But the war had spread to more and more fronts over the last year and become more complicated with the introduction of gas by the Germans, and it was hard to be hopeful whenever the familiar whine of shells started up again, setting his nerves on edge. The worst of it is that I know exactly what each can do, he had once written to Ethel [his aunt]. Oh Lord, how I hate that whistling sound like a kettle boiling. As it gets nearer and nearer, there are mean little pauses which leave heaps and heaps of time to think about where the shell will land and what it will be like when it bursts.
Clery, one of the captains, had once said to him he couldn’t imagine hell being very different. It’s odd, really, wrote Gore-Browne, I don’t fear death and think I can bear pain, but the shells I dislike more than I can describe. Sometimes 2,000 or more would fall in a single day and some days they would come from three different directions at once, so that the air buzzed with them like fighting ducks, reminding him of the music of Strauss. Then for ages afterwards bits of metal would fall sizzling into the mud and patter around.
Source:
Lamb, Christina. “Part One: 1914-1927, Chapter 4.” The Africa House: The True Story of An English Gentleman and His African Dream. Harper Collins Publishers, 2004. 54. Print.
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