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At 4.15 in the morning of February 21, 1916, the great battle began, the German guns deluging the sector with shells of every caliber that smashed and tore the French positions and surroundings until the very face of nature was distorted. French trench shelters vanished and in Caures Wood and La Ville Wood men were buried in the dugouts or blown to fragments.
Hilary posted his little band skilfully underneath these natural shelters in such a way that they would be able to command the bit of sky from every angle. The men jerked and fidgeted. The heavens darkened with massed fliers, and still they came. The Mercutians were taking no chances. "Plenty of guests at our funeral," Wat chuckled, sighting along the barrel of his gun.
"It looks to me," said Edmund, "as if the rest of the campaign wouldn't interest us very much." On the 10th of March we set forth on snowshoes and travelled through the thick forest. That night we encamped at a brook. The Rangers built shelters of boughs in a short time.
It beneficently covers the wheat fields, swelling the crop and the Flour Trust gets us by the throat like a sudden quinsy. It spreads the tail of its white kirtle over the red seams of the rugged north and the Alaskan short story is born. Etiolated perfidy, it shelters the mountain traveler burrowing from the icy air and, melting to-morrow, drowns his brother in the valley below.
Some of the soldiers of General Taylor's army were altogether uncertain into what bushes of the neighboring chaparral the norther had blown their tents, and they went out in search of their missing cotton duck shelters.
I am not speaking of the uncertain shelters of those who struggle upon the skirts of civilisation, in careless, uncared-for wretchedness, without settled homes, or regular occupation, the miserable camp followers of life's warfare, living habitually from hand to mouth, in a reckless wrestle with the world, for mere existence. I do not mean these, but the households of our common working people.
To think that sober men should, with one hand spend vast sums in lying advertisements for the Army, and with the other maintain a system that makes the soldier on furlough reply to the question "Shall I enlist, mate?" with the words "Not while you got a razor to cut yer throat".... Ah, well, common sense would reach even the Army some day, and the soldier be treated and disciplined as a man and a citizen and perhaps, when it did, and the soldier gave a better description of his life, the other citizen, the smug knave who despises him while he shelters behind him, will become less averse from having his own round shoulders straightened, his back flattened and his muscles developed as he takes his part in the first fundamental elementary duty of a citizen preparation for the defence of hearth and home.... Lucille!
They chuckled gleefully at each nefarious trip, almost wished some interfering N.C.O. would appear from an R.E. depôt and originate by his unpleasantries something of a rough house. Shelters through which streams trickled were run up and the floors tiled with a queer assortment of tins, empty cartridge cases and odd bits of wood.
Surely, children, there is One who cares for the small tender things of earth, and shelters them from the rude blasts. Nimble-foot and Silver-nose often saw their cousins, the black squirrels, playing in the sunshine, chasing each other merrily up and down the trees or over the brush-heaps; their jetty coats and long feathery tails forming a striking contrast with the whiteness of the snow.
In the midst of a garden whence there are delightful views, stands a large rotunda open on all sides, with a light, spreading roof supported on elegant pillars. This rural baldachino shelters a dancing-floor.
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