"Firing line" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... been atrocious—pouring rain and driving, cutting snow—but it did not get through my overcoat, which is richly caked with mud. We have had a fortnight's fighting and have marched back now from the firing line for a short rest to refit. It meant two days' marching through roads and fields ankle deep in clinging, porridgy mud, but we were all glad enough to put up with any hardship so long as we got away from the strain of flying shells and bullets. In the trenches we lost some more ...
— Current History, A Monthly Magazine - The European War, March 1915 • New York Times
... lungs have not given him the support he needs for his adventurous and stormy career. At times, when every man's hand has seemed to be against him, he has had to fight desperately with both body and mind to keep his place in the firing line. Some of his friends have seen him in a state of real weakness, particularly of physical weakness, and for myself I have never once found him in a truculent or self-satisfied frame of mind. I believe he is at heart a modest man, and I am quite certain ...
— The Mirrors of Downing Street - Some Political Reflections by a Gentleman with a Duster • Harold Begbie
... It was a slip of my pen. But here in Goerlitz, far from the firing line, even a rational man, when he is troubled, begins to imagine things. With your talents you might have been an officer on a general's staff ...
— Atlantis • Gerhart Hauptmann
... which he gave himself at one passing moment of his life, and which, had he lived, he would have forgotten, as the changing times brought new issues to be met as he met this old one. He was too great, too brave, to ever stand still and let the world go by. He was always on the firing line. This thing—" he rapped the hollow iron shaft again contemptuously, and the hollow sound seemed to add emphasis to his words—"this is a dead monument to a dead issue. Instead of speaking of his life, it cries aloud in hideous emphasis that ...
— The Calling Of Dan Matthews • Harold Bell Wright
... that the Boche mustn't gain another yard of ground." He was a fighter, this brigadier—although I have never yet met another officer who took it as a matter of course that his camp-bed should be equipped with linen sheets when he was living in the firing line. ...
— Pushed and the Return Push • George Herbert Fosdike Nichols, (AKA Quex)
... I made enquiries and from soldiers and foresters learned that heretofore inhabitants of the Ardennes forest, these animals had been driven South when man had chosen to make the firing line of their haunts; and that, prolific breeders, they were now practically a menace to the unarmed civilian. From these same lovers of nature I gathered that for the first time in their recollection sea-gulls and curlews had likewise been seen on the ...
— With Those Who Wait • Frances Wilson Huard
... by a German squadron in perfect order, in line at close order. The 18th Hussars squadron met the charge with well-directed fire at close range, and the German squadron was almost annihilated. A few passed through the firing line and were shot by the horse holders. Thirty-two dead and wounded Germans were counted on the ground in front of the squadron, and of the 60 or 70 which charged not more than a dozen escaped. A second charge was attempted shortly afterwards, ...
— 1914 • John French, Viscount of Ypres
... Hopkins got all his scars in the battle of life. Men who command locomotives on the firing line often get hurt, but Hopkins had votes of thanks from officials and testimonials from men, and life-saver's medals from two governments to show that his scars were the brands of honorable degrees conferred by the Almighty on the field for brave ...
— Danger Signals • John A. Hill and Jasper Ewing Brady
... with surgical cloth; cases are dropping in (seventeen up to date, I hear), and doctors are busy. Already in the night smothered cries burst from the walls of these torture-rooms, and make one conscious that it may be one's turn next. I have always felt that it is all right up in the firing line, but it is that dreadful afterwards on the operating-table.... But nurses and doctors are doing valiantly. There is a German army doctor who knows his business very well, they say; and his reputation has already spread so far among the men of our all-nation sailors ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale
... are very dull and narrow and would bore one to death. We have Wood, Roosevelt, Lee, the British Attache, Whitney and a Doctor Church, a friend of mine from Princeton, who is quite the most cheerful soul and the funniest I ever met. He carried four men from the firing line the other day back half a mile to the hospital tent. He spends most of his time coming around headquarters in an undershirt of mine and a gold bracelet fighting tarantulas. I woke up the other morning with one ...
— Adventures and Letters • Richard Harding Davis
... grim answer to inquiries. White men and colored men, veterans and recruits and volunteers, each lay waiting for the battle to begin or to end so that he might be carried away to safety, for the wounded were in as great danger after they were hit as though they were in the firing line, but none ...
— Notes of a War Correspondent • Richard Harding Davis
... of the people behind the firing line should give one confidence. I had heard that the Italians were a nervous people. It does not apply to this part of Italy. As I approached the danger spot I saw rows of large, fat gentlemen with long thin black cigars ...
— A Visit to Three Fronts • Arthur Conan Doyle
... part, read PATRICK MACGILL'S The Red Horizon (JENKINS). Here we meet the author of The Children of the Dead End and The Rat Pit as Rifleman 3008 of the London Irish, involved in the grim routine of the firing line—reliefs, diggings and repairs, sentry-go's, stand-to's, reserves, working and covering parties, billets; and so da capo. With a rare artistic intuition, instead of diffusing his effects in a riot of general impressions, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, February 16, 1916 • Various
... Egypt announced in giant headlines the arrival of 250,000 no less shadowy Japanese at Antwerp. But the Indians were real. Their appearance was a true touch of the World War and they reached the firing line in Flanders ...
— With Manchesters in the East • Gerald B. Hurst
... was being attended behind the firing line. He wondered where he was, and tried to sit up, but fell back exhausted. The doctor told him to ...
— The Rider in Khaki - A Novel • Nat Gould
... the women of the Allied countries they gave a second or supporting line service in organization and conservation to which they applied their full energy. These efforts brought them close in spirit to the firing line long before the Stars and Stripes were carried to ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume V • Ida Husted Harper
... firing on the breastworks, and receiving a terrible fire from the Spaniards. Five of the fifty-two men were down (three of them killed) and the case was growing serious. The storming party left the fort, and doubled downhill into the firing line, where they poured in volley after blasting volley, killing a Spaniard at each shot, making "a very desperate battle" of it, "our rage increasing with our wounds." No troops could stand such file-firing. The battle became "mere bloody massacre," and the Spaniards ...
— On the Spanish Main - Or, Some English forays on the Isthmus of Darien. • John Masefield |
