IN trench1 warfare2 five things are important: firewood, food, tobacco, candles, and the enemy. In winter on the Zaragoza front they were important in that order, with the enemy a bad last. Except at night, when a surprise — attack was always conceivable, nobody bothered about the enemy. They were simply remote black insects whom one occasionally saw hopping3 to and fro. The real preoccupation of both armies was trying to keep warm.
I ought to say in passing that all the time I was in Spain I saw very little fighting. I was on the Aragon front from January to May, and between January and late March little or nothing happened on that front, except at Teruel. In March there was heavy fighting round Huesca, but I personally played only a minor4 part in it. Later, in June, there was the disastrous5 attack on Huesca in which several thousand men were killed in a single day, but I had been wounded and disabled before that happened. The things that one normally thinks of as the horrors of war seldom happened to me. No aeroplane ever dropped a bomb anywhere near me, I do not think a shell ever exploded within fifty yards of me, and I was only in hand-to-hand fighting once (once is once too often, I may say). Of course I was often under heavy machine-gun fire, but usually at longish. ranges. Even at Huesca you were generally safe enough if you took reasonable precautions.
Up here, in the hills round Zaragoza, it was simply the mingled6 boredom7 and discomfort8 of stationary9 warfare. A life as uneventful as a city clerk’s, and almost as regular. Sentry10-go, patrols, digging; digging, patrols, sentry-go. On every hill-top. Fascist11 or Loyalist, a knot of ragged12, dirty men shivering round their flag and trying to keep warm. And all day and night the meaningless bullets wandering across the empty valleys and only by some rare improbable chance getting home on a human body.
Often I used to gaze round the wintry landscape and marvel13 at the futility14 of it all. The inconclusiveness of such a kind of war! Earlier, about October, there had been savage15 fighting for all these hills; then, because the lack of men and arms, especially artillery16, made any large-scale operation impossible, each army had dug itself in and settled down on the hill-tops it had won. Over to our right there was a small outpost, also P.O.U.M., and on the spur to our left, at seven o’clock of us, a P.S.U.C. position faced a taller spur with several small Fascist posts dotted on its peaks. The so-called line zigzagged17 to and fro in a pattern that would have been quite unintelligible18 if every position had not flown a flag. The P.O.U.M. and P.S.U.C. flags were red, those of the Anarchists19 red and black; the Fascists20 generally flew the monarchist flag (red-yellow-red), but occasionally they flew the flag of the Republic (red-yellow-purple). The scenery was stupendous, if you could forget that every mountain — top was occupied by troops and was therefore littered with tin cans and crusted with dung. To the right of us the sierra bent21 south — eastwards22 and made way for the wide, veined valley that stretched across to Huesca. In the middle of the plain a few tiny cubes sprawled24 like a throw of dice25; this was the town of Robres, which was in Loyalist possession. Often in the mornings the valley was hidden under seas of cloud, out of which the hills rose flat and blue, giving the landscape a strange resemblance to a photographic negative. Beyond Huesca there were more hills of the same formation as our own, streaked26 with a pattern of snow which altered day by day. In the far distance the monstrous27 peaks of the Pyrenees, where the snow never melts, seemed to float upon nothing. Even down in the plain everything looked dead and bare. The hills opposite us were grey and wrinkled like the skins of elephants. Almost always the sky was empty of birds. I do not think I have ever seen a country where there were so few birds. The only birds one saw at any time were a kind of magpie28, and the coveys of partridges that startled one at night with their sudden whirring, and, very rarely, the flights of eagles that drifted slowly over, generally followed by rifle-shots which they did not deign29 to notice.
At night and in misty30 weather, patrols were sent out in the valley between ourselves and the Fascists. The job was not popular, it was too cold and too easy to get lost, and I soon found that I could get leave to go out on patrol as often as I wished. In the huge jagged ravines there were no paths or tracks of any kind; you could only find your way about by making successive journeys and noting fresh landmarks31 each time. As the bullet flies the nearest Fascist post was seven hundred metres from our own, but it was a mile and a half by the only practicable route. It was rather fun wandering about the dark valleys with the stray bullets flying high overhead like redshanks whistling. Better than night-time were the heavy mists, which often lasted all day and which had a habit of clinging round the hill-tops and leaving the valleys clear. When you were anywhere near the Fascist lines you had to creep at a snail’s pace; it was very difficult to move quietly on those hill-sides, among the crackling shrubs32 and tinkling33 limestones35. It was only at the third or fourth attempt that I managed to find my way to the Fascist lines. The mist was very thick, and I crept up to the barbed wire to listen. I could hear the Fascists talking and singing inside. Then to my alarm I heard several of them coming down the hill towards me. I cowered36 behind a bush that suddenly seemed very small, and tried to cock my rifle without noise. However, they branched off and did not come within sight of me. Behind the bush where I was hiding I came upon various relics37 of the earlier fighting — a pile of empty cartridge38-cases, a leather cap with a bullet-hole in it, and a red flag, obviously one-of our own. I took it back to the position, where it was unsentimentally torn up for cleaning-rags.
I had been made a corporal, or cabo, as it was called, as soon as we reached the front, and was in command of a guard of twelve men. It was no sinecure39, especially at first. The centuria was an untrained mob composed mostly of boys in their teens. Here and there in the militia40 you came across children as young as eleven or twelve, usually refugees from Fascist territory who had been enlisted41 as militiamen as the easiest way of providing for them. As a rule they were employed on light work in the rear, but sometimes they managed to worm their way to the front line, where they were a public menace. I remember one little brute42 throwing a hand-grenade into the dug-out fire ‘for a joke’. At Monte Pocero I do not think there was anyone younger than fifteen, but the average age must have been well under twenty. Boys of this age ought never to be used in the front line, because they cannot stand the lack of sleep which is inseparable from trench warfare. At the beginning it was almost impossible to keep our position properly guarded at night. The wretched children of my section could only be roused by dragging them out of their dug-outs feet foremost, and as soon as your back was turned they left their posts and slipped into shelter; or they would even, in spite of the frightful43 cold, lean up against the wall of the trench and fall fast asleep. Luckily the enemy were very unenterprising. There were nights when it seemed to me that our position could be stormed by twenty Boy Scouts44 armed with airguns, or twenty Girl Guides armed with battledores, for that matter.
At this time and until much later the Catalan militias45 were still on the same basis as they had been at the beginning of the war. In the early days of Franco’s revolt the militias had been hurriedly raised by the various trade unions and political parties; each was essentially46 a political organization, owing allegiance to its party as much as to the central Government. When the Popular Army, which was a ‘non-political’ army organized on more or less ordinary lines, was raised at the beginning of 1937, the party militias were theoretically incorporated in it. But for a long time the only changes that occurred were on paper; the new Popular Army troops did not reach the Aragon front in any numbers till June, and until that time the militia-system remained unchanged. The essential point of the system was social equality between officers and men. Everyone from general to private drew the same pay, ate the same food, wore the same clothes, and mingled on terms of complete equality. If you wanted to slap the general commanding the division on the back and ask him for a cigarette, you could do so, and no one thought it curious. In theory at any rate each militia was a democracy and not a hierarchy47. It was understood that orders had to be obeyed, but it was also understood that when you gave an order you gave it as comrade to comrade and not as superior to inferior. There were officers and N.C.O.S. but there was no military rank in the ordinary sense; no titles, no badges, no heel-clicking and saluting48. They had attempted to produce within the militias a sort of temporary working model of the classless society. Of course there was no perfect equality, but there was a nearer approach to it than I had ever seen or than I would have thought conceivable in time of war.
But I admit that at first sight the state of affairs at the front horrified49 me. How on earth could the war be won by an army of this type? It was what everyone was saying at the time, and though it was true it was also unreasonable50. For in the circumstances the militias could not have been much better than they were. A modern mechanized army does not spring up out of the ground, and if the Government had waited until it had trained troops at its disposal, Franco wouKt-never have been resisted. Later it became the fashion to decry51 the militias, and therefore to pretend that the faults which were due to lack of training and weapons were the result of the equalitarian system. Actually, a newly raised draft ‘of militia was an undisciplined mob not because the officers called the private ‘Comrade’ but because raw troops are always an undisciplined mob. In practice the democratic ‘revolutionary’ type of discipline is more reliable than might be expected. In a workers’ army discipline is theoretically voluntary. It is based on class-loyalty52, whereas the discipline of a bourgeois53 conscript army is based ultimately on fear. (The Popular Army that replaced the militias was midway between the two types.) In the militias the bullying54 and abuse that go on in an ordinary army would never have been tolerated for a moment. The normal military punishments existed, but they were only invoked55 for very serious offences. When a man refused to obey an order you did not immediately get him punished; you first appealed to him in the name of comradeship. Cynical56 people with no experience of handling men will say instantly that this would never ‘work’, but as a matter of fact it does ‘work’ in the long run. The discipline of even the worst drafts of militia visibly improved as time went on. In January the job of keeping a dozen raw recruits up to the mark almost turned my hair grey. In May for a short while I was acting-lieutenant in command of about thirty men, English and Spanish. We had all been under fire for months, and I never had the slightest difficulty in getting an order obeyed or in getting men to volunteer for a dangerous job. ‘Revolutionary’ discipline depends on political consciousness — on an understanding of why orders must be obeyed; it takes time to diffuse57 this, but it also takes time to drill a man into an automaton58 on the barrack-square. The journalists who sneered59 at the militia-system seldom remembered that the militias had to hold the line while the Popular Army was training in the rear. And it is a tribute to the strength of ‘revolutionary’ discipline that the militias stayed in the field-at all. For until about June 1937 there was nothing to keep them there, except class loyalty. Individual deserters could be shot — were shot, occasionally — but if a thousand men had decided60 to walk out of the line together there was no force to stop them. A conscript army in the same circumstances — with its battle-police removed — would have melted away. Yet the militias held the line, though God knows they won very few victories, and even individual desertions were not common. In four or five months in the P.O.U.M. militia I only heard of four men deserting, and two of those were fairly certainly spies who had enlisted to obtain information. At the beginning the apparent chaos61, the general lack of training, the fact that you often had to argue for five minutes before you could get an order obeyed, appalled62 and infuriated me. I had British Army ideas, and certainly the Spanish militias were very unlike the British Army. But considering the circumstances they were better troops than one had any right to expect.
Meanwhile, firewood — always firewood. Throughout that period there is probably no entry in my diary that does not mention firewood, or rather the lack of it. We were between two and three thousand feet above sea-level, it was mid23 winter and the cold was unspeakable. The temperature was not exceptionally low, on many nights it did not even freeze, and the wintry sun often shone for an hour in the middle of the day; but even if it was not really cold, I assure you that it seemed so. Sometimes there were shrieking63 winds that tore your cap off and twisted your hair in all directions, sometimes there were mists that poured into the trench like a liquid and seemed to penetrate64 your bones; frequently it rained, and even a quarter of an hour’s rain was enough to make conditions intolerable. The thin skin of earth over the limestone34 turned promptly65 into a slippery grease, and as you were always walking on a slope it was impossible to keep your footing. On dark nights I have often fallen half a dozen times in twenty yards; and this was dangerous, because it meant that the lock of one’s rifle became jammed with mud. For days together clothes, boots, blankets, and rifles were more or less coated with mud. I had brought as many thick clothes as I could carry, but many of the men were terribly underclad. For the whole garrison66, about a hundred men, there were only twelve great-coats, which had to be handed from sentry to sentry, and most of the men had only one blanket. One icy night I made a list in my diary of the clothes I was wearing. It is of some interest as showing the amount of clothes the human body can carry. I was wearing a thick vest and pants, a flannel67 shirt, two pull-overs, a woollen jacket, a pigskin jacket, corduroy breeches, puttees, thick socks, boots, a stout68 trench-coat, a muffler, lined leather gloves, and a woollen cap. Nevertheless I was shivering like a jelly. But I admit I am unusually sensitive to cold.
Firewood was the one thing that really mattered. The point about the firewood was that there was practically no firewood to be had. Our miserable69 mountain had not even at its best much vegetation, and for months it had been ranged over by freezing militiamen, with the result that everything thicker than one’s finger had long since been burnt. When we were not eating, sleeping, on guard, or on fatigue-duty we were in the valley behind the position, scrounging for fuel. All my memories of that time are memories of scrambling70 up and down the almost perpendicular71 slopes, over the jagged limestone that knocked one’s boots to pieces, pouncing72 eagerly on tiny twigs73 of wood. Three people searching for a couple of hours could collect enough fuel to keep the dug-out fire alight for about an hour. The eagerness of our search for firewood turned us all into botanists74. We classified according to their burning qualities every plant that grew on the mountain-side; the various heaths and grasses that were good to start a fire with but burnt out in a few minutes, the wild rosemary and the tiny whin bushes that would burn when the fire was well alight, the stunted75 oak tree, smaller than a gooseberry bush, that was practically unburnable. There was a kind of dried-up reed that was very good for starting fires with, but these grew only on the hill-top to the left of the position, and you had to go under fire to get them. If the Fascist machine-gunners saw you they gave you a drum of ammunition76 all to yourself. Generally their aim was high and the bullets sang overhead like birds, but sometime they crackled and chipped the limestone uncomfortably close, whereupon you flung yourself on your face. You went on gathering77 reeds, however; nothing mattered in comparison with firewood.
Beside the cold the other discomforts78 seemed petty. Of course all of us were permanently79 dirty. Our water, like our food, came on mule-back from Alcubierre, and each man’s share worked out at about a quart a day. It was beastly water, hardly more transparent80 than milk. Theoretically it was for drinking only, but I always stole a pannikinful for washing in the mornings. I used to wash one day and shave the next; there was never enough water for both. The position stank81 abominably82, and outside the little enclosure of the barricade83 there was excrement84 everywhere. Some of the militiamen habitually85 defecated in the trench, a disgusting thing when one had to walk round it in the darkness. But the dirt never worried me. Dirt is a thing people make too much fuss about. It is astonishing how quickly you get used to doing without a handkerchief and to eating out of the tin pannikin in which you also wash. Nor was sleeping in one’s clothes any hardship after a day or two. It was of course impossible to take one’s clothes and especially one’s boots off at night; one had to be ready to turn out instantly in case of an attack. In eighty nights I only took my clothes off three times, though I did occasionally manage to get them off in the daytime. It was too cold for lice as yet, but rats and mice abounded86. It is often said that you don’t find rats and mice in the same place, but you do when there is enough food for them.
In other ways we were not badly off. The food was good enough and there was plenty of wine. Cigarettes were still being issued at the rate of a packet a day, matches were issued every other day, and there was even an issue of candles. They were very thin candles, like those on a Christmas cake, and were popularly supposed to have been looted from churches. Every dug-out was issued daily with three inches of candle, which would bum87 for about twenty minutes. At that time it was still possible to buy candles, and I had brought several pounds of them with me. Later on the famine of matches and candles made life a misery88. You do not realize the importance of these things until you lack them. In a night-alarm, for instance, when everyone in the dug — out is scrambling for his rifle and treading on everybody else’s face, being able to strike a light may make the difference between life and death. Every militiaman possessed89 a tinder-lighter90 and several yards of yellow wick. Next to his rifle it was his most important possession. The tinder-lighters had the great advantage that they could be struck in a wind, but they would only smoulder, so that they were no use for lighting91 a fire. When the match famine was at its worst our only way of producing a flame was to pull the bullet out of a cartridge and touch the cordite off with a tinder-lighter.
It was an extraordinary life that we were living — an extraordinary way to be at war, if you could call it war. The whole militia chafed92 against the inaction and clamoured constantly to know why we were not allowed to attack. But it was perfectly93 obvious that there would be no battle for a long while yet, unless the enemy started it. Georges Kopp, on his periodical tours of inspection94, was quite frank with us. ‘This is not a war,’ he used to say, ‘it is a comic opera with an occasional death.’ As a matter of fact the stagnation95 on the Aragon front had political causes of which I knew nothing at that time; but the purely96 military difficulties — quite apart from the lack of reserves of men — were obvious to anybody.
To begin with, there was the nature of the country. The front line, ours and the Fascists’, lay in positions of immense natural strength, which as a rule could only be approached from one side. Provided a few trenches97 have been dug, such places cannot be taken by infantry98, except in overwhelming numbers. In our own position or most of those round us a dozen men with two machine-guns could have held off a battalion99. Perched on the hill-tops as we were, we should have made lovely marks for artillery; but there was no artillery. Sometimes I used to gaze round the landscape and long — oh, how passionately100! — for a couple of batteries of guns. One could have destroyed the enemy positions one after another as easily as smashing nuts with a hammer. But on our side the guns simply did not exist. The Fascists did occasionally manage to bring a gun or two from Zaragoza and fire a very few shells, so few that they never even found the range and the shells plunged101 harmlessly into the empty ravines. Against machine-guns and without artillery there are only three things you can do: dig yourself in at a safe distance — four hundred yards, say — advance across the open and be massacred, or make small-scale night-attacks that will not alter the general situation. Practically the alternatives are stagnation or suicide.
And beyond this there was the complete lack of war materials of every description. It needs an effort to realize how badly the militias were armed at this time. Any public school O.T.C. in England is far more like a modern army than we were. The badness of our weapons was so astonishing that it is worth recording102 in detail.
For this sector103 of the front the entire artillery consisted of four trench-mortars104 with fifteen rounds for each gun. Of course they were far too precious to be fired and the mortars were kept in Alcubierre. There were machine-guns at the rate of approximately one to fifty men; they were oldish guns, but fairly accurate up to three or four hundred yards. Beyond this we had only rifles, and the majority of the rifles were scrap-iron. There were three types of rifle in use. The first was the long Mauser. These were seldom less than twenty years old, their sights were about as much use as a broken speedometer, and in most of them the rifling was hopelessly corroded105; about one rifle in ten was not bad, however. Then there was the short Mauser, or mousqueton, really a cavalry106 weapon. These were more popular than the others because they were lighter to carry and less nuisance in a trench, also because they were comparatively new and looked efficient. Actually they were almost useless. They were made out of reassembled parts, no bolt belonged to its rifle, and three-quarters of them could be counted on to jam after five shots. There were also a few Winchester rifles. These were nice to shoot with, but they were wildly inaccurate107, and as their cartridges108 had no clips they could only be fired one shot at a time. Ammunition was so scarce that each man entering the line was only issued with fifty rounds, and most of it was exceedingly bad. The Spanish-made cartridges were all refills and would jam even the best rifles. The Mexican cartridges were better and were therefore reserved for the machine-guns. Best of all was the German-made ammunition, but as this came only from prisoners and deserters there was not much of it. I always kept a clip of German or Mexican ammunition in my pocket for use in an emergency. But in practice when the emergency came I seldom fired my rifle; I was too frightened of the beastly thing jamming and too anxious to reserve at any rate one round that would go off.
We had no tin hats, no bayonets, hardly any revolvers or pistols, and not more than one bomb between five or ten men. The bomb in use at this time was a frightful object known as the ‘F.A.I. bomb’, it having been produced by the Anarchists in the early days of the war. It was on the principle of a Mills bomb, but the lever was held down not by a pin but a piece of tape. You broke the tape and then got rid of the bomb with the utmost possible speed. It was said of these bombs that they were ‘impartial’; they killed the man they were thrown at and the man who threw them. There were several other types, even more primitive109 but probably a little less dangerous — to the thrower, I mean. It was not till late March that I saw a bomb worth throwing.
And apart from weapons there was a shortage of all the minor necessities of war. We had no maps or charts, for instance. Spain has never been fully110 surveyed, and the only detailed111 maps of this area were the old military ones, which were almost all in the possession of the Fascists. We had no range-finders, no telescopes, no periscopes112, no field-glasses except for a few privately-owned pairs, no flares113 or Very lights, no wire-cutters, no armourers’ tools, hardly even any cleaning materials. The Spaniards seemed never to have heard of a pull-through and looked on in surprise when I constructed one. When you wanted your rifle cleaned you took it to the sergeant114, who possessed a long brass115 ramrod which was invariably bent and therefore scratched the rifling. There was not even any gun oil. You greased your rifle with olive oil, when you could get hold of it; at different times I have greased mine with vaseline, with cold cream, and even with bacon-fat. Moreover, there were no lanterns or electric torches — at this time there was not, I believe, such a thing as an electric torch throughout the whole of our sector of the front, and you could not buy one nearer than Barcelona, and only with difficulty even there.
As time went on, and the desultory116 rifle-fire rattled117 among the hills, I began to wonder with increasing scepticism whether anything would ever happen to bring a bit of life, or rather a bit of death, into this cock-eyed war. It was pneumonia118 that we were fighting against, not against men. When the trenches are more than five hundred yards apart no one gets hit except by accident. Of course there were casualties, but the majority of them were self-inflicted. If I remember rightly, the first five men I saw wounded in Spain were all wounded by our own weapons — I don’t mean intentionally119, but owing to accident or carelessness. Our worn-out rifles were a danger in themselves. Some of them had a nasty trick of going off if the butt120 was tapped on the ground; I saw a man shoot himself through the hand owing to this. And in the darkness the raw recruits were always firing at one another. One evening when it was barely even dusk a sentry let fly at me from a distance of twenty yards; but he missed me by a yard — goodness knows how many times the Spanish standard of marksmanship has saved my life. Another time I had gone out on patrol in the mist and had carefully warned the guard commander beforehand. But in coming back I stumbled against a bush, the startled sentry called out that the Fascists were coming, and I had the pleasure of hearing the guard commander order everyone to open rapid fire in my direction. Of course I lay down and the bullets went harmlessly over me. Nothing will convince a Spaniard, at least a young Spaniard, that fire-arms are dangerous. Once, rather later than this, I was photographing some machine-gunners with their gun, which was pointed121 directly towards me.
‘Don’t fire,’ I said half-jokingly as I focused the camera.
‘Oh no, we won’t fire.’
The next moment there was a frightful roar and a stream of bullets tore past my face so close that my cheek was stung by grains of cordite. It was unintentional, but the machine-gunners considered it a great joke. Yet only a few days earlier they had seen a mule-driver accidentally shot by a political delegate who was playing the fool with an automatic pistol and had put five bullets in the mule-driver’s lungs.
The difficult passwords which the army was using at this time were a minor source of danger. They were those tiresome122 double passwords in which one word has to be answered by another. Usually they were of an elevating and revolutionary nature, such as Cultura — progreso, or Seremos — invencibles, and it was often impossible to get illiterate123 sentries124 to remember these highfalutin’ words. One night, I remember, the password was Cataluna — eroica, and a moonfaced peasant lad named Jaime Domenech approached me, greatly puzzled, and asked me to explain.
‘Eroica — what does eroica mean?’
I told him that it meant the same as valiente. A little while later he was stumbling up the trench in the darkness, and the sentry challenged him:
‘Alto! Cataluna!’
‘Valiente!’ yelled Jaime, certain that he was saying the right thing.
Bang!
However, the sentry missed him. In this war everyone always did miss everyone else, when it was humanly possible.
1 trench | |
n./v.(挖)沟,(挖)战壕 | |
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2 warfare | |
n.战争(状态);斗争;冲突 | |
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3 hopping | |
n. 跳跃 动词hop的现在分词形式 | |
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4 minor | |
adj.较小(少)的,较次要的;n.辅修学科;vi.辅修 | |
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5 disastrous | |
adj.灾难性的,造成灾害的;极坏的,很糟的 | |
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6 mingled | |
混合,混入( mingle的过去式和过去分词 ); 混进,与…交往[联系] | |
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7 boredom | |
n.厌烦,厌倦,乏味,无聊 | |
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8 discomfort | |
n.不舒服,不安,难过,困难,不方便 | |
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9 stationary | |
adj.固定的,静止不动的 | |
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10 sentry | |
n.哨兵,警卫 | |
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11 fascist | |
adj.法西斯主义的;法西斯党的;n.法西斯主义者,法西斯分子 | |
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12 ragged | |
adj.衣衫褴褛的,粗糙的,刺耳的 | |
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13 marvel | |
vi.(at)惊叹vt.感到惊异;n.令人惊异的事 | |
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14 futility | |
n.无用 | |
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15 savage | |
adj.野蛮的;凶恶的,残暴的;n.未开化的人 | |
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16 artillery | |
n.(军)火炮,大炮;炮兵(部队) | |
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17 zigzagged | |
adj.呈之字形移动的v.弯弯曲曲地走路,曲折地前进( zigzag的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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18 unintelligible | |
adj.无法了解的,难解的,莫明其妙的 | |
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19 anarchists | |
无政府主义者( anarchist的名词复数 ) | |
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20 fascists | |
n.法西斯主义的支持者( fascist的名词复数 ) | |
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21 bent | |
n.爱好,癖好;adj.弯的;决心的,一心的 | |
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22 eastwards | |
adj.向东方(的),朝东(的);n.向东的方向 | |
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23 mid | |
adj.中央的,中间的 | |
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24 sprawled | |
v.伸开四肢坐[躺]( sprawl的过去式和过去分词);蔓延;杂乱无序地拓展;四肢伸展坐着(或躺着) | |
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25 dice | |
n.骰子;vt.把(食物)切成小方块,冒险 | |
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26 streaked | |
adj.有条斑纹的,不安的v.快速移动( streak的过去式和过去分词 );使布满条纹 | |
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27 monstrous | |
adj.巨大的;恐怖的;可耻的,丢脸的 | |
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28 magpie | |
n.喜欢收藏物品的人,喜鹊,饶舌者 | |
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29 deign | |
v. 屈尊, 惠允 ( 做某事) | |
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30 misty | |
adj.雾蒙蒙的,有雾的 | |
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31 landmarks | |
n.陆标( landmark的名词复数 );目标;(标志重要阶段的)里程碑 ~ (in sth);有历史意义的建筑物(或遗址) | |
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32 shrubs | |
灌木( shrub的名词复数 ) | |
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33 tinkling | |
n.丁当作响声 | |
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34 limestone | |
n.石灰石 | |
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35 limestones | |
n.石灰岩( limestone的名词复数 ) | |
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36 cowered | |
v.畏缩,抖缩( cower的过去式 ) | |
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37 relics | |
[pl.]n.遗物,遗迹,遗产;遗体,尸骸 | |
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38 cartridge | |
n.弹壳,弹药筒;(装磁带等的)盒子 | |
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39 sinecure | |
n.闲差事,挂名职务 | |
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40 militia | |
n.民兵,民兵组织 | |
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41 enlisted | |
adj.应募入伍的v.(使)入伍, (使)参军( enlist的过去式和过去分词 );获得(帮助或支持) | |
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42 brute | |
n.野兽,兽性 | |
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43 frightful | |
adj.可怕的;讨厌的 | |
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44 scouts | |
侦察员[机,舰]( scout的名词复数 ); 童子军; 搜索; 童子军成员 | |
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45 militias | |
n.民兵组织,民兵( militia的名词复数 ) | |
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46 essentially | |
adv.本质上,实质上,基本上 | |
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47 hierarchy | |
n.等级制度;统治集团,领导层 | |
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48 saluting | |
v.欢迎,致敬( salute的现在分词 );赞扬,赞颂 | |
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49 horrified | |
a.(表现出)恐惧的 | |
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50 unreasonable | |
adj.不讲道理的,不合情理的,过度的 | |
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51 decry | |
v.危难,谴责 | |
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52 loyalty | |
n.忠诚,忠心 | |
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53 bourgeois | |
adj./n.追求物质享受的(人);中产阶级分子 | |
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54 bullying | |
v.恐吓,威逼( bully的现在分词 );豪;跋扈 | |
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55 invoked | |
v.援引( invoke的过去式和过去分词 );行使(权利等);祈求救助;恳求 | |
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56 cynical | |
adj.(对人性或动机)怀疑的,不信世道向善的 | |
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57 diffuse | |
v.扩散;传播;adj.冗长的;四散的,弥漫的 | |
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58 automaton | |
n.自动机器,机器人 | |
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59 sneered | |
讥笑,冷笑( sneer的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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60 decided | |
adj.决定了的,坚决的;明显的,明确的 | |
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61 chaos | |
n.混乱,无秩序 | |
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62 appalled | |
v.使惊骇,使充满恐惧( appall的过去式和过去分词)adj.惊骇的;丧胆的 | |
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63 shrieking | |
v.尖叫( shriek的现在分词 ) | |
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64 penetrate | |
v.透(渗)入;刺入,刺穿;洞察,了解 | |
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65 promptly | |
adv.及时地,敏捷地 | |
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66 garrison | |
n.卫戍部队;驻地,卫戍区;vt.派(兵)驻防 | |
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67 flannel | |
n.法兰绒;法兰绒衣服 | |
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69 miserable | |
adj.悲惨的,痛苦的;可怜的,糟糕的 | |
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70 scrambling | |
v.快速爬行( scramble的现在分词 );攀登;争夺;(军事飞机)紧急起飞 | |
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71 perpendicular | |
adj.垂直的,直立的;n.垂直线,垂直的位置 | |
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72 pouncing | |
v.突然袭击( pounce的现在分词 );猛扑;一眼看出;抓住机会(进行抨击) | |
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73 twigs | |
细枝,嫩枝( twig的名词复数 ) | |
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74 botanists | |
n.植物学家,研究植物的人( botanist的名词复数 ) | |
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75 stunted | |
adj.矮小的;发育迟缓的 | |
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76 ammunition | |
n.军火,弹药 | |
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77 gathering | |
n.集会,聚会,聚集 | |
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78 discomforts | |
n.不舒适( discomfort的名词复数 );不愉快,苦恼 | |
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79 permanently | |
adv.永恒地,永久地,固定不变地 | |
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80 transparent | |
adj.明显的,无疑的;透明的 | |
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81 stank | |
n. (英)坝,堰,池塘 动词stink的过去式 | |
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82 abominably | |
adv. 可恶地,可恨地,恶劣地 | |
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83 barricade | |
n.路障,栅栏,障碍;vt.设路障挡住 | |
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84 excrement | |
n.排泄物,粪便 | |
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85 habitually | |
ad.习惯地,通常地 | |
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86 abounded | |
v.大量存在,充满,富于( abound的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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87 bum | |
n.臀部;流浪汉,乞丐;vt.乞求,乞讨 | |
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88 misery | |
n.痛苦,苦恼,苦难;悲惨的境遇,贫苦 | |
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89 possessed | |
adj.疯狂的;拥有的,占有的 | |
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90 lighter | |
n.打火机,点火器;驳船;v.用驳船运送;light的比较级 | |
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91 lighting | |
n.照明,光线的明暗,舞台灯光 | |
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92 chafed | |
v.擦热(尤指皮肤)( chafe的过去式 );擦痛;发怒;惹怒 | |
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93 perfectly | |
adv.完美地,无可非议地,彻底地 | |
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94 inspection | |
n.检查,审查,检阅 | |
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95 stagnation | |
n. 停滞 | |
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96 purely | |
adv.纯粹地,完全地 | |
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97 trenches | |
深沟,地沟( trench的名词复数 ); 战壕 | |
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98 infantry | |
n.[总称]步兵(部队) | |
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99 battalion | |
n.营;部队;大队(的人) | |
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100 passionately | |
ad.热烈地,激烈地 | |
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101 plunged | |
v.颠簸( plunge的过去式和过去分词 );暴跌;骤降;突降 | |
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102 recording | |
n.录音,记录 | |
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103 sector | |
n.部门,部分;防御地段,防区;扇形 | |
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104 mortars | |
n.迫击炮( mortar的名词复数 );砂浆;房产;研钵 | |
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105 corroded | |
已被腐蚀的 | |
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106 cavalry | |
n.骑兵;轻装甲部队 | |
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107 inaccurate | |
adj.错误的,不正确的,不准确的 | |
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108 cartridges | |
子弹( cartridge的名词复数 ); (打印机的)墨盒; 录音带盒; (唱机的)唱头 | |
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109 primitive | |
adj.原始的;简单的;n.原(始)人,原始事物 | |
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110 fully | |
adv.完全地,全部地,彻底地;充分地 | |
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111 detailed | |
adj.详细的,详尽的,极注意细节的,完全的 | |
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112 periscopes | |
n.潜望镜( periscope的名词复数 ) | |
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113 flares | |
n.喇叭裤v.(使)闪耀( flare的第三人称单数 );(使)(船舷)外倾;(使)鼻孔张大;(使)(衣裙、酒杯等)呈喇叭形展开 | |
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114 sergeant | |
n.警官,中士 | |
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115 brass | |
n.黄铜;黄铜器,铜管乐器 | |
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116 desultory | |
adj.散漫的,无方法的 | |
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117 rattled | |
慌乱的,恼火的 | |
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118 pneumonia | |
n.肺炎 | |
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119 intentionally | |
ad.故意地,有意地 | |
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120 butt | |
n.笑柄;烟蒂;枪托;臀部;v.用头撞或顶 | |
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121 pointed | |
adj.尖的,直截了当的 | |
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122 tiresome | |
adj.令人疲劳的,令人厌倦的 | |
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123 illiterate | |
adj.文盲的;无知的;n.文盲 | |
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124 sentries | |
哨兵,步兵( sentry的名词复数 ) | |
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