Destroyer

“ But something worse than the fear of unfriendly weather will overshadow the work of disembarkation, and spur to a haste which can only create confusion—that something, the certainty that the alarm has been given, and that every British battleship and cruiser, every British destroyer, torpedo boat, and submarine that wireless telegraphy can summon, is hurrying towards the east coast, and may, at any moment, come into sight. ”

“ We have implored thine assistance against these terrible, insolent, savage, dreadful, invincible destroyers, when, like lions and bears who have lost their young, they have fallen upon us, terrified us, wounded us, slain us by thousands, who are thy people. ”

“ The enemy who possessed the incalculable advantage of the initiative, had at his disposal, whenever he took heart to plan an attack, a force of at least twenty-two very good destroyers, all unfortunately of higher speed than anything we could bring against them, and more heavily armed than many of our destroyers. ”

“ I seem to see them marching, with brave, bright faces and eager feet, to meet the foe. I hear the distant boom of cannon, growing fainter as they press the retreating enemy. And then, alas! many come back to me mutilated, bleeding, dying, yet with ardor unquenched, repressing moans of anguish that they may listen for the shout of victory: wrestling fiercely with the King of Terrors, not that they fear to die, but because his chill grasp palsies the arm that would fain strike another blow for the right. ”

“ No! thirsting to madness, red vengeance will pass,
Like the cloud's subtle fire, thro' a fortress of brass,
Let cannon blaze round him, or white billows flow,
He will reach, thro' them all, the heart's blood of his foe. ”

“ Around you smoky clouds like ogres tower; The earth is rowelled deep with spurs of flame, And on your helmet stones and ashes shower. BUT ON YOU CHARGE. It's odd! You have no fear. Machine-gun bullets whip and lash your path; Red, yellow, black the smoky giants rear; The shrapnel rips, the heavens roar in wrath. BUT ON YOU CHARGE. Barbed wire all trampled down. The ground all gored and rent as by a blast; Grim heaps of grey where once were heaps of brown; A ragged ditch—the Hun first line at last. All smashed to hell. ”

“ As the sentry paces up and down in the beleaguered fortress, he sometimes hears a strange sound in the silent night, as if something were rustling under his feet. It is the enemy, who has undermined the outworks, and to-night or to-morrow night there will be a hollow explosion, and armed men will storm in through the breach. ”

“ The ambition of men and nations, which will resort to such cruel means as these for mere glory's sake, must be absolutely insane. One, and the largest, of the beautiful ships was set on fire by the hostile cannon, and blew up with a tremendous explosion, and I saw with an astonishment which I cannot express her fragments, masts and yards, guns, officers and men, flying through the air. ”

“ The dropping shells sent to every side scurrying figures, pressed against each other in panic, when with sullen roar, lost almost amidst the universal din and clash and swelter of noise, its imprisoned powers were released in straight lines of fire, carrying along their blinding thread of light the shattering steel missiles of death, the blistering resin and sulphur, while at the inner edges of that crushed resurgence of living men lay the victims of its rage, limbless soldiers, bodies stricken into shapelessness, the fainting suitors of Death gasping for breath. ”

“ Venturous, and learning thus the love of blood. 365
The shout of terror rings along the wall,
For now the French their scaling ladders place,
And bearing high their bucklers, to the assault
Mount fearless: from above the furious troops
Hurl down such weapons as inventive care, 370
Or frantic rage supplies: huge stones and beams
Crush the bold foe; some, thrust adown the height,
Fall living to their death; some in keen pangs
And wildly-writhing, as the liquid lead
Gnaws thro' their members, leap down desperate, 375
Eager to cease from suffering. ”

“ Destruction clamors at your palace gates, and the enemy that cometh upon you unaware is an enemy that none shall vanquish or subdue, not even they who are the mightiest among the mighty. Blood stains the earth and the sky. ”

“ To hear the artillery! to see the glittering of the bayonets
and musket-barrels in the sun!
To see men fall and die and not complain!
To taste the savage taste of blood! to be so devilish!
To gloat so over the wounds and deaths of the enemy. ”

“ Moreover—and this you had perhaps over-looked—they have something which is deadlier and more enduring than shot and shell and steel—the unconquerable spirit which leaps up in the hearts of men who are gathered to defend their country from invasion and their national existence from destruction. ”

“ What is overcoming the enemy? Invariably the destruction of his military force, whether it be by death, or wounds, or any means; whether it be completely or only to such a degree that he can no longer continue the contest; therefore as long as we set aside all special objects of combats, we may look upon the complete or partial destruction of the enemy as the only object of all combats. ”

“ Shells shriek, bombs crash and thunder, bullets whine,
⁠Tornado hideous, evil-boding,
That rolls in vain against our serried line,
⁠Alert for onslaught, calmly loading.
Now up and at them. Shouts exultant, harsh,
⁠A mêlée of cold steel colliding,
Gaunt shadows grappling in a bloody marsh,
⁠And low moans rising and subsiding. ”

“ What the public already knows of armies, guns, trenches, etc., has little to do with the suffering that the people of an invaded country endures, when the white-hot flame of the enemy invasion sweeps over the land scorching every flower and leaving in its wake only desolation and pain and despair. ”

“ Every drop of the molten liquid bored a hole through the flesh to the bone. At the same moment enormous blocks of stone and masses of sand rolled, rapid and irresistible, down the slope of the breach, overthrowing, breaking, crushing, smashing whatever stood in their way. Joined to this murderous defense was the frightfully effective fire of our arquebusiers, who shot unerringly, at close range, themselves safe, upon a foe in disorder. And yet, however decimated and broken, the royalists stuck to the assault until they finally reached the circumvallation. ”

“ Not only were the two forts to be passed, but the rebel fleet, with its monster of destruction, the Manassas, and the fire-rafts which would be let loose upon them, to spread conflagration and death in their most fearful forms: while a foe desperate with energy and hate, was working the formidable engines of destruction. ”

“ Show me the man, and come he cased in steel, In complete panoply and pride of war, Ay, guarded by a thousand men-at-arms, Yet I shall reach him through their spears, and feel The last black drop of blood from his black heart Crawl down my blade. Show me the man, I say, And I will kill him. ”

“ And is it only an effect of the strained and perhaps disordered condition of one's nerves, at sight of these brave and fearless women filling with deadly explosives the shells that are soon to batter down the trenches of the enemy who lies in wait behind them to kill their husbands and lovers on the battle-field, that as one stands in the breathless silence of this sombre spot, one thinks one hears the low, deep, far-off, booming of the great guns across the sea? ”

“ It was otherwise with my antagonists: the last that had fallen now ceased to groan: their huge limbs, inured to combat and war-worn, were useless to their own defence, and to the injury of others.
The destruction that I witnessed was vast—Three beings, full of energy and heroism, endowed with minds strenuous and lofty, poured out their lives before me: I was the instrument of their destruction—this scene of carnage and blood was laid by me ”

“ Or again, if we were to see some city surrounded by a severe blockade of the enemy, in which threatening engines were brought against the walls, and the place hard pressed by a vallum, and weapons, and fire, and all the instruments of war, by which destruction is prepared, would we not rightly and deservedly say, if the enemy were repelled and put to flight, that the deliverance had been wrought for the liberated city by God? ”

“ For a while one could not realize that so lately war had been so close at hand, that shrieking bombs had flown overhead, that screaming of shells, booming of guns, whir of airplanes had disturbed this peace, and had wrought destruction in passing this little corner of the world. ”

“ In so horrible a place, where men could scarcely keep their footing, and were sinking at every step up to their arm-pits, and tumbling along as best they could with their muskets and fascines through the impenetrable rubbish—the enemy all the while blazing away at them with 321grape, shell, and canister—the result may easily be imagined. ”

“ He describes the insurgents, after the first explosion of their vindictive fury, as pausing--amazed at their own boldness, and terrified at their own crimes, and the nobles, recovering from their terror, taking immediate advantage of this sudden torpor and paralysis--assembling and slaughtering all, innocent and guilty, burning houses and villages. ”

“ And being no stranger to the art of war, I gave him a description of cannons, culverins, muskets, carabines, pistols, bullets, powder, swords, bayonets, sieges, retreats, attacks, undermines, countermines, bombardments, sea fights; ships sunk with a thousand men, twenty thousand killed on each side; dying groans, limbs flying in the air, smoke, noise, confusion, trampling to death under horses’ feet ”

“ So we would sit cowering between the gabions, while ever and anon the fiery bombs, often shot at random, came in quick succession through the dark sky of night, making bright and glittering arcs as they sped on their message of destruction, sometimes falling short and bursting in mid-air, or on the earth and throwing up a column of dust and stones, and sometimes fairly into the trenches, scattering death and mutilation among us. ”

“ In an instant a slight explosion took place, and we could hear, notwithstanding the uproar of the guns, a whizzing sound running aft on board the enemy—while almost simultaneously, the most thrilling shrieks of anguish rose up on the air, succeeded by a stunning explosion, which drowned every other sound in its fierce uproar. ”

“ The surging masses of human beings intent on each others destruction with the death dealing artillery with its terrific roar and the more destructive missiles of small armies with their hateful hissing sounds, together with the deafening cheers of the moving armies, and the heartrending screams and moans of the wounded and dying make the scene agonizing to the extreme. ”

“ They were impatient for battles, charges, the kind of fighting that is done between great armies on the open field, when there is the roar and smoke of cannon, the rattle of small firearms, the clash of steel, the cries of captains, the shrieks and groans of wounded, the plenteous spilling of blood. ”

“ But I saw stabbing flames that struck upward from the ground to make a wall of sharp, fiery spears, and I knew that every darting flame was launching a projectile from our anti-aircraft guns.
The skies were filled with the red aircraft of the enemy, but their way was an avenue of hell where thousands of shells filled the air with their crashing explosions. There were torpedoes, the unmanned airships whose cargo was death, and they were guided to their marks despite the inferno that raged about the red ships above. ”

“ The great pictures of the desperate battles of the mail-clad warriors of the cross and the Saracens are given with graphic fidelity, the figures in the huge tableaux nearly or quite the size of life, and the hand-to-hand encounter of sword, cimeter, battle-axe, and mace, or the desperate struggles in the "imminent deadly breach," the fierce escalade, the terrific charge, or the desperate assault, represented with a force, vigor, and expression that almost make one's blood tingle to look upon them. ”

“ The instruments of modern material [Pg 18] warfare are almost incredible in the refinement of their destructiveness, and I have no doubt in my own mind that even these ingenuities are also diabolic, and that if we could pierce the veil we should see the invisible enemies at their fiendish work. But these unseen antagonists out-do all the subtleties of the material instruments of destruction in the devices in which they lure and snare and entrap and overthrow the soul. ”

“ The destruction of the enemy, in modern war, and, indeed, modern war itself, are means to obtain that object of the belligerent which lies beyond the war.
Unnecessary or revengeful destruction of life, is not lawful. ”

“ What can a general desire and pray for, when he sees a hostile army, like a great engine of destruction, ready to dash against all that he holds dear, but that the engine may be shivered, deprived of all power of doing mischief—in other words, that the army may be destroyed? ”

“ Here we have an important fortress, threatened with siege for the last sixty days, suffering the assailants of the flag it defends to amass battery upon battery, and string the whole coast of low hills opposite with every variety of apparatus for its own devastation, without throwing a timely shell to prevent their establishment. ”

“ If we realize that this is the true objective, we shall appreciate the fact [20] that the destruction of the enemy’s armed forces is but a means—and not necessarily an inevitable or infallible one—to the attainment of our goal. ”

“ We have demonstrated on the field of battle that we hold in our hands means of destruction against which it is absolutely impossible for any army fortress or fleet to compete with the slightest hope of victory ”