Energy books

At five-thirty, when the
guns in all our batteries were firing at full blast, with a constant
scream of shells over the heads of the waiting men, and when the first
faint light of day stole into the sky, there was a slight rain
falling, and the wind blew lightly from the southwest.
In the front-line trenches a number of men were busy with some long,
narrow cylinders, which had been carried up a day before. They were
arranging them in the mud of the parapets with their nozles facing the
enemy lines.
"That's the stuff to give them!"
"What is it?"
"Poison-gas. Worse than they used at Ypres."
"Christ! . . . supposing we have to walk through it?"
"We shall walk behind it. The wind will carry it down the throat of
the Fritzes. We shall find 'em dead."
So men I met had talked of that new weapon which most of them hated.
It was at five-thirty when the men busy with the cylinders turned on
little taps. There was a faint hissing noise, the escape of gas from
many pipes.


Pages:
285 286 287 288 289 290 291 292 293 294 295 296 297 298 299 300 301 302 303 304 305 306 307 308 309