"Machine gun" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... counter-attacked 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, ...
— Gallipoli Diary, Volume 2 • Ian Hamilton
... "I had the machine gun with which you did the murder until your man there kicked me in the stomach and jerked it away from me. It's in the hangar now. But we don't need the gun, we've got enough evidence without ...
— 32 Caliber • Donald McGibeny
... wade into the conflict. Finally he made up his mind that, in lieu of an iron hand or two, he would use his favorite monkey wrench, for he had no firearms whatsoever; although, had somebody presented him with a one-man machine gun with full directions for using, Mr Reardon would have recoiled in horror from it. Firearms were highly dangerous. ...
— Cappy Ricks Retires • Peter B. Kyne
... have gladly sung them a sweet, low lullaby, crooning a song 30 with which mothers on the shores of all the seven seas had once rocked them to sleep—only now the sound of heavy firing, dull booms of the cannon, and the spit and nervous drum of the machine gun, made its song as futile and indistinguishable as the whisper of a child in the roar of a ...
— Story Hour Readings: Seventh Year • E.C. Hartwell
... as I 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
... over to his 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
... to your cutlasses, boys, or they're into us." His voice rose into a shriek as he ended, for a shovel-headed spear had been buried in his chest. A second wave of dervishes lapped over the hillocks, and burst upon the machine-gun and the right front of the line. The sailors were overborne in an instant, but the Mallows, with their fighting blood aflame, met the yell of the Moslem with an even wilder, fiercer cry, and dropped two hundred ...
— The Green Flag • Arthur Conan Doyle
... 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 your head down, Smith! Make the ...
— Jimmie Higgins • Upton Sinclair
... with a grenade like a tin pineapple in each hand. The sudden loneliness frightened him again. Outside the house was a sound of machine-gun firing, broken by the occasional bursting; of a shell. He looked at the red-tiled roof and at a chromo of a woman nursing a child that hung on the whitewashed wall opposite him. He was in a small kitchen. There was a fire in the hearth where something boiled in a black ...
— Three Soldiers • John Dos Passos
... dimly discernible. As the darkness came on, Ethel discovered that a small light glowed from the side of the car in front of the driver. Gripping the hand-rail, she made bold to raise herself; and, stopping beneath the searchlight and machine-gun that hung, one beneath the other, on swivels in the center of the framework, she ...
— In the Clutch of the War-God • Milo Hastings
... opportunity to train for a soldier made a man of him. He'd have made his mark in the war. Strong an' game an' fierce, he'd ... he'd ... Well, he's dead—he's dead!... Four months after enlistment he's dead.... An' he never had a rifle in his hands! He never had his hands on a machine-gun or a piece of artillery!... He never had a uniform! He never had an ...
— The Desert of Wheat • Zane Grey
... 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 ...
— The Mastery of the Air • William J. Claxton
... Long, edging slightly, "you're about as funny as a machine-gun, you are! If you got a private life, why ain't you back in St. Louis a night like this, showing her and the ...
— Humoresque - A Laugh On Life With A Tear Behind It • Fannie Hurst
... 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. 'E wur a good man, wur Scaplehorn"—he added musingly—"and ...
— Leaves from a Field Note-Book • J. H. Morgan
... quiet, the two Germans not seeming to realise the danger of their position. It is the worst feeling I know to watch a cowardly display of this sort and yet be able to do absolutely nothing. It only needed a spark to set everything in a blaze, which must have ended in the guard being turned out for machine-gun practice. Meanwhile, the news reached some Britishers who were half-way through a concert. By mutual consent it was at once broken up by the singing of the National Anthem. Every one outside at once stood to attention and heartily ...
— 'Brother Bosch', an Airman's Escape from Germany • Gerald Featherstone Knight
... come to the beach for an after-luncheon smoke, and when we were not looking at the Senegalese and workmen, our eyes wandered from hydroplanes and machine-gun-armed motor-boats to the mermaids on the Roman mole. Not till we ran out of tobacco and the mole ran out of mermaids did we realize that Frejus was still unexplored and unsketched. We gave ourselves a six o'clock rendezvous on the ...
— Riviera Towns • Herbert Adams Gibbons
... toward each other with bands playing, discharged their muskets when they were near enough to see the whites of their opponents' eyes, and then charged with fixed bayonets, fighting it out hand to hand. That sort of battle went out of fashion with the introduction of the breech-loading rifle and the machine-gun; and now, with between fifty and sixty thousand men in action, there were periods when not a solitary human being could be seen. And when any did appear, which was only at intervals, they were but ...
— Under the Ensign of the Rising Sun - A Story of the Russo-Japanese War • Harry Collingwood
... window. The stove grew cold. The howling of the coyotes circled nearer and nearer. Suddenly a rifle-shot rung out, then another. The shots did not waken the sleeping boy and girl, but the mule brayed and began to kick with the rapidity of machine-gun fire. They both jumped up and ran out. The mule was just disappearing across the trail. Douglas jumped on Swift's bare back, catching the lariat from the saddle ...
— Judith of the Godless Valley • Honore Willsie
... green against the night; and a white mist covered the low-lying ground. Across the road lay trees in all directions, while, through the few that remained standing, a cold bright moon threw fantastic shadows. On each side of the road, screened by the embankment from machine-gun fire, sat groups of ...
— Mufti • H. C. (Herman Cyril) McNeile
... irrefragable compulsion of a common spell, who are selected for sacrifice in the fervour of a general obsession, but who are cooly awake to the unreason which locks the minds of their fellows, will burst into fury at the bond they feel. The obvious obstruction is the obstinate "blighter" with a machine-gun in front of them. At least, they ...
— Old Junk • H. M. Tomlinson
... the message practically ends the story. Events followed each other from then on like bullets from a machine-gun. A wild drive in a taxicab brought me to the door of Mayor Anderson at ten o'clock that night. I told him the story ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science September 1930 • Various
... was one of the two factors which attracted us toward the Heavy Branch Machine-Gun Corps—as the Tank Corps was known in the first year of its being. On the Somme we had seen a derelict tank, wrecked, despoiled of her guns, and forsaken in No Man's Land. We had swarmed around and over her, wild with curiosity, much as the Lilliputians must have swarmed around the prostrate ...
— Life in a Tank • Richard Haigh
... the Second Devons, the Second West Yorks, the Second Scottish Rifles, and the Second Middlesex, known as the Twenty-third Brigade. The Scottish Rifles charged against intact wire entanglements which halted them in the range of a murderous rifle and machine-gun fire. With daring bravery the Scots sought to tear down the wire with their hands; but were forced to fall back and lie in the fire-swept zone until one company forced its way through an opening and ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume V (of 12) - Neuve Chapelle, Battle of Ypres, Przemysl, Mazurian Lakes • Francis J. Reynolds, Allen L. Churchill, and Francis Trevelyan
... secured weapons and cartridges, posted themselves behind the windows of their barracks, and fired at every Japanese they saw. News quickly reached the authorities, and Japanese companies of infantry hurried out and surrounded their barracks. One party attacked the front with a machine-gun, and another assaulted from behind. Fighting began at half-past eight in the morning. The Koreans defended themselves until noon, and then were finally overcome by a bayonet charge from the rear. Their gallant defence excited the greatest ...
— Korea's Fight for Freedom • F.A. McKenzie
... have 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
... engagement is the extreme bloodiness of modern warfare under some conditions, and its bloodlessness under others. Here, out of a total of something under a thousand casualties seven hundred were incurred in about five minutes, and the whole day of shell, machine-gun, and rifle fire only furnished the odd three hundred. So also at Ladysmith the British forces (White's column) were under heavy fire from 5.30 to 11.30, and the loss again was something under three hundred. With conservative generalship the losses of the battles of the future will be much ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle
... workmen made eight ammunition boxes a day. Nor could they be persuaded into making more. A young Swiss, who could not speak English, was set to work, and in the first day he made fifty boxes. In the same firm the skilled union hands filed up the outside handles of one machine-gun a day. That was their stint. No one was known ever to do more. A non-union filer came into the shop and did twelve a day. A Manchester firm found that to plane a large bed-casting took union workmen one hundred and ninety hours, and non-union ...
— War of the Classes • Jack London
... uncertainty of things. Some men are here to-day and the far side of Wipers to-morrow night. Others arrive from England thirsting for all sorts of things that no sane man ever wants to have anything to do 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 ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, January 19, 1916 • Various
... be back at work again. The silence of the hospital had irked his soul. Here the air was full of the pneumatic riveter. They called it the gun that would win the war. The shipyard atmosphere was shattered all day long as if with machine-gun fire and the riveters were indeed firing at Germany. Every red-hot rivet was ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes
... The machine-gun crew had gone under to a man, doing their best to the last. I think Sergeant Whitehead went with them, too; at least he was near there a short time before, and I never saw him or any of the gun crew again. ...
— The Escape of a Princess Pat • George Pearson
... controls. Altamont gathered up the two cups, the stainless-steel dishes, and the knives and forks and spoons, going up the steps over the shielded converter and ducking his head to avoid the seat in the forward top machine-gun turret. He washed and dried the dishes, noting with satisfaction that the gauge of the water tank was still reasonably high, and glanced out one of the windows. Loudons was taking the big helicopter upstairs, ...
— The Return • H. Beam Piper and John J. McGuire
... haul down the U. S. flag and run up my private signal. Then he is to silence every gun he can find that is bearing on us, and train a machine-gun on the door of the bulk-head, ready to fire when I give the signal by ...
— L. P. M. - The End of the Great War • J. Stewart Barney
... saw an enemy biplane above the "Pfefferruecken," as I was standing at our landing station. I started at once, and overtook him at 1,500 meters altitude. It seems he did not see me. I attacked from above and behind, and greeted him with the usual machine-gun fire. He quickly turned and attacked me. But this pleasure did not last long for him. I quickly had him in a bad way, and made short work of him. After a few more twists and turns my fire began to tell, and finally he fell. I then flew home, satisfied that I had ...
— An Aviator's Field Book - Being the field reports of Oswald Boelcke, from August 1, - 1914 to October 28, 1916 • Oswald Boelcke
... of officers, noncommissioned officers, special units (such as band or machine-gun company), etc., in the various formations of the company, battalion, or ...
— Manual for Noncommissioned Officers and Privates of Infantry • War Department
... 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
... aviator, you might sail over and take pictures to your heart's content, and you would see nothing but a saintly image; you would have to be on the enemy's side, and behind the lines, to make the discovery that under the image had been dug a hole for a machine-gun. When I saw that picture, I thought to ...
— The Profits of Religion, Fifth Edition • Upton Sinclair
... built. It only afforded 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, ...
— "Over There" with the Australians • R. Hugh Knyvett
... was 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 ...
— The Title - A Comedy in Three Acts • Arnold Bennett
... 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 would come. ...
— A Yankee in the Trenches • R. Derby Holmes
... pony's neck, the rat-tat-tat of the animal's heels against the side of the car being somewhat reminiscent of machine-gun ...
— Grace Harlowe's Overland Riders in the Great North Woods • Jessie Graham Flower
... number of machines that were continually roaring above the field at Luxeuil it is remarkable that only two fatal accidents occurred. One was when a British pilot tried diving at a target, for machine-gun practice, and was unable to redress his airplane. Both he and his gunner were killed. In the second accident I lost a good friend—a young Frenchman. He took up his gunner in a two-seated Nieuport. A young Canadian pilot accompanied ...
— Flying for France • James R. McConnell
... German submarine; an American invented the German torpedo; an American invented the German machine-gun; an American invented the Murphy button, the yellow ...
— The Blot on the Kaiser's 'Scutcheon • Newell Dwight Hillis
... a sharp turn and charged their pursuers. The big rifle fired twice. Read saw the Belderkan cars scatter. Suddenly machine-gun bullets cracked ...
— The Green Beret • Thomas Edward Purdom
... splintering gangways, while her guns roared defiance at the huge German batteries. The ground swell made the Vindictive roll and racked her breaking gangways terribly. The storm of German shells and the hail of machine-gun bullets seemed almost to be sweeping everything before them. An officer awaiting his turn on deck asked, "What are all those men lying down for?" and was answered, "All dead, Sir"; killed before they had started. Several gangways were smashed to pieces, the men on them falling ...
— Flag and Fleet - How the British Navy Won the Freedom of the Seas • William Wood
... has made an interesting contribution to the literature of the present war in his account of service, which covers the experience of a young officer in the making and on the battle front,—the transformation of an artist into a first-class machine-gun officer. He covers the training period at home and abroad and the work at the front. This direct and interesting account should serve to bring home to all of us an appreciation of how much has to be done before troops can be made effective for modern war, the cost of unpreparedness, ...
— "Crumps", The Plain Story of a Canadian Who Went • Louis Keene
... slowly still, over terrible going, all holes and hummocks. Half consciously he took cover all he could. The air was alive with the whistle from machine-gun fire storming across zigzag fashion-alive it was with bullets, dust, and smoke. 'How shall I tell her?' he thought. There would be nothing to tell but just a sort of jagged brown sensation. He kept his eyes steadily before him, not wanting to ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... to us 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 so bravely ...
— Tell England - A Study in a Generation • Ernest Raymond
... not in 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 ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, May 21, 1919. • Various
... plan had been to clear up everything as one went along. The idea of the new tactics was to press swiftly ahead even if they left behind them machine-gun nests and strong enemy positions. These could be cleaned up later one by one, while in front the swift advance was intended to demoralize the opposing army and throw it out of formation by the very ...
— Army Boys on the Firing Line - or, Holding Back the German Drive • Homer Randall
... not only believed it could be taken, but that they could take it. And they did take it, as the first hill had been taken, by sheer pluck and dauntless determination. In vain did the Spaniards hurl forth their deadliest fire of machine-gun and rifle. The grim American advance was as unchecked as that of an ocean tide. Finally it surged with a roar like that of a storm-driven breaker over the crest, and dashed with resistless fury against the crowning fortifications. In another ...
— "Forward, March" - A Tale of the Spanish-American War • Kirk Munroe
... 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 ...
— The River War • Winston S. Churchill
... "The Theatre of War," gets more apt every day. During the Balkan War the Servians and Montenegrins used a rattle to imitate machine-gun fire, and a machine has now been devised for imitating the noise of an aeroplane engine, with the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, March 25, 1914 • Various
... 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 Buenos Aires. Kankad showed her the ...
— Uller Uprising • Henry Beam Piper, John D. Clark and John F. Carr
... battle, and his keen eyesight picked out many details that would not have been apparent to a man whose every sense was not trained to the highest point of perfection as were the ape-man's. He noted machine-gun emplacements cunningly hidden from the view of the British and listening posts placed well out ...
— Tarzan the Untamed • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... The first lot of men, or rather the remainder of them, had disappeared in the haze and smoke, punctured by bursting shells. What was happening in the German lines I did not know. Other men were coming up and going over the top. The German machine-gun fire was not quite so deadly now, but our men suffered badly from shell-fire. On several occasions I noticed men run and take temporary cover in the shell-holes, but their ranks ...
— How I Filmed the War - A Record of the Extraordinary Experiences of the Man Who - Filmed the Great Somme Battles, etc. • Lieut. Geoffrey H. Malins
... innocence, I even wondered if 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 her an agreeable travelling-companion. I thought I would ...
— Ranson's Folly • Richard Harding Davis
... the small trees which sparsely covered the ridge gave a partial shade from the sun. Opposite our front a considerable valley, thickly wooded, ran back from the river, and it was our easy and pleasant task to 'fan' this, as an American officer would say, by scattering a ceaseless shower of rifle and machine-gun bullets throughout its length. Under these satisfactory circumstances I ...
— London to Ladysmith via Pretoria • Winston Spencer Churchill
... to 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 in the way—automatic pistols, of course, and ...
— Ned, Bob and Jerry on the Firing Line - The Motor Boys Fighting for Uncle Sam • Clarence Young
... 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 ...
— Joy in the Morning • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... helmets, and with masks at "alert." My vestments consisted simply of a stole worn over my cassock. Helmet and mask lay easily within reach at one side. The firing, meanwhile, was terrific—high explosive shells shrieking overhead and bursting on every side. Rifle and machine-gun bullets added their shrill tenor notes to the ...
— The Greater Love • George T. McCarthy
... began to come and a machine-gun subaltern, looking at a black East in search of daylight, so that he might say, "It is now light; I may go to bed," was somewhat startled. "For," he said, "I have received shocks as the result of too much whisky of old, but from a split tea and chloride of lime—no! It must be the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Aug 15, 1917 • Various
... from the reports of the Royal Flying Corps, who throughout the 7th and 8th attacked the retreating columns with bombs and machine-gun fire, and from other evidence, that the enemy was retiring in considerable disorganization, and could offer no very serious resistance if ...
— With the British Army in The Holy Land • Henry Osmond Lock
... 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
... got away from Crepy with the greatest success. The 13th slaughtered those foolish Huns that tried to charge up the hill in the face of rifle, machine-gun, and a considerable shell fire. The Duke of Wellington's laid a pretty little ambush and hooked a car containing the general and staff of the 1st Cavalry Division. The prisoners were remorsefully shot, as it would have been impossible to ...
— Adventures of a Despatch Rider • W. H. L. Watson
... nearly as could be, the experience of the boys at the front. Bomb-throwing squads were formed, and the best shots in the battalion, the men who had made marksmen's scores on the rifle ranges, were given daily instruction in the important business of sniping. More generous provision for the training of machine-gun teams was made, but so great was the lack in England of these important weapons, that for many weeks we drilled with wooden substitutes, gaining such knowledge of machine gunnery as we could from the study ...
— Kitchener's Mob - Adventures of an American in the British Army • James Norman Hall
... state it was beyond Mr Pickering. The wood seemed carpeted with twigs. Whenever he stepped he trod on one, and whenever he trod on one it cracked beneath his feet. There were moments when he felt gloomily that he might just as well be firing a machine-gun. ...
— Uneasy Money • P.G. Wodehouse
... quickly to him and shook his hand again. On the way out, Ramsey played for a moment or two with the twins, who were rolling a couple of toy spaceships marked hyper-one and hyper-two across the floor and making anachronistic machine-gun noises with their lips. Sally Englander, a plump, young-home-maker type, beamed at Ramsey from the kitchen. Then he went out ...
— Equation of Doom • Gerald Vance
... were overcome. First it was the Germans who with their terrible Fokker planes harnessed the machine-gun to the airplane and made of it a weapon of offense. Then it was the Allies who added the radio and made of it an efficient method of observation and spotting of artillery fire. Increased engine-power began to be developed, and ...
— Opportunities in Aviation • Arthur Sweetser
... live, and beyond it a vast wire entanglement. Then we curved, and I was in an open place, a sort of redoubt contrived out of little homes and cattle-stables. I heard irregular rifle-fire close by, but I could not see who was firing I was shown the machine-gun chamber, and the blind which hides the aperture for the muzzle was lifted, but only momentarily. I was shown, too, the deep underground refuges to which every body takes in case of a heavy bombardment. Then we were in the men's quarters, ...
— Over There • Arnold Bennett
... roared and raged and exploded with the sharp detonations of a machine-gun. Sounds of violent coughing and tinkering came from the bowels of the trunk, telling that the child was still alive and busy. Presently he emerged to breathe and wipe the oil ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, March 19, 1919 • Various
... Evan Baldwin at the club after his first lecture the other night and, Ann, I believe I'll be recruited for the plow as well as for the machine-gun. I'm going to buy some land out there back of the Beesleys' and raise sheep on it. He says Harpeth is losing millions a year by not raising sheep. I'm going to live at Riverfield a lot of the time and motor back and forth to business. Truly, Ann, the land bug has bit me and—and it isn't ...
— The Golden Bird • Maria Thompson Daviess
... Doothnack, 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 ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... infantry advance began, had, after 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
... hours. He 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
... off 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 Vision of Desire • Margaret Pedler
... wealth, the huge machines whereby it was produced, and the railroads whereby it was distributed, and above all, the financial resources upon which the other processes depended. One saw this class holding itself in power by means of the policeman's club and the militiaman's rifle, by machine-gun and battle-ship; one saw that, whether by bribery or by outright force, it had seized all the powers of government, of legislatures and executives and courts. One saw that in the same way it had seized upon the sources of ideas; it controlled the newspapers and the churches and ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair
... Sharrow & Co. found themselves yanked out of uniform and seated once more at their familiar, uninviting desks of yellow oak—very young men, mostly, assigned to various camps of special three-month instruction; and now cruelly interrupted while scrambling frantically after commissions in machine-gun companies, field artillery, flying ...
— The Crimson Tide • Robert W. Chambers
... dug-outs for sleeping and eating; overhead protections and tool-sheds where needed, and, as one came nearer the working face, very clever cellars against trench-sweepers. Men passed on their business; a squad with a captured machine-gun which they tested in a sheltered dip; armourers at their benches busy with sick rifles; fatigue-parties for straw, rations, and ammunition; long processions of single blue figures turned sideways between the brown sunless walls. One understood ...
— France At War - On the Frontier of Civilization • Rudyard Kipling
... two youths won fresh laurels, and both were well on the way to be recognized "aces" by the time Pershing's army succeeded in fighting its way through the nests of machine-gun traps that infested the great ...
— Air Service Boys Over the Atlantic • Charles Amory Beach
... on the west by a gray stone facsimile of Windsor Castle, confirmed with butlers, buttresses, bastions, ramparts, repartees, feudal tenures, moats, drawbridges, posterns, pasterns, chevaux de frise, machicolated battlements, donjons, loopholes, machine-gun emplacements, caltrops, portcullises, glacis, and all the other travaux de fantaisie that make life worth living for retired manufacturers. The general effect is emetic in the extreme. Hard by the castle is ...
— Shandygaff • Christopher Morley
... 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 exceptional aptitude for the rank of company commanders. The non-commissioned officers ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... 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 of mankind obsessed her like a nightmare, and she gnashed her teeth against ...
— Eminent Victorians • Lytton Strachey
... the first experts to fly with a Liberty engine. Without giving any details away, he assured me impressively that it was "an honest-to-God engine" and that his planes were equipped with "an honest-to-God machine-gun," and that he looked forward with cheery anticipation to the first encounter his chaps would have with "the festive Hun." He was one of the few Americans I had met who spoke with something of our scornful affection for the enemy. It indicated to me his absolute certainty ...
— Out To Win - The Story of America in France • Coningsby Dawson
... at least we think he's a pawnbroker—who's always inventing things; stupendous and impossible things. His last idea was machine-howitzers fourteen feet high, that take in shells exactly as a machine-gun takes in bullets. He says "You'll see them in the next War." When you ask him how he's going to transport and emplace and hide his machine-howitzers, he looks dejected, and says "I never thought of that," and has another idea at ...
— The Tree of Heaven • May Sinclair
... little value. Thick grass, dense thorn scrub, high elephant grass, all had their special bearing on the quality of the fighting. Close-quarter engagements were the rule, dirty fighting in the jungle, ambushes, patrol encounters; and the deadly machine-gun that enfiladed or swept every open space. We cannot be surprised that the mounted arm was robbed of much of its utility, that artillery work was often blind for want of observation, that the trench dug in the green heart of a forest escaped the watchful eyes of aeroplanes, that this war ...
— Sketches of the East Africa Campaign • Robert Valentine Dolbey
... 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 over ...
— The War Poems of Siegfried Sassoon • Siegfried Sassoon
... hurried and insufficient breakfast, B Company marched out It was the business of B Company to take up a position south of the enemy's hill, to harass the foe with flanking fire and at the proper moment to rush certain machine-gun posts. B Company had some ten miles to march before reaching its appointed place. McMahon gave it as his opinion that B Company would be incapable of rushing anything when it had marched ten miles in blistering heat and had lain flat for an hour ...
— Our Casualty And Other Stories - 1918 • James Owen Hannay, AKA George A. Birmingham
... 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. Set up ...
— In the Sweet Dry and Dry • Christopher Morley |
