[Projectapollo-mods] But if one waits long enough

[Bown N. <hu...@vi...>]

 stupefying. Dust rose in the air; trees crashed to the ground. Hell was
let loose: Hell and Death were dashing around, converting that normal
sky and that sane earth into a Pandemonium. The wonder was that a human
life was spared. The Subaltern had a fleeting feeling that every one
except himself must be dead. When the storm seemed for a moment to have
abated, he looked around him and was surprised to see that very little
damage had been done to the men. An inexperienced eye would possibly not
have detected any casualties at all. From a Kipling point of view, the
scene was an artistic failure. Not a man was shrieking; not a man
"clawing up the ground." Here and there men had rolled over on their
sides, and were groaning quite softly to themselves. Here and there a
purple patch in the dusty khaki.... The instinct of men, like animals,
is to crawl quietly away from their fellows, and die in solitude. The
Colonel, very little perturbed by the bombardment, had sat throughout
with his back resting against a tree, writing messages, or glaring at
the map. Once, a large piece of shell casing had buried itself in the
ground a few inches from his leg. The jagged piece was hot and heavy.
"Good Heavens," he said to himself