"Shrapnel" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... 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, with ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... Prince had once stayed. All up the hillside to our right the foundations of houses lay out, like a bit of tripe, with the sunshine in their square hollows. Suddenly a band began to play up the hill among some trees; and an officer of local Guards in the new steel anti-shrapnel helmet, which is like the seventeenth century sallet, suggested that we should climb and get a better view. He was a kindly man, and in speaking English had discovered (as I do when speaking French) that it is simpler to stick to one gender. His choice was the feminine, and the Boche described ...
— France At War - On the Frontier of Civilization • Rudyard Kipling
... grow worse. Pharaoh is becoming more and more frightened. While the scare is on he promises again and again that he will obey the Lord unconditionally. There was a terrible storm, you remember. The hail stones fell like shrapnel and the lightning dropped from the clouds and fairly played along the earth, and terror gripped the King's heart. And he sends for Moses. When Moses comes he tells him, all atremble, "I have sinned this time. I will let the people go." But when the storm ceases and the sun shines out he is quite ...
— Sermons on Biblical Characters • Clovis G. Chappell
... devices, deserted the position in its rear, and rushed tumultuously away to crags and sungahs where knife and jezail might still be plied. The centre column then advanced unmolested to the deserted barricade, through which the sappers soon cleared a thoroughfare. The guns swept with shrapnel the hill-sides in front, the flanking detachments pushed steadily further and yet further forward, chasing and slaying the fugitive hillmen; and the Duke of Wellington's observation was that morning fully made ...
— The Afghan Wars 1839-42 and 1878-80 • Archibald Forbes
... of which the great wolf-dog listened with exemplary patience. He would have preferred action, but not unlike many human beings who strive to appear profound under a broadside of philosophical eloquence, applauding each bursting shrapnel of platitudes by mentally wagging their tails, Chance wagged his tail, impressed more by the detonation than the substance. And Chance was quite a superior dog, as ...
— Sundown Slim • Henry Hubert Knibbs
... 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 ...
— Paths of Glory - Impressions of War Written At and Near the Front • Irvin S. Cobb
... to the Zambesi. Leaving Natal, he found his way to America, and at Boston he enlisted in the Federal army. The service was as hot as could be. In one battle, two men were killed close to him by shrapnel shell, a rifle bullet passed close to his head, and killed a man behind him; other two were wounded close by him. His letters to his sister expressed his regret at the course of his life, and confessed that his troubles were due to his disobedience. ...
— The Personal Life Of David Livingstone • William Garden Blaikie
... undischarged, again stood immovably covering Dominique, as he deliberately and rapidly reloaded, and once more while the crowd still pressed on a torrent of shrapnel poured into them, sickening ...
— The False Chevalier - or, The Lifeguard of Marie Antoinette • William Douw Lighthall
... necessity of keeping one's head low. Hitherto the men knew little of the nature or use of guns, but now glimmerings of the mystery surrounding artillery fire soon dawned. The men learnt the natures of German shell, and the difference between shrapnel and high explosives and what targets the enemy generally selected. Facts like these were explained to them by the "real soldiers" of the Regular units to which they were attached. On relief the Battalion marched back to Oblinghem ...
— The Story of the "9th King's" in France • Enos Herbert Glynne Roberts
... onset. Like blasts of a blizzard, the shrapnel of the desert is hurled into eyes, face, ears, and nostrils; little rivers pour down the back and fill every discoverable wrinkle and cranny of the ...
— Trail Tales • James David Gillilan
... 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 ...
— The Conquest of America - A Romance of Disaster and Victory • Cleveland Moffett
... 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 Bannister's ...
— T. Haviland Hicks Senior • J. Raymond Elderdice
... strong," Major Hunt said—"we have a good few casualties, of course, but we haven't lost many officers—most of them have come back. I think all your immediate chums are still in France. But I've been out of it myself for two months—stopped a bit shrapnel with my hand, and it won't get better." He indicated a bandaged left hand as he spoke, and they realized that his face was worn, and deeply lined with pain. "It's stupid," he said, and laughed. "But when are you coming back? We've plenty ...
— Captain Jim • Mary Grant Bruce
... blown up by the French in 1870 in a vain attempt to prevent the German occupation, was mined, so that it could be instantly destroyed. I found my little garden rather neglected, for the man who looks after it had been "mobilized" and is now lying in a hospital at Bordeaux, getting over a shrapnel wound in the leg. The place nevertheless was full of pears, peaches, figs, green corn, American squashes, beans, tomatoes, and no end of roses, gladioli, tobacco plant, hollyhocks, heliotrope, dahlias, morning-glories, ...
— Paris War Days - Diary of an American • Charles Inman Barnard
... 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 singly and in detachments. Heroes ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... 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
... like the U-38, which sank the Armenian, carrying one or more outside guns, capable of discharging various kinds of shell, from blank shots to shrapnel, represents an important evolution in the development of marine warfare. Such a craft has the equipment to enable her to visit and search a passing merchantman, and to provide for the safe removal of officers, crew or ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 5, August, 1915 • Various
... battalions to which the attachments were made. The units of the Battalion not doing attachment duty were used for working parties in the trenches and suffered several casualties. No. 2 platoon, right flank company, specially suffered, being caught by shrapnel fire on the Bethune-La Basse road, ten N.C.O.'s and ...
— The 23rd (Service) Battalion Royal Fusiliers (First Sportsman's) - A Record of its Services in the Great War, 1914-1919 • Fred W. Ward
... 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 ...
— Watts (1817-1904) • William Loftus Hare
... whom he was known as "uncle Marschner," would not have dared to suggest his sending a rabbit he had reared to the butcher or dragging a dog that had won his affection to the pound. And now he was to drive into shrapnel fire men whom he himself had trained to be soldiers and had had under his own eyes for months, men whom he knew as he did his own pockets. Of what avail were subtle or deep reflections now? He saw nothing ...
— Men in War • Andreas Latzko
... hack us through and through; The chilled steel bolts are swift! We have emptied the bunkers in open sea, Their shrapnel bursts where our coal should be." And he answered, ...
— Departmental Ditties and Barrack Room Ballads • Rudyard Kipling
... end of the path another gun spoke, the report being immediately followed by an explosion, accompanied by a terrible outburst of yells and shrieks. Amid these I believed I heard the sharp patter of shrapnel on the face of the cliff, while other yells arose from the party who had been attending to the business of keeping up the supply of burning faggots above the opening of ...
— The First Mate - The Story of a Strange Cruise • Harry Collingwood
... 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
... work of the Bulgarians was very good indeed; they had an excellent field-piece, practically the same field-piece as the French army. Their work was very fine with regard to aim and to the bursting of shrapnel, and their firing from concealed positions was also good. But I never saw enterprising work on their part; I never saw them go into the open, except during a brief time at Chatalja. They seemed to dig themselves in behind the crest of a ...
— Bulgaria • Frank Fox
... were posted for a time in the bed of the stream directly under the balloon, and stood in the water to our waists awaiting orders to deploy. Standing there under that galling fire of exploding shrapnel and deadly Mauser bullets the minutes seemed like hours. General Wheeler 25 and a part of his staff stood mounted a few minutes in the middle of the stream. Just as I raised my hand to salute in moving up the stream to post the leading squadron of my regiment, a piece of bursting ...
— Story Hour Readings: Seventh Year • E.C. Hartwell
... the middle,' 'Keep to your right' were being passed back continually. Progress was slow of course under these conditions and with the heavy loads that we all carried. But it was all so novel to me that I had not a moment to feel dull or depressed. After a time we reached the notorious 'Shrapnel Corner' and turned towards 'Transport Farm,' for we were bound for trenches at Hill 60. This place was of course famous for the British attack in 1915, and for the German counter-attack with gas a little later on which was all too successful. It was also notorious ...
— Q.6.a and Other places - Recollections of 1916, 1917 and 1918 • Francis Buckley
... pets, and there is no explaining them. The fools will graze contentedly with shrapnel and high explosives bursting all about them, but go into a panic at the sight of a piece of paper in broad daylight. And when they think they see ghosts in the dark they act like the Gadarene swine, only making more noise ...
— The Lion of Petra • Talbot Mundy
... armies. A fierce cannonading is going on continually, and I lift my eyes from the sheet at each report, to see the puffs of smoke two or three miles off. The Germans have been firing salvoes of four shots over a little village where the French batteries are stationed, shrapnel that burst in little puffs of white smoke; the French reply with explosive shells that raise columns of dust over the German lines. Half of our regiment have left already for the trenches. We may go tonight. We have made a march ...
— Poems • Alan Seeger
... 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 ...
— A Yeoman's Letters - Third Edition • P. T. Ross
... long red dress comes out and 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 ...
— Peck's Sunshine - Being a Collection of Articles Written for Peck's Sun, - Milwaukee, Wis. - 1882 • George W. Peck
... about that need only to visit the Military Park at Vicksburg, or the country about Petersburg or Richmond, to recognize that even fifty years ago our soldiers understood the art of sheltering themselves from bullet and shrapnel in the bosom of Mother Earth. The trench warfare in Flanders, the Argonne, and around Verdun has been novel only in the degree to which it has been developed and perfected. Concrete-lined trenches, with spacious and well-furnished bomb-proofs, with phonographs, printing presses, and occasional ...
— Aircraft and Submarines - The Story of the Invention, Development, and Present-Day - Uses of War's Newest Weapons • Willis J. Abbot
... unlimbered, and came into action against the kopje, and we and the limbers trotted about 300 yards back, and are waiting there now. A gunner and a driver slightly wounded, and some horses hit. One bullet broke our wheel-driver's whip. Our shrapnel are bursting beautifully over the ...
— In the Ranks of the C.I.V. • Erskine Childers
... almost touching the cot on which the speaker writhed in his death agony lay another man apparently in a profound stupor. He wore the uniform of a private soldier and his eyes were bandaged. His face had been torn to pieces by shrapnel, fragments of which had blinded him. At that instant he came out of that stupor. Perhaps the familiar words recalled him to himself. He moved his hand slightly. The sister saw his lips ...
— And Thus He Came • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... preceding the battle of the Marne? He was killed in Belgium on the morning of September 26—the second day of the offensive. He was in command of an anti- aeroplane battery advanced in the night to what was considered a well-concealed position. The German guns, however, got the range. Shrapnel nearly wiped out the command, and the Captain was wounded in the head. He died at the hospital at Etaples half an hour after he arrived, and lies buried in the English cemetery on the dunes, with his face towards the country for which ...
— On the Edge of the War Zone - From the Battle of the Marne to the Entrance of the Stars and Stripes • Mildred Aldrich
... troops, a third kind of projectile is employed. It is called shrapnel, and it consists of a thin shell, holding a little powder and a large quantity of bullets. The powder is ignited by a fuse, which is set to act during flight, or on graze, when the shell is nearing the object. The explosion bursts the shell open, and liberates the bullets, which ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 324, March 18, 1882 • Various
... wire Of old defences tangles up the feet; Faces and hands strain upward through the mire, Speaking the anguish of the Hun's retreat. Sometimes no letters came; the evening hate Dragged on till dawn. The ridge in flying spray Of hissing shrapnel told the runners' fate; We knew we should not hear from you that day— From you, who from the trenches of the mind Hurl back despair, smiling with sobbing breath, Writing your souls on paper to be kind, That you for us may take ...
— The Glory of the Trenches • Coningsby Dawson
... that he was not born to be merely happy and get rich, or to have a fine old time, why, such a complete upheaval as this seems to me to be necessary, and for me—if this war can rip off, with its shrapnel, the selfishness with which prosperity has encrusted the lucky: if it can explode our false values with its bombs: if it can break down our absurd pretensions with its cannon,—all I can say is that Germany will have done missionary work ...
— Told in a French Garden - August, 1914 • Mildred Aldrich
... 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 ...
— Zone Policeman 88 - A Close Range Study of the Panama Canal and its Workers • Harry A. Franck
... Mississippi's 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 heads of ...
— The Gulf and Inland Waters - The Navy in the Civil War. Volume 3. • A. T. Mahan
... Gap. It was of vast military importance, for here Breckenridge and Siegel met. Moore occupied an elevation north of New Market. Now in place of the thundering cannon and rattling musketry we were listening to a medley of bird notes that fell thick as shrapnel around us. The vast hills covered with their leafy verdure of summer; the rich valley spread below us made radiant by the beauty of the descending sun and a light rain; voices rising on the misty air from the valley below—all seemed to unite in weaving a magic spell for the coming scene. As we gazed ...
— See America First • Orville O. Hiestand
... is a reservist. He is a man thirty-five years of age. He was wounded by a shrapnel ball in the groin early in the spring, but is now ...
— A Volunteer Poilu • Henry Sheahan
... gave them no chance, and by 3:30 in the afternoon a third of the enemy, with the exception of a force that lay hid in bushy hollows on the east bank between the two posts, were in full retreat, leaving many dead, a large proportion of whom had been killed by shrapnel. ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... 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 ...
— Life's Handicap • Rudyard Kipling
... 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 the conversation to ...
— Love, The Fiddler • Lloyd Osbourne
... 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 of ...
— Miss Mapp • Edward Frederic Benson
... always find handy, told him plainly who he was, explicitly what "Standard Oil" was, and exactly who and what I was. I opine that about either assault there was nothing dignified, generous, or refined, but in stock-exchange battles one has not time to scent shrapnel. The immediate result of this interchange of deckle-edged[7] insults was to daze the public. "Standard Oil" attacked and actually replying; Rogers assaulting Lawson and Lawson sending back worse than he got—almost anything might ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... 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
... The shrapnel shot from Stephenson's batteries fell with too deadly an aim among the Beloochee footmen for them to hold their position on the hills. They fled towards the walls of their fortress, and the British infantry pushed hotly after them; but, in spite of all ...
— Our Soldiers - Gallant Deeds of the British Army during Victoria's Reign • W.H.G. Kingston
... 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
... 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 ...
— The Battle of Spring Hill, Tennessee - read after the stated meeting held February 2d, 1907 • John K. Shellenberger
... 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 spurred ...
— The Mad King • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... 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 ...
— Verses 1889-1896 • Rudyard Kipling
... of Montezuma To the gates of old Peking He has heard the shrapnel bursting, He has heard the Mauser's ping. He has known Alaskan waters And the coral roads of Guam, He has bowed to templed idols And to sultans ...
— Winning a Cause - World War Stories • John Gilbert Thompson and Inez Bigwood
... bombardment. In battle, artillery may do its work without causing a casualty; but so long as he had cover for his body, the soul of the Boer rifleman was little shaken by the bursting of projectiles; fierce firing came often from portions of a position which appeared to be smothered by shrapnel, and invisible in the ...
— History of the War in South Africa 1899-1902 v. 1 (of 4) - Compiled by Direction of His Majesty's Government • Frederick Maurice
... days of March were chilly, with alternations of snow and sunshine. When the air was pure, we heard it vibrate with the life of aeroplanes and echo to their contests. The dry throb of machine-guns, the incessant scream of shrapnel formed a kind of crackling dome over our heads. The German aeroplanes overwhelmed the environs with bombs which gave a prolonged whistle before tearing up the soil or gutting a house. One fell a few paces from the ward where I was operating ...
— The New Book Of Martyrs • Georges Duhamel
... were still in possession of a section of the Talana ridge. The light was bad and the guns re-opened upon the crest line in the belief that the whole of it was still occupied by the enemy. The practice was excellent, and in a brief space both sides were driven off the hill by the shrapnel. A subsequent attempt to take it was successful. The result of the battle, which lasted from sunrise until 2 p.m., might have been reversed but for the inaction of the main Boer force posted on Lennox Hill under L. Meyer, and of another force on Impati under Erasmus, who, though he ...
— A Handbook of the Boer War • Gale and Polden, Limited
... spattered with a hail that might have been shrapnel, or stones and gravel—Ruth did not know. The hood sheltered her. She was on the far side of the ...
— Ruth Fielding at the War Front - or, The Hunt for the Lost Soldier • Alice B. Emerson
... up in bed—a fine young fellow about twenty years old. A shrapnel-shell, somewhere in France, passed over his head and burst just behind him. His bare back is a mass of scars. The healing fluid is being pumped in through the shattered elbow of his right arm, ...
— The Valley of Vision • Henry Van Dyke
... this morning if anything connected with war can be so called,—a little company of mitrailleuses-a-chien, that is, small, shrapnel gun carriages drawn by the famous Belgian dogs. It sort of made my heart crinkle up to see those magnificent animals, detailed for fatal duty without doubt, pushing on so joyously. Straining in the traces and really smiling with their great tongues ...
— Lige on the Line of March - An American Girl's Experiences When the Germans Came Through Belgium • Glenna Lindsley Bigelow
... curious incident occurred! A falcon, hovering over the heads of our burghers in the sluit, was hit by a bullet from one of the shrapnel shells and fell dead to the ground in the midst of the men. It was already half-past four, and we began to ask ourselves how the affair would end. At this juncture I received a report from a burgher, whom I had placed on the eastern side of the mountain to watch the ...
— Three Years' War • Christiaan Rudolf de Wet
... bombardment when over the Hun lines, this might be accomplished without danger. So far as was known, they had gauged the utmost capacity for reaching them possessed by the German anti-aircraft guns, and Jack promised himself to jeer at the futile efforts of these gunners to explode their shrapnel shells close to ...
— Air Service Boys Over the Atlantic • Charles Amory Beach
... 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 sank ...
— The Guns of Shiloh • Joseph A. Altsheler
... face—a stray one spinning with a sloppy whit into Jacob Bumble's open mouth as he sang, like a musket—ball into a winter turnip; while a fine preserved pineapple flew bash on Isaac Shingle's sharp snout, like the bursting of a shrapnel shell. ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... 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 ...
— The Little Lady of Lagunitas • Richard Henry Savage
... French sentries who must watch through the night for signs of Hun activity. Over the rear wall of the trench was another built-up wall of sand-bags. This parados, as it was called, is intended to give protection against shrapnel, which often burst just after passing over a trench. Thus the parados prevents a back-fire of the bullets carried in the shrapnel shell, which otherwise might ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys with Pershing's Troops - Dick Prescott at Grips with the Boche • H. Irving Hancock
... position. The "Delaware" was too near to bring her battery to bear, and was obliged to turn slowly in the narrow channel. The "Perry," more fortunately situated, opened at once on the enemy with shrapnel. But the contest was unequal, and the two vessels were forced to retreat down the river about seven miles, there to await the remainder of ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 2 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... What a discontented sort of an animal a man is, sir! Only a month ago, I was in the quiet of the country out at the front, with not a sound except the birds and the bellow of a cow in the distance as it might be, and the shrapnel making little clouds in the heavens, and the shells whistling, and maybe a yell or two when one of us was hit; and would you believe it, sir, I complained of the noise and wanted to have a peaceful hour at home. Well: them two has taught me a ...
— O'Flaherty V. C. • George Bernard Shaw
... youth has got into a deplorable habit of 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 ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, February 25th, 1920 • Various
... in Maurice's room. We talked of the situation, and the effect of the Americans coming in, bucking everyone up—we were rather cheerful. Then the sirens began—and the guns followed just as Maurice and Odette got back—They seemed unusually loud—and we could hear the bits of shrapnel falling on the terrace beneath us, Odette was frightened and suggested going into the cellar—but as Maurice's rooms are only on the second floor, we did not want ...
— Man and Maid • Elinor Glyn
... 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 ...
— Christopher Columbus, Complete • Filson Young
... an original kind of march—I suppose a battery of howitzers never before found itself mounted upon cars, ready to open fire at once and bang away into the offing with shrapnel or into the bushes with canister. Our line extended a half-mile along the track. It was beautiful to stand on the bank above a cutting and watch the files strike from the shadow of a wood into a broad flame of moonlight, every rifle sparkling up alert as it came forward. A beautiful ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 44, June, 1861 • Various
... 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 material ...
— Manual for Noncommissioned Officers and Privates of Infantry • War Department
... of my life. But other feelings were mingled with it. I reflected: "What effect will it have upon me? I expect I shall come into the middle of the fight when I get over that ridge. Shall I duck my head when I hear the bullets whistling and the shrapnel bursting around me? I am determined to play the man. I know Wattrelot is close by, trotting behind me. He mustn't see the least symptom of nervousness ...
— In the Field (1914-1915) - The Impressions of an Officer of Light Cavalry • Marcel Dupont
... victory that proved much and won little), and then back to Armentieres, whence we were sent north to St. Eloi, after making a short advance in the vicinity of Messines. From St. Eloi we were ordered to Hill 60, taking part in the now historic battle there. After Hill 60, Ypres, where shrapnel and poison gas put an end to my soldiering days—I am afraid ...
— A Soldier's Sketches Under Fire • Harold Harvey
... issued from the trees and hung above them in thin streaks. Another sound was added to the uproar—a long-drawn whine—and a sepia coloured puff appeared high up in the sky. A sharp ringing crack followed. Then another puff appeared, and then another. High-explosive and shrapnel shells continued to burst ...
— Combed Out • Fritz August Voigt
... their portion, pain and hunger without end, Till they hail the yell of shrapnel as the welcome of a friend; They drink and burn and rape and laugh to hear the women cry, And do the devil's work to-day, but ...
— Raemaekers' Cartoons - With Accompanying Notes by Well-known English Writers • Louis Raemaekers
... deck of 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, ...
— The River War • Winston S. Churchill
... which these experiments were going on (those of the sponges in sea-water) required daylight for their progress. There was no place for their storage more suitable than that portion of his studio-laboratory which was above ground; and the situation of his house in regard to air attacks, bombs, shrapnel seemed to him far more favourable than the upper rooms at the College of Surgeons. That great building was often endangered because of its proximity to the Strand and Fleet Street; and the Strand and Fleet Street, being regarded ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston
... extreme right 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 ...
— Through Three Campaigns - A Story of Chitral, Tirah and Ashanti • G. A. Henty
... little mountain guns, and away went a shrapnel screaming across the open and just three and six-tenths seconds after, exploded ...
— The Battle of Bayan and Other Battles • James Edgar Allen
... 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 pumphouse. The ...
— Make Mine Homogenized • Rick Raphael
... logs and sand bags, 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 ...
— The Martial Adventures of Henry and Me • William Allen White
... loth, for excitement had begun to stir his blood. They stayed there for some minutes, straining their eyes for sight of anything save the little zagged splashes of bursting shrapnel, while voices buzzed, and muttered: "Look! ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... cursing and cheering, the Devons crept forward across the sodden grass. Many of the bravest, among them Chisholme, went down on that plain of death. Far beyond the level veldt there were something like 800 feet to climb in the face of Mauser and shrapnel. At length, however, the top of the ridge was reached. There stood the three guns that had wrought such havoc, now silent among the corpses of the frock-coated burghers who ...
— Sir John French - An Authentic Biography • Cecil Chisholm
... was roused to fever by the discovery that evening of an infernal machine in the City Hall. Leaning against one of the great marble pillars in the lobby of the building, a gleaming object (looking very much like a four-inch shrapnel shell) was found by a vigilant patrolman. To his horror he found it to be one of the much-dreaded thermos bottles. Experts from the Bureau of Rumbustibles were summoned, and the bomb was carefully analyzed. Much to the disappointment of the chief inspector, the devilish ingredients of ...
— In the Sweet Dry and Dry • Christopher Morley
... that a balloon would run of being riddled by bullets, shrapnel, or pom-poms has not been taken into account, and as to the estimate of this risk there is some difference of opinion. The balloon corps and the artillery apparently approach the question with different bias. On the one hand, it is stated ...
— The Dominion of the Air • J. M. Bacon
... learned within a few days to handle their masks adroitly. So the problem of defense against this new offensive was solved satisfactorily, while no such adequate protection against the older weapons of bayonet and shrapnel has yet ...
— Creative Chemistry - Descriptive of Recent Achievements in the Chemical Industries • Edwin E. Slosson
... 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 our first barbed wire ...
— In the Flash Ranging Service - Observations of an American Soldier During His Service - With the A.E.F. in France • Edward Alva Trueblood
... projectile, more or less hollow, and loaded with a charge of explosive. Besides this it has an apparatus for setting off the bursting charge. It weighs 1 pound 5 ounces approximately, and 4 ounces of this is high explosive. The shell being of serrated cast-iron, an explosion will scatter a sort of shrapnel over an area equal to three times the height. No more need be said of the effectiveness of such a weapon. Among rifle grenades the Mills is also the standard more or less, although the French make great use of a rifle grenade that fits over the muzzle of the rifle, ...
— Military Instructors Manual • James P. Cole and Oliver Schoonmaker
... smoke in five minutes as would smother you all in this room! I received, at the same moment, two musket balls in the thighs, a grape shot through the calf of my leg, a lance through my left shoulder, a piece of a shrapnel in the left deltoid, a bayonet through the cartilage of my right ribs, a cut-cut that carried away a pound of flesh from my chest, and the better part of a congreve rocket on my forehead. Pretty well, ...
— The Room in the Dragon Volant • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... vicinity. The Huns in charge of the anti-aircraft defences stationed about the target direct huge beams of numerous searchlights toward the sky and an intense barrage is put up above and around the target by the Hun batteries. The air is filled with shrapnel from bursting shells at the altitude at which the machine is flying, for the Huns have accurate instruments which gauge the altitude of an aeroplane from the sound vibrations of its engines. The aviators, however, are still intent on picking out their ...
— Night Bombing with the Bedouins • Robert Henry Reece
... the 1st our cavalry were busy with their horses, while the artillery devoted themselves chiefly to their guns. All that day our infantry stood in the trenches, and the smoke from the enemy's shrapnel made fantastic shapes against the leaden grey of the Northern sky. While I sat writing a young officer rushed in. He had kindly returned from the firing line especially to tell me of a little incident he had witnessed there. A private, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, October 14, 1914 • Various
... Shrapnel shells were exploding all about her, and at times she was almost entirely enveloped in smoke. Between the reports of the heavier artillery could be heard the staccato spatter of bullets on her iron sides as the machine-guns sprayed her from end to end. Now and then one of the gunners would ...
— L. P. M. - The End of the Great War • J. Stewart Barney
... Our right section commander got a blighty two days ago and is probably now in England. He went off on a firing battery wagon, grinning all over his face, saying he wouldn't sell that bit of blood and shrapnel for a thousand pounds. I'm wearing your tie—it's the envy of the battery. All the officers wanted me to give them the name of my girl. It never occurs to men that mothers will do ...
— Carry On • Coningsby Dawson
... among the evil princes of the earth. The first and most striking feature is a stupidity that rises into a sort of ghastly innocence. The protection of workmen! Some workmen, perhaps, might have a fancy for being protected from shrapnel; some might be glad to put up an umbrella that would ward off things dropping from the gentle Zeppelin in heaven upon the place beneath. Some of these discontented proletarians have taken the same ...
— Utopia of Usurers and other Essays • G. K. Chesterton
... firing shrapnel and were using solid shot. When their Gatlings also ceased, I guessed that it might be that the guns were jammed. If I were right and if one avoided the solid shot by approaching the barricade obliquely, there was no danger in charging the barricade. I told my troop that I ...
— Captain Macklin • Richard Harding Davis
... returned from beyond the corn-field, was that at which it had been proposed to place one gun, under cover of the adobe hut; run it out by hand; fire, and run it under shelter again to reload. By this means, a few rounds of grape, canister, and shrapnel, could have cleared the roof of ...
— Company 'A', corps of engineers, U.S.A., 1846-'48, in the Mexican war • Gustavus Woodson Smith
... about the Hindenburg line. In fact, for the first half of the dinner he hardly spoke. I think he was worried about his left hand. There is a deep furrow across the back of it where a piece of shrapnel went through and there are two fingers that will hardly move at all. I could see that he was ashamed of its clumsiness and afraid that someone might notice it. So he kept silent. Professor Razzler did indeed ask him straight ...
— The Hohenzollerns in America - With the Bolsheviks in Berlin and other impossibilities • Stephen Leacock
... he didn't mind; he got out and saw for himself everything that was going on. Didn't seem to worry him at all.... And I shall never forget the way the heavies lammed it into the wood. They had half an hour, six batteries of 6-inch howitzers, before the 18-pounders put in a five minutes' burst of shrapnel.... They say the wood is choked ...
— Pushed and the Return Push • George Herbert Fosdike Nichols, (AKA Quex)
... system platoons may not be able to advance to the Attack without a barrage, and it is essential that all movements should conform exactly to the timing of the barrage and that the troops should keep under the back edge of the shrapnel curtain, so as to deliver their assault before the enemy has time to bring rifles and machine guns into play. Under such circumstances, Ground scouts must be dispensed with. Such a position will not be attacked without careful previous reconnaissance ...
— Lectures on Land Warfare; A tactical Manual for the Use of Infantry Officers • Anonymous
... one was looking not only at the scene of recent battle, but at the scene of a battle proceeding at that very moment. The Germans were engaged in a fierce counter-stroke on the North-Eastern front of the Ypres salient. The only indication was the bursting of a good deal of shrapnel at this point. It was here that I first saw shrapnel shells and noticed the little white puffs of smoke, which for all the world looked like the steam let off by an ordinary locomotive. Behind us, or rather, on the right of Scherpenberg hill, there was a big British gun which was firing steadily ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey
... home, I want to go home, The Johnsons and shrapnel they whistle and roar; I don't want to go to the trenches no more. I want to go home, Where the Allemands can't get at me, Oh my! I don't want to die; I ...
— One Young Man • Sir John Ernest Hodder-Williams
... directed against the fort at once slackened, after the explosion of that shell amongst the guns; while the fire from the fort redoubled, the rounds of solid shot, grape, chain, and shrapnel, with withering volleys of small-arm fire, sweeping through the rebel ranks like hail, and playing awful havoc among the closely-packed masses of men only partially concealed by the jungle. But the besiegers, as Frobisher had already had an opportunity ...
— A Chinese Command - A Story of Adventure in Eastern Seas • Harry Collingwood
... ring' again this morning. The weather is as hot as ever. While we were down there a German aeroplane flew right over from one end to the other—north to south. The anti-aircraft guns were firing at it the whole time, but failed to hit it. It was flying at a great height, and the shrapnel appeared to be bursting all round it. At one time it flew directly over our heads; but it did not drop any bombs! A few minutes after it had passed, bits of shrapnel fell quite near us—within four or five yards—proving ...
— At Ypres with Best-Dunkley • Thomas Hope Floyd
... wounded man on the table, and again were off. The guns roared. Shrapnel dropped and exploded, or exploded in air. Overhead Zaidos was conscious that the duel in the clouds still went warily on, but he could not give it a glance. He lost all track of time. He saw others with the Red Cross badge, working, working with the same feverish haste with which he kept at ...
— Shelled by an Unseen Foe • James Fiske
... 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
... the 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 ...
— The Wrong Twin • Harry Leon Wilson
... Every man of the group had fallen forward with his bayonet pointing straight out in front of him. Some had been running with such elan that in falling their shoulders had fairly plowed into the soft ground. They had nearly all been killed by shrapnel fire, which in most cases had killed cleanly. We found one, however, who had been badly mashed by a shell which had burst in the ground at his feet, making a deep, oblong hole six feet long into which his shattered body had fallen. The metal identification tags, one of which every soldier ...
— The Note-Book of an Attache - Seven Months in the War Zone • Eric Fisher Wood
... 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 across a level field of veldt, and they commence to ascend a slight depression, which is just ...
— Impressions of a War Correspondent • George Lynch
... her, his long face working with emotion—the face of an intellectual, with that deep scar on the temple, where a fragment of shrapnel had struck him on the first day of ...
— Helena • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... the Spaniards at the battery. Hardly had he spoken when there was a peculiar whistling, singing sound in the air, and immediately afterward the noise of something exploding over our heads. It was shrapnel from the Spanish batteries. We sprung to our feet and leaped on our horses. Immediately afterward a second shot came which burst directly above us; and then a third. From the second shell one of the shrapnel bullets dropped on my wrist, hardly ...
— Rough Riders • Theodore Roosevelt
... sons of Cuba libre took to their heels, and most of the newspaper correspondents did likewise. The members of Grimes' Battery, who were not needed at the guns, were sent back to the caissons, and another round of shrapnel was sent in reply. Again a hurtling sound rent the air; again there was the fierce crack of a Spanish shell in our immediate vicinity, and, on looking around to see where this shell struck, it was observed that it had burst over the Gatling battery. Luckily, it had ...
— The Gatlings at Santiago • John H. Parker
... later, things happen which make you think suddenly and think hard. You are passing, a dozen of you together instead of the usual two or three, through those green fields by those green hedgerows when there is a sharp whiz and a crash, and a shrapnel shell from a German seventy-seven (their field gun) bursts ten yards behind you. You are standing at a corner studying a map, and you notice that a working party is passing the corner frequently on some duty or another. You were barely aware that there was ...
— Letters from France • C. E. W. Bean
... rubble came in handy for filling in that nullah. Hullo!" Parker's glasses went to his eyes. "You're right, by Jingo! They're gathering for an assault. Gad! what a beautiful mark for shrapnel. I wish we'd a ...
— The Elephant God • Gordon Casserly
... heart to reproach the Kaiser for making war on the Russia of these delightful people, just as I like to think that at this very moment good Germans may be asking him how he can bring himself to discharge shrapnel at the England of Bernard Shaw and Cunninghame Graham. History may not forgive him for it; but the practical point at the moment is that he does it, and no doubt attributes the perfidy of England to the popularity of our works. ...
— New York Times, Current History, Vol 1, Issue 1 - From the Beginning to March, 1915 With Index • Various
... showed them to be up about fourteen thousand feet, and below them an artillery duel was in progress. It was a wonderful, but terrible sight. Immediately under them, and rather too near for comfort, shrapnel was bursting all around. The "Archies," or anti-aircraft guns of the Germans, were trying to reach the French planes, and, in addition to the bullets, "woolly bears" and "flaming onions" were sent up toward them. These are two types of bursting shells, the first so named because when it explodes ...
— Air Service Boys in the Big Battle • Charles Amory Beach
... are more particulars about that young chap Speranza, the one we printed the special about last Sunday. He must have been a corker. When his lieutenant was put out of business by a shrapnel this Speranza chap rallied the men and jammed 'em through the Huns like a hot knife through butter. Killed the German officer and took three prisoners all by himself. Carried his wounded lieutenant to the rear on his shoulders, too. Then he went back into the ruins to get another wounded ...
— The Portygee • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... of order: deranged: it was not human, to be killed. But it lay motionless, with the fire hose playing upon it. Then abruptly there was an explosion. The fallen Robot, with a deafening report and a puff of green flame, burst into flying metallic fragments like shrapnel. Nearby windows were broken from the violent explosion, and pieces of the flying metal were hurled a hundred feet or more. One huge chunk, evidently a plate of the thing's body, struck into the crowd two blocks away, and ...
— Astounding Stories, April, 1931 • Various
... street of the town stretched, the houses standing in exclusive withdrawal far apart on large plots of ground, a treeless, dusty, unlovely lane. Here the summer sun raked roof and window with its untempered fire; here the winds of winter bombarded door and pane with shrapnel of sleet and charge of snow, whistling on cornice and eaves, fluttering in chimney like ...
— Trail's End • George W. Ogden
... for all I knew of their endless activity and the precious work that they were doing. I could see how the Huns were shelling them. You would see an airplane hovering, and then, close by, suddenly, a ball of cottony white smoke. Shrapnel that was, bursting, as Fritz tried to get the range with an anti-aircraft gun—an Archie, as the Tommies call them. But the plane would pay no heed, except, maybe, to dip a bit or climb a little higher ...
— A Minstrel In France • Harry Lauder
... a scratch on the forehead and saw only a red blur. I wiped them dry with my sleeve and looked again. The broad back in front of me was covered with mud. Impossible to distinguish the color of the tunic. But the shrapnel helmet above it was—French! I was in French hands. If ever I live long enough in one place, so that I may gather a few possessions and make a home for myself, on one wall of my living-room I will have a bust-length portrait, rear view, of a French brancardier, ...
— High Adventure - A Narrative of Air Fighting in France • James Norman Hall
... to advance. In a storm of shrapnel, bullets and flame, the British host swept down again upon the foe. The Germans gave desperate and deadly resistance. They fought hand to hand, with bayonets and clubbed muskets and grenades. It was a death grapple, with decisive victory on neither side. ...
— The Flag • Homer Greene
... friend not long before the end, when he was feeling the strain upon him to be heavier than he could bear; after a word or two about the war—he had volunteered to go to the front as a chaplain—he said, "So I am staying here as usual; but the incessant demands on my time try me as much as shrapnel and bullets." That sentence seems to me to confirm my view that he had not so much sacrificed as devoted himself. He never gained a serene patience; I have heard him over and over again speak with a sigh of his correspondence and the demands it made ...
— Hugh - Memoirs of a Brother • Arthur Christopher Benson
... examining 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
... the door opened and the landlord appeared, apologizing for the raid as if it had been an accident of his kitchen. We must have no fear. All danger was over. The avion—only one!—had been chased out of our neighbourhood. The noise we heard now was merely shrapnel fired by anti-aircraft guns. We would not be disturbed again, that he'd guarantee ...
— Everyman's Land • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... 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 proprietor's ...
— The Man Upstairs and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... proportion these supplies were to assume. The purchase of these works would have deprived the whole munition industry of its main support. Similar proposals have repeatedly been worked out by us, as, for example, the proposal to amalgamate the whole shrapnel industry of the United States. The fear, well grounded in itself, that such an arrangement was scarcely within the bounds of practical politics and could have been got round, could be ignored. In case of disputes as to the validity of such a step we should have gained more by the publicity ...
— My Three Years in America • Johann Heinrich Andreas Hermann Albrecht Graf von Bernstorff
... deployed 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 ...
— The Boy Allies with the Cossacks - Or, A Wild Dash over the Carpathians • Clair W. Hayes
... YORK, Dec. 31.—An order for $2,000,000 worth of shrapnel, to be used in the war in Europe, has been rejected by the Commonwealth Steel Company of Granite City, Ill., it was learned to-day, because Clarence H. Howard, president of the organization, believes warfare should ...
— Practical English Composition: Book II. - For the Second Year of the High School • Edwin L. Miller
... a powerful explosive, which was set off after a certain trigger or spring or firing pin (according to the type used) was released by the thrower. The explosive blew the grenade to bits, and it was scored, or crisscrossed, by deep indentations so that the iron would break up into small pieces like shrapnel. The grenades could be carried in a pouch or in the pocket, and were harmless as long as the detonating ...
— Ned, Bob and Jerry on the Firing Line - The Motor Boys Fighting for Uncle Sam • Clarence Young
... from the once bullet-swept water's edge to the slight shelter of a sand-bank, and walk by the narrow sap into "Shrapnel Valley," still strewn with old water-bottles and broken rum-jars, by a trench then to "Monash Valley," and there probably you start coveys of partridge, which abound now in great numbers, or you start the silver fox or ever-present hare. Wild life has returned as if there never had ...
— Europe—Whither Bound? - Being Letters of Travel from the Capitals of Europe in the Year 1921 • Stephen Graham
... least concerned with his affliction. A civilian with the toothache could not expect the consideration of a hero with a shrapnel wound. Moreover, this was her first appearance in the role of hostess at a large party, and she fluttered about like ...
— Quin • Alice Hegan Rice
... fully 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 across the vast ...
— The Vertical City • Fannie Hurst
... of a shrapnel shell and its spray of low-velocity bullets is also theoretically most destructive, but a roof of 6-inch boards will furnish perfect protection from the bullets. Mother Earth remains the best protection there is from fire. No rifle bullet can penetrate through a ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume I (of 8) - Introductions; Special Articles; Causes of War; Diplomatic and State Papers • Various
... long month back he had worked and slaved, and fought battles, and sailed his ship, and did all he could, it must be confessed, to make everybody around him happy, while a load of sorrow, which felt as big as a bag of shrapnel or a kedge anchor, lay at his own heart. He now determined to get rid of this incubus, to leave it, or creep out from under it somehow. During all these months he had tried, and tried hard, to forget his ...
— As We Sweep Through The Deep • Gordon Stables
... during which time the shrieking of shell, the crash of fallen timbers, the fragments of rocks flying through the air, shattered from the cliffs by solid shot, the heavy mutterings from the valley between the opposing armies, the splash of bursting shrapnel, and the fierce neighing of wounded artillery-horses, made a picture terribly grand and sublime, but which my pen ...
— Three Years in the Federal Cavalry • Willard Glazier
... Of the four that were attached to this gun two had already been wounded. It was glorious to see these lads of fifteen and sixteen daily withstanding the onslaught of the mighty naval guns. The rocks around their howitzer were torn by lyddite, and the ground strewn with shrapnel bullets. ...
— With Steyn and De Wet • Philip Pienaar
... had been passed, and the enemy wire, more or less cut by our shrapnel, had been crossed, our men had to attack the enemy fire trenches of the first line. These, like the other defences, varied in degree, but not in kind. They were, in the main, deep, solid trenches, dug with short bays or zigzags in the pattern of the Greek Key or badger's ...
— The Old Front Line • John Masefield
... 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
... 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 ...
— The 28th: A Record of War Service in the Australian Imperial Force, 1915-19, Vol. I • Herbert Brayley Collett
... inhuman as to refuse admittance to a stranger, and already probably a myriad new friendships and not a few engagements have resulted. Our own camaraderie is admirable. The federation of the barrage breaks down every obstacle; while a piece of shrapnel that one can display is more valuable than any letter of introduction, no matter who wrote it. Hence we all talk; and sometimes we sing too—choruses of the moment, for the most part, in one of which the depth of our affection for our maternal relative is measured and regulated ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Nov. 14, 1917 • Various
... a fearful uproar of artillery arose immediately to the west, shells began to rain in the river woods, then shrapnel, then, in long clattering cadence, volley succeeded volley, faster, faster, till the outcrash became ...
— Ailsa Paige • Robert W. Chambers
... square, but its direction was changed a little more to the right so as to take it somewhat farther from the face of the enemy's position. The artillery now opened fire upon the guns of the enemy, but the square kept on its course steadily, while a storm of bullets and fragments of shrapnel-shell flew around them. The enemy's gunners proved that their training had been good. They worked their guns quickly and their aim was accurate. General Baker, who was acting as head of the intelligence department, was struck in the face by ...
— The Dash for Khartoum - A Tale of Nile Expedition • George Alfred Henty
... me with scraps of song The desolated ways along: Through sickly fields all shrapnel-sown, And meadows reaped by death alone; By blazing cross and splintered spire, By headless Virgin in the mire; By gardens gashed amid their bloom, By gutted grave, by shattered tomb; Beside the dying and the dead, Where rocket ...
— Rhymes of a Red Cross Man • Robert W. Service
... contrivance. I am reminded again of the days during the Boer war, when one realised that it had never occurred to our happy-go-lucky Army that it was possible to make a military use of barbed wire or construct a trench to defy shrapnel. Suppose in the North Sea we got a surprise like that, and fished out a parboiled, half-drowned admiral explaining what a confoundedly slim, unexpected, almost ungentlemanly thing the enemy ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells
... out, shells, case-shot, and shrapnel had all been exhausted. The Mahsuds were firing more steadily than ever; and on the terrace itself, the infantry and sowars were in no enviable case. Unwin had fallen, shot through the head. Montague had momentarily succumbed to pain and exhaustion; ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... mentioned that part of the damage I got at Loos was a shrapnel bullet low down at the back of my neck. The wound had healed well enough, but I had pains there on a cold day. His fingers found the place and it ...
— Greenmantle • John Buchan
... said more than I meant to, Bert. I've got to turn out these machines in order that our soldiers may have shrapnel to fight with, and what with enlistments and the determination of unscrupulous workmen to take advantage of the situation, I'm pretty hard pressed. I can't very well spare steady young men like you, who have too much sense and too much patriotism ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... private had been lying with his battalion in a trench when a German aeroplane was sighted. It had hardly passed by when showers of shrapnel descended, and the Germans, in that grey- green so hard to see, were coming on as thick as locusts. Then the orders came to fall back, and he was hit as his battalion made another stand. He had crawled a mile across the fields in the night with a bullet in his arm. A medical corps officer ...
— My Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... 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 a shower ...
— With Kitchener in the Soudan - A Story of Atbara and Omdurman • G. A. Henty
... destroyed, and the destruction was beginning to live, to cover itself with fresh wreckage and dung, to smoke and consume itself. The rain had ceased in melancholy. Up aloft in the clearings of the sky, clusters of shrapnel stippled the air round aeroplanes, and the detonations reached us, far and fine. Along the sodden road we met Red Cross motor ambulances, rushing on rails of mud, but we could not see inside them. In the first stages we were interested in everything, and ...
— Light • Henri Barbusse
... wounded. I took him on my shoulders, and got him out of the line of fire. The Bavarians sent another shrapnell shell after us, and, as the projectile burst over our heads, I felt a blow on the leather rim of my kepi. "A shrapnel splinter!" I thought, scornfully: "could it not have hit me a little more to the right, and have ...
— Dr. Dumany's Wife • Mr Jkai
... letter, Friday and Saturday we moved, and rather marched up, billeting Friday night and on Saturday night—I won't go into details. On the march we saw an aeroplane being shelled—a very pretty sight—white puffs of smoke bursting all round it; one bit of shrapnel fell quite near us and made one of the brigade sergeants quite excited. I am writing this in comfort in bed in my dug-out, though my eyes keep trying to close; I am a bit tired, but I shall get a good night's sleep, I hope. It is now nearly eleven. On Sunday ...
— Letters from France • Isaac Alexander Mack
... hitting at their feet. Telt just gaped, but even as it hit the floor Brion was jumping forward. He caught it with the side of his foot, kicking it back into the dark opening of the tunnel. Telt hit the ground next to him as the orange flame of an explosion burst below. Bits of shrapnel rattled from the ...
— Planet of the Damned • Harry Harrison |
