United States or Singapore ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
It was the shadow of a field-telephone and its poles! And the airplane from which that photograph was taken was so high that it must have looked like a mere speck to one on the ground. There's war magic for you. You will ask, of course, why the Germans don't maintain over the Allied lines a similar system of aerial observation. They do when the Allies let them.
For every Boche battery that opens on us, two or three of ours thunder back a reply and that without any delays other than those incidental to the use of that maddening instrument, the field-telephone.
"Obey orders if you break owners" is a good rule, but a really efficient river-boss knows a better. It runs, "Get the logs out. Get them out peaceably if you can, but get them out." He does not need a field-telephone to headquarters to teach him how to live up to the spirit of this rule. That might involve headquarters. Jimmy was such a river-boss. Therefore when Mr.
Now, if you put your ear to the receiver of a field-telephone, you find yourself, as it were, suddenly thrust into a vast subterranean cavern, filled with the wailings of the lost, the babblings of the feeble-minded, and the profanity of the exasperated.
They were both parties of sappers. The one party had a great roll of wire on a drum, and as quick as you could think they were unreeling it, and as they unreeled it fastening it to eaves, overhanging branches, and to corners of walls, stretching it out forward. It was the field-telephone.
A thousand fresh Hungarian troops had just come in next morning, and were waiting for their coffee, when the word came by field-telephone that a Russian flier was dropping bombs about twenty kilometres away.
It is hardly necessary to add that we do not possess a real field-telephone.
Since then we have made the acquaintance of the military field-telephone, and we feel distinctly softened towards the young woman at home who, from her dug-out in "Gerrard," or "Vic.," or "Hop.," used to goad us to impotent frenzy. She was at least terse and decided. If you rang her up and asked for a number, she merely replied, as the case might be, and switched you off.
So cordial and informal were their greetings that I felt as though I were being welcomed at a country-house in America instead of the headquarters of a German army in the field. So perfect was the field-telephone service that the staff had been able to keep in touch with our progress ever since, five hours before, we had entered the German lines, and had waited dinner for us.
The whirring of the field-telephone wires which hang low, hastily looped over the branches of olive and mulberry trees, alone indicates any activity of man. There are no troops in sight, save a patrol which stops us and examines our papers. It seems difficult to realize that a great battle is impending. No scene could be more peaceful. In the marshes, frogs are croaking in loud unison.
Word Of The Day