War & Military Books

Claude Wheeler opened his eyes before the sun was up and vigorously shook his younger brother, who lay in the other half of the same bed. "Ralph, Ralph, get awake! Come down and help me wash the car." "What for?" "Why, aren't we going to the circus today?" "Car's all right. Let me alone." The boy turned over and pulled the sheet up to his face, to shut out the... more...

CHAPTER I ON ACTIVE SERVICE "Four o'clock mornin', sah; bugle him go for revally." Dudley Wilmshurst, Second Lieutenant of the Nth West African Regiment, threw off the light coverings, pulled aside the mosquito curtains, and sat upon the edge of his cot, hardly able to realise that Tari Barl, his Haussa servant, had announced the momentous news. Doubtful whether his senses were not... more...

PRELUDE It was graduation day at West Point, and there had been a remarkable scene at the morning ceremonies. In the presence of the Board of Visitors, the full-uniformed officers of the academic and military staff, the august professors and their many assistants, scores of daintily dressed women and dozens of sober-garbed civilians, the assembled Corps of Cadets, in their gray and white, had risen as... more...

CHAPTER I London lay as if washed with water-colour that Sunday morning, light blue sky and pale dancing sunlight wooing the begrimed stones of Westminster like a young girl with an old lover. The empty streets, clean-swept, were bathed in the light, and appeared to be transformed from the streets of week-day life. Yet the half of Londoners lay late abed, perhaps because six mornings a week of reality... more...

CHAPTER I A GAME OF BASEBALL “Now for a home run, Jack!” “Soak it out over the bleachers!” “Show the Hixley boys what we can do!” “Give him a swift one, Dink! Don’t let him hit it!” “Oh, dear, I do hope Jack scores!” came in a sweet, girlish voice. “Of course he’ll score!” returned a youth sitting near the girl who had made the remark. “He’s been holding back for just... more...

CHAPTER I Hillsdale is "somewhere in the United States of America"—but there are hundreds of Hillsdales! This particular Hillsdale is no less, no more, than the others. It contains the usual center of business activity clustering about a rather modern hotel. One of its livery stables has been remodelled into a moving-picture house, the other into a garage; one of its newspapers has become a... more...

I MONT BLANC, the Dent du Midi, and the Aiguille Verte look across at the bloodless faces that show above the blankets along the gallery of the sanatorium. This roofed-in gallery of rustic wood-work on the first floor of the palatial hospital is isolated in Space and overlooks the world. The blankets of fine wool—red, green, brown, or white—from which those wasted cheeks and shining eyes protrude... 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...

CHAPTER I It was a midwinter day, yet the air was balmy. The trees were bare-limbed but with a haze clothing them in the distance that seemed almost that of returning verdure. The grass, even in mid-winter, showed green. A bird sang lustily in the hedge. Up the grassy lane walked a girl in the costume of the active Red Cross worker—an intelligent looking girl with a face that, although perhaps not... more...

CHAPTER IPORTRAITS "As to what the picture represents, that depends upon who looks at it."—Whistler. The French Mission in its profound wisdom had sent as liaison officer to the Scottish Division a captain of Dragoons whose name was Beltara. "Are you any relation to the painter, sir?" Aurelle, the interpreter, asked him. "What did you say?" said the dragoon. "Say that... more...