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Updated: June 10, 2025
Where destruction pure and simple is desired, the shell is charged with a high explosive such as picric acid or T.N.T., the colloquial abbreviation for the devastating agent scientifically known as "Trinitrotoluene," the base of which, in common with all the high explosives used by the different powers and variously known as lyddite, melinite, cheddite, and so forth, is picric acid.
Thanks to the devoted sentinels dying at their posts in the sea of fire, the range was exact, and the exploding melinite shattered the charging columns. "An appalling scene followed. The shells had burst or overthrown the fire containers and the Germans were seen, running wildly amid the flames which overwhelmed hundreds of wounded and disabled.
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.
There were three heads close together for a space of twenty seconds or so, and then a fearful explosion happened the unique, tremendous laughter of Mr Colclough, which went off like a charge of melinite and staggered the furniture. 'Now, now! a feminine voice protested from an unseen interior. I was taken to the drawing-room, an immense apartment with an immense piano black as midnight in it.
Gunners say that melinite sometimes does these things. I rode south-west, over Range Post and a bit of the Long Valley to Waggon Hill, our nearest point to the relief column and the English mail. At no great distance ten miles or so I could see the hills overlooking the Tugela, where the English are.
That shell will be cherished after extraction of its fuse and melinite charge. Fire from other Boer guns proved more disastrous. Surprise Hill's howitzer threw one shell to the little encampment behind Range Point, where it killed one man and wounded four of the unfortunate Royal Irish Fusiliers. But the time seems now ripe for larger events.
The war-balloons moved slowly forward in a straight line at an elevation of four thousand feet, sweeping the Moslem host from van to rear with a ceaseless hail of melinite and cyanogen bombs.
The small arms consisted of a couple of heavy ten-bore elephant guns carrying three-ounce melinite shells; a dozen rifles and fowling-pieces of different makes of which three, a single and a double-barrelled rifle and a double-barrelled shot-gun, belonged to her Ladyship, as well as a dainty brace of revolvers, one of half a dozen braces of various calibres which completed the minor armament of the Astronef.
You come out of the dust and the stench of melinite, not knowing where you were, hardly knowing whether you were hit only knowing that the next was rushing on its way. No eyes to see it, no limbs to escape, no bulwark to protect, no army to avenge. You squirm between iron fingers. Nothing to do but endure. LADYSMITH, Dec. 6. "There goes that stinker on Gun Hill," said the captain.
"The aerostats have stationed themselves at great elevations over the ramparts of fortresses and the bivouacs of armies, and have rained down a hail of dynamite, melinite, fire-shells and cyanogen poison-grenades, which have at once put guns out of action, blown up magazines, rendered fortifications untenable, and rent masses of infantry and squadrons of cavalry into demoralised fragments, before they had the time or the opportunity to strike a blow in reply.
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