Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: May 13, 2025
We go more quickly and trouble no more now about the star-shells, which, among us who know nothing, say, "I know" and "I will." All is changed, all habits and laws. We march exposed, upright, through the open fields. Then I suddenly understand what they have hidden from us up to the last moment we are attacking! Yes, the counter-attack has begun without our knowing it.
Away we rushed through the night, and as we went through villages where our Tommies were billeted, the strains of the old home songs Irish, Scotch and English were wafted to my ears. Except for the incessant shelling, the flash of guns, and the distant glare from the star-shells, it was almost impossible to believe we were in the terrible throes of war. I arrived at G.H.Q. about 8.30 p.m.
Order began again, and against the whitish and bluish sheets spread by the star-shells I saw the pendulums of the step once more fall into line under the long body of shadows. During the night there was a distribution of brandy. By the light of lanterns we saw the cups held out, shaking and gleaming. The libation drew from our entrails a moment of delight and uplifting.
A German sentry would reply to him, more of our men would fire back, more Germans join in, star-shells make the night as bright as day; then Fritz would "get the wind up" thoroughly and call for artillery support our guns would blaze into reply and there would be many casualties just because one man lost his nerve and "saw things."
Phantasmal palaces of shrieking lightning, with arches of star-shells, appear and vanish amid forests of ghastly gleams. While the bombardment is patching the sky with continents of flame, it is drawing still nearer. Volleys of flashes are plunging in here and there and devouring the other lights. The supernatural army is arriving! All the highways of space are crowded.
As we filed through the village the reflections of star-shells threw weird lights on half-ruined houses; an occasional shell screamed overhead, to burst with a dull, echoing sound within the shattered walls of former cottages; and one could hear the rat-tat-tat of machine-guns.
That is, if we don't go over the top at 'em first." "I hope we'll be there!" murmured Joe. "And I hope we get a good light so we can film the fighting." "They'll be almost light enough from the star-shells, bombs and big guns," said Private Drew. "Say, you ought to see the illumination some nights when the Boches start to get busy! Coney Island is nothing to it, Buddy!"
"Ah," says the soldier, "and how he said good-by to us!" We breathe a little now. We do not think any more unless it be that we are at last saved, at last lying down. Some engineers fire star-shells, to reconnoiter the state of things in the ground we have evacuated. Some have the curiosity to risk a glance over it.
They hung in the air alight for about thirty seconds, illuminating the ground like day. When they disappeared the guns flashed out; then the French replied; after that more star-shells; then the guns spoke again, and so it continued. We were suddenly stopped by an officer warning us to put out our lamp immediately, and proceed cautiously for about three hundred yards.
He only has a two or four-foot-wide trench to cross, and even if the alarm be given he is back among the million and two shell-holes of No Man's Land before any action can be taken: even though they bomb their front thoroughly the chances are in the scout's favor; though they make No Man's Land bright as day with star-shells and flares there are plenty of shell-holes deep enough to completely hide him from view.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking