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Updated: May 13, 2025
The Norman rifles and machine-guns shrieked out lead in a high staccato until the advance, slackened, wavered and fell back. Hun artillery showered shell, gas, and shrapnel over every yard of ground. For a period the Normans fell in dozens everywhere. The canal in places was stained red, and Norman bodies drifted twirling away on its fast-running waters before sinking.
Shrapnel. He spoke like a man having a right to be indignant, but excepting that the doctor had bestowed nicknames upon him in a speech at a meeting, no one could discover the grounds for it. He nodded briefly.
But they do not use high-explosive here. Shrapnel merely and uselessly torments. When I first saw the Cathedral I was told that there had been calm for several days. I know that German agents in neutral countries constantly deny that the Cathedral is now shelled. When I saw the Cathedral again the next morning, five shells had just been aimed at it.
Rations and ammunitions were issued and off we started. We crossed the Yperlee Canal by a foot bridge and climbed the steep slope once more into the deadly salient. As we passed down to the bridges in Indian file several of our men were struck by shrapnel bullets. When we crossed over the canal we were led to the west of La Brique and halted in a ditch, where we promptly dug in.
The whistling death came out of space. The French went on, a wide shallow valley opened out before them, and they descended by the easy slope into it. Here the German shells and shrapnel ceased to fall among them, but, as the heavy thunder continued, John knew the guns had merely turned aside their fire for other points on the French line. Carstairs by his side gave an immense sigh of relief.
A shrapnel battery had been emplaced among the rapid-fire pieces during the recent interval. A hundred yards down the works to the east landed the first finger of a hand that groped for headquarters. Boylan watched for the second shell one eye, and as little besides as possible, above the rim of the trench now deserted.
One could be within a few hundred yards of the firing-line and literally not see a thing save the fleecy puffs of bursting shrapnel. Indeed, I don't know what we should have done had it not been for the church towers. These were conveniently sprinkled over the landscape every cluster of houses seemed to have one and did their best to make up for the region's topographical shortcomings.
But to lie inglorious beneath showers of shrapnel darting divergent from the unassailable sky meekly to be blown out of life by level gusts of grape to clench our teeth and shrink helpless before big shot pushing noisily through the consenting air this was horrible! "Lie down, there!" a captain would shout, and then get up himself to see that his order was obeyed.
The American who desires to satisfy himself about that need only to visit the Military Park at Vicksburg, or the country about Petersburg or Richmond, to recognize that even fifty years ago our soldiers understood the art of sheltering themselves from bullet and shrapnel in the bosom of Mother Earth.
I had a piece of shrapnel or something through the right upper arm, clearing the bone and making a hole about as big as a half dollar. My left shoulder was full of shrapnel fragments, and began to pain like fury. More tea. More rum. More fags. Another faint.
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