When It Let Go, We Went
On Talking Again, If Nobody Hurt - Maybe Saying, 'That Was A Ripper!' Or
Some Such Commonplace Comment Before We Resumed; Or, Maybe, We Would See
A Shell Poising Itself Away High In The Air Overhead.
In that case,
every fellow just whipped out a sudden, 'See you again, gents!' and
shoved.
Often and often I saw gangs of ladies promenading the streets,
looking as cheerful as you please, and keeping an eye canted up watching
the shells; and I've seen them stop still when they were uncertain about
what a shell was going to do, and wait and make certain; and after that
they sa'ntered along again, or lit out for shelter, according to the
verdict. Streets in some towns have a litter of pieces of paper, and
odds and ends of one sort or another lying around. Ours hadn't; they
had IRON litter. Sometimes a man would gather up all the iron fragments
and unbursted shells in his neighborhood, and pile them into a kind of
monument in his front yard - a ton of it, sometimes. No glass left;
glass couldn't stand such a bombardment; it was all shivered out.
Windows of the houses vacant - looked like eye-holes in a skull. WHOLE
panes were as scarce as news.
'We had church Sundays. Not many there, along at first; but by-and-bye
pretty good turnouts. I've seen service stop a minute, and everybody
sit quiet - no voice heard, pretty funeral-like then - and all the more so
on account of the awful boom and crash going on outside and overhead;
and pretty soon, when a body could be heard, service would go on again.
Organs and church-music mixed up with a bombardment is a powerful queer
combination - along at first.
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