|
|
|
We went on eating. There was a cough, a noise like a railway engine starting and then an explosion that shook the earth again.
"This isn't a deep dugout," Passini said.
"That was a big trench mortar."
"Yes, sir."
I ate the end of my piece of cheese and took a swallow of wine. Through the other noise I heard a cough, then came the chuh-chuh-chuh-chuh - then there was a flash, as a blast-furnace door is swung open, and a roar that started white and went red and on and on in a rushing wind...In the jolt of my head I heard somebody crying. I thought somebody was screaming. I tried to move but I could not move. I heard the machine-guns and rifles firing across the river and all along the river. There was a great splashing and I saw the star-shells go up and burst and float whitely and rockets going up and heard bombs, all this in a moment, and then I heard close to me someone saying, "Mamma mia! oh, mamma mia!"
Ernest Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms, Penguin, Harmondsworth, Middlesex, 1929, p. 46-47.
TIME: World War One
PLACE: Italy
CIRCUMSTANCE: a shelling
There was much shelling and many rockets in the rain and machinegun and rifle fire all along the line ... Guns were firing from the field behind the village and the shells going away had a comfortable sound.
Ernest Hemingway, A Farewell To Arms, Penguin, Harmondsworth, Middlesex, 1929, p. 145.
TIME: World War One
PLACE: Italy
CIRCUMSTANCE: a shelling
home
