"Lyddite" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... one of these big shells fell amongst a group of fourteen burghers who were at dinner. The shell struck a sharp rock, which it splintered into fragments, and was emitting its yellow lyddite; but, fortunately, the fuse refused to burn, and the shell did not explode, so we had a narrow escape that day from ...
— My Reminiscences of the Anglo-Boer War • Ben Viljoen
... converging to the main hill, while far away the infantry and cavalry were beginning to crown the heights near us. Then the field guns and the pompoms began to play. As the field guns came up to a broad plateau section after section came into action, and we fired shrapnel and lyddite on the crests ahead and to the left. Every now and then a rattle of Mausers and Metfords would tell us that the infantry were at their work, but practically the battle was over. From being an infantry attack as expected ...
— In Flanders Fields and Other Poems - With an Essay in Character, by Sir Andrew Macphail • John McCrae
... stone behind which an inveterate foe with grim joy saw a soldier fall to his soft-nosed bullet; while far down behind these men of a forlorn hope there was hurrying up artillery which would presently throw its lyddite and its shrapnel on the top of the hill up where hundreds of Boers held, as they thought, an impregnable position. At last with rushes which cost them almost as dearly in proportion as the rush at Balaclava cost the Light Brigade, ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... these was a solid, and burst on impact with an explosive force equal to about twenty pounds of lyddite. The other consisted of two liquids separated by a partition in the shell, and these, when mixed by the breaking of the partition, burst into a volume of flame which could not be extinguished by any known human means. It would burn even in a vacuum, since ...
— A Honeymoon in Space • George Griffith
... used to keep us awake at night with fireworks after news such as that of Colenso and Magersfontein, but, except amongst the young boys, they were not given to exultation over what they had done or to any boasting. Then they talked about lyddite, and it was quite clear that it had been a terrible bogy in their minds, and that they had imagined it was to have an effect like throwing earthquakes at them, and it was equally evident that the result of actual experience had fallen ...
— Impressions of a War Correspondent • George Lynch |
