War & Military Books

CHAPTER I. "Does it never rain here?" asked the Latest Arrival, with sudden shift of the matter under discussion. "How is that, Bentley?" said the officer addressed to the senior present, the surgeon. "You've been here longest." "Don't know, I'm sure," was the languid answer. "I've only been here three years. Try 'Tonio there. He was born... more...

OFF TO WAR The time was late in the autumn of the second year of the war; the place, the garden of a war hospital in a small Austrian town, which lay at the base of wooded hills, sequestered as behind a Spanish wall, and still preserving its sleepy contented outlook upon existence. Day and night the locomotives whistled by. Some of them hauled to the front trains of soldiers singing and hallooing,... more...

CHAPTER I GOOD-BY, BRIGHTON "Wanted: young men to enlist in Uncle Sam's submarine fleet for service in European waters." The magic words stood out in bold type from the newspaper that Jack Hammond held spread out over his knees. Underneath the caption ran a detailed statement setting forth the desire of the United States Government to recruit at once a great force of young Americans to man... more...

CHAPTER I. THE TWIN EAGLETS. Autumn was upon the world -- the warm and gorgeous autumn of the south -- autumn that turned the leaves upon the trees to every hue of russet, scarlet, and gold, that transformed the dark solemn aisles of the trackless forests of Gascony into what might well have been palaces of fairy beauty, and covered the ground with a thick and soundless carpet of almost every hue of... more...

IN PARIS John Scott and Philip Lannes walked together down a great boulevard of Paris. The young American's heart was filled with grief and anger. The Frenchman felt the same grief, but mingled with it was a fierce, burning passion, so deep and bitter that it took a much stronger word than anger to describe it. Both had heard that morning the mutter of cannon on the horizon, and they knew the... more...

CHAPTER I In the huge shed of the wharf, piled with crates and baggage, broken by gang-planks leading up to ships on either side, a band plays a tinselly Hawaiian tune; people are dancing in and out among the piles of trunks and boxes. There is a scattering of khaki uniforms, and many young men stand in groups laughing and talking in voices pitched shrill with crates excitement. In the brown light of... more...

PREFACE The success of Harry Lorrequer was the reason for writing Charles O'Malley. That I myself was in no wise prepared for the favor the public bestowed on, my first attempt is easily enough understood. The ease with which I strung my stories together,—and in reality the Confessions of Harry Lorrequer are little other than a note-book of absurd and laughable incidents,—led me to believe... more...

CHAPTER I A BOWL OF ROSES In the morning-room of a large, old-fashioned country-house, situated a few miles outside the city of New Orleans, sat a young man arranging a bowl of roses. Beside him stood a pretty girl, in riding costume, whose face bore a trace of petulance. "Do make haste, Cousin Ridge, and finish with those stupid flowers. You have wasted half an hour of this glorious morning over... more...

CHAPTER 1. Sun and Shadow Thirty years ago, Marseilles lay burning in the sun, one day. A blazing sun upon a fierce August day was no greater rarity in southern France then, than at any other time, before or since. Everything in Marseilles, and about Marseilles, had stared at the fervid sky, and been stared at in return, until a staring habit had become universal there. Strangers were stared out of... more...

CHAPTER I SPRING IN THE TRAIN His was the first figure to catch my eye that evening in Petrograd; he stood under the dusky lamp in the vast gloomy Warsaw station, with exactly the expression that I was afterwards to know so well, impressed not only upon his face but also upon the awkwardness of his arms that hung stiffly at his side, upon the baggy looseness of his trousers at the knees, the unfastened... more...