United States or Turks and Caicos Islands ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !


Up in the fir trees the nests of the pigeons are sometimes so big that it appears as if they must use the same year after year, adding fresh twigs, else they could hardly attain such bulk. Those in the ash-poles are not nearly so large. In the open drives blue cartridge-cases lie among the grass, the brass part tarnished by the rain, thrown hurriedly aside from the smoking breech last autumn.

All that the men wanted, all they ever asked for, was water and ammunition; and here the greatest self-sacrifice of all to the cause was frequently seen; for a wounded man, unable to struggle forward another yard, would, as he fell to the ground, hastily unbuckle water-bottle and cartridge-cases and hand them to an advancing comrade with a cheery word, "Go on and good luck, my lad," and then as often as not he would lay him down to die with parched lips and cleaving tongue.

Here, indeed, a momentary gleam of hope revived, when Alf found the spent cartridge-cases which his brother had thrown down on the occasion of his shooting for the purpose of impressing his captors, and they searched every yard of the island, high and low, for several days, before suffering themselves to relapse into the old state of despair.

The rifles grew hot so hot that they had to be changed for those of the reserve companies. The Maxim guns exhausted all the water in their jackets, and several had to be refreshed from the water-bottles of the Cameron Highlanders before they could go on with their deadly work. The empty cartridge-cases, tinkling to the ground, formed a small but growing heap beside each man.

His Cossack uniform with ivory-topped cartridge-cases intensifies the length of his body and of his face. He has all the medals there are, but only wears two, a Vladimir Cross at the centre of his collar, like a brooch, and a Georgian on his chest. His head is long, and his cheeks seem to curve inwards from his temples.

Occasionally at night the N.C.O. seizes the traversing-handles, and with his thumb on the button slowly sweeps that range of sand-bags, till the feed-block sucks up the cartridge-belt like a chaff-cutter and the empty cartridge-cases lie as thick round the tripod as acorns under an oak. The Huns reply by taking a flashlight photograph of us with a calcium flare, and then all is still again.

The ground of the trench was littered with empty cartridge-cases, and there were many dead bodies. The last shell, as I have said, had played havoc with the parapet. In the next spell of darkness Peter crawled through the gap and twisted among some snowy hillocks. He was no longer afraid of shells, any more than he was afraid of a veld thunderstorm.

The sacks were brought in, Romana called in four or five officers, the dollars were counted out and a receipt given to Terence for them. "I will send the ammunition up in half an hour, Marquis." "I thank you greatly, senor. I will at once order a number of men to set to work casting bullets and preparing cartridge-cases.

It was part of something else, something still bigger: a monstrous shadowy arm had thrust out from Europe and torn open this country, erected these chimneys, piled these heaps and sent the ration-tins and cartridge-cases to follow them. It was gigantic kindred with that ancient predecessor which had built the walls of Zimbabwe.

Nevertheless some suppressed part of my being had been stirring up ugly and monstrous memories, of distortion, disfigurement, torment and decay, of dead men in stained and ragged clothes, with their sole-worn boots drawn up under them, of the blood trail of a dying man who had crawled up to a dead comrade rather than die alone, of Kaffirs heaping limp, pitiful bodies together for burial, of the voices of inaccessible wounded in the rain on Waggon Hill crying in the night, of a heap of men we found in a donga three days dead, of the dumb agony of shell-torn horses, and the vast distressful litter and heavy brooding stench, the cans and cartridge-cases and filth and bloody rags of a shelled and captured laager.