"Shrapnel" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... And when their lines are broken, When their shrapnel falls less fast, Shalt thou fail to send a token Undefeated to the last? Surely not. Red devastation Still shall urge by land and sea Every proud advancing nation While Marconi's installation Rules ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, September 23, 1914 • Various
... sheer gave her the chance to move ahead. She then steamed quickly up, hugging the east bank, where the eddy current favored her advance. As she passed close under the muzzles of St. Philip's guns she fired rapidly canister and shrapnel, the fire from the fort passing for the most part harmlessly over the ship and the ...
— The Gulf and Inland Waters - The Navy in the Civil War. Volume 3. • A. T. Mahan
... 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
... more nearly up to date with the fighting. By December, Bloch, who had seemed utterly discredited in August, was justified up to the hilt. The world was entrenched at his feet. By May the lagging military science of the British had so far overtaken events as to realise that shrapnel was no longer so important as high explosive, and within a year the significance of machine guns, a significance thoroughly ventilated by imaginative writers fifteen years before, was being grasped by the conservative but by no means ...
— What is Coming? • H. G. Wells
... flank, with fearful crash Shrapnel and ball commingling clash, And bursting shells, with lurid flash, Their dazzled sight confound: Trembles the earth beneath their feet, Along their front a rattling sheet Of leaden hail concentric meet, And numbers ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various
... 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 bias. On the one hand, it is ...
— The Dominion of the Air • J. M. Bacon
... the Cavalry sweep forward at full speed, the most they can do will be to take some stretch of ground through which the opposing Cavalry must pass, and on which there is still time to range, and then turn on shrapnel fire ...
— Cavalry in Future Wars • Frederick von Bernhardi
... dressed in 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
... have they been conducted that no hint of them became public until yesterday. Yet, coincident with their disclosure, came yesterday, also, announcement of a contract for the manufacture for the Allies of shrapnel and high explosive shells on the greatest scale yet undertaken by an American corporation, which revealed as could nothing else how carefully these supposedly secret dealings had been discovered, watched, ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 4, July, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... Eliot 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 to his ...
— Anne Severn and the Fieldings • May Sinclair
... let us see the men's heads, though sometimes we could only 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 guns ashore, and over very rough country dragged them up the hills with ...
— Five Months at Anzac • Joseph Lievesley Beeston
... 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 Story of the Great War, Volume VI (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... a wrong 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
... 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 ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... in the midst of what appears to be calamitous confusion. 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 made ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... 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 horse trough and grabbing pails of water, raced for the ...
— Make Mine Homogenized • Rick Raphael
... are profitably used where the ground is so difficult or cover so limited as to make it desirable to take advantage of the few favorable routes; no two platoons should march within the area of burst of a single shrapnel[2]. Squad columns are of value principally in facilitating the advance over rough or brush-grown ground; they afford no material advantage ...
— Manual of Military Training - Second, Revised Edition • James A. Moss
... clap of thunder you ever heard close to your ears, then the smoke covered everything and you could hear the shot going through the air like a giant rocket— The shots they fired at us did not cut any ice except a shrapnel that broke just over the main mast and which reminded me of Greece— The other shots fell short— The best thing was to see the Captains of the Puritan and Cincinnati frantically signalling to be allowed to fire too— ...
— Adventures and Letters • Richard Harding Davis
... 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 on the covert behind which they knew the enemy's ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... so easy, you know. It was a four and a half pound shell, filled with gun-cotton slabs and shrapnel bullets packed in sawdust. The charge was black powder in a paper bag, and you stuck it at the bottom end of the pipe and put a bit of fuse into the touch-hole—but, of course, you must take care it penetrates the charge. The shell-fuse has a pinner ...
— The Pretty Lady • Arnold E. Bennett
... the Zafir, mortally wounding a Soudanese soldier, and two struck the Fateh. After the long-range bombardment had continued for about an hour the gunboats moved forward opposite to the enemy's position, and poured a heavy and continuous fire of shrapnel and double shell into all the forts, gradually subduing their resistance. The fugitives from the batteries, and small parties of Baggara horse who galloped about on the open plain between the works and the town, afforded ...
— The River War • Winston S. Churchill
... with a sloppy whit into Jacob Bumble's open mouth as he sang, like a musket—ball into a winter turnip; while a fine preserved pineapple flew bash on Isaac Shingle's sharp snout, like the bursting of a shrapnel shell. ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... the mountings, sniffin' the mornin' cool, I climbs in my old brown gaiters along o' my old brown mule. The monkey can say what our road was — the wild-goat 'e knows where we passed. Stand easy, you long-eared old darlin's! Out drag-ropes! With shrapnel! Hold fast — 'Tss! 'Tss! For you all love the screw-guns — the screw-guns they all love you! So when we take tea with a few guns, o' course you will know what to do — hoo! hoo! Jest send in your Chief an' surrender — it's worse if you fights or you runs: You may hide in the caves, ...
— Verses 1889-1896 • Rudyard Kipling
... before that cataclysm of Promethean fire; that celestial monsoon. It stirs the heart like the rustle of a silken gonfalon dipped in gore, like the whistle of rifle-balls, like the rhythmic dissonance of a battery slinging shrapnel from the heights of Gettysburg into the ragged legions of General Lee. I have counseled my contemporary to be calm; but by Heaven! it does stir my soul into mutiny to see a lot of intellectual pismires, who have secured positions of trust ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... and spent a most interesting half hour, talking to the officer in command of the village. As we came through the village we saw the effect of rifle fire and the work of machine guns on the walls of the houses. Some of them had been hit in the upper story with shrapnel and were pretty badly battered up. The village must have been quite unpleasant as a place of residence while the row was on. The commanding officer, a major, seemed glad to find some one to talk to, and we stretched our legs for half an hour or so in front of his headquarters and let him ...
— A Journal From Our Legation in Belgium • Hugh Gibson
... cigarette dangling from his lips as he strolled about with restless yet quiet energy. There has been no flash and glitter of military uniforms on the Zone since the French sailed for home, but every one knew "the Colonel" for all that, the soldier who has never "seen service," who has never heard the shrapnel scream by overhead, yet to whom the world owes more thanks than six conquering generals ...
— Zone Policeman 88 - A Close Range Study of the Panama Canal and its Workers • Harry A. Franck
... specially to see him, and he told me that he should certainly recommend him for the V.C. Your husband was a brave man and did brave things; he gave his life to save another's. He was wounded with shrapnel in the head and spine as he was crossing No Man's Land. The officer to whom he was attached as orderly had been hit in one of the shell-holes, and your husband crawled out of his trench in full view of the enemy's line, and brought him back. It was on the return journey that he received ...
— More Tales of the Ridings • Frederic Moorman
... of an observer taking control of a plane and effecting a good landing after his pilot had been killed," said Mason. "He came down not a long way from an airdrome where I was stationed. A bit of anti-aircraft shrapnel caught the pilot in the back. It did not kill him instantly, but he was not long in succumbing to his wound. He had just energy enough left, after he realized that he was very badly hurt, to tell his observer that he was going off. Before he actually relinquished control ...
— The Brighton Boys with the Flying Corps • James R. Driscoll
... 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. But in order to accomplish this they had to make a detour to the right, and in so doing came ...
— Vellenaux - A Novel • Edmund William Forrest
... 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, breathless. With ...
— The Kingdom of the Blind • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... a fine view as our guns were being focused on and about the north-west coast. The cliff line and half a mile inland is shrouded in a pall of yellow dust which, as it twirls, twists and eddies, blots out Achi Baba himself. Through this curtain appear, dozens at a time, little balls of white,—the shrapnel searching out the communication trenches and cutting the wire entanglements. At other times spouts of green or black vapour rise, mix and lose themselves in the yellow cloud. The noise is like the rumbling of an express train—continuous; no break at all. The Turks ...
— Gallipoli Diary, Volume I • Ian Hamilton
... 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 as to the validity of such ...
— My Three Years in America • Johann Heinrich Andreas Hermann Albrecht Graf von Bernstorff
... 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 ...
— On the Irrawaddy - A Story of the First Burmese War • G. A. Henty
... across country towards this bridge, but there being no gap through the marshes and undergrowth, the Battalion was forced to turn aside through Le Mesnil village and, incidentally, to pass under a light shrapnel barrage. It was not known that the village was in the enemy's hands, but as soon as Z Company, who were leading, had reached the far side, the remaining Companies were attacked. Again Y Company distinguished itself, as did W and ...
— The Story of the 6th Battalion, The Durham Light Infantry - France, April 1915-November 1918 • Unknown
... into thin lines, with short intervals between the men, as the shrapnel broke. From out the blur of the mingling of landscape and sky there came, simultaneously, a whir, a crash, and the quick dash of shrapnel balls over the ground, and of the brief flash which marked the shrapnel's burst there remained only a dimly-seen lingering cloud of dirty smoke and ...
— The Boy Allies with the Cossacks - Or, A Wild Dash over the Carpathians • Clair W. Hayes
... 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
... 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 ...
— Air Service Boys in the Big Battle • Charles Amory Beach
... who he was, explicitly what "Standard Oil" was, and exactly who and what I was. I opine that about either assault there was nothing dignified, generous, or refined, but in stock-exchange battles one has not time to scent shrapnel. The immediate result of this interchange of deckle-edged[7] insults was to daze the public. "Standard Oil" attacked and actually replying; Rogers assaulting Lawson and Lawson sending back worse than he got—almost anything might happen next. It was right here I got to Rogers' ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... Women's Reserve Ambulance Corps in England was spurned. Now—they wear shrapnel helmets while working ...
— Mobilizing Woman-Power • Harriot Stanton Blatch
... like Ruskin and many other of the nineteenth-century philosophic artists, idealised warfare. His warriors are not clad in khaki; they do not crouch behind muddy earthworks. They are of the days before the shrapnel shell and Maxim gun; they wear bright steel armour, wield the sword and lance, and by preference they ride on horseback. Indeed, they are of no time or country, unless of the house of Arthur and the land ...
— Watts (1817-1904) • William Loftus Hare
... wound through his lung. The Black Watch and 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
... 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 which calms our ...
— From Aldershot to Pretoria - A Story of Christian Work among Our Troops in South Africa • W. E. Sellers
... looked at these things there passed through the desolate sanctuaries, and down an aisle past pillars pitted with shrapnel, a sad old woman, sad even for a woman of North-East France. She seemed to be looking after the mounds and stones that had once been the cathedral; perhaps she had once been the Bishop's servant, or the wife of one of the vergers; she only remained ...
— Unhappy Far-Off Things • Lord Dunsany
... have got mine. I had been scampering towards the stars, like a jack-rabbit chased by barking greyhounds, when a shrapnel shell caught up with me. It sneezed all over my poor bus, and threw some junk into me as if it thought me nothing better than a kind of waste basket. Seems as if it had got tired of carrying its load and wanted to put it on me. It succeeded ...
— A Man for the Ages - A Story of the Builders of Democracy • Irving Bacheller
... 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
... 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 on ...
— The Man Upstairs and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... 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 ...
— A Soldier's Sketches Under Fire • Harold Harvey
... 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 work ...
— Captain Jim • Mary Grant Bruce
... strange oversight or 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 ...
— The Cruise of the Thetis - A Tale of the Cuban Insurrection • Harry Collingwood
... 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 ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... 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
... he 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 ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Nov. 28, 1917 • Various
... 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 pen utterly fails ...
— Three Years in the Federal Cavalry • Willard Glazier
... 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 rush to ...
— The Little Lady of Lagunitas • Richard Henry Savage
... nothing. Nothing at 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 ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, April 5, 1916 • Various
... shrapnel 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 ...
— Air Service Boys Over The Enemy's Lines - The German Spy's Secret • Charles Amory Beach
... Chinese, elated at their success in capturing the eastern half of the French Legation, pushed their barricades nearer and nearer, and only one hundred yards behind their advanced lines they brought two guns into action, firing segment and shrapnel alternately. Under this devastating bombardment, almost a bout portant, as the French say, the last line of French trenches and their main-gate blockhouse became untenable. Pieces of shell tore through everything; men were wounded more and more quickly, and in the most sheltered ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale
... he found no opportunity of getting thence to the Zambesi. Leaving Natal, he found his way to America, and at Boston he enlisted in the Federal army. The service was as hot as could be. In one battle, two men were killed close to him by shrapnel shell, a rifle bullet passed close to his head, and killed a man behind him; other two were wounded close by him. His letters to his sister expressed his regret at the course of his life, and confessed that his troubles were ...
— The Personal Life Of David Livingstone • William Garden Blaikie
... wounded, 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 strength and pulled therefrom a soldier's Testament. ...
— Heart Talks • Charles Wesley Naylor
... at one point, the river was fordable to a small island, opposite the enemy's lines. Four batteries, and the Maxims, at once moved over, with two companies of Soudanese, and opened fire. The distance across was but six hundred yards, and the fire was tremendous—shell, shrapnel, and rockets—while the Soudanese fired volleys, and the Maxims maintained ...
— With Kitchener in the Soudan - A Story of Atbara and Omdurman • G. A. Henty
... 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 ...
— Men in War • Andreas Latzko
... 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 ...
— The Living Present • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... was slippery with the blood of countless thousands, where a fellow's chances of getting back alive were, so he pictured it, one in a million, brought a distinct feeling of panic. He could see the air literally filled with bursting shrapnel, while red-hot bullets from machine-guns swept the earth as clean as a scythe goes through the ripening wheat. Man simply could not endure in a hell like that! ...
— Where the Souls of Men are Calling • Credo Harris
... out the cheque and pocketing the book as he rises and goes past Cusins to Mrs Baines] I also, Mrs Baines, may claim a little disinterestedness. Think of my business! think of the widows and orphans! the men and lads torn to pieces with shrapnel and poisoned with lyddite [Mrs Baines shrinks; but he goes on remorselessly]! the oceans of blood, not one drop of which is shed in a really just cause! the ravaged crops! the peaceful peasants forced, women and men, to till their fields under the fire of opposing armies on pain of starvation! ...
— Major Barbara • George Bernard Shaw
... now with Lord Raglan on the Ridge, with his arm in a sling, for he had just been struck by a shrapnel-shell. ...
— The Thin Red Line; and Blue Blood • Arthur Griffiths
... forehead could be seen, for the last bullet which struck him had ploughed 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 to cover a ...
— The Next of Kin - Those who Wait and Wonder • Nellie L. McClung
... we were told to thin out our ranks so that if a shell fell among us our casualties would be light. From then on, we marched about eight or ten feet apart in single file on each side of the road. We were ordered to wear our steel helmets as a protection against shrapnel. Some did not see the need of doing this, but most of us were glad to take the precaution. We crossed several narrow gauge tracks on our march, and saw trains carrying supplies of all kinds to the battle front. They were pulled by gasoline engines. We also saw ...
— In the Flash Ranging Service - Observations of an American Soldier During His Service - With the A.E.F. in France • Edward Alva Trueblood
... fire, steadily increasing in intensity, now came from all directions, not only from the front and the dense tropical thickets on our flanks, but from sharpshooters thickly posted in trees in our rear, and from shrapnel apparently aimed at the balloon. Lieutenant-Colonel Derby, of General Shafter's staff, met me about this time and informed me that a trail or narrow way had been discovered from the balloon a short distance back leading ...
— The Story of the Philippines and Our New Possessions, • Murat Halstead
... 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 scrub-clad heights of ...
— On Land And Sea At The Dardanelles • Thomas Charles Bridges
... 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 her at all, and that ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London
... and we went in there and found it full of French officers. They have some sense. The abri would not turn a direct explosion of a shell; but it would shield one against a glancing blow and against the shrapnel which sprays itself out from the point where the shell hits like a molten iron fountain. After the ninth bomb had come over we left the abri. The Germans had been allowancing Recicourt to nine a day. But that day they gave us three more prunes for dessert. They came very ...
— The Martial Adventures of Henry and Me • William Allen White
... general practice 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 ...
— Aeroplanes and Dirigibles of War • Frederick A. Talbot
... 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 were made in the walls of the communication ...
— The 28th: A Record of War Service in the Australian Imperial Force, 1915-19, Vol. I • Herbert Brayley Collett
... him, and called again. Becoming frightened, she raised herself by a great effort and peered through the glass. At first she was too puzzled to understand what had happened. He was hanging over the front of the balcony, with his head twisted oddly. Twisted and shattered. He had been killed by shrapnel ...
— Mr. Britling Sees It Through • H. G. Wells
... soldier rapidly acquires the art of placing himself under the command of his nearest superior in rank; but at the same time he learns with equal rapidity to take command himself if no superior be present—no bad thing in times of battle and sudden death, when shrapnel is whistling, and promotion is taking place ...
— The First Hundred Thousand • Ian Hay
... could hear no sound of Scottish voices or of the uproar of hand-to-hand fighting in the trench. When he saw the Germans duck down hastily and squeeze close up against the wall of the trench, while overhead a string of shells crashed angrily and the shrapnel beat down in gusts across the trench, he diagnosed correctly that the assault had failed, and that the British gunners were again searching the German trench with shrapnel. His German guard said something to the other men, and while one ...
— Action Front • Boyd Cable (Ernest Andrew Ewart)
... putting off his marriage with her friend Milly. She (Judy) will see to that! She assumes the role of a notorious Chelsea model, whom proper Peter has never seen. Peter knocks his head on the mantelpiece, just where a shrapnel splinter had hit him, and is persuaded that she, Judy McCarthy, affecting to be Trixie O'Farrel, is his wife. It all seems very horrible to him, but, shell-shock or no shell-shock, he sets to work to paint her portrait in a business-like way, and ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, February 25th, 1920 • Various
... with them from the trenches. There 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 French ...
— With Joffre at Verdun - A Story of the Western Front • F. S. Brereton
... 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
... 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 that immediate vicinity. ...
— The Colored Regulars in the United States Army • T. G. Steward
... wooded, 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
... cheer greeted him as he passed along the line, inspiring the men by his presence. Thus for half an hour the two lines stood face to face in deadly conflict; at length the general directed a battery to be placed in a commanding position, and the shells and shrapnel were seen to work fearful havoc in the rebel ranks. The gray line wavered; then back through the cornfield and over the fences the confederates rushed, seeking shelter from the terrible storm, under cover of the woods, on the other side of the field. "Forward!" shouted ...
— Three Years in the Sixth Corps • George T. Stevens
... 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 ...
— A Handbook of the Boer War • Gale and Polden, Limited
... 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 to take ...
— Man and Maid • Elinor Glyn
... 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 ...
— Greenmantle • John Buchan
... turning to go when we heard a whirr overhead, followed by a volley of mitrailleuse. High up in the blue, over the centre of the dead city, flew a German aeroplane; and all about it hundreds of white shrapnel tufts burst out in the summer sky like the miraculous snow-fall of Italian legend. Up and up they flew, on the trail of the Taube, and on flew the Taube, faster still, till quarry and pack were lost in mist, and the barking ...
— Fighting France - From Dunkerque to Belport • Edith Wharton
... involuntarily crouched 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. It was my first acquaintance ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V1 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... was mined, so that it could be instantly destroyed. I found my little garden rather neglected, for the man who looks after it had been "mobilized" and is now lying in a hospital at Bordeaux, getting over a shrapnel wound in the leg. The place nevertheless was full of pears, peaches, figs, green corn, American squashes, beans, tomatoes, and no end of roses, gladioli, tobacco plant, hollyhocks, heliotrope, dahlias, morning-glories, verbena, ...
— Paris War Days - Diary of an American • Charles Inman Barnard
... that the price of a hundred murders was overdue, and he chose to make payment where a V-shaped cliff enclosed a small, flat plateau and not more than a dozen could ride at him at a time. His companions scattered much as a charge of shrapnel shrieks through the rocks, but Khumel Khan knew well enough that he was the quarry—his was the head that by no conceivable chance would be allowed to plan fresh villainies. He might have run yet a little way, but he saw the uselessness, ...
— Rung Ho! • Talbot Mundy
... at his companion's vehemence, and the subject passed and gave way to another about shrapnel. But he did not fail, later on, to carry a humorous report of ...
— Love, The Fiddler • Lloyd Osbourne
... 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 battle ...
— The Boy Allies with Haig in Flanders • Clair W. Hayes
... thunder of the inanimate, the congregated sound of the allies man had devised,—the saltpetre he had digged, the powder he had made, the rifles he had manufactured, the cannon he had moulded, the solid shot, grape, canister, shrapnel, minie balls. The shells were fearful, Allan was fain to acknowledge. They passed like whistling winds. They filled the air like great rocks from a blasting. The staunchest troops blanched a little, jerked the head sidewise as the shells burst and showered ruin. There ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... long, long trail that's leading To No Man's Land in France Where the shrapnel shells are bursting ...
— Joy in the Morning • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... 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 ...
— Life's Handicap • Rudyard Kipling
... be shells, shrapnel and solid shot. We may not have a battle this week or next week, but a big one is bound to come some time or other and then if any section of the Northern artillery shows uncommon deadliness and precision we'll know that Carrington is there. Why, ...
— The Shades of the Wilderness • Joseph A. Altsheler
... for no formalities, but took off 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 ...
— Jimmie Higgins • Upton Sinclair
... 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 ...
— Paths of Glory - Impressions of War Written At and Near the Front • Irvin S. Cobb
... 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 ...
— Three Years' War • Christiaan Rudolf de Wet
... merchants. The preparations made to dislodge Aguinaldo and his main army, entrenched and sheltered by fortifications at Calumpit, were now completed, and General McArthur's division steadily advanced. The flower of the insurgent army was there, well armed and supplied with artillery and shrapnel shell. Commanded by General Antonio Luna, they were evidently prepared to make at Calumpit the bold stand which was expected of them at Malolos. The transport difficulties were very great, and as General McArthur ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... came from different points as the airship dropped her deadly cargo. Shrapnel fell on the congested house-tops with a peculiar hiss and thud and ambulances rumbled over ...
— Submarine Warfare of To-day • Charles W. Domville-Fife
... wonderfully lean, and the fowls, but for difference in size, might have been ostriches, they were so wiry of muscle, especially as regarded the legs. A time was to come when Mrs. Filliter was to cook shrapnel-killed mule and exhausted cavalry charger for her gentlemen, and when they were to bear up better than most sufferers from this tough and lasting form of diet, because of not having previously been pampered, as Mrs. Filliter expressed it, ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... Hotel National they finally took us in; for we were foreigners, and the Military Revolutionary Committee had promised to protect the dwellings of foreigners.... On the top floor the manager showed us where shrapnel had shattered several windows. "The animals!" said he, shaking his first at imaginary Bolsheviki. "But wait! Their time will come; in just a few days now their ridiculous Government will fall, and then we ...
— Ten Days That Shook the World • John Reed
... magazine rifles of the "Albatross" in the hands of the colleagues, as in the hands of the crew, began to rain down the bullets, of which not one was lost in the masses below. And the little gun shot forth its shrapnel, ...
— Rubur the Conqueror • Jules Verne
... doom, so far as the King was concerned? No human being could have endured with patience this continuous heavy firing at long range to which the Admiral subjected his friends at Court; every post that arrived was loaded with a shrapnel of grievances, the dull echo of which must have made the ears of those who heard it echo with weariness. Things were evidently humming in Espanola; large cargoes of negroes had been sent out to take the place of the dead natives, ...
— Christopher Columbus, Complete • Filson Young
... the fight. He showed himself. A minute after the ship's shrapnel burst near him, putting death's fear upon his weakness. Someone had said that the ambush was in the grass rather than in the banana grove, the ambush that was screened so well. Was there just will and time left ...
— Cinderella in the South - Twenty-Five South African Tales • Arthur Shearly Cripps
... at the double-periscope yelled over to us that the French were bringing up reinforcements through the communicating trenches. The Lieutenant of Artillery ran over to the field artillery and showed them the beautiful target. Soon after that a few of our shrapnel burst over these positions. Bang! And the enemy was gone. Suddenly a ball of red fire appeared in the first French trench. This meant—shells fall ahead of trenches; place shots further back. Just then, over a front of one and a half kilometers, a whole brigade of Frenchmen rose from ...
— An Aviator's Field Book - Being the field reports of Oswald Boelcke, from August 1, - 1914 to October 28, 1916 • Oswald Boelcke
... 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.
... 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 ...
— Lige on the Line of March - An American Girl's Experiences When the Germans Came Through Belgium • Glenna Lindsley Bigelow
... and the straw at least did not end in smoke. The demonstration provided some amusement to our Grenadiers, who, with the assistance of a "Gamage" catapult, and two West Spring Throwers succeeded, to their immense delight in bursting the old Bethune bomb as shrapnel over the German trenches. It was only when the last bomb was thrown that Sergt. G. F. Foster, the stoutest Bomber that ever lived and fell, ended a demonstration which can hardly have caused a flutter in the dove-cotes ...
— The Sherwood Foresters in the Great War 1914 - 1919 - History of the 1/8th Battalion • W.C.C. Weetman
... Bullets, shrapnel, shell—nothing can stop the trillions of famished, man-sized beetles which, led by a madman, sweep down over the ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science February 1930 • Various
... of the enemy's position. The enemy were soon seen leaving it, and the fire was then directed on the next place, with the same result. Meanwhile Beynon had driven down those of the enemy who were posted on the hill; and general panic set in, the guns pouring shrapnel into them until ...
— Through Three Campaigns - A Story of Chitral, Tirah and Ashanti • G. A. Henty
... 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 might strike the ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys with Pershing's Troops - Dick Prescott at Grips with the Boche • H. Irving Hancock
... the 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 of sight. All pursuit with its accompanying direct and cross-fire having thus ceased, ...
— The Battle of Spring Hill, Tennessee - read after the stated meeting held February 2d, 1907 • John K. Shellenberger
... 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 ceiling ...
— Planet of the Damned • Harry Harrison
... 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, ...
— The Red Flower - Poems Written in War Time • Henry Van Dyke
... Chieftain, as he slid back low to ground after stooping at the lordly stag—but this crashing avalanche of shale with the king of the forest atop was too much for them, and they went down the "hill" into the nothing and the far distance that lay, so to speak, almost at one's feet, like a spatter of shrapnel. ...
— The Way of the Wild • F. St. Mars
... quiet sky split redly asunder. German guns began to feel a way to Paris. The earth rocked in a gentle rhythm under a rain of shells. Shrapnel and gas lent vivacity to the assault. Guns to their utmost reach swept the little valley like a Titan's sickle. Private Cowan nestled his cheek against the earthen side of his little slit trench and tried to remember what she had worn that last night in Newbern. Something ...
— The Wrong Twin • Harry Leon Wilson
... 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 Head, they ...
— One of Ours • Willa Cather
... the Southern position through his glasses, while he restrained his eager men. The volume of Southern fire was growing fast. Shells and shrapnel rained death over a wide area, and the air was filled with whistling bullets. It was certain destruction for any force to charge down the road in face of the Southern cannon, and the Northern army began to spread out, wheeling toward ...
— The Rock of Chickamauga • Joseph A. Altsheler
... close range they received a rifle and machine-gun fire that mowed them down almost instantly. Those who had not been shot fell to the ground to escape the leaden hail. But escape was not for them. Shrapnel was poured upon them, and nearly all of ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume III (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... for us men, but no place of safety for our horses nearer than this long and narrow donga which ran from within our lines towards those of the Boers. So some of us galloped them thither, six-in-hand, amid the whine of shrapnel and the whistle of shot. I remember the man next me being killed by a shell with all his team, and the tangle of flying harness, torn horseflesh, and crimson khaki, that we left behind us on the veldt; also that a small red flag, ludicrously like ...
— Raffles - Further Adventures of the Amateur Cracksman • E. W. Hornung
... 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 Naval History of the United States - Volume 2 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... he had passed over the crest and turned upon the enemy's flank and rear. Here was a sharp combat, but our men established themselves upon the summit and drove the enemy before them. White and Ewing charged over the open under a destructive fire of musketry and shrapnel. As Ewing approached the enemy's battery (Bondurant's), it gave him a parting salvo, and limbered rapidly toward the right along a road in the edge of the woods which follows the summit to the turnpike ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V1 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... we 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
... 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 has returned as ...
— Europe—Whither Bound? - Being Letters of Travel from the Capitals of Europe in the Year 1921 • Stephen Graham
... 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 ...
— Ray's Daughter - A Story of Manila • Charles King
... 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 what ...
— With Those Who Wait • Frances Wilson Huard
... profitably 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.[5] SQUAD COLUMNS are of value principally in facilitating the advance over rough or brush-grown ground; they afford no ...
— Manual for Noncommissioned Officers and Privates of Infantry • War Department
... of destruction are approaching perfection with frightful rapidity.[2] The Congreve rockets, the effect and direction of which it is said the Austrians can now regulate,—the shrapnel howitzers, which throw a stream of canister as far as the range of a bullet,—the Perkins steam-guns, which vomit forth as many balls as a battalion,—will multiply the chances of destruction, as though the hecatombs of Eylau, Borodino, Leipsic, ...
— The Art of War • Baron Henri de Jomini
... possibly have reached the end of the path another gun spoke, the report being immediately followed by an explosion, accompanied by a terrible outburst of yells and shrieks. Amid these I believed I heard the sharp patter of shrapnel on the face of the cliff, while other yells arose from the party who had been attending to the business of keeping up the supply of burning faggots above ...
— The First Mate - The Story of a Strange Cruise • Harry Collingwood
... day or two longer—and we should be plunged into battle. A bullet for one, shrapnel for another, dysentery for a third, a bayonet or death from ...
— At Suvla Bay • John Hargrave
... his horse toward the left of his line, where, a little to the rear, lay the fresh troops that he had been holding in readiness against this very moment. As he galloped across the plain, his staff at his heels, shrapnel burst about them. Von der Tann ...
— The Mad King • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... demobbed just 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 was ...
— Indiscretions of Archie • P. G. Wodehouse
... 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 completely ...
— "Co. Aytch" - Maury Grays, First Tennessee Regiment - or, A Side Show of the Big Show • Sam R. Watkins
... Matthews got a wound in the leg, and we had to carry him. Just as we started, they got to shelling pretty bad and we dropped into a hole. I looked over my shoulder and there was the Pilot, the chaplain, sir, I mean, with his body spread over Sergeant Matthews, to keep off the shrapnel. It was there ...
— The Sky Pilot in No Man's Land • Ralph Connor
... 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 reached this point, but ...
— 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
... strongly posted on the banks of the canal—indeed, at one time there appeared to be a likelihood of their breaking into our weakly-guarded camp or turning the flank of our storming parties. The guns at Hindu Rao's house, however, prevented such a catastrophe by pouring shrapnel into the ranks of the rebels; and just at the critical moment Hope Grant brought up the Cavalry brigade, which had been covering the assaulting columns. The Horse Artillery dashed to the front and opened fire upon the enemy. From the gardens and ...
— Forty-one years in India - From Subaltern To Commander-In-Chief • Frederick Sleigh Roberts
... it stay here. It may be hit.' These words from a staff officer give you the first idea that things are going to happen. Up to then you might have been driving through the black country in the Walsall district with the population of Aldershot let loose upon its dingy roads. 'Put on this shrapnel helmet. That hat of yours would infuriate the Boche'—this was an unkind allusion to the only uniform which I have a right to wear. 'Take this gas helmet. You won't need it, but it is a ...
— A Visit to Three Fronts • Arthur Conan Doyle
... which was set off after a certain trigger or spring or firing pin (according to the type used) was released by the thrower. The explosive blew the grenade to bits, and it was scored, or crisscrossed, by deep indentations so that the iron would break up into small pieces like shrapnel. The grenades could be carried in a pouch or in the pocket, and were harmless as long as the detonating ...
— Ned, Bob and Jerry on the Firing Line - The Motor Boys Fighting for Uncle Sam • Clarence Young
... 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 ...
— The Poems of Henry Van Dyke • Henry Van Dyke
... drawback of enabling them the better to see their visitors. The battle waxed fierce, and when re-inforcements came galloping to the assistance of the Boers it looked as if the Light Horse must be worsted. But the artillery was behind them, and from it was belched forth a hail of shrapnel which compelled the re-inforcements to draw rein and "pant to the place from whence at first they flew." Our guns away back at the Reservoir also contributed to this result. Thus it was that the task of evicting the Boers ...
— The Siege of Kimberley • T. Phelan
... of bovril embedded itself quietly there without damage, and a tin of Bath Oliver biscuits beat a fierce tattoo on one of corned beef. Innumerable dried apricots from the burst package flew about like shrapnel, and tapped at the tins. A jar of prunes, breaking its fall on the flour, rolled merrily out into the middle ...
— Miss Mapp • Edward Frederic Benson
... murders the same pieces the prima donnas have sung. We have seen a colored girl attempt a selection from some organ-grinder opera, and she would howl and screech, and catch her breath and come again, and wheel and fire vocal shrapnel, limber up her battery and take a new position, and unlimber and send volleys of soprano grape and cannister into the audience, and then she would catch on to the highest note she could reach and hang to it like a dog to a root, till you would ...
— Peck's Compendium of Fun • George W. Peck
... 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
... hundred or so, perhaps, all 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 ...
— Letters to Helen - Impressions of an Artist on the Western Front • Keith Henderson
... British hero: "'Aig 'e don't say much; 'e don't, so to say, say nothin'; but what 'e don't say don't mean nothin', not 'arf. But when 'e do say something—my Gawd!" Then they came to grips and mentioned the cause of their injuries—bullet or shrapnel. Then the time and the place. Both had been hit in the knee, and this coincidence, operating like all coincidences, added to their friendliness. Their cigarettes finishing simultaneously, Ginger gave Six-foot-two one of his; and Six-foot-two offered his little packet ...
— A Boswell of Baghdad - With Diversions • E. V. Lucas
... on. Some R.G.A. men have arrived with four pretty toys from Vickers's, and one fine morning they are going to disturb those sand-bags opposite them with a battery of trench mortars; our field guns will draw a curtain of shrapnel in front of the German support trenches, and then they will satisfy their curiosity as to what ...
— Leaves from a Field Note-Book • J. H. Morgan
... 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 defence with more ...
— The Conquest of America - A Romance of Disaster and Victory • Cleveland Moffett
... well as minutes count in such an adventure, and quicker than the eye can count them, puffy balls of white appear above, below and all around on the on-rushing Foker; they are the shrapnel bursts of our vigilant anti-aircraft guns that have now opened briskly from every hill ...
— The Greater Love • George T. McCarthy
... and there is no explaining them. The fools will graze contentedly with shrapnel and high explosives bursting all about them, but go into a panic at the sight of a piece of paper in broad daylight. And when they think they see ghosts in the dark they act like the Gadarene swine, only making ...
— The Lion of Petra • Talbot Mundy
... crumbling tops 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 of bomb. ...
— The Lost Continent • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... amplification of the "story of meeting and Prescott marriage." And of course, the frivolous Jaffery, now that one really wants him, is sitting astride of a cannon, and smoking a pipe and, notebook and pencil in hand, is writing a picturesque description of the bungling decapitation by shrapnel of the general who has just been unfolding to him the whole plan of the campaign, and consequently is provokingly un-getatable by serious persons ...
— Jaffery • William J. Locke
... 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 old ...
— T. Haviland Hicks Senior • J. Raymond Elderdice
... take Ted's going with the quiet fortitude with which his uncle met it. Those early weeks of nineteen hundred and seventeen were black ones for many. The grim Moloch War demanded more and ever more victims. Thousands of gay, brave, high spirited lads like Ted were mown down daily by shrapnel and machine gun or sent twisted and writhing to still more hideous death in the unspeakable horror of noxious gases. It was all so unnecessary—so senseless. Larry Holiday whose life was dedicated to the healing and saving of men's bodies ...
— Wild Wings - A Romance of Youth • Margaret Rebecca Piper
... "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 ...
— The Portygee • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... the landlord appeared, apologizing for the raid as if it had been an accident of his kitchen. We must have no fear. All danger was over. The avion—only one!—had been chased out of our neighbourhood. The noise we heard now was merely shrapnel fired by anti-aircraft guns. We would not be disturbed again, that he'd ...
— Everyman's Land • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... fire now opens on the extreme left, and in a few minutes the artillery are ordered forward, and the six guns pass us at a gallop. They are soon lined up and firing shrapnel at some Boers, who scurry away over the brow of a kopje. The guns limber up and jump the railway line—a pretty stiff little obstacle—the narrow gauge metals being on top of a narrow embankment. Then ...
— Impressions of a War Correspondent • George Lynch
... quickly to Colonel Newcomb, who appreciated Canby's courage and presence of mind. As the train approached the four cannon were unloaded from the trucks, and swept the further shore with shell and shrapnel. After a scattered fire the Southern force withdrew some distance, where it halted, apparently undecided. The clouds rolled up again, the feeble moon disappeared, and the river ...
— The Guns of Shiloh • Joseph A. Altsheler
... machine, an aviator has found his motor fail him, and has been obliged to land on hostile soil; with the result that he has been made prisoner. But with dual-engine machines it has been found that, when one motor has failed mechanically, or has been put out of action by shrapnel, the remaining unit has been sufficient—though the machine has flown naturally at a reduced rate—to enable the pilot to regain his ...
— Learning to Fly - A Practical Manual for Beginners • Claude Grahame-White
... waiting for their 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 did not ...
— The Kangaroo Marines • R. W. Campbell
... and countrymen, if the wise and learned philosophers of the older world, the first observers of nutation and aberration, the discoverers of maddening ether and invisible planets, the inventors of Congreve rockets and shrapnel shells, should find their hearts disposed to inquire, What has America done for mankind? let our answer be this:—America, with the same voice which spoke herself into existence as a nation, proclaimed to mankind the inextinguishable rights ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... brook, and begin to ascend the hill. The 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 the Missouri, some of them Rocky Mountain hunters, cannot be driven. The ...
— My Days and Nights on the Battle-Field • Charles Carleton Coffin
... shrapnel, sir! Horses in lather, guns on the wheel and bayonets set. We'll bivouac in the camp of the enemy on the ...
— Andrew the Glad • Maria Thompson Daviess
... frequent halts, 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 ...
— The Leicestershires beyond Baghdad • Edward John Thompson
... and not very convenient, and if the patient had not been so desperately ill, he would have been moved to Charleroi for his operation. He was a French tirailleur—a lad about twenty, his right arm had been severely injured by shrapnel several days before, and was gangrenous right up to the shoulder. He was unconscious and moaning slightly at intervals, but he stood the operation very well, and we left him fairly comfortable when we had to return ...
— Field Hospital and Flying Column - Being the Journal of an English Nursing Sister in Belgium & Russia • Violetta Thurstan |
