Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 19, 2025
Then about two minutes' telephoned talk to the Battery and ten minutes of spouting lyddite volcanoes finished the minnenwerfer trouble. But all this above-ground work was by way of an aside to the Sapper Subaltern. He was far too busy with his mine gallery to worry about the doings of gunners and bomb-throwers and infantry and such-like fellows.
The scene at Harwich was like that which follows a colliery explosion. Of the British seamen in the hospital thirteen were suffering from severe burns, five from less serious burns, two from the effects of lyddite fumes, and one each from concussion, severe injury, slight wounds, shock, and slight burns. A few wounded German sailors also lay in the hospital.
With few exceptions, the Lyddite shells hit the mark. Range is given more by increase or diminution of the charge than elevation or depression of the howitzers. The guns kicked viciously and ran back at each discharge. Bursting violently, the shells threw out big sheets of tawny flame, followed by showers of stones and a cloud of dust and brownish smoke.
They had nothing to do but to stand or sit down near their horses, watching the fire from the enemy's batteries on the hills, and the bursting of our lyddite shells among them, the outburst of brownish-yellow smoke rendering them easily distinguishable from the sudden puffs of white vapour caused by the explosion of the shrapnel shells of the artillery.
From half-past five a tremendous fire had been kept up on the Boer positions. The naval guns were distributing their heavy lyddite shells among the entrenchments distant from three to six miles, and occasionally throwing up a missile on to the summit of the lofty hill known as Spion Kop away to the left front. Not less steadily or effectively the howitzer battery was pounding the Boer position.
Lyddite and melinite swept like hail across the thin line of intrepid horsemen." "My God! How they fell!" writes Captain Letorez, who, after his horse was shot under him, leapt on a riderless animal and came through unhurt. When the men got up close to the German guns they found themselves riding full tilt into hidden wire entanglements seven strands of barbed wire.
When we approached Modder River he exclaimed that we were now within range of the Boer guns, and accordingly pulled up the windows as a sort of protection against shells and bullets. As we steamed into Modder River station the 4.7 gun called "Joe Chamberlain" loosed off a Lyddite shell at the Magersfontein trenches.
She was a bulky Dutch vrouw, with a dishevelled head of coarse black hair, and a dirty cotton gown, and dirty bare feet in bulgy shoes that were trodden down at heel. But with her livid, purple face and protruding, bloodshot eyeballs uplifted to the drifting cloud of greenish lyddite vapour that thinned away overhead, she was great and terrible, and the very incarnation of Maternity Bereft.
Ears stopped with wax; eyes half blinded by the scorching yellow blasts; still, in some chance seconds interval, we could hear the hive-like b rr rr rr rr rr r r r r of the small arms plying on the shore; still see, through some break in the acrid smoke, the profile of the castle and houses; nay, of the very earth itself and the rocky cliff; see them all, change, break, dissolve into dust; crumble as if by enchantment into strange new outlines, under the enormous explosions of our 15-in. lyddite shells.
Then they talked about lyddite, and it was quite clear that it had been a terrible bogy in their minds, and that they had imagined it was to have an effect like throwing earthquakes at them, and it was equally evident that the result of actual experience had fallen short of their apprehensions.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking