"Shrapnel" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... north-east, along a gentle declivity stretching 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 ...
— 1914 • John French, Viscount of Ypres
... includes many masterly lawyers, and many adroit men of the world. But all of them are political appointments. Hence in ordinary cases a man will get clean justice. But the moment politics flutter on the breeze, the masked battery on the Bench is uncurtained to bellow forth anti-Nationalist shrapnel. Irish Judges, in fact, are very like the horse in the schoolboy's essay: 'The horse is a noble and useful quadruped, but, when irritated, he ceases to ...
— The Open Secret of Ireland • T. M. Kettle
... 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
... 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, ...
— Through Palestine with the 20th Machine Gun Squadron • Unknown
... 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, "Let ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... 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. ...
— The Paliser case • Edgar Saltus
... six thousand Fusiliers Marins who made up the Naval Brigade at Dixmude in November, 1914. "You are my best infantrymen," he told them; and, if you want to know why, all you have to do is read Dixmude (HEINEMANN), by CHARLES LE GOFFIC. For four weeks, shrapnel to right of them, "saucepans" to left of them, volleyed and thundered, and for four weeks the six thousand stood in the valley of death at Dixmude and held up six times as many Boches, who came on, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, March 15, 1916 • Various
... 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 on the covert behind which they knew the enemy's masses were ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... dust and ashes; The painted salons are charred with fire; The dovecot pitted with shrapnel splashes, The park a tangle of trench and wire; Shell-holes yawn in the ferns and mosses; Stripped and torn is the avenue; Down in the rose-walk humble crosses Grow where my lady's ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, May 16, 1917. • Various
... my shoulders, and got him out of the line of fire. The Bavarians sent another shrapnell shell after us, and, as the projectile burst over our heads, I felt a blow on the leather rim of my kepi. "A shrapnel splinter!" I thought, scornfully: "could it not have hit me a little more to the right, and have ...
— Dr. Dumany's Wife • Mr Jkai
... a green gown of iridescent fish scales, into the 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 ...
— The Vertical City • Fannie Hurst
... 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 ...
— The Poems of Henry Van Dyke • Henry Van Dyke
... silence. In his man's mind one thought dominated—the immense pity of it all. And there was a dreadful fascination in looking at these girl soldiers, whose soft, warm flesh was so soon to be mangled by shrapnel ...
— The Crimson Tide • Robert W. Chambers
... 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 ...
— Manual of Military Training - Second, Revised Edition • James A. Moss
... hopeful of persuading them to leave 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
... 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
... them to be up about fourteen thousand feet, and below them an artillery duel was in progress. It was a wonderful, but terrible sight. Immediately under them, and rather too near for comfort, shrapnel was bursting all around. The "Archies," or anti-aircraft guns of the Germans, were trying to reach the French planes, and, in addition to the bullets, "woolly bears" and "flaming onions" were sent up toward them. These are two types of bursting shells, the ...
— Air Service Boys in the Big Battle • Charles Amory Beach
... breathless things, full of strange secrets, thrilling with a fearful expectation, broken by sudden and shattering voices that speak and then are still—voices that seem to come out of the bowels of the earth near at hand and are answered by voices more distant, the vicious hiss of the shrapnel, the crisp rattle of the machine-guns, the roar of "Mother," that sounds like an invisible express train thundering through the sky above you. The solitude and the silence assume an oppressive significance. They are only ...
— Pebbles on the Shore • Alpha of the Plough (Alfred George Gardiner)
... as 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 to make his way to the foremost of his boys and lay like a black porpoise, ...
— Life's Handicap • Rudyard Kipling
... 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 ...
— Rhymes of a Red Cross Man • Robert W. Service
... our hearts exploding with love, God's smile on our simple faces, God's simple faith in our souls.... He has been told by his cleverest writers that Russia is the last stronghold of God. And war? He thought that he would be plunged into a scene of smoke and flame, shrapnel, horror upon horror, danger upon danger. He finds instead a country house, meals long and large, no sounds of cannon, not even an aeroplane. Are we kind to him? Not at all.... We are not unkind but ...
— The Dark Forest • Hugh Walpole
... courage of modern men. He was astonished at the quickness with which they came to disregard shrapnel. And they were so quietly enduring when they were wounded. He had seen a lot of the wounded, and he had expected much groaning and crying out. But unless a man is hit in the head and goes mad he does not groan or scream! ...
— War and the Future • H. G. Wells
... 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 ...
— The Boys of '98 • James Otis
... swallowed as much smoke in five 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, ha, ha! and all while you'd say bah! and in eight days and a half I was making a forced ...
— The Room in the Dragon Volant • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... the open. And owing to the thick fog our airmen had been able to see nothing. The bombardment continued with great fury for several hours, with guns of all calibres, but fortunately mostly small, with shrapnel, high explosive, and gas, chiefly lacrimatory, but mixed with a certain quantity of lethal. Luckily we had pretty good cover, mainly caverne blasted in the rock. The Command Post itself was proof against anything less than a direct hit from a pretty ...
— With British Guns in Italy - A Tribute to Italian Achievement • Hugh Dalton
... an 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 planes. The cognac still throbbed a little ...
— Three Soldiers • John Dos Passos
... 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, which ...
— The Dominion of the Air • J. M. Bacon
... 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 ...
— The Colored Regulars in the United States Army • T. G. Steward
... 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 of the ...
— Three Years' War • Christiaan Rudolf de Wet
... broke loose. Machine gun and rapid rifle fire burst forth from the German front trenches, and streams of bullets swept over the intervening ground like a gigantic hail-storm; then some field batteries began to burst H.E. shrapnel above the disturbed area, while star shells and magnesium flares threw an uneven light over the ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 152, January 24, 1917 • Various
... epigram, and to be incapable of distinguishing good from bad: the author of the parting between Richard and Lucy Feverel—a high- water mark of novelistic passion and emotion—from the creator of Mr. Raikes and Dr. Shrapnel, which are two of the most flagrant unrealities ever perpetrated in the name of fiction ...
— Views and Reviews - Essays in appreciation • William Ernest Henley
... trench-raiding which has since been carried out so 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 ...
— Over the top with the 25th - Chronicle of events at Vimy Ridge and Courcellette • R. Lewis
... while the higher and more distant hills were furry with chaparral. Once they saw a coyote slide into the brush, and once Billy wished for a gun when a large wildcat stared at them malignantly and declined to run until routed by a clod of earth that burst about its ears like shrapnel. ...
— The Valley of the Moon • Jack London
... 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 rights of human nature, and the only lawful ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... 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, there was no danger in charging the barricade. I told my troop ...
— Captain Macklin • Richard Harding Davis
... artillery opens its 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 ...
— My Days and Nights on the Battle-Field • Charles Carleton Coffin
... had been bursting here, there and everywhere underneath them; but no one paid much attention to the shower. Indeed, shrapnel does not account for as many hostile planes as might be imagined; since each looks like a fly when ten thousand feet high, and the surrounding ...
— Air Service Boys Over The Enemy's Lines - The German Spy's Secret • Charles Amory Beach
... "A shrapnel bullet!" exclaimed Ross. "That accounts for the poor little brute being in such a terrible funk. Give him a drink of water. He'll be better now. We can bandage the wound ...
— The Submarine Hunters - A Story of the Naval Patrol Work in the Great War • Percy F. Westerman
... Swarming on the 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 ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... 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, ...
— The Boy Allies with Haig in Flanders • Clair W. Hayes
... 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
... Danton's rage 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, ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... moment when we stood on a hilltop and watched the 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
... through the lungs; that the wounded soldier would spit up 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 many were ...
— A Journey Through France in War Time • Joseph G. Butler, Jr.
... had 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 ...
— My Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... 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 shell on his ...
— The Story of the Malakand Field Force • Sir Winston S. Churchill
... men know 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
... wouldn't even look like that. One nuclear shell from that gun and they'd be vaporized. Or perhaps the tank had sonic projectors; then the skin would peel off their bones. Or they might be burned, or cut up by shrapnel, or gassed with some new mist their ...
— The Green Beret • Thomas Edward Purdom
... through the window and dropped lightly to the yard. The two men were halfway across the yard from the pumphouse when a loud explosion ripped the building. Parts of the pump engine flew through the thin walls like shrapnel. A billowing cloud of purple smoke welled out of the ruptured building as Johnny and Barney flattened themselves against the hot, packed earth. Flames licked up from the pump shed. The men ran for the ...
— Make Mine Homogenized • Rick Raphael
... wounded man on the table, and again were off. The guns roared. Shrapnel dropped and exploded, or exploded in air. Overhead Zaidos was conscious that the duel in the clouds still went warily on, but he could not give it a glance. He lost all track of time. He saw others ...
— Shelled by an Unseen Foe • James Fiske
... Women's Reserve Ambulance Corps in England was spurned. Now—they wear shrapnel helmets while working during ...
— Mobilizing Woman-Power • Harriot Stanton Blatch
... her temper sweet when she knew at last what it was to hide in cellars and underground railway stations, or lie quaking in bed, whilst bombs crashed, houses crumbled, and aircraft guns distributed shrapnel on friend and foe alike until certain shop windows in London, formerly full of fashionable hats, were filled with steel helmets. Slain and mutilated women and children, and burnt and wrecked dwellings, excuse a good deal of violent language, and produce a wrath on which many ...
— Heartbreak House • George Bernard Shaw
... the captured battery flag are dyed with his blood. A dozen willing arms 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 ...
— The Little Lady of Lagunitas • Richard Henry Savage
... let 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 does ...
— America's War for Humanity • Thomas Herbert Russell
... now 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 any ...
— "Crumps", The Plain Story of a Canadian Who Went • Louis Keene
... still. Killed? Rather, out of 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, ...
— Astounding Stories, April, 1931 • Various
... the French side alone forty thousand have passed over our heads, and from the German side about as many, with this difference, that the enemy shells burst right upon us. For my own part, I was buried by three 305 shells at once, to say nothing of the innumerable shrapnel going off close by. You may gather that my brain was a good deal shaken. And now I am reading. I have just read in a magazine an article on three new novels, and that reading relieved many of the cares ...
— Letters of a Soldier - 1914-1915 • Anonymous
... 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
... were the guns right behind, cleverly 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 ...
— With Joffre at Verdun - A Story of the Western Front • F. S. Brereton
... of mouth-organs and heaved it after him; they scattered like a shrapnel shell. The young feller didn't wait to close the door. We heard him gallopin' up the board walk like he was needin' fresh air. We stood stock still for a matter of five seconds, I reckon; Hadds and me scart to move, and the Majoress with her brow wrinkled in thought. All of a suddent, ...
— Mr. Scraggs • Henry Wallace Phillips
... gun two had already been wounded. It was glorious to see these lads of fifteen and sixteen daily withstanding the onslaught of the mighty naval guns. The rocks around their howitzer were torn by lyddite, and the ground strewn with shrapnel bullets. ...
— With Steyn and De Wet • Philip Pienaar
... carelessness on the part of their commander, they were advancing in close order, and Jack felt that now was the moment when his twelve-pounder was likely to prove useful. He intended to captain the gun himself, and had caused it to be loaded with shrapnel some time before: and he therefore now carefully aimed the weapon at a certain spot over which the troops must pass, and the distance of which he knew almost to an inch. Then, waiting patiently until the leading column was within about three yards of it, he fired. The shell appeared to ...
— The Cruise of the Thetis - A Tale of the Cuban Insurrection • Harry Collingwood
... 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 ...
— What is Coming? • H. G. Wells
... 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 opened on us from ...
— Adventures and Letters • Richard Harding Davis
... end. His eyes are dark with doom; He hears the shrapnel shrieking overhead: He sees the ravaged ranks, the flame-stabbed gloom. Oh, to have fallen! the battle-field his bed, With Wauchope and his glorious brother-dead. Why was he saved for this, for this? And now He raises the ...
— Songs of a Sourdough • Robert W. Service
... 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 ...
— Watts (1817-1904) • William Loftus Hare
... 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 ...
— Bulgaria • Frank Fox
... up 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, uncovered, ...
— The Tale of a Trooper • Clutha N. Mackenzie
... centre being directed on to a conical hill at the back of the enemy's camp. The reserve followed in column of companies, in single rank, at fifty paces distance between companies. The enemy's guns opened on the Regiment at once with shrapnel, but most of the shells went high, only one ...
— The Record of a Regiment of the Line • M. Jacson
... War 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 got up ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, December 9, 1914 • Various
... He looked up. The shouting voices, apparently from the falling clouds, voices unfamiliar and guttural, warned him of what was coming. The darkness which loomed over him, took shape. He turned and ran for his life. Only a little way above his head a storm of shrapnel now was streaming from the lowered guns of the Admiralty. Turning back to look, he saw, scarcely fifty yards above him, the falling of a huge Zeppelin. He felt himself just outside its range and paused, ...
— The Kingdom of the Blind • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... 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 his little remaining ...
— Heart Talks • Charles Wesley Naylor
... is sitting up in bed—a fine young fellow about twenty years old. A shrapnel-shell, somewhere in France, passed over his head and burst just behind him. His bare back is a mass of scars. The healing fluid is being pumped in through the shattered elbow of his right arm, ...
— The Valley of Vision • Henry Van Dyke
... 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 from ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 21 - The Recent Days (1910-1914) • Charles F. Horne, Editor
... artillery gave them 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
... 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' surrender — it's worse if you fights or you runs: You may hide in ...
— Verses 1889-1896 • Rudyard Kipling
... the shrieking of shell, the crash of fallen timbers, the fragments of rocks flying through the air, shattered from the cliffs by solid shot, the heavy mutterings from the valley between the opposing armies, the splash of bursting shrapnel, and the fierce neighing of wounded artillery-horses, made a picture terribly grand and sublime, but which my ...
— Three Years in the Federal Cavalry • Willard Glazier
... 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 to trade on his ...
— The Personal Life Of David Livingstone • William Garden Blaikie
... 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 ...
— The Shades of the Wilderness • Joseph A. Altsheler
... minutes were out, shells, case-shot, and shrapnel had all been exhausted. The Mahsuds were firing more steadily than ever; and on the terrace itself, the infantry and sowars were in no enviable case. Unwin had fallen, shot through the head. Montague had ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... Worcesters, Second East Lancashires, First Sherwood Foresters, and the Second Northamptons. The Twenty-fourth Brigade had fought its way through from the Neuve Chapelle-Armentieres road. As soon as this had been accomplished by the British, their artillery proceeded to send such a rain of shrapnel fire between the village and the Germans that a counterattack was quite impossible. This gave the victors an opportunity to intrench themselves practically at their leisure. The plans of the British commander had embraced a forward movement when the troops had ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume V (of 12) - Neuve Chapelle, Battle of Ypres, Przemysl, Mazurian Lakes • Francis J. Reynolds, Allen L. Churchill, and Francis Trevelyan
... the 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, ...
— Sundown Slim • Henry Hubert Knibbs
... Church of Saint Peter and Saint Paul, the roof and upper story of which had been pierced by shells, seemed to be occupied. We knocked and went in. The man and his wife were in the sitting-room, trying to put it in order. Much of the furniture was destroyed; the walls were pitted with shrapnel-scars, but the cheap ornaments on the mantel were unbroken. In the ceiling was a big hole, and in the floor a pit in which lay the head and fragments of a German shell. I asked if I might have them. "Certainly," answered the man. "We ...
— Fighting For Peace • Henry Van Dyke
... went and sat in Maurice's room. We talked of the situation, and the effect of the Americans coming in, bucking everyone up—we were rather cheerful. Then the sirens began—and the guns followed just as Maurice and Odette got back—They seemed unusually loud—and we could hear the bits of shrapnel falling on the terrace beneath us, Odette was frightened and suggested going into the cellar—but as Maurice's rooms are only on the second floor, we did not want ...
— Man and Maid • Elinor Glyn
... 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 later ...
— The Story of the "9th King's" in France • Enos Herbert Glynne Roberts
... naked can 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 ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... I sat 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, I never thought ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, June 20, 1917 • Various
... again stood immovably covering Dominique, as he deliberately and rapidly reloaded, and once more while the crowd still pressed on a torrent of shrapnel poured into them, sickening ...
— The False Chevalier - or, The Lifeguard of Marie Antoinette • William Douw Lighthall
... "Shrapnel!" said F., waving his hand in airy introduction. "They're searching the road yonder I expect—ah, there goes another! Yes, they're trying the road yonder—but here's the ...
— Great Britain at War • Jeffery Farnol
... dismounted a few hundred yards from the guns. They soon saw with satisfaction that the fire of the Boers was far from effective, their aim was not good, and a very small proportion of the shells burst; while on the other hand the shrapnel from the British batteries burst with splendid accuracy over the crest of the hill. For two hours the artillery duel continued, then the Boer guns gradually ceased their fire. The mist that had partly shrouded the summit ...
— With Buller in Natal - A Born Leader • G. A. Henty
... 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 line fell back toward Grapevine Bridge. At five o'clock ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... cent was utilized in pigments, 30 per cent in alloys other than shot, 15 per cent in pipe, 10 per cent in shot, and 7 per cent in all other uses. During the war much larger quantities were used in munitions, such as shot and shrapnel. ...
— The Economic Aspect of Geology • C. K. Leith
... passed and removed, and though oft times I personally felt that the pattering of shrapnel on the tin roof opposite was uncomfortably close, I was convinced there was no theatrical display of bravery, no cheap heroism in our companions' unconsciousness. They were interested in ...
— With Those Who Wait • Frances Wilson Huard
... of the 1st our cavalry were busy with their horses, while the artillery devoted themselves chiefly to their guns. All that day our infantry stood in the trenches, and the smoke from the enemy's shrapnel made fantastic shapes against the leaden grey of the Northern sky. While I sat writing a young officer rushed in. He had kindly returned from the firing line especially to tell me of a little incident he had witnessed there. A private, hailing from Rotherhithe, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, October 14, 1914 • Various
... was kept up on those in the gardens by jhinjals and pigadas, who when hard pressed took refuge in an outwork or round tower. The fire from the south-east extremity was soon silenced pro tempore, the shrapnel practice being very effective. The howitzer battery on the extreme left of the artillery line was too great a range, and with the exception of one gun, all the shells fell short. In the melee, the Zuburjur 48-pounder, was dismounted, and carried with it a considerable portion ...
— Journals of Travels in Assam, Burma, Bhootan, Afghanistan and The - Neighbouring Countries • William Griffith
... 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 completely to the rear, when those old artillery soldiers would ...
— "Co. Aytch" - Maury Grays, First Tennessee Regiment - or, A Side Show of the Big Show • Sam R. Watkins
... the village on my 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 ...
— Adventures of a Despatch Rider • W. H. L. Watson
... 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 to go aloft, at the end of a steel tether, and bob about for seven ...
— Paths of Glory - Impressions of War Written At and Near the Front • Irvin S. Cobb
... them if you saw any by the way they did not stop in one place; they moved on. When a gunner saw a submarine wake he fired; where he wasn't sure he fired anyway. What was he there for? Bang! Boom! Solid shot were ricochetting, piling up little white splashes, and the shrapnel were making little holes and bursting into little white smoke ...
— The U-boat hunters • James B. Connolly
... 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 ...
— One of Ours • Willa Cather
... 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 ...
— Company 'A', corps of engineers, U.S.A., 1846-'48, in the Mexican war • Gustavus Woodson Smith
... of shrapnel that causes the face mutilations, and although the first room we visited at Chaptal was a witness to the marvelous restorative work the surgeons are able to accomplish—sometimes—many weeks and even months must elapse while the face is not only red and swollen, but twisted, the mouth almost parallel ...
— The Living Present • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... of Mons developed, the British line of the Conde Canal was swept with German shrapnel. German shells, also, began bursting in the suburbs of Mons and in the near-by villages. Sir Douglas Haig's right thus came under strong fire. German aeroplanes assisted by dropping smoke bombs over the British ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume II (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... from the haggard face of Little Spenski. They looked forward to the 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, ...
— Red Fleece • Will Levington Comfort
... valley we uncovered our pursuers to the fire of the battery at the village, which opened with shrapnel shells, firing over our heads. General Stanley, who was in the battery, reported that not less than eight guns opened fire. As soon as Cleburne encountered that fire he hastily drew back over the ridge, out ...
— The Battle of Spring Hill, Tennessee - read after the stated meeting held February 2d, 1907 • John K. Shellenberger
... skirmishing line, preceded the guns, and their Enfield fire, as soon as they were within range, astonished the enemy. Then the artillery opened with shrapnel, and nearly at the first round silenced the enemy's guns by killing the majority of the gunners and smashing the sponging rods. Then the infantry advanced at a charge, and the enemy, who were massed to defend the bridge, at ...
— In Times of Peril • G. A. Henty
... Krupps 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 agencies in the world, is a gentle Madonna-faced lady ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier
... 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 ...
— Lectures on Land Warfare; A tactical Manual for the Use of Infantry Officers • Anonymous
... 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 ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... 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 up in this quarter, though they kept up a bold front and seldom stopped firing except when ...
— The Story of Louis Riel: The Rebel Chief • Joseph Edmund Collins
... from his flask, while the German was endeavouring to staunch my wound with an antiseptic preparation served out to them by their medical corps. The Highlander had one of his legs shattered, and the German had several pieces of shrapnel buried in ...
— The Healing of Nations and the Hidden Sources of Their Strife • Edward Carpenter
... thing I did was to open my eyes, but I was bleeding from a scratch on 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, ...
— High Adventure - A Narrative of Air Fighting in France • James Norman Hall
... boldest man might well turn pale before that pass he tried, For if the first attack should fail then every hope was gone: But French looked once, and only once, and then he said, 'Push on!' The gunners plied their guns amain; the hail of shrapnel flew; With rifle fire and lancer charge their squadrons back we threw; And through the pass between the hills we swept in furious fray, And French was through to Kimberley to drive ...
— Rio Grande's Last Race and Other Verses • Andrew Barton 'Banjo' Paterson
... the conflict last; the din was awful! The spiteful bizz of the Remington bullet, the swish of the Martini, and the shriek of the Mauser, coupled with the unearthly booming of the Hotchkiss quick-firer, and the boom, roar, and bursting of the shrapnel on both sides, all this intermingled with voices calling out orders, and shouting for stretchers, went on until the shades of evening fell over a day which, Lord Methuen says, has never had an equal. Yet above all this din, I was able to hear that voice ...
— From Aldershot to Pretoria - A Story of Christian Work among Our Troops in South Africa • W. E. Sellers
... the vessels sustained no severe damage. Still, they were in a precarious position. The "Delaware" was too near to bring her battery to bear, and was obliged to turn slowly in the narrow channel. The "Perry," more fortunately situated, opened at once on the enemy with shrapnel. But the contest was unequal, and the two vessels were forced to retreat down the river about seven miles, there to await the remainder of ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 2 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... 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 ...
— Wild Wings - A Romance of Youth • Margaret Rebecca Piper
... of a shrapnel shell and its spray of low-velocity bullets is also theoretically most destructive, but a roof of 6-inch boards will furnish perfect protection from the bullets. Mother Earth remains the best protection ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume I (of 8) - Introductions; Special Articles; Causes of War; Diplomatic and State Papers • Various
... entered 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 from this ...
— What Germany Thinks - The War as Germans see it • Thomas F. A. Smith
... from the Boers who were still in possession of a section of the Talana ridge. The light was bad and the guns re-opened upon the crest line in the belief that the whole of it was still occupied by the enemy. The practice was excellent, and in a brief space both sides were driven off the hill by the shrapnel. A subsequent attempt to take it was successful. The result of the battle, which lasted from sunrise until 2 p.m., might have been reversed but for the inaction of the main Boer force posted on Lennox Hill under L. Meyer, and of another force on ...
— A Handbook of the Boer War • Gale and Polden, Limited
... move. He hastened to tell me of people riding along calmly in automobiles, and of the next moment there being nothing but a hole in the road. Also he told me how shrapnel spread, scattering death over large areas. If I had had an idea of dodging anything I ...
— Kings, Queens And Pawns - An American Woman at the Front • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... saw for himself everything that was going on. Didn't seem to worry him at all.... And I shall never forget the way the heavies lammed it into the wood. They had half an hour, six batteries of 6-inch howitzers, before the 18-pounders put in a five minutes' burst of shrapnel.... They say the wood ...
— Pushed and the Return Push • George Herbert Fosdike Nichols, (AKA Quex)
... home, I want to go home, The Johnsons and shrapnel they whistle and roar; I don't want to go to the trenches no more. I want to go home, Where the Allemands can't get at me, Oh my! I don't want to die; I want ...
— One Young Man • Sir John Ernest Hodder-Williams
... sort of an animal a man is, sir! Only a month ago, I was in the quiet of the country out at the front, with not a sound except the birds and the bellow of a cow in the distance as it might be, and the shrapnel making little clouds in the heavens, and the shells whistling, and maybe a yell or two when one of us was hit; and would you believe it, sir, I complained of the noise and wanted to have a peaceful hour at home. Well: them two has taught me a lesson. ...
— O'Flaherty V. C. • George Bernard Shaw
... laid their 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 ...
— A Yeoman's Letters - Third Edition • P. T. Ross
... actual trenches there was little cover for the garrison. A few excavations in the earth—designated "dugouts"—roofed with waterproof sheets, afforded moderate protection against the weather, but none against shrapnel, splinter, or bomb. The C.O. was the possessor of quarters boasting a covering of two sheets of corrugated iron which had a thin layer of earth on top. This, however, demonstrated its degree of usefulness by falling in upon its occupant. Later on excavations ...
— The 28th: A Record of War Service in the Australian Imperial Force, 1915-19, Vol. I • Herbert Brayley Collett
... Germans, after a sharp conflict, succeeded in repulsing 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 ...
— Fritz and Eric - The Brother Crusoes • John Conroy Hutcheson
... below the air-ship a little flame burst out. The smoke from a shrapnel hung in the air for a moment like a ball of cotton, and then that, too, ...
— Banzai! • Ferdinand Heinrich Grautoff
... at the lines of San Pedro Macati Dyer's guns had sighted swarms of rebels up the Pasig, and with placid and methodical precision were sending shrapnel in that direction and dull, booming concussions in the other. An engagement of some kind was on at San Pedro, and Stuyvesant twitched with nervous longing to get there, despite the doctors, and sat wondering was another engagement off at Manila. Just what to do he had not decided. ...
— Ray's Daughter - A Story of Manila • Charles King
... 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
... Caruso, You have not budged one inch upon the road; While half the lads have got their khaki trousseau, You still retain that voice and nut-like mode; Peace holds you with the tightness of a grapnel, And, still adhering to her ample hem, You enfilade us with your tuney shrapnel From 9 ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, November 11, 1914 • Various
... halted and stared 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, supported by their white ...
— Mufti • H. C. (Herman Cyril) McNeile
... heard, every eye saw the sudden white mist at a gun-muzzle and followed that first shell screaming toward the little Christmas toy sitting in the sun on that distant little hill. And yet it was nothing. Another and yet another mass of shrapnel went screaming, and still there was no response, no sign. It was nothing—nothing at ...
— Crittenden - A Kentucky Story of Love and War • John Fox, Jr.
... 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 ...
— In the Ranks of the C.I.V. • Erskine Childers
... said, "here are more particulars about that young chap Speranza, the one we printed the special about last Sunday. He must have been a corker. When his lieutenant was put out of business by a shrapnel this Speranza chap rallied the men and jammed 'em through the Huns like a hot knife through butter. Killed the German officer and took three prisoners all by himself. Carried his wounded lieutenant to the rear on his shoulders, too. Then ...
— The Portygee • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... of Montezuma To the gates of old Peking He has heard the shrapnel bursting, He has heard the Mauser's ping. He has known Alaskan waters And the coral roads of Guam, He has bowed to templed idols And to sultans ...
— Winning a Cause - World War Stories • John Gilbert Thompson and Inez Bigwood
... over this story; doctors are notoriously inhuman. The professor had laughed also, but the possible picture of him-self squirming helplessly before a casually interested public had terrors which no enemies' shrapnel had ever ...
— The Window-Gazer • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... to be seen and not even a puff of smoke to suggest his whereabouts. But the air was full of the booming of heavy guns and the rising eerie shriek of the shrapnel. ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, October 21, 1914 • Various
... a very difficult mark for artillery to hit. A few bullet-holes in the fabric of a balloon make but little difference, since the size of the perforation is very minute as compared with the great surface of material, but on the other hand, a shrapnel bursting just in front of may cause a rapid fall. It is therefore considered prudent to keep the balloon well away from an enemy, and two miles are laid down as the nearest approach ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... hitting at their feet. Telt just gaped, 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 ...
— Planet of the Damned • Harry Harrison
... 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
... of you. You are a very clever girl. If art fails there is always the Bar. I am not advising you to take to drink; I refer to the law. Listen, Flamby, I was wrong to try to deceive you as well as the others. Besides, it is not necessary. You are unusual. I stopped a stray piece of shrapnel a fortnight after I went back and was sent to a hospital in Burton-on-Trent. The M.O.'s have a positive genius for sending men to spots remote from their homes and kindreds—appalling sentence. In this case it was a blessing ...
— The Orchard of Tears • Sax Rohmer
... his coat and pitched in. There was plenty of work he 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 completing ...
— Jimmie Higgins • Upton Sinclair
... 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 just ...
— Tommy Atkins at War - As Told in His Own Letters • James Alexander Kilpatrick
... submarines launching torpedoes below, Which troop ship to atoms are they to blow? Ghosts of disease lurking in camp, Spectral sickness in trenches so damp; Ten million bullets ripping the air, Which Conscript to be stricken, and when and where? Ten million shrapnel shrieking o'er head, Which Conscript to reckon among their dead? Thousands of wounds, a-gaping and wide, Who will recover, and who will have died? Millions of mothers so anxious at home, Who will wear crepe for loved ones, ...
— Rhymes of the Rookies • W. E. Christian
... over their mules and cracked their whips. Another shot followed, but it was also short, and the last wagon turned the shoulder of the hill into the gorge of the creek as the ball bounded along up the Gauley valley. It was perhaps fortunate for us that solid shot instead of shrapnel were used, but it is not improbable that the need of haste in firing made the battery officer feel that he had no time to cut and adjust fuses to the estimated distance to our train; or it is possible that shells were used but did not explode. ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V1 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... the surface, to drive tunnels through the roots to conduct brine, to bombard sectors with sixteeninch guns firing shrapnel loaded with salt, to isolate by means of a wide saline band the whole territory, both occupied and threatened. Salt enthusiasts argued that nothing except a few million tons of an inexpensive mineral would be wasted if an improbable ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... nothing to say about the Hindenburg line. In fact, for the first half of the dinner he hardly spoke. I think he was worried about his left hand. There is a deep furrow across the back of it where a piece of shrapnel went through and there are two fingers that will hardly move at all. I could see that he was ashamed of its clumsiness and afraid that someone might notice it. So he kept silent. Professor Razzler did indeed ask him straight across the table what he thought about the final breaking ...
— The Hohenzollerns in America - With the Bolsheviks in Berlin and other impossibilities • Stephen Leacock
... night of Saturday the 24th of April. For the greater part of the day the 'Charnwood' had been lying off Cape Helles, which is the southernmost point of the Gallipoli Peninsula, while the people listened to the thunder of guns, and watched the shrapnel bursting in white puffs over the ...
— On Land And Sea At The Dardanelles • Thomas Charles Bridges
... 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
... leaning on her 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 my feet fell ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... we got immediately opposite the looters a burst of shell fire from the German guns, followed by a hail of shrapnel, blazed all about us, and the hero-cook jumped like a bullfrog, bumping plumb into one of the Algerians, and he and the cook and the pig tumbled over and over, the pig squealing like mad, the Algerian rolling ...
— S.O.S. Stand to! • Reginald Grant
... this morning if anything connected with war can be so called,—a little company of mitrailleuses-a-chien, that is, small, shrapnel gun carriages drawn by the famous Belgian dogs. It sort of made my heart crinkle up to see those magnificent animals, detailed for fatal duty without doubt, pushing on so joyously. Straining in the traces and really smiling with their great tongues hanging out, they ...
— Lige on the Line of March - An American Girl's Experiences When the Germans Came Through Belgium • Glenna Lindsley Bigelow
... 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 foes. Another of the Burmese heroines was ...
— On the Irrawaddy - A Story of the First Burmese War • G. A. Henty
... roused to fever by the discovery that evening of an infernal machine in the City Hall. Leaning against one of the great marble pillars in the lobby of the building, a gleaming object (looking very much like a four-inch shrapnel shell) was found by a vigilant patrolman. To his horror he found it to be one of the much-dreaded thermos bottles. Experts from the Bureau of Rumbustibles were summoned, and the bomb was carefully analyzed. Much to the disappointment of ...
— In the Sweet Dry and Dry • Christopher Morley
... 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, ...
— Poems • Alan Seeger
... a continuous procession. We had seen things that day and night 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 ...
— Soldier Silhouettes on our Front • William L. Stidger
... he jibes, he luffs; Like a great bee he drones aloud; He whirls above the shrapnel puffs, And, laughing, ducks ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, January 26, 1916 • Various |
