"Grenade" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... tumulus hill in flank, but two gallant London Scots settled the activity of the enemy and captured the position by themselves. Corporal C.W. Train and Corporal F.S. Thornhill stalked the garrison. Corporal Train fired a rifle grenade at one machine gun, which he hit and put out of action, and then shot the whole of the gun team. Thornhill was attacking the other gun, and he, with the assistance of Train, accounted for that crew as well. The two guns were captured and Tumulus Hill gave no more trouble. Both these Scots ...
— How Jerusalem Was Won - Being the Record of Allenby's Campaign in Palestine • W.T. Massey
... are using the grenade as a war weapon with considerable success in trench fighting, and for guarding the men who hurl them from poisonous vapors, which are used with telling effect by the Germans, a ...
— News Writing - The Gathering , Handling and Writing of News Stories • M. Lyle Spencer
... superintendent of this department is an old soldier of very great intelligence and vast communicativeness, and quite absorbed in thinking of and handling weapons; for he is a practical armorer. He had few things to show us that were very interesting,—a helmet or two, a bomb and grenade from the Crimea; also some muskets from the same quarter, one of which, with a sword at the end, he spoke of admiringly, as the best weapon in the collection, its only fault being its extreme weight. He ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... enemy. But a trench is serrated with bays containing half a dozen men who are cut off from sight of their neighbors. Of these half-dozen men one or, at most, two are on the lookout while the others are sleeping, and a well-placed hand-grenade will put the whole six of them out of action. Experience has shown that where there has been much shell-fire the sentry's observation is very lax, as men will not stick their heads above the trenches any ...
— "Over There" with the Australians • R. Hugh Knyvett
... Sick of her ear-rings, weary of her mare, She'll have a lover—something ready-made, Or improvised between two cups of tea— A lover by imperial ukase! Fate said her word—I chanced to be the man! If that grenade the crazy student threw Had not spared me, as well as spared the Tsar, All this would not have happened. I'd have been A hero, but quite safe from her romance. She takes me for a hero—think of that! Now by our holy Lady of Kazan, When ...
— The Sisters' Tragedy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... glances of his generals and the noise of the troops filing by, reminded him of what had happened. His eye resumed its calm expression, and, in a firm, sonorous voice he recommenced giving his orders. Suddenly a whizzing sound was in the air above him—a grenade fell to the ground close to the emperor, burrowed into the earth, and scattered ...
— NAPOLEON AND BLUCHER • L. Muhlbach
... mountains and cliffs, if pursued by enemies, protect themselves by ingeniously rolling immense stones down upon their foes. They also hurl with great force small stones about the size of one's hand. As these tribes have each from one hundred to three hundred members, they constitute a formidable grenade army! ...
— The Human Side of Animals • Royal Dixon
... on with his erasures and interlineations. Just as he finished them a hand-grenade came down the stove-pipe, and the explosion shivered the stove into a thousand fragments. However, it did no further damage, except that a vagrant piece knocked a couple of ...
— Editorial Wild Oats • Mark Twain
... there? Assuredly no one had invited him. As he advanced into the middle of the brilliantly lighted room an empty space was left for him, officers and ladies shrinking from him, as though his near approach brought defilement with it. Looking quietly round, he deliberately produced and held up a hand-grenade, as it was called—that is to say, a small bombshell—and, before any one of the astonished spectators could stop him, lighted a match at one of the wax-candles, and applied it to the fusee of the shell. A shower of sparks came rushing ...
— Amos Huntingdon • T.P. Wilson
... infantry advanced along our front between the Bois Grenier and Festubert. On the left, north of Fromelles, we stormed the German first line trenches. Hand-to-hand fighting went on for some time with bayonet, rifle, and hand grenade, but we continued to hold on to this position throughout the day and caused the enemy very heavy loss, for not only were many Germans killed in the bombardment, but their repeated efforts to drive us from the captured positions ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 3, June, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... these terrible machines, scarcely known as yet to the Italians, weighed nearly six thousand pounds. After the cannons came culverins sixteen feet long, and then falconets, the smallest of which shot balls the size of a grenade. This formidable artillery brought up the rear of the procession, and formed the hindmost guard ...
— The Borgias - Celebrated Crimes • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... muttered the young Frenchman grimly and his hand-grenade took the same course that the two others had followed. A deafening concussion ensued and then ...
— Fighting in France • Ross Kay
... other places in the trenches, light artillery, such as machine guns and grenade throwers were set up. Here and there were little stoves to warm the food brought up whenever a relief party could get through the rain of shells. In some places heavy concrete or wooden dugouts were constructed, well under ground, ...
— Ned, Bob and Jerry on the Firing Line - The Motor Boys Fighting for Uncle Sam • Clarence Young
... anti-individual guided missile? The physicists have got small-scale antigravity good enough to float and fly something the size of a hand grenade. I can smell that even though it's a back-of-the-safe military secret. Well, how about keying such a missile to a man's finger-prints—or brainwaves, maybe, or his unique smell!—so it can spot and follow him around then target in on him, without ...
— The Creature from Cleveland Depths • Fritz Reuter Leiber
... At the third grenade, which, it seems, fell into a straw magazine, Custrin took fire; could not be quenched again, so much dry wood in it, so much disorder too, the very soldiers some of them disorderly (a bad deserter set); so that it soon flamed aloft,—from side to side one sea of flame: ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVIII. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Seven-Years War Rises to a Height.—1757-1759. • Thomas Carlyle
... the moment, all hopes of a quick decision in a war of manoeuvre and retiring to their prepared lines of defence on the Aisne, relied upon methodically prepared and regularly constructed trench systems, and upon the hand grenade, the trench mortar, and the other weapons of close combat, for superiority in a long campaign of trench siege warfare, which endured until the collapse of Russia in 1917 freed for an offensive movement on the requisite scale in 1918 upwards of 1,500,000 men. At the First Battle of the Marne, ...
— Lectures on Land Warfare; A tactical Manual for the Use of Infantry Officers • Anonymous
... later from below came two sharp reports—his grenade and the Doctor's. They were off together. Crash followed crash in quick succession until the row was finished. Silence followed for a single second. Then came the cries and curses of men, as they staggered from their half-demolished ...
— Lost In The Air • Roy J. Snell
... besydes the peins they most be at to feid them wt fresch mulberry leaves, they have no great abondance of them, whence they draw the most of their silk from Italy wheir its in great abondance; as Florence, litle republic of Lucques, Messin, as also from Grenade. Oranges of Chine are knowen for the best of the world. Cannel[254] (which growes not in France) is in ...
— Publications of the Scottish History Society, Vol. 36 • Sir John Lauder
... that Colonel Taubmann never fired a shot in his life— round-shot, bomb or grenade, grape or canister—with a tithe of the effect wrought by this letter. For a whole day ...
— Merry-Garden and Other Stories • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... firmly secured within; but from every window affording cover to the troops, gleamed a line of bayonets rising above the threatening field-pieces, pointed, at a distance of little more than twelve feet, directly upon the gateway. In addition to his musket, each man of the guard moreover held a hand grenade, provided with a short fuze that could be ignited in a moment from the matches of the gunners, and with immediate effect. The soldiers in the block-houses were ...
— Wacousta: A Tale of the Pontiac Conspiracy (Complete) • John Richardson
... leaves of an artichoke, attached to the back of their collars. It is the badge of their tribe. Also at night some of them develop the most primitive of all instincts and crawl out on their stomachs with a hand-grenade to get as near as may be to the enemy's listening posts and taste the joy of killing. But by day they are as demure and sleepy as the tortoiseshell cat which has taken up its ...
— Leaves from a Field Note-Book • J. H. Morgan
... them on us, but it was not a great while before we fell into line and produced bombs to match theirs. At first we had the Tickler variety as previously described; since then we have used the "hair-brush" and others, but to-day we are using the standardized Mill hand grenade. ...
— Private Peat • Harold R. Peat
... when the Territorial division were still armed with the virtually obsolete 15-pounder. Accidents of this character, moreover, have a bad effect upon the personnel of batteries, for the soldier does not like his weapon, be it a rifle, or a hand-grenade, or a sabre that crumples up, to play tricks on him. The difficulty was not got over until elaborate experiments, immediately set on foot by the War Office (which still dealt with design and investigation, although ...
— Experiences of a Dug-out, 1914-1918 • Charles Edward Callwell
... Then I heard mother calling, "Sarah! You will be killed! Leave your clothes and run!"—and a hundred ejaculations that came too fast for me to answer except by an occasional "Coming, if you will send me a candle!" Candle was the same as though I had demanded a hand-grenade, in mother's opinion, for she was sure it would be the signal for a bombardment of my exposed room; so I tossed down my bundles, swept combs and hairpins into my bosom (all points up), and ravished a candle from some one. ...
— A Confederate Girl's Diary • Sarah Morgan Dawson
... ye're dead, yer bloomin' useless fraud. That's the man I am. An' ye're a thing—a bloody thing. Yah—you corpse!" He flung at Jimmy's head the biscuit he had been all the time clutching hard, but it only grazed, and striking with a loud crack the bulkhead beyond burst like a hand-grenade into flying pieces. James Wait, as if wounded mortally, fell back on the pillow. His lips ceased to move and the rolling eyes became quiet and stared upwards with an intense and steady persistence. Donkin was surprised; he sat suddenly on the chest, and looked down, exhausted and gloomy. ...
— The Nigger Of The "Narcissus" - A Tale Of The Forecastle • Joseph Conrad
... burst of noise and flame. To attain accuracy and distance in throwing these destructive little ovals is by no means as easy as it sounds. The bombing-school at Etaples will not soon forget the American baseball player who threw a bomb seventy yards. The hand-grenade is the unsafest and most treacherous of all weapons and even in practice accidents and near-accidents frequently occur. The Mills bomb, which has a scored surface to prevent slipping, is about the shape and size of a large lemon. Protruding from one end is the small metal ring of the firing-pin. ...
— Italy at War and the Allies in the West • E. Alexander Powell
... some remarks which, though given in a sufficiently matter-of-fact and every-day tone, fell like a thunder-clap upon the ears of all present, save two persons; and produced upon the Honorable Richard Pennroyal an effect as if a hand-grenade had been let off within his head, and his spine drawn neatly out through the back ...
— Archibald Malmaison • Julian Hawthorne
... made a sort of hand-grenade by putting three or four pounds of powder into a "rind of a tree" (piece of bark) with "a fusey [fuse] to have time to throw the rind." This he flung into the fort, having directed his Indians to follow up the explosion by breaking in with hatchet ...
— French Pathfinders in North America • William Henry Johnson
... an ancient galley which was in the same hall, and went out through the church into the garden planned by Piranesi. The woman showed them a very old palm, with a hole in it made by a hand-grenade in the year '49. It had remained that way more than half a century, and it was only a few days since the trunk of the ...
— Caesar or Nothing • Pio Baroja Baroja
... projectile, shot, ball; grape; grape shot, canister shot, bar shot, cannon shot, langrel shot^, langrage shot^, round shot, chain shot; balista^, ballista^, slung shot, trebucbet^, trebucket^; bullet, slug, stone, brickbat, grenade, shell, bomb, carcass, rocket; congreve^, congreve rocket^; shrapnel, mitraille [Fr.]; levin bolt^, levin brand^; thunderbolt. pike, lance, spear, spontoon^, javelin, dart, jereed^, jerid^, arrow, reed, shaft, bolt, boomerang, harpoon, gaff; eelspear^, oxgoad^, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... ought to remember it very well. I was wounded in the leg by a hand-grenade, of which I still carry the marks. Pray, feel it, you can perceive what sort of a wound ...
— The Pretentious Young Ladies • Moliere
... Only a hero would have been so childish— Who is the hero who equipped you thus That now you smile at me from all your trappings? Whose was the loving, microscopic brush Which gave each tiny face its grim mustache, Stamped cannon cross-wise on each pouch, and gave Each officer his bugle or grenade? Take them all out! The table's covered with them. Here are the skirmishers, the fugle-men, The Infantry with shoulder-straps of green. Take them all out! They're little conquerors! Oh, Prokesch, look! locked in that little box Lay sleeping all the glorious ...
— L'Aiglon • Edmond Rostand
... him, of course, the cavalry is still "la plus belle arme de France." He loved to explain the use of cavalry in modern warfare, of what it was yet to do in the offensive, armed as it is today with the same weapons as the infantry, carrying carbines, having its hand-grenade divisions, its mitrailleuses, ready to go into action as cavalry, arriving like a flash au galop, over ground where the infantry must move slowly, and with difficulty, and ready at any time to dismount and fight on foot, to finish a pursuit begun as cavalry. It ...
— On the Edge of the War Zone - From the Battle of the Marne to the Entrance of the Stars and Stripes • Mildred Aldrich
... sodden weight of the dead magter through the hole, their exposed backs crawling with the expectation of instant death. No further attack came as they ran from the tower, other than a grenade that exploded too far behind them to ...
— Planet of the Damned • Harry Harrison
... hanged my petard well and 'twas plain the shock of it had gone far to shatter the wall of confidence our enemies had builded on the field of Camden and elsewhere. Had a hand-grenade with the fuse alight been dropped upon the table, the consternation could scarce have been greater. To a man the tableful was up and thronging round me; but above all the hubbub I heard a little cry of misery from the table-foot where ...
— The Master of Appleby • Francis Lynde
... each other in the open doorway while they spoke, and at this point some missile hurtled past their faces and thudded heavily against the planking of the door, where it burst with all the enthusiasm of a hand-grenade. Startled, they sprang back; then, recovering from the shock, they discovered themselves quite uninjured in body if somewhat damaged in raiment. They were liberally bespattered from head to foot with the ...
— The Monk of Hambleton • Armstrong Livingston
... remembered, too, that since leaving Springfield ten days before, they had had at least two escapes. The track had been tampered with in a manifest attempt to wreck the train. A hand grenade had been found in one of the cars. It is not likely that this deadly machine was taken on ...
— The Life of Abraham Lincoln • Henry Ketcham
... to the fort had gone, And the grenade, it struck him in the breast; He fought for liberty, and death he won, For country here, ...
— Modern Italian Poets • W. D. Howells
... parts of it sound as if they were thundered from the Opposition Benches at one or two in the morning, and mentions this as a defect in the book. The same objection applies to many parts of his own history. His sweeping character of Macpherson is precisely such a hot hand-grenade as he might in an excited mood have hurled in Parliament against some Celtic M.P. from Aberdeen or Thurso whose zeal had outrun ...
— The Celtic Magazine, Vol. 1, No. 1, November 1875 • Various
... a grenade which fell short of its target and rolled in front of them. Norton took two quick strides and kicked it into one of the ...
— Narakan Rifles, About Face! • Jan Smith
... the nineteenth the English placed their cannon. On the morning of the twentieth the firing began. At five in the afternoon an assault was made. A brave French refugee with a grenade in his hand was the first to climb the breach, and fell, cheering his countrymen to the onset with his latest breath. Such were the gallant spirits which the bigotry of Lewis had sent to recruit, in the time of his utmost need, the ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... course of a moderate walk he saw them enter the Hotel Grenade. This satisfied the wandering Rackbird. If the negroes went into that hotel at that time of night, they must live there, and he could ...
— The Adventures of Captain Horn • Frank Richard Stockton
... Accident. Not being furnished with such Scoopes as our Enemies made use of, in tossing their hand Grenadoes some distance off, one of our own Soldiers aiming to throw one over the Wall into the Counterscarp among the Enemy, it so happen'd that he unfortunately miss'd his Aim, and the Grenade fell down again on our side the Wall, very near the Person who fir'd it. He starting back to save himself, and some others who saw it fall, doing the like, those who knew nothing of the Matter fell into a sudden Confusion, and imagining some greater danger than there really was, ...
— Military Memoirs of Capt. George Carleton • Daniel Defoe
... in front as silently as possible. That, on being hailed, they should light the hand-grenades, &c., with a slow match provided for the purpose, and throw them into the port-holes. I was one of the party that advanced. The sentinel hailed and fired. We rushed on. The first hand-grenade that was thrown in drove the enemy from the upper story, and before they could take any measure to defend it, the block-house was on fire in several places. Some few escaped, and the rest surrendered without our having lost a single man. Though many shot were ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis
... "that's not all it does. When you press the jewel in the center one of these comes out." A black pellet the size of his fingernail dropped into his palm. "A grenade, made of solid ulranite. Just squeeze it hard and throw. Three seconds later it explodes with enough force to blast ...
— Deathworld • Harry Harrison
... that I will never forget. "Ah, les salauds!" he cried, "They let us come right up to the barbed wire without firing. Then a hail of grenades and balls. My comrade fell, shot through the leg, got up, and the next moment had his head taken off by a grenade before my eyes." "And the barbed wire, wasn't it cut down by the bombardment?" "Not at all in front of us." I congratulated him on having a 'blessure heureuse' and being well out of the affair. But he thought only of his comrade and went on down ...
— Poems • Alan Seeger
... a grenade, now, thrown down their main hatchway. I saw long piles of cartridges there. The powder monkeys have brought them up faster than they can be used. Take a bucket of combustibles, and let's hear from ...
— Israel Potter • Herman Melville
... this opposition that Dr. Boylston's life was in danger; it was considered unsafe for him to be out of his house in the evening; a lighted grenade was even thrown into the house of Cotton Mather, who had favoured the new practice, and had sheltered another clergyman who had submitted ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... Kings on thrones of gold, The one was young, the other old. The young one's laws were wisely made Till someone took a hand-grenade And threw it, shouting, "Down with Kings!"— The old one laid ...
— The Sunny Side • A. A. Milne
... much of a success of their plan, but as a method of gaining ground and keeping their enemy busy on that particular part of the line the men of their Second Division were effective. They dashed into the first line of German trenches and cleared them out with the bayonet and hand grenade. The furor of the attack took them on into the second line. By dawn the soldiers of the Second Division had driven a ...
— 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
... hand grenade could have produced no more violent or immediate result. Madam damned the Martels, individually and collectively, ...
— Quin • Alice Hegan Rice
... the saw with the hammer and the nails," was my last hand-grenade as I departed out the back door to the barn. From the old clock standing against the wall in the back hall I discovered the hour to be exactly seven-thirty, and I felt that I had what would seem like a week ahead of me before the setting of the sun. However, I was wrong in my judgment, for ...
— The Golden Bird • Maria Thompson Daviess
... mentioned that according to information obtained from the enemy fifteen Germans were killed by a bomb dropped upon the ammunition wagon of a cavalry column. It was thought at the time that this might have been the work of one of our airmen, who reported that he had dropped a hand grenade on this convoy, and had then got a bird's-eye view of the finest display of fireworks he had ever seen. From corroborative evidence it now appears that this was the case; that the grenade thrown by him probably was the cause of the destruction of a small convoy ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol 1, Issue 4, January 23, 1915 • Various
... a gr-reat coort goin' to sarve a sacred writ iv replevy on th' usurper to th' loftiest or wan iv th' loftiest jobs that th' people iv a gloryous state can donate to a citizen. He sthraps on three gatlin' guns, four revolvers, two swords, a rifle, a shot gun, a baseball bat, a hand grenade (to be used on'y in case iv thirst), a pair iv handcuffs, brass knuckles, a sandbag, a piece of lead pipe in a stockin', a rabbit's foot f'r luck, a stove lid an' a can iv dinnymite, an' with siveral iv his cillybrated knives behind ...
— Mr. Dooley's Philosophy • Finley Peter Dunne
... Gods. But it is all very far from our common thoughts and conceptions; that is why it sounds to most people like sentimental nonsense and 'poetry.' No wonder Plato hated that word;—since it is made a hand-grenade, in the popular mind, to fling at every truth. And yet Poetry 'gets in on us,' too, ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... anchors, cables, and rigging; iron tools,—merchandise for trade, and all things necessary for his enterprise. There was one man of his party worth all the rest combined. The Prince de Conti had a protege in the person of Henri de Tonty, an Italian officer, one of whose hands had been blown off by a grenade in the Sicilian wars. His father, who had been Governor of Gaeta, but who had come to France in consequence of political convulsions in Naples, had earned no small reputation as a financier, and devised the ...
— France and England in North America, a Series of Historical Narratives, Part Third • Francis Parkman
... years, sprouted from his face. This hirsute growth should have been white, but the season was summer and it had not been exposed to a rain-shower for some time. What was visible of the face looked as if at some period it had stopped a hand-grenade. The nose was so variously malformed in its healed brokenness that there was no bridge, while one nostril, the size of a pea, opened downward, and the other, the size of a robin's egg, tilted upward to the sky. One eye, of normal size, dim-brown ...
— The Red One • Jack London
... of man In the priceless gift the Father gave, In the infinite love that stooped to save, Dared not brand his brother a slave! "Who doth such wrong," he was wont to say, In his own quaint, picture-loving way, "Flings up to Heaven a hand-grenade Which God shall cast down upon ...
— Selections From American Poetry • Various
... works like this. You are sitting up to the ears in mud under a brisk howitzer, trench mortar and rifle grenade fire, when a respectful signaller crawls round ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol 150, February 9, 1916 • Various
... is a constructive criticism," declared Col. Roosevelt, tossing another grenade into the administration trenches. The Colonel is our favorite constructive critic. After he has finished a bit of construction it takes an hour for ...
— The So-called Human Race • Bert Leston Taylor
... an hour, emitting a horrid stench; in a calm the flame would rise ten feet. Some of the rockets were sharp pointed, others not, made of sheet iron very thick, containing at the lower end some of them a fusee of grenade, calculated to burst, and if they were taken hold of before the explosion, might prove dangerous; one or two persons received injury in this way. They appear to contain a greater variety of combustibles ...
— The Defence of Stonington (Connecticut) Against a British Squadron, August 9th to 12th, 1814 • J. Hammond Trumbull
... see a hand grenade without thinking how difficult it is just now to be a hero in France. Every man is really a hero, and the men who have medals are almost ashamed since they know that nearly all their comrades merit them. It is especially difficult to be a hero in one's own family. One of the men ...
— The White Road to Verdun • Kathleen Burke
... some echoes of the earth-battle, some grenade-volleys and rapid-fire clattering, now deafened and all but blinded by the vast, up-belching explosions of the thanatos projectiles, Gabriel flew among the drifting mists and vapors. Still was he guided by one or two search-lights; but most of these were gone, now. Yet the glare of the conflagration, ...
— The Air Trust • George Allan England
... not far from Valencia. He was hiding in a small cottage in an orange-grove just outside the town. The place was surrounded by police, but Despujol, discovering this, opened fire upon them from one of the windows and also threw a hand grenade among them, with result that two carabineers were killed and four others injured, among the latter being Senor Rivero himself. A desperate fight ensued, but in the end the bandit received a bullet in the head ...
— The Stretton Street Affair • William Le Queux
... the battle in his favor. He had given orders to drop hand grenades from the tops of the Richard down through the enemy's main hatch. It was by this means that the Serapis had been so often set on fire. Now at an opportune moment, a hand grenade fell among a pile of cartridges strung out on the deck of the Serapis and caused a terrible explosion, killing many men. This seemed to reduce materially the fighting appetite of the British, and soon ...
— Paul Jones • Hutchins Hapgood
... preparing to show the effect of a gun-cotton hand-grenade; in other words, a species of bomb-shell, meant to be thrown by the hand into an enemy's boat at close-quarters. This really tremendous weapon was an innocent-looking disc or circlet of gun-cotton, weighing not ...
— In the Track of the Troops • R.M. Ballantyne
... and long, and it echoed through the room and throughout the corridors. It sounded to Malone like the blast of a small bomb, or possibly a grenade. Startled himself by the volume of sound he had managed ...
— Supermind • Gordon Randall Garrett
... grenade crashed through the window and exploded with a globe of yellow flame the size of a basketball; dense clouds of phosphorus pentoxide gushed from it and the sprinkler system switched on, drenching ...
— The Adventurer • Cyril M. Kornbluth
... I spent learnin' how to drill with my goddam rifle, I'll be a sucker if I've used it once. I'm in the grenade squad." ...
— Three Soldiers • John Dos Passos
... A hand grenade was used by them which our boys called potato-mashers. The head of the potato-masher was a can made of one-sixteenth-inch brittle steel. The can was about seven inches long by four and one-half inches in diameter. Around the inside of the can was a layer of small ...
— The Fight for the Argonne - Personal Experiences of a 'Y' Man • William Benjamin West
... Blaine shuddered as he saw it was headless. The ray had nearly missed that time, its energy spent before complete disintegration was effected. The girl lay still at his feet. With quick fingers he frisked the guard, finding his ray pistol and one gas grenade. What was he to do with the big fellow? He ought to let him have ...
— The Copper-Clad World • Harl Vincent
... section and they hasn't even been a gun went off all day or no areoplanes or nothing and here we thought we was going to see a whole lot of excitement and we haven't fired a shot or throwed a grenade or even saw a German all the wile we was here and we are just like when we come only for those poor birds that went on that wild goose chase and didn't come back and they's been some talk about sending ...
— The Real Dope • Ring Lardner
... been said—was a mess. It would have looked better if someone had simply tossed a grenade in it and had done with it. At least the results would have been random and ...
— Damned If You Don't • Gordon Randall Garrett
... to make this test more easy and accurate. Of the English appliances, the Banner patent drain grenade, and Kemp's drain tester are worthy of mention. The former consists "of a thin glass vial charged with pungent and volatile chemicals. One of the grenades, when dropped down any suitable pipe, such as the soil pipe, breaks, or the grenade may be inserted ...
— The Home Medical Library, Volume V (of VI) • Various
... the enemy's fire abreast us seemed to lull, and Mr. Stacey mounted the bulwarks, and cried out: "You have cleared their decks, my hearties!" Aloft, a man was seen to clamber from our mainyard into the very top of the Englishman, where he threw a hand-grenade, as I thought, down her main hatch. An instant after an explosion came like a, clap of thunder in our faces, and a great quadrant of light flashed as high as the 'Serapis's' trucks, and through a breach in her bulwarks I saw men running with only the collars ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... me a bed in the officers' ward—me, a corporal. It is because I am an American, of course. Wish there was some way of showing one's appreciation for so much kindness. My neighbor on the left is a chasseur captain. A hand-grenade exploded in his face. He will go through life horribly disfigured. An old padre, with two machine-gun bullets in his hip, is on the other side. He is very patient, but sometimes the pain is a little too much for him. To a Frenchman, "Oh, la, la!" is an expression for every conceivable kind ...
— High Adventure - A Narrative of Air Fighting in France • James Norman Hall
... the enemy feigned a general attack, to draw our soldiers into the breach, that they might see what we were like: every man ran thither. We had made a great store of artificial fires to defend the breach; a priest of M. le Duc de Bouillon took a grenade, thinking to throw it at the enemy, and lighted it before he ought: it burst, and set fire to all our store, which was in a house near the breach. This was a terrible disaster for us, because it burned many poor soldiers; ...
— The Harvard Classics Volume 38 - Scientific Papers (Physiology, Medicine, Surgery, Geology) • Various
... Here a scratch on the metal drew his attention. Closely he scrutinized this scratch. A hint of whitish metal told the tale—metal the Master recognized as having been abraded from a ring the Master himself had given him; a ring of aluminum alloy, fashioned from part of a Turkish grenade at Gallipoli. ...
— The Flying Legion • George Allan England
... heart, if once mine come Into the self-same room; 'Twill tear and blow up all within Like a grenade ...
— Tudor and Stuart Love Songs • Various
... swagger was a perpetual entertainment to us. One night, a hand-grenade fell out of the pocket of one of the wounded. In defiance of orders, Tailleur, who knew nothing at all about the handling of such things, turned it over and examined it for some time, with comic ...
— The New Book Of Martyrs • Georges Duhamel
... rapping out a string of oaths, English, Italian, and French, for he swore in all the languages he spoke, which, he once told me, were five, he declared that for his part he considered the powder wasted, that we'd have done as well to fling a hand-grenade into a fissure, that a thousand barrels of powder would be but as a popgun for rending the schooner's bed from the main, and in short, with several insulting looks and a face black with rage and disappointment, gave me very plainly to know that I had not only played the fool myself, ...
— The Frozen Pirate • W. Clark Russell
... other was blown off by the explosion of a hand grenade which a Pinkerton detective threw into the house some years ago in an attack upon her sons. There was a younger son of hers killed by ...
— Jack Wright and His Electric Stage; - or, Leagued Against the James Boys • "Noname"
... it was, too. But it pleased their taste, no doubt. Mightily amazed some of Fritz's officers must have been, back in April, as they sat and took their ease in these luxurious quarters, to have Jock come tumbling in upon them, a grenade ...
— A Minstrel In France • Harry Lauder
... the cross-examination went to show that during the fight, one of the parties drew a slung-shot and cocked it, but to the best of the witness' knowledge and belief, he did not fire; and at the same time, the other discharged a hand-grenade at his antagonist, which missed him and did no damage, except blowing up a bonnet store on the other side of the street, and creating a momentary diversion among the milliners.) He could not say, however, ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume X (of X) • Various
... Winfree said. He slammed the door of the car to give Peggy a little protection, then scooped up a handful of snow from the gutter to pound into a ball and toss like a grenade at the back of Major Dampfer's neck. The Major's boots flew out from under him, and he landed belly-down in the snow, burying his pistol's muzzle. The gun went off, flinging itself like a rocket out of his hand. Winfree snatched it up. "Blanks!" he yelled, waving the ...
— The Great Potlatch Riots • Allen Kim Lang
... sent to Camp Boone for their preliminary training, and here the young recruits were put through their paces in rifle shooting, grenade throwing, bayonet practice and all the other exercises by which Uncle Sam turns his boys into soldiers. There was plenty of fun mixed in with the hard work, and they had many stirring experiences. A pleasant feature was the coming of Tom, who although ...
— Army Boys in the French Trenches • Homer Randall
... this, I turned to jab a claw at the other priests, using the motion to cover my flicking a coin grenade toward them. It blew a nice hole in the floor with a great show ...
— The Repairman • Harry Harrison
... a Hun rifle grenade arrived at the same place at the same time, intermingled and went down to the Base to be sifted. In the course of time came a wire from our Albert Edward, saying he had got the grenade out of his system and was at that moment at the railhead; ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, May 23, 1917 • Various
... had no fear, and was kind, and with that, back I trotted to get the comrade. But at that second—pouf!—a big noise, and I fell down and could not get up. It was the good new leg of M'sieur le Docteur which those sacres Boches had blown off with a hand-grenade. So that I lay dead enough. And when I came alive it was dark, and also the leg hurt—but yes! I was annoyed to have ruined that leg which ...
— Joy in the Morning • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... interesting reminiscences here crowd in. It was during the charge on 445 that Lieut. Stoner missed a dugout door by a foot with his hand grenade and his tender heart near froze with horror an hour afterward when he came back from pursuit of the Reds to find that with the one Bolo soldier in the dugout were cowering twenty-seven women and children, one eight days old. The red-whiskered old Bolo soldier ...
— The History of the American Expedition Fighting the Bolsheviki - Campaigning in North Russia 1918-1919 • Joel R. Moore
... story, I suppose. There were only three of them, two with guns, one with a hand grenade. The pistol men managed to wound two Senators and a guard. I was right there, talking to Connaught. I spotted the little fellow with the hand grenade and tackled him. I knocked him down, but the grenade went flying, pin pulled, seconds ticking away. I lunged for ...
— Pythias • Frederik Pohl
... much. My suppressed giggling burst like a grenade into uncontrolled laughter. Then I said: ...
— Tell England - A Study in a Generation • Ernest Raymond
... out, the Chesapeake came up into the wind somewhat, so as to expose her quarter to her antagonist's broadside, which beat in her stern-ports and swept the men from the after guns. One of the arm chests on the quarter-deck was blown up by a hand-grenade thrown from the Shannon. [Footnote: This explosion may have had more effect than is commonly supposed in the capture of the Chesapeake. Commodore Bainbridge, writing from Charleston, Mass., on June 2, 1813 (see "Captains' Letters," vol. xxix. No. 10), says: ...
— The Naval War of 1812 • Theodore Roosevelt
... It means, "All over!" You say "Na pooh!" when you push your plate away after dinner. It also means, "Not likely!" or "Nothing doing!" By a further development it has come to mean "done for," "finished," and in extreme cases, "dead." "Poor Bill got na-poohed by a rifle-grenade yesterday," says ...
— The First Hundred Thousand • Ian Hay
... Ned answered. "There are plenty of chemical fire extinguishers on the market, too, Tom. If your idea is to invent a new hand grenade, stay off it! A lot of money has ...
— Tom Swift among the Fire Fighters - or, Battling with Flames from the Air • Victor Appleton
... let go a clip from his carbine, trying to hit one of the vision-slits; then rolled to one side, dropped out the clip, slapped in another. There was a shimmering blue mist around him. If he only hadn't used his last grenade, ...
— Hunter Patrol • Henry Beam Piper and John J. McGuire
... his worthiness At Alisandre he was when it was won. Full often time he had the board begun Above alle nations in Prusse. In Lettowe had he reysed,* and in Russe, *journeyed No Christian man so oft of his degree. In Grenade at the siege eke had he be Of Algesir, and ridden in Belmarie. At Leyes was he, and at Satalie, When they were won; and in the Greate Sea At many a noble army had he be. At mortal battles had he been fifteen, And foughten ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... helmet, the coat of mail, the plate of armor, the slingshot; just as their later brothers, for a like purpose, conceived and devised the throwing of mustard gas, the two-ton explosive, the aerial bomb, the mortar shell, the hand-grenade—for the protection, false and true, of the home. For the upbuilding of the home, for the continuance of the home, men of this calling also it was who conceived and shaped, among other things, the cook-stove, ...
— Opportunities in Engineering • Charles M. Horton
... of justice. This and other letters were in an outhouse; the old soldier had not permitted them to penetrate the fortress. He had entered into the spirit of his instructions, and to him a letter was a probable hand-grenade. ...
— A Terrible Temptation - A Story of To-Day • Charles Reade
... seemed, than because he liked to hear the noise! Dead bodies are found nearly every morning. Murders are so common that they do not provoke even passing comment. In the night there comes a sharp bark of an automatic or the shattering roar of a hand-grenade (which, since the war proved its efficacy, has become the most recherche weapon for private use in these regions), a clatter of feet, and a "Hello! Another killing." That is all. Life is the cheapest thing ...
— The New Frontiers of Freedom from the Alps to the AEgean • Edward Alexander Powell
... moving about the line, and their reports were all of the same kind—'men steady, firing well, no waste of ammunition, not many killed and wounded, all able to hold their own.' Here and there a cartridge or grenade had set the wooden walls alight. But men were ready with water; and even when the flames caught on the side towards the enemy there was no lack of volunteers to jump down and put them out. The fort, half a mile in rear and overlooking the whole scene, did good work with its ...
— The Passing of New France - A Chronicle of Montcalm • William Wood
... too soft-hearted—but I will!" he cried, and flung a hand-grenade, and then a second, over the breastwork. The explosions were followed by agonized groans from the Grays hugging the lower side of the terrace. For this they had crawled across the road in the night—to find themselves unable to move either way and directly ...
— The Last Shot • Frederick Palmer
... our emplacements. We had quite an interesting time, as in one place where the trench is not occupied, and up which we have to go to one emplacement, one of our field gun batteries put four shots into the trench about 10 yards behind Ingle and knocked him over, then a rifle grenade landed nearly at my feet and kindly failed to go off. We returned in time for a late scrappy lunch at 2-30. When I was intending to have a nap and a read when one of the Northumberland Fusiliers officers, ...
— Letters from France • Isaac Alexander Mack
... first picture, which is called "The Point of Honor," illustrates the old story of the officer who, on being accused of cowardice for refusing to fight a duel, came among his brother officers and flung a lighted grenade down upon the floor, before which his comrades fled ignominiously. This design is capital, and the outward rush of heroes, walking, trampling, twisting, scuffling at the door, is in the best style of the grotesque. You see but the back of most of these gentlemen; ...
— George Cruikshank • William Makepeace Thackeray
... yeomen's work. With the yew bow and cloth-yard shaft at Cressy and Agincourt—with the brown bill and pike under the brave Lord Willoughby—with culverin and demi-culverin against Spaniards and Dutchmen—with hand-grenade and sabre, and musket and bayonet, under Rodney and St. Vincent, Wolfe and Moore, Nelson and Wellington, they have carried their lives in their hands, getting hard knocks and hard work in plenty—which was on the whole what they looked for, and the best thing for them—and little ...
— Tom Brown's Schooldays • Thomas Hughes
... fire they reached the palisade, and crouching below the range of shot, hewed furiously with their hatchets to cut their way through. Daulac had crammed a large musketoon with powder, and lighting a fuse, he tried to throw it over the barrier, to burst like a grenade among the savages without; but it struck the ragged top of one of the palisades, fell back among the Frenchmen and exploded, killing and wounding several of them. In the confusion which followed, the Iroquois got possession of the loopholes, and thrusting ...
— Old Quebec - The Fortress of New France • Sir Gilbert Parker and Claude Glennon Bryan
... from the primary use of these nefarious weapons the recognized hand grenade, which is actually hand-shrapnel, plied by men at close quarters. Thousands of these have been thrown by the armies in their charges on the trenches. And then, to offset the use of these devices in the offensive, ...
— Kelly Miller's History of the World War for Human Rights • Kelly Miller
... the factories and the munition plants they have not feared to don the blouse of the workingman, and on this blouse they wear as insignia a large grenade like that on the brassard of the mobilized men. Note these figures. On the first of February, 1916, the civil establishments of war, the munition plants, and the Marine workshops employed 127,792 women. The number has increased, and on ...
— Fighting France • Stephane Lauzanne
... it takes the fear-frozen trainee, staring glass-eyed at the fumbled grenade to realize that this one at his feet ...
— Far from Home • J.A. Taylor |
