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We were under the bank at Grembergen, just across the river from Termonde. The enemy were putting over shells about one hundred yards from where we were crawling toward a machine-shop sheltering wounded men. The obus were noisy and the dirt flew high. Scattered bits of metal struck the bank.
This routine duty done, he passed slowly towards a more deserted because a more exposed part of the defences, and seated himself on the frozen sward alone. The cannon thundered around him. He heard unconsciously: from time to time an obus hissed and splintered close at his feet; he saw with abstracted eye.
"I suspect," said the former, "that we shall soon have worse calamities to endure than the Prussian obus and the black loaf. The Communists will have their day." "I shall be in my grave before then," said De Breze, in hollow accents.
"I refer to the flattened trajectory and the obus controversy." "We have not heard the reports," answered the commandant, with becoming gravity. "But we own a mountain howitzer." "The modernity of German ordnance " began Augustus. "Do you dance, Mr. Albumblatt?" asked Mrs. Starr. "For we'll have a hop and all be your partners," Mrs. Bainbridge exclaimed.
"You've got to get well in a hurry; there's work for you to do! All sorts of things have been happening since that obus knocked you out. Just a week ago, for instance, the President went before Congress and " "What's that you say? Not war?" "Yes, war, young man!
At daybreak the bombardment recommenced a terrible storm of shells of every calibre bombs, torpedoes flew overhead to salute the Boches, and to complete the destruction which had been going on for three days. Without paying attention to the few obus which the Boches sent over in reply to our storm, we all mounted the parapets to get a view of the scene.
A Belgian, one of the boy soldiers, came forward to sing to the bearded men. And the song that he sang was "La valse des obus" "The Dance of the Shells." "Dear friends, I'm going to sing you some rhymes on the war at the Yser." The men to whom he was singing had been holding the Yser for ten months. "I want you to know that life in the trenches, night by night, isn't gay."
Yet it was not fear which was the matter with them. Intellectually they were brave men and coerced themselves into joining many perilous adventures. It was the intolerable strain upon the nervous system that made wrecks of them. Some men are attacked with a kind of madness in the presence of shells. It is what a French friend of mine called la folie des obus.
"Twenty hundreds of obus," the clerk who had been counting the money said. "That is the payment, is it not, Coru-hin-Irigod?" "That is the payment," the slave dealer replied. The clerk swept up the remaining coins, and his companion took them over and put them in an iron-bound chest, snapping the padlock.
The one is the incendiary shell obus fumigene while the other is a shell, the contents of which, upon coming into contact with the gas contained within the gas-bag, set up certain chemical reactions which precipitate an explosion and fire. The incendiary shells are charged with a certain compound which is ignited by means of a fuse during its flight.
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