
... the vicinity had already joined the colours and were in mobilisation camps at Halethrope and Pimlico and at the Glen Burnie rifle range. Also that the Bessemer Steel Company of Baltimore, the Maryland Steel Company, the great cotton mills and canneries, were working night and day, turning out shrapnel, shell casings, uniforms, belts, bandages and other munitions of war, all to be furnished without a cent of profit. Furthermore, the banks and trust companies of Baltimore had raised fifty million dollars for immediate needs of the ...
— The Conquest of America - A Romance of Disaster and Victory • Cleveland Moffett
... 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 hare. Wild life ...
— Europe—Whither Bound? - Being Letters of Travel from the Capitals of Europe in the Year 1921 • Stephen Graham
... of modern warfare, and the fact that single British flyers are feared even by two of the enemy's planes, here is a story told by a young Englishman, who knows no nerves when he is in the air, no matter how near he comes to being snuffed out by the shrapnel and bullets. He is a man of 5 feet 10 inches, with clear blue eyes and blond hair—one of those truth-loving Britishers who prefers to err against himself in his reports rather than tell of ...
— Some Naval Yarns • Mordaunt Hall
... among whom he was known as "uncle Marschner," would not have dared to suggest his sending a rabbit he had reared to the butcher or dragging a dog that had won his affection to the pound. And now he was to drive into shrapnel fire men whom he himself had trained to be soldiers and had had under his own eyes for months, men whom he knew as he did his own pockets. Of what avail were subtle or deep reflections now? He saw nothing but the glances of dread and beseeching that his men turned on him, asking protection, ...
— Men in War • Andreas Latzko
... 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 but by no means inadaptable ...
— What is Coming? • H. G. Wells
... 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 opening ...
— The First Mate - The Story of a Strange Cruise • Harry Collingwood
... organised defensive system platoons may not be able to advance to the Attack without a barrage, and it is essential that all movements should conform exactly to the timing of the barrage and that the troops should keep under the back edge of the shrapnel curtain, so as to deliver their assault before the enemy has time to bring rifles and machine guns into play. Under such circumstances, Ground scouts must be dispensed with. Such a position will not be attacked without careful previous reconnaissance and the lines of advance will have been chosen ...
— Lectures on Land Warfare; A tactical Manual for the Use of Infantry Officers • Anonymous
... Infantry, and her Majesty's 13th Light Infantry, under Brigadier Sale. I ordered forward three troops of horse artillery, the camel battery, and one foot battery, to open upon the citadel and fortress, by throwing shrapnel shells, which was done in a masterly style under the direction of Brigadier Stephenson. My object in this was to make the enemy shew their strength in guns, and in other respects, which completely succeeded, and our shells must have done great execution, and ...
— Campaign of the Indus • T.W.E. Holdsworth
... 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 Carrington ...
— The Shades of the Wilderness • Joseph A. Altsheler
... uproar of artillery arose immediately to the west, shells began to rain in the river woods, then shrapnel, then, in long clattering cadence, volley succeeded volley, faster, faster, till the outcrash became one ...
— Ailsa Paige • Robert W. Chambers
... 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 to regain ...
— Learning to Fly - A Practical Manual for Beginners • Claude Grahame-White
... admittance to a stranger, and already probably a myriad new friendships and not a few engagements have resulted. Our own camaraderie is admirable. The federation of the barrage breaks down every obstacle; while a piece of shrapnel that one can display is more valuable than any letter of introduction, no matter who wrote it. Hence we all talk; and sometimes we sing too—choruses of the moment, for the most part, in one of which the depth of our affection for our maternal relative is measured and regulated by the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Nov. 14, 1917 • Various
... in sad silence above the grass-grown sepulchers of their fallen fellows. Softened and mellowed by ancient ivy stood these sentinels of sorrow, their scarred faces still revealing the rents and gashes of shrapnel and ...
— The Lost Continent • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... nearer and nearer until they could see the swift fall of the deadly missiles from the swooping planes and the havoc wrought in the straggling ranks by the showers of pellets from the shrapnel exploding ...
— In the Clutch of the War-God • Milo Hastings
... floating proudly above their heads. The shot and shell plunging through their ranks from the hills above, the two siege guns on Lee's Hill now in beautiful play, the brass pieces of the Washington Artillery firing with grape and shrapnel—but all this made no break nor halt in that long line of blue. The double column behind the stone wall and the Third South Carolina on the crest of the Hill met them in front with a cool and steady fire, while the Second South Carolina directed ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... the enemy, who had ultimately to retire again under the guns of Fort Quelin, although they made a vigorous resistance while the engagement lasted—only falling back on suffering severe loss from the shower of shrapnel to which they were subjected, besides losing many prisoners. During all the time of this attack and repulse, Fort Saint Julien, on the other side of the fortress, was shelling the Landwehr reserve, causing many casualties amongst the ...
— Fritz and Eric - The Brother Crusoes • John Conroy Hutcheson
... invisibility of the warring armies. On the beaches, certainly, there were tents and stores and men moving. But the rolling countryside beyond seemed bleak and deserted. Only occasionally a high-explosive shell threw up a spout of brown earth, or a burst of shrapnel sent a puff of white smoke to float like a Cupid's cloud along the sky. And yet two armies were hidden here, with their rifles, machine-guns, and artillery ...
— Tell England - A Study in a Generation • Ernest Raymond
... never seen anything as lovely as the country is now, it is like one great garden; how I wish you could be here. I have had a busy day, as one of my patients had to be operated on. Doctor R—— took a piece of shrapnel out of his arm, and two others have been pretty ill; four leave to-morrow, so the general clearing ...
— 'My Beloved Poilus' • Anonymous
... anti-aircraft gun had started barking and the sky sparkled with exploding shrapnel. The "put, put, put" of a machine gun had begun somewhere. Chrisfield strode up the hill in step with his friend. Behind them bomb followed bomb, and above them the air seemed full of exploding shrapnel and droning ...
— Three Soldiers • John Dos Passos
... watched the attack of July 1st, on one day in 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 ...
— My Second Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... 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 ...
— The Siege of Kimberley • T. Phelan
... finished looking at this object we 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 ...
— Paths of Glory - Impressions of War Written At and Near the Front • Irvin S. Cobb
... 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 day of ...
— Helena • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... electric fountain of a seaside cabaret, and Wheeler had to carry her to her car wrapped in a sable rug, Gerald Fishback was lying with his face in Flanders mud, and his eye sockets blackly deep and full of shrapnel, and a lung-eating gas cloud rolling at him across ...
— The Vertical City • Fannie Hurst
... morning I was wandering about 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 the vast, terrific work of man. Imagine burrowing all that way down in the belly of ...
— An Onlooker in France 1917-1919 • William Orpen
... Shrapnel shells were exploding all about her, and at times she was almost entirely enveloped in smoke. Between the reports of the heavier artillery could be heard the staccato spatter of bullets on her iron sides as the machine-guns sprayed her from end to end. Now and then ...
— L. P. M. - The End of the Great War • J. Stewart Barney
... get the girls' personal belongings, and when he entered the canteen he stood still and looked about him with horror and thankfulness as he realized the narrow escape those girls had had. The windows and roof were full of shell holes. Shrapnel had penetrated everywhere. He went about to examine and took pieces of shrapnel out of the flour and sugar and coffee which had gone straight through the tin containers. The vanilla bottles were broken and there was shrapnel in the vanilla, shrapnel was embedded in the wooden tops ...
— The War Romance of the Salvation Army • Evangeline Booth and Grace Livingston Hill
... could move—" began Colonel Wood, when, of a sudden, both he and Theodore Roosevelt heard a strange humming sound in the air. Then came the explosion of a shrapnel shell over their heads, and both leaped ...
— American Boy's Life of Theodore Roosevelt • Edward Stratemeyer
... Commander Nettlebones, senior officer of the eastern division after my papa, although a very young man still, carries a swivel-gun and two bow-chasers. His Majesty's cutter Kestrel, commanded by Lieutenant Bowler, is armed with three long-John's, or strap-guns, capable of carrying a pound of shrapnel. His Majesty's cutter Albatross, Lieutenant Corkoran Donovan, carries ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... extensively was really 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 around. They are very deep and zig-zag ...
— Over the top with the 25th - Chronicle of events at Vimy Ridge and Courcellette • R. Lewis
... intimation M. Bredin had of the declaration of war was the impact of a French roll on his ear. It was one of those nobbly, chunky rolls with sharp corners, almost as deadly as a piece of shrapnel. M. Bredin was incapable of jumping, but he uttered a howl and his vast body quivered like a stricken jelly. A second roll, whizzing by, slapped against the wall. A moment later a cream-bun burst in sticky ruin ...
— The Man Upstairs and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... evil princes of the earth. The first and most striking feature is a stupidity that rises into a sort of ghastly innocence. The protection of workmen! Some workmen, perhaps, might have a fancy for being protected from shrapnel; some might be glad to put up an umbrella that would ward off things dropping from the gentle Zeppelin in heaven upon the place beneath. Some of these discontented proletarians have taken the same view as Vandervelde their leader, and are now energetically engaged in protecting themselves ...
— Utopia of Usurers and other Essays • G. K. Chesterton
... in diameter. Every man of the group had fallen forward with 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 metal identification ...
— The Note-Book of an Attache - Seven Months in the War Zone • Eric Fisher Wood
... skirmishers became aggressive, swarming over the meadows, and into the wood which had seen such heavy slaughter in the fight of yesterday. As Jackson's pickets, extended over a wide front, gave slowly back, his guns opened in earnest, and shell and shrapnel flew fast over the open space. The strong force of skirmishers betrayed the presence of a line of battle not far in rear, and ignoring the fire of the artillery, the Confederate batteries concentrated ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... 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 rather ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... on what modern war demanded than many of the British command. Even Kitchener argued for shrapnel when Lloyd George wanted high explosives. There was no civilian in Canada to argue against Hughes, who aimed to do in Canada what the Minister of Munitions, Director-General, Headquarters Staff, and the Minister of Transports did in England. He ...
— The Masques of Ottawa • Domino
... 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 ...
— Bulgaria • Frank Fox
... blood, but that when attended to at once, and the wound dressed, it would be a matter of only eight or ten days when he would be again in fairly good condition. He said, however, that wounds from fragments of shrapnel were of quite a different character; that they were ragged, unclean and usually gave much concern. He said, also, as a matter of fact, that the gun or rifle was performing a less and less important function in warfare. That ...
— A Journey Through France in War Time • Joseph G. Butler, Jr.
... side of 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
... 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 it came forward. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 44, June, 1861 • Various
... the burden well, The dreadful paths they know, With fear and death and torture dwell. And sup and sleep with, woe. They're riven in the shrapnel gust, But; blind and reeling, plan Another blow, a final thrust To subjugate the tyrant's lust. So, bleeding, blundering in the dust, Men fight and die ...
— 'Hello, Soldier!' - Khaki Verse • Edward Dyson
... of 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 ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies
... minutes as would smother you all in this room! I received, at the same moment, two musket balls in the thighs, a grape shot through the calf of my leg, a lance through my left shoulder, a piece of a shrapnel in the left deltoid, a bayonet through the cartilage of my right ribs, a cut-cut that carried away a pound of flesh from my chest, and the better part of a congreve rocket on my forehead. Pretty well, ...
— The Room in the Dragon Volant • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... Dustbin—attached for rations and discipline—accompany us on our sanitary rounds; set us a fine example of indifference to shell fire, even to the extent of attempting to catch spent shrapnel as it fell; and proved the wettest of wet blankets to the "socials" of the local rats. Then, as happens with sanitary inspectors in France, there arrived late one afternoon a despatch requesting the pleasure of my society—in five hours' time—at a village some twenty kilos distant as the shell ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, August 1, 1917. • Various
... 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 ...
— Rung Ho! • Talbot Mundy
... agreed; "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 get ...
— Pellucidar • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... 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
... 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 to make his way to the foremost of his boys and lay like a black ...
— Life's Handicap • Rudyard Kipling
... ammunition was stored lay at some little distance from the other buildings, near the gun-park, and was surrounded by a thick high wall of earth. One realised from this how dangerous were its contents. But the store-men, who gave out the shrapnel-shells and the fuses, went about their work as if regardless of the fact that in each one of these lurked death and destruction. And yet in every shrapnel-shell were a couple of hundred bullets that could easily put a whole company hors ...
— 'Jena' or 'Sedan'? • Franz Beyerlein
... me with scraps of song The desolated ways along: Through sickly fields all shrapnel-sown, And meadows reaped by death alone; By blazing cross and splintered spire, By headless Virgin in the mire; By gardens gashed amid their bloom, By gutted grave, by shattered tomb; Beside the dying and the dead, Where rocket green and rocket red, In trembling pools of poising light, With flowers ...
— Rhymes of a Red Cross Man • Robert W. Service
... twenty of them ran clear from the back of the ravine past the fire of "C" and "D" companies to the bluff, and joined their comrades in a rattling fusillade on "A." Fortunately, only a few of them, had Winchesters. "A" moved forward a little, and soon got the measure of the ravine. The shrapnel screeched in the air, and burst right in among the brush and boulders, smashing the scraggy trees, and tearing up the moss that covered the ground in patches. The rebels at once saw that the game was ...
— The Story of Louis Riel: The Rebel Chief • Joseph Edmund Collins
... bombing of Baccarat just below us, while the Boche machine passed very close overhead. He does not say that he hid behind one tree and I hid behind another, trying to keep the trunks between us and the flying shrapnel. Nor does he say that he picked up and carried home a fragment which landed between us in the road, although it came just as near to me as ...
— The Fight for the Argonne - Personal Experiences of a 'Y' Man • William Benjamin West
... in the forward line.... We were entertained by a certain amount of shell 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 proceeded ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume III (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... wire Of old defences tangles up the feet; Faces and hands strain upward through the mire, Speaking the anguish of the Hun's retreat. Sometimes no letters came; the evening hate Dragged on till dawn. The ridge in flying spray Of hissing shrapnel told the runners' fate; We knew we should not hear from you that day— From you, who from the trenches of the mind Hurl back despair, smiling with sobbing breath, Writing your souls on paper to be kind, That you for us may take the ...
— The Glory of the Trenches • Coningsby Dawson
... all to what he could do. He once cut a fellow open, took out his liver, extracted twenty-three shrapnel bullets from it, bounced it on the floor to see it was all right, and put it back, all inside of three minutes. And the fellow what owns the liver hasn't had a to-morrow morning head-ache ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, April 5, 1916 • Various
... was rendered nugatory by the bridge over the second canal being commanded from the heights, the guns on which opened upon our columns with shrapnel, while the gunners were completely protected by their epaulements. And a further attempt by Gibbon to cross the canal by the bridge near Falmouth, was anticipated by the enemy extending ...
— The Campaign of Chancellorsville • Theodore A. Dodge
... Camerons were almost unrecognisable in their rags. The staple dressing is tincture of iodine; you don't attempt anything but swabbing with lysol, and then gauze dipped in iodine. They were nearly all shrapnel shell wounds—more ghastly than anything I have ever seen or smelt; the Mauser wounds of the Boer War were pin-pricks compared with them. There was also a huge train of French wounded being dressed on the other side of the station, including lots ...
— Diary of a Nursing Sister on the Western Front, 1914-1915 • Anonymous
... 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 on ...
— T. Haviland Hicks Senior • J. Raymond Elderdice
... the groom appears at the top of the stairs, a glimpse of the bride behind him. It surely is running the gauntlet! They seemingly count "one, two, three, go!" With shoulders hunched and collars held tight to their necks, they run through shrapnel of rice, down the stairs, out through the hall, down the outside steps, into the motor, slam the ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... waiting and smoking idly, each armed with his "Movement Order." The dull boom of guns not excessive, though there's a frequent "plom! plom! plom!" of the Archies, and the sky is dotted with clusters of pretty little shrapnel clouds. Sometimes the crack! crack! crack! crack! of machine guns high up in the blue. It makes you feel slightly homesick. I don't quite know why. That sort of thing isn't done ...
— Letters to Helen - Impressions of an Artist on the Western Front • Keith Henderson
... indeed, a quiet day. Some of the men played cards, and Oscar read his Bible. The night, too, began well. But at four fifteen everybody was roused by the gas alarm. Gas shells came over for exactly half an hour. Then the shrapnel broke loose; not the long, whizzing scream of solitary shells, but drum-fire, continuous and deafening. A hundred electrical storms seemed raging at once, in the air and on the ground. Balls of fire were rolling all over the place. The range was a little long for the Boar's ...
— One of Ours • Willa Cather
... from fire. No rifle bullet can penetrate through a 3-foot thickness of sandbags. A 6 or 8-inch high-explosive shell, which is the largest caliber practicable for trench warfare, may burst near a double layer of bags of stone rubble without hurting anyone in a cellar 30 feet underneath. The rain of shrapnel bullets which mows the barbed wire in front of a trench, as hail mows ripening grain, will not reach a single man in the trench to the rear, if he ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume I (of 8) - Introductions; Special Articles; Causes of War; Diplomatic and State Papers • Various
... toll-gate at the entrance of Gettysburg, we found that we had got into a heavy cross-fire; shells both Federal and Confederate passing over our heads with great frequency. At length two shrapnel shells burst quite close to us, and a ball from one of them hit the officer who was conducting us. We then turned round and changed our views with regard to the cupola—the fire of one side being bad enough, but preferable to that of both sides. A small boy of twelve ...
— Three Months in the Southern States, April-June 1863 • Arthur J. L. (Lieut.-Col.) Fremantle
... at B.Q.H. that Lieut. G—— had been killed. He had gone down to the trenches to inspect some work which was being done by his platoon, and was on the point of returning when an enemy shell burst and a shrapnel bullet went through his heart. This sad event recalled to us his words at the gathering on Christmas night. His prediction that one would be missing ere the year ended was fulfilled, and he was the one called ...
— Over the Top With the Third Australian Division • G. P. Cuttriss
... about a year ago. I saw him in Paris about a year before that. The old egg got a bit of shrapnel in his foot or something, didn't he? Anyhow, I remember he ...
— Indiscretions of Archie • P. G. Wodehouse
... place across open ground swept by both shrapnel and machine-guns, and the men just seemed ...
— From the St. Lawrence to the Yser with the 1st Canadian brigade • Frederic C. Curry
... 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. They were pulled by gasoline engines. We ...
— In the Flash Ranging Service - Observations of an American Soldier During His Service - With the A.E.F. in France • Edward Alva Trueblood
... service of the Women's Reserve Ambulance Corps in England was spurned. Now—they wear shrapnel helmets while ...
— Mobilizing Woman-Power • Harriot Stanton Blatch
... drawn elsewhere almost immediately, however. Two balls of black smoke had suddenly appeared close to one of the machines ahead of me, and with the same disconcerting abruptness similar balls began to dot the sky above, below, and on all sides of us. We were being shot at with shrapnel. It was interesting to watch the flash of the bursting shells, and the attendant smoke puffs—black, white, or yellow, depending on the kind of shrapnel used. The roar of the motor drowned the noise ...
— Flying for France • James R. McConnell
... its way 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 ...
— The Next of Kin - Those who Wait and Wonder • Nellie L. McClung
... 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 seems to me I don't know ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London
... the town and saw on all sides the tokens of street fighting. All the windows were smashed by shell fire; some houses had been entirely gutted. Dead Frenchmen lay around in heaps, some corpses so mutilated by shrapnel as to appear hardly human. With a shudder we turned our eyes ...
— What Germany Thinks - The War as Germans see it • Thomas F. A. Smith
... 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 ...
— The Cow Puncher • Robert J. C. Stead
... 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 Forest of Swords - A Story of Paris and the Marne • Joseph A. Altsheler
... 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
... 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 ...
— Watts (1817-1904) • William Loftus Hare
... few casualties, of course, but we haven't lost many officers—most of them have come back. I think all your immediate chums are still in France. But I've been out of it myself for two months—stopped a bit shrapnel with my hand, and it won't get better." He indicated a bandaged left hand as he spoke, and they realized that his face was worn, and deeply lined with pain. "It's stupid," he said, and laughed. "But when are you coming back? We've plenty of ...
— Captain Jim • Mary Grant Bruce
... order: deranged: it was not human, to be killed. But it lay motionless, with the fire hose playing upon it. Then abruptly there was an explosion. The fallen Robot, with a deafening report and a puff of green flame, burst into flying metallic fragments like shrapnel. Nearby windows were broken from the violent explosion, and pieces of the flying metal were hurled a hundred feet or more. One huge chunk, evidently a plate of the thing's body, struck into the crowd two blocks away, and felled ...
— Astounding Stories, April, 1931 • Various
... if I mentioned that part of the damage I got at Loos was a shrapnel bullet low down at the back of my neck. The wound had healed well enough, but I had pains there on a cold day. His fingers found the place and it ...
— Greenmantle • John Buchan
... headcover and cause it to catch cold and trot home to mother, he will have to sit up late and do some more thinking. For Atkins of to-day is a knowing bird; he can make a little go the whole distance and conjure plenty out of nothingness. As for cover, two bricks and his shrapnel hat make a very passable pavilion. Goodness knows it would puzzle a guinea-pig to render itself inconspicuous in our village, yet I have watched battalion after battalion march into it and be halted and dismissed. Half an hour later there is not a soul to be seen. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Sept. 5, 1917 • Various
... death-splinters, and sickening sights and smells. There he will have to be constantly on the watch, meals and sleep can only be snatched at precarious intervals, and seldom without disturbance; if there is anything more nerve-racking than the scream of shells and the hail of shrapnel it is the lull that follows, when he waits for the enemy's rush to begin. And yet, the moment he finds himself back in the trench again, he becomes acclimatised; his men speak of him as a cool and resourceful young officer under any difficulties, while on more ...
— In Brief Authority • F. Anstey
... saw those three infantry columns pouring out of the woods again, at a quick step. We manned the guns, and waited as before, till they reached the middle of the field. Then we began to plow up the columns with shrapnel. This time some of our infantry tried and found it in range for their muskets and they adjusted their rifle sights and took careful aim, with a rest on the top of the works. Soon, the columns faltered, then stopped, then broke, and made good time back to their woods. ...
— From the Rapidan to Richmond and the Spottsylvania Campaign - A Sketch in Personal Narration of the Scenes a Soldier Saw • William Meade Dame
... between the lines, and the imperative necessity of keeping one's head low. 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 ...
— The Story of the "9th King's" in France • Enos Herbert Glynne Roberts
... complete units, these little groups crawled, floundered, and wriggled their way up the gully on to the hill. It was now daylight. As they gained the summit the Turks greeted them with terrific bursts of shrapnel and common shell. The crack, the white puff of smoke, then the scattering balls of lead ...
— The Kangaroo Marines • R. W. Campbell
... deadly accuracy, the flagship was hurling shrapnel shell over the heads of the bluejackets into ...
— A Prisoner of Morro - In the Hands of the Enemy • Upton Sinclair
... longer movement that we should have to do with. The truth is that if the arrow leaves the point A to fall down at the point B, its movement AB is as simple, as indecomposable, in so far as it is movement, as the tension of the bow that shoots it. As the shrapnel, bursting before it falls to the ground, covers the explosive zone with an indivisible danger, so the arrow which goes from A to B displays with a single stroke, although over a certain extent of duration, its indivisible mobility. Suppose an elastic stretched from A to B, could you ...
— Creative Evolution • Henri Bergson
... is to shatter the aerostat, and to this end either shrapnel, high explosive, or incendiary shells will be used. The former must explode quite close to the balloon in order to achieve the desired end, while the incendiary shell must actually strike it, so as to fire the gas. The high explosive shell may explode effectually some feet ...
— Aeroplanes and Dirigibles of War • Frederick A. Talbot
... of recent battle, but at the scene of a battle proceeding at that very moment. The Germans were engaged in a fierce counter-stroke on the North-Eastern front of the Ypres salient. The only indication was the bursting of a good deal of shrapnel at this point. It was here that I first saw shrapnel shells and noticed the little white puffs of smoke, which for all the world looked like the steam let off by an ordinary locomotive. Behind us, or rather, on the right of Scherpenberg hill, ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey
... the monster guns; And the sharp bark Of the lesser guns; The whine of 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, Blindly fighting ...
— The Red Flower - Poems Written in War Time • Henry Van Dyke
... saw the back of my last General at D——. You remember him—a very pleasant man. Well, he showed us round the trenches. The shells were bursting up along the forward line held by my brother Hal's[3] old regiment [4th King's Own]. You could see the shrapnel bursting on the ground, and perhaps setting fire to something or other. None of the shells were near us, so we were quite safe. Leaving the line about dark, we had to rattle home. Of course we lost our way, as our maps ...
— Letters of Lt.-Col. George Brenton Laurie • George Brenton Laurie
... 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
... spattered with a hail that might have been shrapnel, or stones and gravel—Ruth did not know. The hood sheltered her. She was on the far ...
— Ruth Fielding at the War Front - or, The Hunt for the Lost Soldier • Alice B. Emerson
... little trees and saplings, under whip and spur, the horses are champing the bits, and are muddied from head to foot. Now, quick, quick; look, the Yankees have discovered the battery and are preparing to charge it. Unlimber, horses and caisson to the rear. No. 1 shrapnel, load, fire—boom, boom; load, ablouyat—boom, boom. I saw Sam Seay fall badly wounded and carried to the rear. I stopped firing to look at Sergeant Doyle how he handled his gun. At every discharge it would bounce, and turn its muzzle ...
— "Co. Aytch" - Maury Grays, First Tennessee Regiment - or, A Side Show of the Big Show • Sam R. Watkins
... the little mountain guns, and away went a shrapnel screaming across the open and just three and six-tenths seconds after, exploded ...
— The Battle of Bayan and Other Battles • James Edgar Allen
... to tell," was Marcy's answer. "We sighted the Hollins inside Diamond Shoals, threw a couple of shrapnel at her and she came to; that's all there was of it. Her skipper was a sailorman all over, and plucky, too; and if he had had anything to fight with, he would have made things lively for us. I never before felt so sorry for anybody as I did for him; but of course I didn't have a ...
— Marcy The Blockade Runner • Harry Castlemon
... March were chilly, with alternations of snow and sunshine. When the air was pure, we heard it vibrate with the life of aeroplanes and echo to their contests. The dry throb of machine-guns, the incessant scream of shrapnel formed a kind of crackling dome over our heads. The German aeroplanes overwhelmed the environs with bombs which gave a prolonged whistle before tearing up the soil or gutting a house. One fell a few paces from the ward where I was ...
— The New Book Of Martyrs • Georges Duhamel
... keeps their hearts from that haunting foe, l'ennui; He's their plaything, friend, and sentry too, and a lover of devilry; He helps them to hunt out rats or Boches; he burrows and sniffs for mines, And he growls when the murderous shrapnel flies screaming above the lines; His little black nose is a-quiver with glee whenever a raid is on, And they say with pride, "C'est la guerre elle-meme, notre ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Nov. 28, 1917 • Various
... been knocked out. As the nearest man at hand I joined him in carrying the stretcher, and we doubled our fastest for the trees where the first shot had pitched. We found that an R.A.M.C. man had been struck above the ankle by a piece of shrapnel. The wound was small, but deep and ugly, and the leg was broken. The poor chap was in terrible pain. We conveyed him as carefully as we could to the field ambulance. There had been other casualties ...
— War Letters of a Public-School Boy • Henry Paul Mainwaring Jones
... back he had worked and slaved, and fought battles, and sailed his ship, and did all he could, it must be confessed, to make everybody around him happy, while a load of sorrow, which felt as big as a bag of shrapnel or a kedge anchor, lay at his own heart. He now determined to get rid of this incubus, to leave it, or creep out from under it somehow. During all these months he had tried, and tried hard, to forget his lost love Gerty, but all in vain. Trying to forget her made matters infinitely worse, so now ...
— As We Sweep Through The Deep • Gordon Stables
... came down to see them. He had been sent home early in nineteen-seventeen with a shrapnel wound in his left leg, the bone shattered. He obtained his discharge at the price of a permanent limp, and went back ...
— Anne Severn and the Fieldings • May Sinclair
... locate them by the glint of the bayonets in the sunshine. Everywhere they were pushing on in extended order, but many falling. The Turks appeared to have the range pretty accurately. About mid-day our men seemed to be held up, the Turkish shrapnel appearing to be too much for them. It was now that there occurred what I think one of the finest incidents of the campaign. This was the landing of the Australian Artillery. They got two of their ...
— Five Months at Anzac • Joseph Lievesley Beeston
... They loaded and moved forward, column on column, like so many immortals that could not be vanquished. The scene from the balloon, as Lowe informed me, was awful beyond all comparison,—of puffing shells and shrieking shrapnel, with volleys that shattered the hills and filled the air with deathly whispers. Infantry, artillery, and horse turned the Federal right from time to time, and to preserve their order of battle the whole ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... 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!" shouted General Hooker, ...
— Three Years in the Sixth Corps • George T. Stevens
... indecisive victory that proved much and won little), and then back to Armentieres, whence we were sent north to St. Eloi, after making a short advance in the vicinity of Messines. From St. Eloi we were ordered to Hill 60, taking part in the now historic battle there. After Hill 60, Ypres, where shrapnel and poison gas put an end to my soldiering days—I am afraid ...
— A Soldier's Sketches Under Fire • Harold Harvey
... 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
... prepared to depart. He had ever loved to be the centre of a picture, but here was a time when to be in the centre was torture. Eyes of morbid curiosity were looking at the open wounds of his heart-ragged wounds made by the shrapnel of tragedy and treachery, not the clean wounds got in a fair fight, easily healed. For the moment at least the little egoist was a mere suffering soul—an epitome of shame, misery and disappointment. He must straightway flee the place ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... 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
... risk 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 ...
— The Dominion of the Air • J. M. Bacon
... and came into action against the kopje, and we and the limbers trotted about 300 yards back, and are waiting there now. A gunner and a driver slightly wounded, and some horses hit. One bullet broke our wheel-driver's whip. Our shrapnel are bursting beautifully over ...
— In the Ranks of the C.I.V. • Erskine Childers
... and our own skill in taking cover we suffered no casualties. We were congratulating ourselves that we were to pass through this ordeal uninjured, when suddenly a 5.9-inch shell fell short. It exploded almost in our midst, and I was unlucky enough to get in the way of one of the shrapnel bullets. I felt a slight sting in my right temple as though pricked by a red-hot needle—and then the ...
— Through St. Dunstan's to Light • James H. Rawlinson
... at a Red Cross class, being taught how to take foreign bodies out of the ear, when the news came. Tish was not paying much attention, because she considered that if a soldier got a bullet or shrapnel in his ear, a syringe would not help him much. She had gone out of the room, therefore, and Aggie had just had a bean put in her auditory canal, and was sure it would swell before they got it again, when Tish returned. She said the bill had passed, and that ...
— More Tish • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... 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 ...
— My Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... shells were lost to them. They were intent on their own little affairs. For ourselves we felt more than anything else a sensation of surprise—surprise because we were not more afraid of the bursting shrapnel. ...
— The Red Horizon • Patrick MacGill
... which came from just overhead—a concert of jarring sounds and little whispers. The "shrieking shrapnel," of which one reads in the description of every battle, did not seem so much like a shriek as it did like the jarring sound of telegraph wires when some one strikes the pole from which they hang, and when they came very close the noise was like the rushing ...
— Notes of a War Correspondent • Richard Harding Davis
... not loth, for excitement had begun to stir his blood. They stayed there for some minutes, straining their eyes for sight of anything save the little zagged splashes of bursting shrapnel, while voices buzzed, and muttered: "Look! There! There! ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... 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 my feet ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... troops left El 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 from ...
— The Colored Regulars in the United States Army • T. G. Steward
... irregular horse, not being trained to act in concert with the regular troops, the whole were thrown into confusion, and were unable to reform or advance upon the guns. By a rapid movement, Major Huntingdon had brought his two twelve pound Howitzers to play on the Sepoy battalion, with shrapnel, shell and spherical case, with considerable effect. The native officer who commanded them deployed his right wing into line, and sent the left to endeavour to take the artillery in flank or rear. ...
— Vellenaux - A Novel • Edmund William Forrest
... might be accomplished without danger. So far as was known, they had gauged the utmost capacity for reaching them possessed by the German anti-aircraft guns, and Jack promised himself to jeer at the futile efforts of these gunners to explode their shrapnel shells close to ...
— Air Service Boys Over the Atlantic • Charles Amory Beach
... no 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
... effect among troops, a third kind of projectile is employed. It is called shrapnel, and it consists of a thin shell, holding a little powder and a large quantity of bullets. The powder is ignited by a fuse, which is set to act during flight, or on graze, when the shell is nearing the object. The ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 324, March 18, 1882 • Various
... watch two enemy aeroplanes and the intricate skeins they are spinning. Around the stiff mechanical birds up there that appear now black like crows and now white like gulls, according to the play of the light, clouds of bursting shrapnel stipple the azure, and seem like a long flight of snowflakes ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse
... pets, others ran back for ammunition, an officer gave 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 ...
— A Yeoman's Letters - Third Edition • P. T. Ross
... mingled with it. I reflected: "What effect will it have upon me? I expect I shall come into the middle of the fight when I get over that ridge. Shall I duck my head when I hear the bullets whistling and the shrapnel bursting around me? I am determined to play the man. I know Wattrelot is close by, trotting behind me. He mustn't see the least ...
— In the Field (1914-1915) - The Impressions of an Officer of Light Cavalry • Marcel Dupont
... 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 Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 21 - The Recent Days (1910-1914) • Charles F. Horne, Editor
... fire. The Rebel 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, ...
— My Days and Nights on the Battle-Field • Charles Carleton Coffin
... committing hara-kiri, he slashed his hand across his stomach, and then drew it up from his waist to his chin. "I'm scraped with shrapnel from there to there," said Mr. Hamlin. "And another time I got a ball in the shoulder. That would have been a 'blighty' for a fighting man—they're always giving them leave—but all I got was six weeks at ...
— The Lost Road • Richard Harding Davis
... range of canister, and is to be used only under the same circumstances, but at an increased distance. Canister is more effective at from 250 yards with the 12-pdr. howitzer, to 400 yards with the XI-inch; but beyond those distances shrapnel should be used up to 900 yards for the 12-pdr., and 1,500 with the XI-inch. A well-delivered shrapnel-shell from a heavy gun must sweep away the crew of a pivot or other gun, on a spar-deck not protected by bulwarks. The 'distant ...
— Ordnance Instructions for the United States Navy. - 1866. Fourth edition. • Bureau of Ordnance, USN
... 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
... while our few cavalry reconnoitred. Then we passed into a deep broad nulla between two ancient earth-walls. All this terrain had been a network of canals and cultivation. Shrapnel was bursting in our front. We filed out, at the left, on to a plain. Half a mile ahead was the nearer curve of a hilly ground. The main range ran in a Carpathian-like sweep across our front, from west to east; turned, and went across our front again. Beyond this was Beled Station, ...
— The Leicestershires beyond Baghdad • Edward John Thompson
... sharp jerk and there was 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— A little fort had ...
— Adventures and Letters • Richard Harding Davis
... She kept you with her in her fields of Flanders, Where you go, Gathering your wounded from among her dead. Grey night falls on your going and black night on your returning. You go Under the thunder of the guns, the shrapnel's rain and the curved lightning of the shells, And where the high towers are broken, And houses crack like the staves of a thin crate filled with fire; Into the mixing smoke and dust of roof and walls torn asunder You go; And only ...
— A Journal of Impressions in Belgium • May Sinclair
... and that are disobeyed only at the price of destruction. He did not know there are moral laws that cannot be bent by any force of glamour, or are bent only to fly back with vindictive violence. In the face of shrapnel or the Judgment Day, it was evident to Redwood that this man would have sheltered behind some curiously dodged vote ...
— The Food of the Gods and How It Came to Earth • H.G. Wells
... us orders for to shell a sand redoubt, Loadin' down the axle-arms with case; But the Captain knew 'is dooty, an' he took the crackers out, An' he put some proper liquor in its place. An' the Captain saw the shrapnel (which is six-an'-thirty clear). ('Orse-Gunners, listen to my song!) "Will you draw the weight," sez 'e, "or will you draw the beer?" An' we didn't ...
— The Seven Seas • Rudyard Kipling
... when the gunners promised to destroy a new work erected by the Huns in front of their lines. They were heavily handicapped at the outset by the necessity of employing percussion shrapnel against a strong breastwork. But even when allowances were made, it seemed unnecessary that their first shell, a premature, should burst in the trees far behind on the Messines road, that the second ...
— The War Service of the 1/4 Royal Berkshire Regiment (T. F.) • Charles Robert Mowbray Fraser Cruttwell
... described with a letter and number. These were for the guiding of 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, when the ...
— The Boy Allies with Haig in Flanders • Clair W. Hayes |
