Shell burst

“ The body of the tree was carried across the splintered stump with crushing impact from the power of its flight, plus the power of the burst of the explosive charge which broke the shell-jacket into slashing fragments; and the towering column of limbs, branches, and foliage laid its length on the ground with a majestic dignity. Which shows what one shell can do, one of three which burst in the neighbourhood at the same time. In time, the shells would get all the trees; make them into chips and splinters and toothpicks. ”

“ I'm writing this in a new home, this time a splinter-proof dugout. The Huns are again strafing us—last shell burst fifty yards away a few minutes ago. Several times since I started writing I have had to shake off the dust and debris thrown by shell bursts on to these pages. I was again sniped at with shrapnel this morning on my machine while reconnoitering the roads—they all missed, but they're not nice. I'm filthy, alive, and covered with huge mosquito bites; you get sort of used to the incessant din in time. ”

“ Bang! rumph! r-r-r-rumph! Bang! Shrapnel and high explosive seemed to come together.
Another and another shell followed, then a [147] blinding crash as I was turning my car and a shell burst in the square not far away, showering bits of shell and débris over me. ”

“ At that moment it burst, and limbs, and head, and entrails, were seen flying in the air, with the fragments of the shell, and prostrate and struggling forms lay writhing on every hand in the last, fierce agonies of death. ”

“ But this time there were several further shell-bursts. No dull boom in the distance followed by a long-drawn whine, but only the earth and smoke thrown darkly up and then the deafening double detonation.
The next day more shells came over, and the next day also.
The big holes with their earthen rims began to dot the fields in many places. No damage of "military importance" had been done. Not even a soldier had been killed, but only an inoffensive cow.
At night the sky was alive with the whirr of propellers, and shells whistled overhead and burst a long way off. ”

“ When one watches a 15-inch gun fired and hears its 2,000-pound shell go screaming through the air, his concept of its destructive action is exaggerated by imagination, and further confirmed if he sees that shell burst inside a house, reducing its interior to wreckage. ”

“ But at the attacking point the infantry were almost across when the storm burst, and the shells for the most part struck down harmlessly behind them. The men were into the fragments of broken wire, and the shattered parapet loomed up under their hands a minute after the first shell burst. ”

“ I had thought a shell was a hollow ball of iron, filled with powder and furnished with a fuse, and that they threw it over into your ranks, and there it lay, hissing and spitting, till the fire reached the powder, and the shell burst and killed a dozen men or so; that is, if some venturesome fellow didn't run up and stamp the fire off the fuse before the miserable thing went off! Of a conical shell, shaped like a minie-ball, with ridges on the outside to fit the grooves of a rifled cannon, and exploding by a percussion-cap at the pointed 111 end, I had no idea in the world. ”

“ To say truth, shells generally go where no one is; I saw only one man killed by a shell. I had raised my head from the ground and was listening for the burst of a coming shell, when I saw a man among the advance ranks of the 13th Brigade on my right stop suddenly in the midst of a blinding flash. An arm and hand flew through the air in a horrible curve; the smoke belched, the air was rent by the explosion, the smoke blew and drifted away, and there on the hillside lay what [Pg 126] was left of the man, folded in the deep quietness of death. ”

“ When a shell passes very near to one its whistle increases to the roar of an express train, and when there is anything like a heavy bombardment on it is only those shells which pass dangerously close that one can hear above the general din.
More disconcerting than the actual burst of the shell is the ‘whirr’ of the splinters or, in the case of shrapnel, the loud ‘miaow’ of the flying bullets. ”

“ One of the largest of their shells bursted within nine or ten yards of me: there was a single rock close by, about the size of a butt; and I got instant shelter under it in time to avoid the fury of the shell. Where it burst the earth was torn in such a manner that two or three butts might easily have gone into the hole it made, and it threw great quantities of stones and dirt to a considerable distance. ”

“ Few of these common shell burst, and when they did, seldom hurt anyone; but no one, however brave or however small, can stand in a place which is being shelled, without feeling that he is the biggest thing there—for miles round—or the most conspicuous person, however many others are round him. The casualties from this first day of thoughtful and thorough shelling were very slight, considering the crowded state of the area, and the men's principal anxiety was to obtain fragments of shells or intact unexploded ones, digging those out before they had time to get cool. ”

“ Few shells fall near the guns, though many pass over with a shriek to burst in the neighbourhood of those conspicuous earthworks, whose parapet must be a very shell trap, so continuous are the explosions on it. An occasional heavy shell rumbles up from the South, and, passing over with the noise of an electric tram, detonates in a fountain of yellow earth near the same target. ”

“ My experience in watching and timing shell fire now stood me in good stead. I was able by the action of the shells to instantly determine whether the German guns were jumping, rendering their aim uncertain, and, also, to know when the next burst would come, where it would strike, and about how it would operate,—whether gas, shrapnel, or what not. Men were clinging to the walls, trying to take shelter, and it was clearly impossible to get through with the horse. ”

“ SHELLS, in gunnery, are hollow iron balls to throw out of mortars or howitzers with a fuze hole of about an inch diameter, to load them with powder, and to receive the fuze: the bottom, or part opposite the fuze, is made heavier than the rest, that the fuze may fall uppermost; but in small elevations this is not always the case, nor is it necessary; for, let it fall as it will, the fuze sets fire to the powder within, which bursts the shell, and causes great devastation. The shells had much better be made of an equal thickness, for then they burst into more pieces. ”

“ Hundreds of shells have already fallen in the town, and there are some zealous statisticians who compile charts showing exactly where each shell struck and the direction from which it was fired, but the majority of us do not concern ourselves much about any that burst beyond a radius of fifty yards from our own camps or houses, and so many fall harmless that we seldom ask whether anybody has been hit, and it sometimes happens therefore that one does not hear of serious casualties except by accident. ”

“ But you will soon come to know that the shell often makes more noise than it does harm and that, after a terrific bombardment, by no means is everybody destroyed.
HOW TO PROTECT YOURSELF FROM SHELLS
The big shell, which is so appalling, is only really dangerous if it falls on the place where a man is standing, because the splinters rise in the air. Fall down flat when the shell bursts. Even if you are quite close, there is comparatively little risk. ”

“ A pleasant ‘drawing-room’ voice is that of our beautiful little field-howitzer. It goes off with more of a puff than a bang, and the shell sails away with a soft whirring note which is lost in the distance long before the formidable crash of the burst is wafted back from the German lines.
An alarming sound that one used to hear earlier in the war, when ammunition was of a lower quality than it is now, was that [465] of a shell with a ‘stripped’ driving band. Such a shell will whirl through the air at any angle and will land, possibly base first, a mile or two short of its mark. ”

“ Our trip across that field was without even a narrow escape. The shells obligingly burst not closer to us than two or three hundred yards, and we reached B Company headquarters in safety. There a number of men were in rather a bad condition—as a matter of fact, one was dying—from the effects of a shell which had struck directly into their dugout. It killed one man by impact and gave the others such a concentrated dose of the gas as to put them into a dangerous condition. ”

“ P. "Shells are often called bombs, a word which signifies great noise; because, when they burst, they make a great noise. They consist of a large shell of cast iron, which is round and hollow. A hole is made through the shell to receive a fusee, as it is called; this is a small pipe, or hollow piece of wood, which is filled with some combustible matter. When a bomb is about to be fired, it is filled with powder, after which the fusee is driven into the vent, or hole of the shell."
William. "How are bombs fired, father?"
Gen. P. "They are thrown from a kind of cannon called a mortar. ”

“ I got into my cellar, was so tired that I threw myself down on the bed and wrapped myself up in my blankets, boots, mud, lice and all. I hadn't been asleep long before the Huns started “hating” the chateau. They have put over twenty-five large calibre shells into my place, the grounds and the house. They are still at it. Every time a shell bursts it makes a hole big enough to bury five horses, and it shakes the foundations all round. The [pg 137] shells are bigger than usual. The smoke and earth are blown up fifty or sixty feet in the air. The effect is a moral disruption. ”

“ Almost invariably the shell bursts by a longitudinal slit extending over fully two thirds of its long diameter, the first point of rupture being commonly situated midway between the spine and the centre of the shell. In normal births, so to speak, the head of the animalcule emerges first ”

“ You can just hear, through the crash, the shriek of a third and fourth shell as they come tearing down the vault of heaven—crash—crash. Clouds of dust are floating over you. A swifter shriek and something breaks like a glass bottle in front of the parapet, sending its fragments slithering low overhead. It bursts like a rainstorm, sheet upon sheet, smash, smash, smash, with one or two more of the heavier shells punctuating the shower of the lighter ones. The lighter shell is shrapnel from field guns, sent, I dare say, to keep you in the trench while the heavier shell pounds you there. ”

“ When a shell falls, it whirls round, burrows, and excavates the earth to a considerable extent, and bursting, makes dreadful havoc around. I have more than once witnessed fragments of the mangled bodies and limbs of the British soldiers thrown into the air by the bursting of our shells, and by one from the enemy, Captain White, of the seventh Massachusetts regiment, and one soldier were killed, and another wounded near where I was standing. ”

“ Somehow to-night we feel that nothing can touch us. We feel that we can in safety take any risks. Again and again we fly into Zeebrugge. Through the mist the great white beams stagger and wheel and swoop and wait. For once they do not terrify me. In the haze I see the quick flashes of the guns, and shell after shell bursts in a barrage over the Mole. In the ghostly light of the incessant green balls I see the round puffs of the shell-bursts, actually touching each other in a long line, so closely together are they placed as a barrier. ”

“ Everyone who has spent a little time in naturalising on the shore, has noticed how often you may find univalve shells, such as those of the whelk and periwinkle, with the top of the shell knocked off. This is nearly always the case with the dead shells that you find strewn along the tide-line; and after a storm, on a rocky coast, you may find shells that still contain the living tenant, in the same sad condition. And you may also meet not infrequently with shells, dead or living, that bear evidence of the owners' efforts to repair them after an accident to the spire. ”

“ One followed the communication-trench, took up gun or shovel, as the order might happen to be, and became either soldier or laborer; or, more often, both at once. Everything was done at night. Everything was dismal, dangerous, frightful. There was no real repose, no relaxation. The incessant shell-fire added its horror to our other discomforts and dangers. The shell! that insensate creature of chance, which bursts over the innocent, scatters its fragments over the plain, and in stupid indifference crushes a clod of earth or snuffs out the lives of a hundred [123] human beings. ”

“ A shell passing away from you over your head is like the loud crackling of a newspaper close to your ear. It makes a sort of deep reverberating crackle in the air, gradually lessening, until there is a dull boom, and a mile or so away you see a thick little cloud of white smoke in the air or a pear-shaped cloud of grey-black smoke on the ground. Coming towards you a shell makes a cutting, swishing note, gradually getting higher and higher, louder and louder. There is a longer note one instant and then it ceases. Shrapnel bursting close to you has the worst sound. ”

“ The noise of the shells from field guns is exactly like that of a rocket going up. When the shell is coming towards you, there is a sharper hiss in it, like a whip. It gives you a second or two to get under cover and then crack-whizz as the shrapnel whizzes out. ”

“ Leaving the horses in a farm, we slipped from tree to tree. There was the column, still advancing. A first shell, ten mètres in front of it, stopped it short; immediately a second fell on the left, wounding some men, and [14] a horse reared and upset its rider. A third shell struck mercilessly into the centre of the column and caused an explosion which sent flying, right and left, dark shapes which we guessed to be fragments of bodies. It rained shell, which struck the road with mathematical precision, sowing death and panic. ”