Bombardment

“ To our hero and to the hundreds of onlookers the bombardment formed a grand but awful spectacle. Fascinated by the sight, they watched the salvoes of artillery directed at the bastions, every shot striking home, sending up clouds of dust, and followed often enough by a fall of masonry. The rebel shots whistled and rattled in the air, guns flashed and shells exploded both over their own men and over the doomed city. From the highest to the lowest, from the general in command to the youngest drummer-boy, all knew that this was the crowning work of anxious months of toil. ”

“ From all sides the gunfire and the bursting shells hurl their swift shafts of light and stripe confusedly the black sky over our heads. The bombardment then becomes so intense that its illumination has no break. ”

“ The passage overhead of German aeroplanes made nights uneasy. Darkness was lit by those huge flashes in the sky, which denoted explosions of our dumps of shells. The ground shook many times an hour with great concussions. Sometimes the crash of bombs and patter of machine-guns firing at our transport lasted till pale dawn appeared or its approach was heralded by the bombardment of our guns, whose voice pronounced the prologue of attack. ”

“ In a bomb-proof dug-out I may be smashed to atoms and in the open may survive ten hours' bombardment unscathed. No soldier outlives a thousand chances. But every soldier believes in Chance and trusts his luck. ”

“ At 5 o'clock the bombardment began, slowly at first and then growing in volume until the whole air quivered with the rush of the larger shells and the earth shook with the concussion of guns. In a few minutes the whole distant landscape disappeared in smoke and dust, which hung for a while in the still air and then drifted slowly across the line of battle. ”

“ Hundreds of guns along miles of front and miles of depth were taking part in the most stupendous bombardment yet attempted by the army. From ‘Granny,’ the enormous howitzer that fired six times an hour at a range of seventeen thousand yards, to machine guns in the front line trenches, every available piece of ordnance was adding its quota to what constituted a veritable hell of noise. ”

“ When the officers and men of those two attacking battalions lay in the mud on that pitch-black night, soaked to the skin and shivering with cold, as they lay there waiting for the awful hour when it seems as if horror itself has been let loose, and as they wondered in their own minds what lay before them, gradually the German bombardment started, and then by degrees increased in intensity, until for fully thirty minutes before zero hour it became perfect hell. ”

“ That no human being could survive such a bombardment were many grewsome proofs. In one place for a mile the road was lined with those wicker baskets in which the Germans carry their ammunition. These were filled with shells, unexploded, and behind the trenches were hundreds more of these baskets, some for the shells of the siege-guns, as large as lobster-pots or umbrella-stands, and others, each with three compartments, for shrapnel. In gutters along the road and in the wheat-fields these brass shells flashed in the sunshine like tiny mirrors. ”

“ Why, it's like boomerang-throwing, for this last, you'll swear, circled round you before it sank nestling under the edge of the plate of steaming pork-stew in front of you. The air is thick with these doughy missiles. Nobody is the least surprised except us, and we become quite absorbed in watching the friendly bombardment. ”

“ For the most part, however, we found the German trenches obliterated, the little village a smoking heap of ruins, and those Germans who survived, dazed and frightened, amid piles of torn corpses. If this enormous concentration of guns was required to blast a path of 1,400 yards with a thirty-five-minute bombardment, what a gigantic concentration of artillery, what a colossal expenditure of ammunition, will be required to drive a wedge several miles deep through positions which the Germans have spent three seasons in strengthening and consolidating! ”

“ Thousands upon thousands of shells of all sizes were employed. The bombardment from both sides lasted three days and three nights, until at last not a soldier, neither French nor German, was left in the village. Both sides had been obliged to retreat before the infernal fire of the opponent, for not a man would have escaped alive out of that inferno. The whole slope and height were veiled in an impenetrable smoke. In the evening of the third day the enemy's bombardment died down a little, and we were ordered to go forward again into the shell torn ruins. ”

“ We were busily engaged making our morning ablutions in some shell holes when, like a bolt from the blue, hell broke loose in the form of the most violent bombardment I had experienced up to that time, lasting twenty minutes, missiles of every kind raining down on us on all sides. "Stand to!"—and we waited.
At the end of twenty minutes our men started jumping out of their trenches ahead of us and charging across. They were met by the enemy in mass formation and overwhelmed. They died to a man. ”

“ By a bombardment, technically speaking, is meant a more or less continuous shell-fire upon a place with a view to destroying magazines, buildings, materials, and supplies of all kinds, in addition to inflicting the greatest possible losses upon the garrison and producing among the inhabitants a state of terror and unrest, frequently extending to mutiny, and finally causing the surrender of the place. ”

“ Nothing was more discouraging than this hopeless inferiority in long range guns. Assaulting troops, no matter how spirited and courageous, cannot hold their advance in the teeth of a bombardment that scatters emplacements like chaff before the wind and shocks men into a state of insensibility. The stunning effect of massive, high explosives is more important than the casualties caused by direct hits. ”

“ In the British service a bombardier is a non-commissioned grade in the artillery below that of corporal.
Bombardment. Is an attack upon a fortress or fortified town by means of shells, red-hot shot, carcasses, rockets, etc., to burn and destroy the buildings, and kill the inhabitants, and by this means compel its surrender. A bombardment requires little engineering skill; whereas a regular siege requires the aid of engineers to direct the attack against fortifications, guns, and soldiery, leaving the inhabitants and buildings untouched. ”

“ A slow bombardment may also precede the active cannonade which prepares for an assault, or the systematic artillery attack of a regular siege.
DEFENCE AGAINST BOMBARDMENT. 8. The defence against bombardment is frequently, from necessity, strictly passive, and consists in so disposing 11 the troops and materials as to protect them under bomb- and splinter-proofs, repairing damages to the latter and to magazines and parapets as occasion offers; saving the ammunition of the place by firing only such shots as promise to pay for themselves by the effect produced ”

“ Our bombardment is the most uplifting and exciting thing. So fast do the shells fly over and detonate on the enemy ground that it is almost impossible to distinguish the isolated shell-bursts; they are lost in one dense fog of smoke. Just now we ceased to be rational as we stood watching it. "That's the stuff to give 'em!" cried a Tommy in his excitement. "Pump it over! Pump it over!" ”

“ It might naturally be supposed that, with this continued bombardment, much blood would be spilt; and when all our agents are dwelling on this continuance as a cruelty, every reader must conclude that needless carnage was perpetrated, and much blood shed. But no such thing; not one drop could be spilt, and why? Because every creature had left the town before the eight hours had commenced to run! But the bombardment was continued for two reasons. In the first place, every house, as in Paris, was a fort ”

“ The German troops who were holding that part were about to be relieved. They had suffered from the slow, continual bombardment. There were deep dug-outs in their trenches, where they saved the men as far as possible, but one after another these would be crushed or blocked by a heavy shell. The tired companies had lost in some cases actually half their men by this shell fire, losing them slowly, day by day, as a man might bleed to death. ”

“ The bombardment had begun on the 25th, and night after night from the hilltop at Couin watchers saw with exultation and confident expectation, reflected in many letters, the great shells picking out the enemy's lines with fire. ”

“ Meanwhile the bombardment continues without intermission, and the night becomes intensely cold and eerie. Will the darkness never pass and let us get started on the job?
Soon after midnight the infantry, who are to make the assault, arrive at their places of assembly, full of quips and jests, a sure sign that they are cheery and in good form for the coming fray. Rum is served out, and the men lie down in little bunches, either to snatch a few minutes’ sleep or else to resume their constant arguments and bickerings on every subject under the sun except anything connected with the war. ”

“ During the next day the scout wandered about the beleaguered city, viewing the animated and in many respects terrible scene of warfare which it presented,—the fierce bombardment from the Federal works, extending in a long curve from the river above to the river below the city; the hot return fire of the defendants; the equally fierce exchange of fire between the gunboats and mortars and the intrenchments on the bluffs; the bursting of shells in the city streets; the ruined habitations, and the cave-like refuges in which the citizens sought safety from the death-dealing missiles. ”

“ The danger, indeed, to life and limb of a bombardment is very slight. I would at any time prefer to be for 24 hours in the most exposed portion of a bombarded town, than walk 24 times across Oxford Street in the middle of the day. A bomb is a joke in comparison with those great heavy wagons which are hurled at pedestrians by their drivers in the streets of London. ”

“ We began by climbing Battery Buchanan, near the landing, and inside the main line of works. Trenches, embrasures, casemate and barbette guns, bomb-proofs, gabions, riflemen’s pits, all in sand that no rifle projectiles could breach, and bombardment could only render stronger, seemed to assure absolute impregnability to this work alone, except against regular siege operations. ”

“ When it reached the trenches a preliminary bombardment was the stroke of fate that led to the prompt capitulation of some two hundred survivors to a British charge. The remainder of the thousand men was practically all casualties from shell-bursts, which, granting some exaggeration in a prisoner's tale, illustrates what killing the guns may wreak if the target is under their projectiles. ”

“ They have given pleasure and strength to men as they went out to do immortal deeds. No wounded soldier, or parched traveler, thinks lightly of a cup of water because it perished in the using; and so it is with the songs our soldiers sing.
VI
EASTER SUNDAY
Night and day for a week, the fearful bombardment continued. Our guns were everywhere, and belching forth without intermission. Dumps of shells were almost as common as sheaves in a corn-field, and processions of ammunition-wagons piled the shells up faster than the gorging guns could take them. The noise was something beyond imagination. ”

“ Well, we eventually got back to the car and to the base.
At twelve o’clock that night the Boches started shelling the town. You can’t imagine the feeling it gives one in the pit of one’s stomach to hear the gun go off in the distance, then the horrible screech of the onrushing shell, and finally the deafening explosion that shakes the plaster down on your cot. Our chiefs were at the outposts, and none of us knew enough to get out and go to the abri, so we just lay there shivering and sweating a cold sweat through the whole bombardment. ”

“ Bombardment proceeding incessantly. Was amazed at the amount of material already brought up, at the gangs already working on the shell-wrecked roads, and at the crowd of spectators who lined a convenient ridge to ‘watch the show.’
Went with the Child and the battery commander from whom we were taking over to get a look at the country and visit the O.P. Passed through Fricourt—not long captured. Never could a bombardment have done its work of destruction more thoroughly than here. Not figuratively, but literally; no one brick stood upon another, scarcely one brick was whole. ”

“ Fear ... Oh! terrible thing! It is a contagious malady that has to be watched. All of us have inside a cowardly beast that awakens sometimes at the approach of danger——
Very violent bombardment to-day. The two chauffeurs who brought me here this morning left the machine at the entrance to the village. On returning from Côte-de-l'Oie I found them in a sappers' bombardment shelter where they sought refuge.
These men are green and grumble about things. Around them are some poilus and a captain. The explosions outside redouble and I feel as if the whole world was ill at ease. ”

“ The position was exposed to the fire of the rebel artillery and they kept up an incessant bombardment of the men at work who had holes in the banks after the manner of swallows and when things got too hot they would crawl into their individual bomb proofs. ”

“ Last night I watched the "tir de Barrage" of a German attack and I was happy. A terrific bombardment started just an hour ago a couple miles north of us and the sky overhead was made brilliant by bursting shells. Then several of our own nearby batteries began hammering away in answer to the red fire "Artillery Wanted" signals sent up from the first line trenches; and gradually every available gun along our front got into action. ”