"Machine gun" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... told me by Zela Wiltsie Worley, a college girl, now a missionary's wife, who has known what it means to lie on the floor of her home an entire morning with machine gun bullets crashing through her home, between the fire of two ...
— Flash-lights from the Seven Seas • William L. Stidger
... dawn, he went out with eighty men to an outpost that had been an abandoned farm. It was rather a forlorn hope. They had one machine gun. At nine o'clock the enemy opened fire on them and followed it by an attack. The major in charge went down early. At two Cecil was standing in the loft of the farmhouse, firing with a revolver on men who beneath him, outside, were placing dynamite under a corner ...
— Love Stories • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... these were ineffectual, but two or three perforated gas-chambers, and one smashed the hand and arm of a man upon the forward platform; The sentinel on the lower gallery immediately replied, and the machine gun on the shield of the eagle let fly and promptly stopped any further shots. The airship rose and signalled the flagship and City Hall, police and militiamen were directed at once to the spot, ...
— The War in the Air • Herbert George Wells
... bear, strike right at the soul and enable him to realise the nearness of the spiritual world? 'Prayer is the foundation of all grace' were the words of a dying soldier who had deliberately returned to the area of poisonous gas and had brought back the machine gun on his shoulders. Some of us have realised what individual prayer at home has done for us, but we should all like to feel that the whole nation is also testing ...
— The One Great Reality • Louisa Clayton
... gun, for instance. The genius who could have hit on that is capable of inventing anything. Why shouldn't I devote my life to spreading the Dix inventions over the earth? It's a colossal idea. Not one invention, but fifty—from a corkscrew to a machine gun. It's better ...
— Septimus • William J. Locke
... sun; the queer iridescent shapes of glowing, greenish phosphorus in the nighttime sea; the butter melting into yellow oil on the plate on the saloon table; the sickly smell of steam and grease and oil from the engine-room; the machine gun fixed at the stern with its waterproof hood; the increasing brilliance of the stars, and the rapid descent of evening upon the splendid colour-prism of a Mediterranean sunset—these, and thousands of other intimate commonplaces, are inlaid ...
— At Suvla Bay • John Hargrave
... heavily last night but were unable to drive us out except in one small section on our right. To-day, fighting is still going on and the Naval Division are in it now. We have made a good gain and taken over 400 prisoners and a machine gun. We are still on the rack, though, as there are a lot of Turks not yet cleared out from holes and corners of our new holding, and ammunition is running very short. If our ammunition does not run out altogether and we can hold what we have, our total ...
— Gallipoli Diary, Volume 2 • Ian Hamilton
... means a machine gun; it sounds like either that or a monkey." The Wanderer crowed beautifully. Monsieur Auguste's bosom friend, le Cordonnier, ...
— The Enormous Room • Edward Estlin Cummings
... of the machine gun section, according to reports of the 8th Army Corps jumped off the river bank into the Piave below Villa Jacur and swam across under danger of being drowned. He betrayed the position, strength and composition of his ...
— Independent Bohemia • Vladimir Nosek
... so weary from their long "hike" that they wrapped up in their overcoats, lay down on the ground and went right to sleep. We remained three days here waiting for orders. We were near the front, could hear the guns all the time and the occasional rattle of a machine gun. When our orders did finally come, we were told to march back over part of the same route we had come and we finally stopped close to Novient. It was here that we saw our first action and it was here that we finished our education in the work that ...
— In the Flash Ranging Service - Observations of an American Soldier During His Service - With the A.E.F. in France • Edward Alva Trueblood
... Virginia for the making of part of the smokeless powder required; the British Enfield rifle was modified to use American ammunition so that machinery already making arms for England could be utilized with a minimum of change; and European experience having indicated the value of the machine gun, a new and improved type was invented by John M. Browning. In many cases, however, it was impossible immediately to equip both the soldiers in training here, and those who could be sent abroad. Hence surplus equipment ...
— The United States Since The Civil War • Charles Ramsdell Lingley
... raging for some time when a mounted officer dashed up. Securing silence he ordered us all into barracks. There was an ominous growl. Then he told us he had brought a battalion of soldiers and a machine gun section from Spandau, and if we did not disperse in five minutes he would ...
— Sixteen Months in Four German Prisons - Wesel, Sennelager, Klingelputz, Ruhleben • Henry Charles Mahoney
... explosions rent the air. Then followed a series of poppings like the discharge of a machine gun. ...
— The Rover Boys Under Canvas - or The Mystery of the Wrecked Submarine • Arthur M. Winfield
... lay a-lyin' there and blastin' of me lot, And wishin' I could just dispose of all them bombs I'd got, I sees within the doorway of a shy, retirin' dug-out Six Boches all a-grinnin', and their Captain stuck 'is mug out; And they 'ad a nice machine gun, and I twigged what they was at; And they fixed it on a tripod, and I watched 'em like a cat; And they got it in position, and they seemed so werry glad, Like they'd got us in a death-trap, which, condemn their souls! they 'ad. For there our boys was fightin' fifty yards in front, ...
— Rhymes of a Red Cross Man • Robert W. Service
... infantry, and it should be kept up to the maximum both in efficiency and in strength, for it can not be made in a hurry. At present both infantry and artillery are too few in number for our needs. Especial attention should be paid to development of the machine gun. A general service corps should be established. As things are now the average soldier has far too much labor of ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... burst of speed one of our planes shot toward one of the German planes and seemed almost to ride on top of it, all the while pouring into it a stream of machine gun bullets, the smoke of which we could see. When they separated, ours rose but the German shot downward, evidently out of control, and we held our breath in anxious joy as we watched him drop two thousand feet or more. Then as he came through ...
— The Fight for the Argonne - Personal Experiences of a 'Y' Man • William Benjamin West
... for the Germans to keep their front line supplied with ammunition or food, the carriers of which were obliged to pass through a tornado of shells and machine gun bullets while crossing the Valley of the Ailette, where their every movement could be observed by the French. Eventually the position became untenable and the Germans retired during the night to the Northern ...
— America's War for Humanity • Thomas Herbert Russell
... describe Camp Sibley, two miles outside Chippewa, and the way it grew miraculously, overnight, into a khaki city. No going into detail concerning the effective combination formed by Chug and a machine gun. These things were important and interesting. But perhaps not more interesting than the seemingly unimportant fact that in July following that April Chug was dancing blithely and rhythmically with Elizabeth Weld, and saying, "Angie Hatton's a smooth ...
— Half Portions • Edna Ferber
... of the government, the Institute of Smolny, was turned into a fortress. There were in the garret, as a heritage of the old Central Executive Committee, a score of machine guns, but they were in poor condition and had been entirely neglected by the caretakers. We ordered an additional machine gun company to the Smolny Institute. Early in the morning the sailors rolled the machine gun with a deafening rumble over the cement floors of the long and half-dark corridors of the building. Out of the doors the frightened ...
— From October to Brest-Litovsk • Leon Trotzky
... machine gun teams are going up with us, and some time tomorrow a Missouri battalion comes up to support. I'd have had you over here before, but I only got my orders to relieve yesterday. We may have to advance under shell fire. The enemy has been ...
— One of Ours • Willa Cather
... My God, Dad, if I thought—! But what's the use talking? They know in London all about the Ambulance Equipment and the Machine Gun Battery, and the Hospital. Do you know why Caramus took a job in the Permanent Force in England? It was either that or blowing out his brains. He could not face his father, a war millionaire. My ...
— To Him That Hath - A Novel Of The West Of Today • Ralph Connor
... reason of clinging mud, F. informed us that this trench had been our old front line before we took Beaumont Hamel; and I noticed many things, as, clips of cartridges, unexploded bombs, Lewis-gun magazines, parts of a broken machine gun, and various odds and ends of accoutrements. In some places this trench had fallen in because of rain and other things and was almost impassable, wherefore, after much floundering and splashing, F. suggested we should climb out again, which we did forthwith, ...
— Great Britain at War • Jeffery Farnol
... six months. Some sport, I can tell you, Nora. I've got a little machine gun that's a perfect daisy. Gee! I've got to pull up. The hardest work we fellows have sometimes is to remember that we mustn't talk about our job. They used to call me undisciplined. I'm getting it into my bones now, though.—Why, Nora, this is queer! I guess we're going to have a cocktail ...
— The Box with Broken Seals • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... them and across the ice went Carmen, up the slippery hillside, and straight to the multi-mouthed machine gun, at the side of which stood Major Camp. She had been all night with these bewildered, maddened people. She had warmed shivering babes at her own breast. She had comforted widows of a night, and ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... lips. "I do not believe it is proper for service officers to discuss political issues publicly," he said like a machine gun. ...
— Industrial Revolution • Poul William Anderson
... forward to the attack. The bullets from the big 45:90's drove through half a dozen men at a shot, and the passageway, gorged with surging, helpless men, became a shambles. The rifles, pumped without aim into the mass, withered it away like a machine gun, and against that steady stream of death no ...
— Children of the Frost • Jack London
... way out I met Pee-wee shouting away like a machine gun. "Come on up the street with me," I said; "I want to ...
— Roy Blakeley • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... machine gun through all its five noses as the subaltern drew the lever home. The empty cartridges clashed on the floor and the smoke blew back through the truck. There was indiscriminate firing at the rear of the ...
— The Light That Failed • Rudyard Kipling
... German making the first spiral upward, in an effort to attain a position suitable for using the machine gun. Blaine therefore zigzagged more to westward, thereby throwing the reviving Erwin into an easier position. At this an easier position. At this Blaine was pleased to see his friend look wonderingly at him and the ...
— Our Pilots in the Air • Captain William B. Perry
... now in sight. The German cause was doomed. One great victory remained to be gained, the clearing of the Argonne forest, wild, tangled, meshed with thousands of miles of barbed wire, crowded with machine gun nests and swept with a hurricane of shot and shell. But nothing could stop America's boys now that their blood was up, and they did much in helping to win here the final and greatest battle of the war. All the Army Boys, fighting like tigers, ...
— Army Boys on German Soil • Homer Randall
... with the machine guns—it's a wicked thing, a machine gun. But they couldn't touch us with the bayonet. Every time the men came back they had bayonet practice, and they got awfully good. You know when you thrust at the Germans—so—if you miss him, you bring ...
— Aaron's Rod • D. H. Lawrence
... and some of them are expected to die. The surgeons have examined some of the food left over from that supper and report finding ground glass in some pieces of the apple pie served as dessert. Later the captain of our machine-gun company, which has only one machine gun so far, had the piece taken into the company mess-room to demonstrate the mechanism to his lieutenants so that they might instruct the men. He found the mechanism of the piece so badly jammed that the machine gun refused to work. ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys with Pershing's Troops - Dick Prescott at Grips with the Boche • H. Irving Hancock
... with, and are kept doing a bomb course and a machine-gun course on alternate days for eight months. There is a tale told of one such who, when he was finally sent to the trenches, was returned as hopeless after three days because he would do nothing except sit beside a machine gun trying to fill the belt with grenades. There is no sadder story in ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, January 19, 1916 • Various
... the balconies of the club and of the theatre had thrown themselves far over the railings and were all looking in the same direction and waving their hats and cheering loudly, and he heard above the shouts of the people the regular tramp of men's feet marching in step, and the rattle of a machine gun as it bumped and shook over the rough stones. He gave a shout of pleasure, and Kirkland and the two boys ran with him up the slope, crowding each other to get a better view. The mob parted at the Palace gates, and they saw two lines of blue-jackets, ...
— Soldiers of Fortune • Richard Harding Davis
... a machine gun, four or five hundred yards to her left. A solenoid jack-hammer; Tony Lattimer must have decided which building he wanted to break into next. She became conscious, then, of the awkward weight of her equipment, and began redistributing it, shifting the straps of ...
— Omnilingual • H. Beam Piper
... a demonstration in force was carried out by fresh troops; little was effected by this demonstration as it was checked mainly by shell and machine gun fire before advancing very far. Like many another effort of these heart breaking days, it was fore-doomed to fail; and the spirits of the troops and their fighting value was only maintained by the stern resolve that every man would continue fighting, ...
— With a Highland Regiment in Mesopotamia - 1916—1917 • Anonymous
... back to camp," remarked Thad. "There's little chance of Old Cale coming back here to-night. He got the scare of his life when that flashlight burst on him so sudden like. I wouldn't be surprised if he thought a rapid-fire machine gun was opening on him; or else that lightning had taken to camping ...
— The Boy Scouts in the Maine Woods - The New Test for the Silver Fox Patrol • Herbert Carter
... masterly and exhaustive a style as to render it absolutely impossible for me to usefully add anything to his remarks. I cannot, however, leave this branch of the subject without mentioning, not a piece of ordnance, but a small arm, invented since the date of Sir William's address. I mean the Maxim machine gun. This is not only one of the latest, but is certainly one of the most ingenious pieces of mechanism that has been devised. The single barrel fires the Martini-Henry ammunition; the cartridges are placed in loops upon a belt, and when this belt is introduced to the ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 488, May 9, 1885 • Various
... on a course that in less than two hours would bring him over the heights of Mount Lawson and the mystery that awaited him there. And he fingered the trigger grip that was part of the stick and nodded within his dark cockpit at the rattle of a machine gun that merged its staccato ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, November, 1930 • Various
... as we left the trenches we were under a heavy rifle fire, and as we advanced this became more and more intense, with machine gun and shrapnel fire added. The ground was perfectly flat and open with no form of cover to be obtained, and our casualties soon became very heavy. We continued to advance till we got to within about 150 yards of the enemy's trenches, but by this time our casualties were so heavy that it ...
— Letters from Mesopotamia • Robert Palmer
... The big car moved smoothly forward. A turn of the steering wheel brought it around headed toward the wide gates. Barney shifted to second speed, stepped on the accelerator and the cut-out simultaneously, and with a noise like the rattle of a machine gun, ...
— The Mad King • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... Pant, turning to the two aviators. "There's a machine gun on it. We'll halt them yet. I better go with you. Some of the rest of you explore the interior here. They may not have taken ...
— Panther Eye • Roy J. Snell
... insecure, and the post, when taken over, was ill prepared for defence.... When the battalion was suffering very heavy casualties from a 77mm. field gun at very close range, Captain Lord Tybar rushed forward under intense machine gun fire and succeeded in capturing the gun single-handed after killing the entire crew.... Later, when repeated attacks developed, he controlled the defence at the point threatened, giving personal assistance with revolver and bombs.... ...
— If Winter Comes • A.S.M. Hutchinson
... he asserted, "and it's fast. But I'll bet you a new hat I can empty my old smoke-wagon quicker than you can that pocket machine gun." ...
— Partners of Chance • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... assistant. Between them they swung the machine gun around, the assistant wrenching off the canvas cover. Fulsbee rapidly sighted the piece for six hundred yards. The assistant stood by to feed belts of cartridges, while Dave took his post ...
— The Young Engineers in Colorado • H. Irving Hancock
... adopted a new Machine Gun, all the Reporters went over and interviewed Gen. James Henry Guff about it. He wrote a Magazine Article on the Mistakes of the British in South Africa and likewise got rid of a few ponderous Opinions on our Policy in ...
— People You Know • George Ade
... once. He had enormous and poetic admiration, though very little understanding, of all mechanical devices. They were his symbols of truth and beauty. Regarding each new intricate mechanism—metal lathe, two-jet carburetor, machine gun, oxyacetylene welder—he learned one good realistic-sounding phrase, and used it over and over, with a delightful feeling of being technical ...
— Babbitt • Sinclair Lewis
... the good fortune to be in the advance party. Soon after starting the Duke of Norfolk's horse fell in a hole and put his thigh out, so he lost the fun, for it was not long before, from the hills ahead of us, came rap, rap, and then the rat-tat-tat-tat of a machine gun. We dismounted, advanced extended, and opened fire. I aimed at the hills, so I know I hit something. The Boers retiring, we (that is the battalion) occupied one kopje and then another, the dust flicking up in front of us. Then boom! whish-sh-sh! a cloud of red dust shot up, and ...
— A Yeoman's Letters - Third Edition • P. T. Ross
... from these experiments that when very accurate shooting is required at long ranges with double-barreled rifles, they should be mounted in a manner similar to that adopted in the manufacture of the Nordenfelt machine gun, in which weapon the barrels are fitted into a plate at the extreme breech end, the muzzles projecting through holes bored to receive them in a metal plate. No unequal expansion would then take place, and the barrels would be free to become ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 441, June 14, 1884. • Various
... the German submarine; an American invented the German torpedo; an American invented the German machine-gun; an American invented the Murphy button, the yellow fever antitoxin, the ...
— The Blot on the Kaiser's 'Scutcheon • Newell Dwight Hillis
... remained for nearly three weeks. Brigade Headquarters, the Machine-gun Company, and some A.S.C. were already in the village—ominous news for ...
— The Story of the 2/4th Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry • G. K. Rose
... having good years to spend; Longed to get home and join the careless crowd Of chaps who work in peace with Time for friend. That's all washed out now. You're beyond the wire: No earthly chance can send you crawling back; You've finished with machine-gun fire— Knocked ...
— The War Poems of Siegfried Sassoon • Siegfried Sassoon
... crowd of us all in the open by the side of the trench which was to be repaired! When a flare goes up the whole place is as light as day for a few seconds; and they were going up all round the Salient—what remains of it, one side disappeared on Thursday morning! Now and then a machine-gun would rattle a few rounds, and we would all duck down; but none of them ...
— At Ypres with Best-Dunkley • Thomas Hope Floyd
... don't, but am not sure. The suggestion that cucumbers were dug out of the ground like potatoes, was only an error of judgment. Anyone might have made it. But although rusty in his science, he is well up in machine-gun drill. He will suit the expedition to a nicety. Artillery, Cavalry, and Infantry ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 103, August 13, 1892 • Various
... in the junior commissioned ranks have naturally been highest in the infantry. There is, however, nothing like a want of officers in this arm. Many Captains and Lieutenants who have been wounded by machine-gun fire (such wounds are usually slight and quickly healed,) have been able to return speedily to the front. The reserve officers have in general done remarkably well, and in many cases have shown quite ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... the huge guns stood so close together they all but touched. Beyond these were the front trenches, in which the sharpshooters and the machine-gun men watched the enemy. And beyond again were the listening ...
— Ruth Fielding at the War Front - or, The Hunt for the Lost Soldier • Alice B. Emerson
... day the enemy made another attack with a strong body of picked storm-troops from another division brought up specially from the reserves, but the greeting they received from our rifle, Lewis gun, and machine-gun fire caused enormous casualties, and the attack collapsed. Capt. Grey Burn was decorated with the M.C. for his share in this splendid day's work. The ground captured in the first day's fighting, representing an advance of 5,000 yards, was consolidated and ...
— The Seventh Manchesters - July 1916 to March 1919 • S. J. Wilson
... back at any time as your first Tired People," said Wally, his keen face looking as though it never could grow weary. "Machine-gun courses must be very ...
— Captain Jim • Mary Grant Bruce
... more clear, the noise of the guns came from behind them, but to the right and the left. For an hour they ran rapidly forward, and it seemed that the tide of battle had swept to the north, leaving this area denuded of troops. They saw neither guns nor infantry, although a renewed burst of machine-gun fire told them they were ...
— The Parts Men Play • Arthur Beverley Baxter
... perfectly all right. It rattled off from beginning to end like a machine-gun, and must have caused enormous casualties. Only I thought Auntie Joe might be one of the casualties. I thought it might put her out of action as a hostess for a week or so. You see, for me to publish such an onslaught on new titles in the afternoon, and then attempt to dine with the ...
— The Title - A Comedy in Three Acts • Arnold Bennett
... extreme satisfaction that Bill sat on a log at one side of a path in the woods and watched little Kerry, who proved to be no mean hand at stopping all kinds of balls, nearly knocked off his feet by the machine-gun-like pitches of "that other fellow from Freeport," as ...
— Radio Boys Loyalty - Bill Brown Listens In • Wayne Whipple
... the Yorkshire towns. Nothing seems too large or too small for Colonel D.'s department. Field-glasses, periscopes, water-bottles, they arrive from the trenches with the same certainty as a wounded howitzer or machine-gun, and are returned ...
— The War on All Fronts: England's Effort - Letters to an American Friend • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... fell dead in that costly battle. Stanley, who tried me in the Prefects' Room, took seven machine-gun bullets in his body, and died in a lighter as it approached the beach. Lancaster, who in less grand years would undoubtedly have bowled for Oxford and England, lay down on W. Beach and died. And White, the gentle giant—Moles White, who swam ...
— Tell England - A Study in a Generation • Ernest Raymond
... and, like Mrs. Kraemer, she had a son fighting in the north of France. There, however, the obvious similitude ended; Edwin Doothnack served a machine-gun of the American Expeditionary Forces, while his mother was as poor and retiring as the other woman was dogmatic and rich. Miss Brasher brought her early in the evening to the Meekers, a little person with the ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... this time the French torpedo boat Fronde dropped back from her position alongside us and started in to take part in the melee with a machine gun. This caused the Emden to devote part of her time to us, and we were made the objective of a severe machine-gun fire which, owing to our position in the shadow of the pier and of the fact that the light was very poor, did little or no damage. Nevertheless, it was rather disconcerting to hear the rattle of lead on the ...
— Current History, A Monthly Magazine - The European War, March 1915 • New York Times
... in the army. How many more days of drill would we have to endure? Perhaps we would be sent to the front soon. That would be a change at least. I tried to visualize the future. What would actual warfare be like? I thought of bayonet charges and men falling under machine-gun fire. Then I recollected having heard somewhere that a soldier can take an active part in a modern war without ever seeing the enemy, and I imagined a low range of distant hills dotted with little puffs of smoke. ...
— Combed Out • Fritz August Voigt
... lay as to their direction, they had run plunk into a machine-gun nest and Roscoe Bent, with all his diabolical skill of aim, could not afford his fine indulgence of sneering, for as an active combatant, which Tom was not, he should have known that these nests were more likely to be ...
— Tom Slade Motorcycle Dispatch Bearer • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... records the vibrations of any alcoholic breath within five miles, and indicates on a sensitive dial the exact direction and distance of the breath. It was only too evident that the search for Quimbleton was going forward with fierce system. In the shelter of an old barn they heard a cork-popping machine-gun going off rapidly. This was one of the most atrocious ruses employed by the chuffs in their search for conscientious drinkers. The gun fires no projectile, but produces a pleasant detonation like the swift and repeated drawing of corks. ...
— In the Sweet Dry and Dry • Christopher Morley
... shipping of the ordinary sort had stopped moving. However, in a few minutes he heard telltale whistles ahead, and he signaled half speed. A lumbering old lighter with a yawing derrick passed close aboard. An auxiliary fisherman, his exhaust snapping like a machine-gun, and seeming to depend on that noise ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... noncommissioned officers, special units (such as band or machine-gun company), etc., in the various formations of the company, battalion, or regiment, are shown ...
— Manual for Noncommissioned Officers and Privates of Infantry • War Department
... day in the Sevzevais sector, when, to quote his citation, he "had shown great initiative in assuming command when his officer was disabled, and, with total disregard for his personal safety, had held his machine-gun against almost impossible odds." In the accomplishment of this feat he had been so badly gassed and wounded that his career as a soldier was definitely, if ...
— Quin • Alice Hegan Rice
... a drowning man or a man in great danger reviews his past. I didn't. I spent those few minutes wondering when the machine-gun fire ...
— A Yankee in the Trenches • R. Derby Holmes
... learnt, and the infantry attack on the morning of 10 March was preceded by an artillery preparation which set a new standard of destruction and was designed to obliterate trenches, barbed wire, and machine-gun positions. It was effective over the greater part of the front attacked, and in the centre and on our right the Fourth and Indian Corps quickly overcame the dazed and decimated Germans and pushed beyond Neuve Chapelle to the Bois du Biez and slopes of the Aubers ridge beyond. ...
— A Short History of the Great War • A.F. Pollard
... transfer to the Motor Machine-Gun Corps came through approved, and I was assigned to the Fourteenth battery of light-armored motor-cars, commanded by Captain Nigel Somerset, whose grandfather, Lord Raglan, had died, nursed by Florence Nightingale, while in command ...
— War in the Garden of Eden • Kermit Roosevelt
... a Tsar," said the Count to me. "But he must be terrible. What the Russian people need is cruelty—not machine-gun bullets and shells, but cruelty. They do not mind dying. The whip ...
— Europe—Whither Bound? - Being Letters of Travel from the Capitals of Europe in the Year 1921 • Stephen Graham
... running before the locomotive were completely covered in with plating, except that the leading one was pierced in front for the muzzle of a machine-gun, and the second at either side for ...
— The Light That Failed • Rudyard Kipling
... in 'stended order. We wur several yards apart, just loike we was when a section of us recruits wur put through platoon drill, when I fust jined the Army an' sergeant made us drill with skipping-ropes a-stretched out so as to get the spaces. And there wur a machine-gun in that there house—you know how they sputters. It cut down us poor chaps loike a reaper. Jacob Scaplehorn wur nex' me and I 'eerd 'un say 'O Christ Jesus' as 'e went over like a rabbit and 'e never said no more. ...
— Leaves from a Field Note-Book • J. H. Morgan
... protection for one's legs, which is the part of the body one would rather be hit in if one must be hit at all. The goose-flesh always crept around my head when I walked along this sap, for, strange to say, my head seemed to be the most valuable part of me, and at night the machine-gun bullets used to whistle through the low hedge that ran alongside it and frequently struck sparks from the flints on the old road just a yard or two away. I suppose I used that sap two hundred times, always with misgivings, for I have seen more than a score ...
— "Over There" with the Australians • R. Hugh Knyvett
... lightning and bade it speak their will and work their pleasure; how the same vapor that issued from the pot bubbling on Martina's fire could be harnessed and made to draw a hundred wagons at once upon the old-time steel-railed highways; how a child's hand on the crank of a machine-gun might hurl invisible death among a regiment of men and put even an army to flight. Steam and gunpowder and electricity, what wonderful ideas were connoted in the words! The very names thrilled him with a ...
— The Doomsman • Van Tassel Sutphen
... his place, but the interests of the Home Department did not suffer in the hands of the Under-Secretary. Sir HAMAR GEEENWOOD rattles out his replies with the speed and accuracy of a machine-gun, and has a neat formula for dealing with "supplementaries": "All these further Questions are covered by ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, May 21, 1919. • Various
... "When that critter swallowed us, he got something that will prove pretty indigestible. Let's try to give him a stomach ache. I don't suppose that a machine-gun will affect him, ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science July 1930 • Various
... did look like the hexynitrate stuff they put in small-arm bullets nowadays. A thirty-caliber bullet had the explosive effect of an old-style six-pound T.N.T. shell. Only, hexynitrate goes off with a crack instead of a boom. It wasn't an American plane opening up with a machine-gun. ...
— Morale - A Story of the War of 1941-43 • Murray Leinster
... irreverent Cavalier, convalescent at home from a machine-gun bullet through his shoulder, and hero-worshipper of his Colonel, that Andrew Lackaday owed his shy appearance at Mansfield Court. He was proud of the boy, a gallant and efficient soldier; Lady Verity-Stewart ...
— The Mountebank • William J. Locke
... midnight, the usual nocturnal battle-sounds rose in a swift crescendo of bursting shells and rattling staccato of machine-gun fire, which echoed in weird music from cliff to ...
— The Tale of a Trooper • Clutha N. Mackenzie
... inventor of the Gatling gun, born in Hertford County, N. Carolina, U.S.; he was bred to and graduated in medicine, but in 1849 settled in Indianapolis and engaged in land and railway speculation; his famous machine-gun, capable of firing 1200 shots a minute, was brought out in 1861; another invention of his is a ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... talking with the others, agreed to set out in the direction in which the three squadrons of cavalry had started in the morning with instructions to work round, and be prepared to cut off the enemy's retreat. They had with them some of the mounted infantry and a machine-gun. ...
— With Buller in Natal - A Born Leader • G. A. Henty
... infinite and multiform wickedness, before his very eyes. Here was a group of men being taught to advance under fire; crawling on their bellies on the ground, jumping from one hummock to another, flinging themselves down and pretending to fire. A man in front, supposed to have a machine-gun, was shouting when he had "got" them. Now they unslung their little trenching-tools, and began to burrow themselves like wood-chucks into the ground. "Dig, you sons o' guns, dig!" the officer would shout. "Keep ...
— Jimmie Higgins • Upton Sinclair
... Yorks suffered casualties amounting approximately to 15 officers and 600 other ranks, the Sherwood Foresters also losing 12 officers and 180 other ranks. The temporary loss of the trenches by the West Yorks exposed the trenches of the D.L.I, to enfilade machine-gun fire, from which they had considerable casualties, including Majors Mander and Robb. This was the only serious fighting in which the Division was engaged, but a certain amount of trouble was caused by the arrival of guns from Antwerp which fired "Black ...
— A Short History of the 6th Division - Aug. 1914-March 1919 • Thomas Owen Marden
... by shell-fire, even if it did not entirely stop the work. Some 3000 Turkish infantry, 1200 cavalry, and twelve guns had advanced from the Kauwukah system of defences to attack our outpost line on the ridge. They heavily engaged hill 630, working round both flanks, and brought heavy machine-gun and artillery fire to bear on the squadron holding it. The Royal Flying Corps estimated that a force of 2000 men attacked the garrison, which was completely ...
— How Jerusalem Was Won - Being the Record of Allenby's Campaign in Palestine • W.T. Massey
... garrison there for service on the Nile. The 1st Battalion of the North Staffordshire Regiment was moved up the river from Cairo to take the place of the Wady Halfa garrison of six battalions, which had moved on to Sarras and Akasha. A Maxim battery of four guns was formed from the machine-gun sections of the Staffordshires and Connaught Rangers and hurried south. The 2nd, 4th, 5th, and 6th Egyptian Battalions from Cairo were passed in a continual succession along the railway and river to the front. In all this busy and complicated ...
— The River War • Winston S. Churchill
... the third day he gulped the last corner down and peeped out under the tablecloth. The Bosch on guard was oiling the lock of the machine-gun. Two more he could hear in the kitchen clattering pots about. The remaining four were asleep, grotesquely ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Apr 2, 1919 • Various
... would be no more war; and yet at Gutenstein sixty men with three machine guns, under Lieut. Maglaj, a Slovene from Carinthia, kept 1500 men at bay from 9 a.m. till 3.30, after which they slowly withdrew until the fighting ceased at six; a corporal and two men of a machine-gun detachment were cut off and concealed themselves in the shrubs of a defile. Suddenly they heard a German company come down the road, singing as they marched. The three men opened fire—the Germans in perplexity stood still and then retired ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 2 • Henry Baerlein
... past a pair of long 90-mm guns to a stone stairway. Von Schlichten explained, as they went down, that the guns of King Kankad's Town were the only artillery above 75-mm on Uller in non-Terran hands. They climbed into an open machine-gun carrier and strapped themselves to their seats, and for two hours King Kankad showed her the sights of the town. They visited the school, where young Kragans were being taught to read Lingua Terra and studied from textbooks printed in Johannesburg and Sydney and ...
— Uller Uprising • Henry Beam Piper, John D. Clark and John F. Carr
... been digging for perhaps an hour when hell broke loose. They'd seen us. All about was a storm of machine-gun and rifle bullets, and we dropped on our faces, the diggers in their trench—pretty shallow it was. As for the covering party, we simply took our medicine. And then the shrapnel joined the music. Word was passed to get back to the trenches, and we started promptly. We stooped ...
— Joy in the Morning • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... try our luck," explained the lieutenant who was to lead Ned, Bob, Jerry, and their comrades, numbering half a score, out on a night raid. "There's a German dugout not far from here, and near by a machine-gun nest, and if we can get close enough to rush it, and capture those we don't kill, we may make it possible for a big forward movement—if the information we get is of the right sort. So get ready. Gas masks, hand grenades—rifles will be ...
— Ned, Bob and Jerry on the Firing Line - The Motor Boys Fighting for Uncle Sam • Clarence Young
... although I saw a German officer—a decent young fellow—try to keep his men from shootin'. But he couldn't hold 'em in, so I hoisted Tom on my back an' started for our trenches. Got there, too, you know, jest as a machine-gun over to the right started spoutin'. It didn't matter my droppin' Tom in the trench an' tumblin' after him. The boys buried him decent while the sawbones was cuttin' what was left of my arm away, an' puttin' ...
— Mary Louise and the Liberty Girls • Edith Van Dyne (AKA L. Frank Baum)
... us, for example, were the artillery craft, which darted backward and forward across the lines as from their height of vantage they ranged and registered for the guns. On push days these same buses were to be seen lower still, well within range of machine-gun bullets from the ground, as they crawled and nosed over the line of advance and kept intelligent contact between far-ahead attacking infantry and the rear. Above the tangled network of enemy defences roved the line photography machines, which provided the Staff with accurate survey ...
— Cavalry of the Clouds • Alan Bott
... the other. And then her pen, in the virulence of its volubility, would rush on to the discussion of individuals, to the denunciation of an incompetent surgeon or the ridicule of a self- sufficient nurse. Her sarcasm searched the ranks of the officials with the deadly and unsparing precision of a machine-gun. Her nicknames were terrible. She respected no one: Lord Stratford, Lord Raglan, Lady Stratford, Dr. Andrew Smith, Dr. Hall, the Commissary-General, the Purveyor—she fulminated against them all. The intolerable futility ...
— Eminent Victorians • Lytton Strachey
... are the saddest of all because so wanton! There was scarcely a single collection of houses in that fifty miles which I traversed which did not bear its ugly scar of fire and shell, scarcely a farmhouse that was not crumbled or peppered with machine-gun bullets. Miles of desolation may be seen in a couple of hours' drive around Vitry-le-Francois,—Favresse, Blesmes, Ecrinnes, Thieblemont, Maurupt, Vauclerc,—with acre upon acre of ruined buildings, a chimney standing here and there, heaps of twisted iron that once were farm machines, ...
— The World Decision • Robert Herrick
... untameable wrath. Rifle-fire is as inconstant in volume as piano music; there is something of human effort to be heard in the "tap ... tap ... tap ... tap-tap-trrrrapp" of its crescendos and diminuendoes. But the machine-gun is different from these. It strikes a higher note, and can be heard above the roar of the bursting shells. It is mechanical, there is nothing about it of human passion; it is a machine, and a most ...
— "Contemptible" • "Casualty"
... it would be, in two minutes, or in ten or in an hour-they did not know. When the fire of the French guns lifted, they did not know whether it would be to let the poilus assault, or whether it would be only to trick the German infantry and machine-gun men out of their tunnels and dugouts to meet the frightful fall of the French ...
— The Boy Allies with Haig in Flanders • Clair W. Hayes
... from the firing-line began to pass through our trenches. From these we learned that the attack was being well held, and that the Turkish infantry coming on with fanatical shouts of "Allah, Allah!" was being mowed down by rifle and machine-gun fire. ...
— The Fifth Battalion Highland Light Infantry in the War 1914-1918 • F.L. Morrison
... and his acquaintance, Sprague, came to terms, my eye fell on a peculiar gun set up in a corner. It had a tremendous cylinder about the barrel, as though it contained some device to cool it. It was not a machine-gun of the type I had seen, however, yet cartridges seemed to be fed to it from a disk on which they were arranged radially rather than from a band. Kennedy had risen to go and looked about ...
— The Treasure-Train • Arthur B. Reeve
... the war progresses. "Spotting" for the artillery far behind the enemy's lines; "searching" for ammunition dumps, for new dispositions by the enemy of men, material, and guns; attacking a convoy or bodies of troops on the march; sprinkling new trenches with machine-gun fire, or having a go at an aerodrome—any wild form of aerial adventure might be included in the diary of the pilot of a ...
— The Mastery of the Air • William J. Claxton
... Federation, along with its allies in the structural trades, had backed up the teamsters, and all had smashed down ingloriously. It had been a bloody strike. The police had broken countless heads with their riot clubs; and the death list had been augmented by the turning loose of a machine-gun on the strikers from the barns of the ...
— The Iron Heel • Jack London
... heard the bull voice of a Hun officer hic-coughing gutturals, and they were on him. He had no time to send up an S.O.S. rocket, and his machine-gun jammed. In a minute they were all mixed up, at it tooth and claw as merry as a Galway election, the big Bosch officer, throwing off a hymn of hate, the life and soul of the party. He came for Patrick with an automatic, and Patrick thought ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, April 4, 1917 • Various
... possibly my cognac had not been a little too strong. For she suddenly developed into a most brilliant conversationalist, and applauded and laughed at everything I said, and fired off questions at me like a machine-gun, so that I had no time to think of anything but of what she was saying. Whenever I stirred, she stopped her chattering and leaned toward me, and watched me like a cat over a mouse-hole. I wondered how I could have considered ...
— Ranson's Folly • Richard Harding Davis
... which we saw was in the square of the little town of Haelen, where some dogs of a dog machine-gun battery lay panting in their traces. A Belgian officer in command there I recollect for his passionate repetition of, "Assassins! The barbarians!" which seemed to choke out any other words whenever he spoke of the Germans. His was ...
— My Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... be gained by the close {39} co-operation of the artillery and infantry at every stage of the battle, and unless infantry co-operate, the artillery is not likely to produce any decisive effect. Long-range machine-gun fire is an important auxiliary to the artillery in covering and supporting the advance of attacking infantry. Enfilade fire, the most telling of all, is more easily brought to bear than of old owing to the increase ...
— Lectures on Land Warfare; A tactical Manual for the Use of Infantry Officers • Anonymous
... you been with, and how many years?" He snapped the questions at Jimmy with the rapidity of machine-gun fire. ...
— The Efficiency Expert • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... vitality, to extract from a life of twice the length. Alan Seeger had barely passed his twenty-eighth birthday, when, charging up to the German trenches on the field of Belloy-en-Santerre, his "escouade" of the Foreign Legion was caught in a deadly flurry of machine-gun fire, and he fell, with most of his comrades, on the blood-stained but reconquered soil. To his friends the loss was grievous, to literature it was—we shall never know how great, but assuredly not ...
— Poems • Alan Seeger
... gazed, swung sharply, and came after him, spreading out as they came. And Bell, after one instant's grim debate, went into a maple leaf dive for the jungle below him. The others dived madly in his wake. He heard a sharp, tearing rattle. A machine-gun. He saw the streaks of tracers going very wide. Gunfire in the air is far from accurate. A machine-gun burst from a hundred yards, when the gun has to be aimed by turning the whole madly vibrating ship, is less accurate ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, June, 1930 • Various
... with the disciplined patience of the army, to the recital of the exploit that had won the War Cross for him, but there was a peculiar glint in his light eyes. As Smith drew to a conclusion, Pinkey slowly lifted his leg, stiffened by a machine-gun bullet, over the horse's neck and ...
— The Dude Wrangler • Caroline Lockhart
... in the approaches to the town, the infantry plunging deep into the bog at every step. Not infrequently the soldiers had to rescue a comrade who had sunk to the waist in the morass, but they continued to push forward steadily, facing machine-gun fire from hidden redoubts and battling their way past with bombs and rifle fire. There were concrete gunpits about the positions in front of the town, which was flooded from the Steenbeke River, but the infantry divided and bombed their way ...
— America's War for Humanity • Thomas Herbert Russell
... that perfectly planned and co-ordinated assault which had been merely carried out at its original time, without either being hastened or delayed by Mike's activities. That plan had been beautifully contrived, and it would certainly have been successful but for the machine-gun bullets from the gallery and the fight Joe's followers ...
— Space Platform • Murray Leinster
... had cleared the last corner of the Argonne of German machine-gun nests and gunners, and were widening their offensive on the Meuse. The French had taken Laon, and were pushing on. The British had taken Lens and Cambrai and were ...
— Foch the Man - A Life of the Supreme Commander of the Allied Armies • Clara E. Laughlin
... down to the water's edge, and Billings mounted the pilot's seat. There was a moment's delay as he assured himself that he had everything necessary. Jimmy Hollis went over his armament and ammunition to see that nothing had been omitted. Besides pistol and rifle, there was the machine-gun mounted in front of him on the plane, and ammunition for all three. Bowen's account of the terrors of Caspak had impressed us all with the necessity for ...
— The People that Time Forgot • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... is known that the Bolshevist thugs, when tired of using the rifle, the machine-gun, the cord, and the bayonet, expedited matters by drowning their victims by hundreds in the Black Sea, in the Gulf of Finland, and in the great rivers. Submarine cemeteries was the name given to these last resting-places of some of Russia's most high-minded sons and daughters.[283] It ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon
... had taken refuge in dogged silence. He had been badgered into lies. He had broken down at last and told the truth. Sheriff Billie Prince, keen as a hound on the scent, persistent as a bulldog, peppered the man's defense with a machine-gun fire of questions. Back of these loomed the shadow of a long term ...
— A Man Four-Square • William MacLeod Raine
... her remarks, as was her wont, with the vigour and precision of a machine-gun. There was always a delightful definiteness both about her ideas and the ...
— The Vision of Desire • Margaret Pedler |
