United States or Ukraine ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Roman vessels a red thing that might have been a lamp, another that might have been a lachrymatory. "Well," said Ethel, "you know, Norman, I always told you that the children's pots and pans in the clay ditch were very like Roman pottery." "Posthumus's patty pan!" said Norman, holding it up. "No doubt this was the bottle filled with the old queen's tears when Cloten was killed."
His sausage balloons began to reappear in the sky as the summer wore on; he increased the number of his aeroplanes; more of his five-point-nine howitzers were sending their compliments; he stretched out his shell fire over communication trenches and strong points; mustered great quantities of lachrymatory shells and for the first time used gas shells with a generosity which spoke his faith in their efficacy.
We started off in the dark and rode through Hénencourt and Millencourt to Albert. Just before we reached Albert we passed through a cloud of lachrymatory gas, which made me weep copious tears for nearly half an hour. The great sight in Albert was of course the ruined cathedral, with its colossal statue of the Virgin and Child hanging downwards over the roadway.
In order to counter the use of lachrymatory compounds by the enemy, compounds which penetrated the helmet insufficiently to cause serious casualties but sufficiently to hamper the individual by lachrymation, goggles were introduced in which the eyes were protected by rims of rubber sponge.
The lachrymatory shell makes your eyes smart, and the Germans apparently considered this a great auxiliary to high explosives and shrapnel. Was it because of the success of the first gas attack at Ypres that they now placed such reliance in gas shells? The shell when it lands seems a "dud," which is a shell that has failed to explode; then it blows out a volume of gas.
Nevertheless, important events were shaping themselves about this time. German artillery attacks increased in violence against the British front. Aeroplanes were particularly busy observing all moves on the board. In Champagne the Germans kept the French occupied with heavy shells and "lachrymatory projectiles." These projectiles have been described as "tearful and wonderful engines of war."
But in some degree it was merely a development of the "stinkpot" which the Chinese have employed for years. So too the tear-bomb, or lachrymatory bomb, which painfully irritated the eyes of all in its neighbourhood when it burst, filling them with tears and making the soldiers practically helpless in the presence of a swift attack.
Demolished villages, the only shelter for troops in a desolate area, have been rendered uninhabitable for days by a concentrated lachrymator enemy shoot of less than one hour. Again, walking into gas "pockets" up a trench one has been stopped as by a fierce blow across the eyes, the lachrymatory effect was so piercing and sudden.
Wigglesworth sitting down to dinner at a broad, flat tombstone carving one of his own plump little marble cherubs, gnawing a pair of crossbones and drinking out of a hollow death's-head or perhaps a lachrymatory vase or sepulchral urn, while his hostess's dead children waited on him at the ghastly banquet.
A thousand vague and lachrymatory fancies took possession of my soul and even the idea of suicide flitted across my brain; but it is a trait in the perversity of human nature to reject the obvious and the ready, for the far-distant and equivocal.
Word Of The Day