pitch-forking

Updated: May 16, 2025

Fifteen hundred sick or exhausted men are housed there and there are no hot douches or chintz curtains to cheer them! We were taken first to the church, a large featureless building at the head of the street. In the doorway our passage was obstructed by a mountain of damp straw which a gang of hostler-soldiers were pitch-forking out of the aisles.

Edith Wharton - Fighting France, from Dunkerque to Belfort