Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
"All of a sudden everything seemed bright and I saw a fellow right close to me and then there was a noise that made my ears ring and dirt flew in my face and I heard that fellow yell. As soon as I took a couple more steps I stumbled and fell into a place that was hot the earth was hot, just like an oven. That was a new shell-hole I was in.
The sockray Bosh made another charge, and this was the end, every man in the shell-hole knew. There were literally swarms of the grey figures, their bullets came like a shower of hail. Jimmie decided to wait till the enemy was near enough for him to aim the revolver with effect.
The attack began at dawn with the capture of 2,000 yards of German positions on the outskirts of the shell-torn mining center, the Canadians driving their lines closer about the heart of the city and gaining possession of many railway embankments and colliery sidings in the northwest and southwest suburbs which had been strongly fortified for defense with a series of shell-hole nests of machine guns.
You would see him, if the sculptor followed my thought, sitting in front of his shell-hole on Vimy Ridge, calm, dispassionate, devoted to his duty and the day's work, quietly giving the directions that guided the British guns in their work of blasting the Hun out of the refuge he had chosen when the Canadians had driven him from the spot where the major sat.
He came out from his punishment a King's sergeant which means that whatever he did nobody could degrade him. He got this for lifting his trench mortar over the parapet when all the detachment were killed. Carrying it out into a shell-hole, he held back the Hun attack and saved the situation. He got drunk again, and again chose to be returned to the trenches.
Still nearer the enemy's wire defenses lay a smaller shell-hole. By creeping up beside the sentry Prescott was able to see it. He remained where he was while a soldier of the French party, holding a bomb in his right hand, crept out of the crater, moving noiselessly ahead. Arrived at the edge of the smaller shell-hole the soldier sent back a hand signal, then crept down into concealment.
And the funny part of it is, we wouldn't know each other if we met in the street. That's because we met in a shell-hole. I tried to hunt you up along the line, made inquiries in the hospital at Rheims, and tried to get a line on you from the Red Cross and Y.M.C.A. Nothing doing. Somebody told me you were in the Flying Corps. I guess I must have fainted while they were taking you away.
Sure you examined the ground ahead, and saw to it we'd hit no bumps that might give us trouble?" "It's all right there, Tom; could hardly be better. But be sure you don't change from a straight course, because there's a nasty shell-hole, about ten feet deep, to the left. If we struck that good-night!" "I notice you marked it with that pole, Jack, and I'll swing clear, you can depend on that."
It was time to seek cover, which was not easy to find just there, where masses of stonework were piled high. At any moment things might drop. I ducked my head behind a curtain of bricks as I heard a shrill "coo-ee!" from a shell. It burst close with a scatter, and a tin cup was flung against a bit of wall close to where the lanky man sat in a shell-hole.
Three bees and a fly winging their way past, with the rise and fall of their varied hums, were sufficient to renew vividly for me the blackness of night over the sticky mud of Souville, and to cloud for a moment the scent of clover and dying grass, with that terrible sickly sweet odor of human flesh in an old shell-hole.
Word Of The Day