Explore "Coming Up For Air" by George Orwell on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
I wasn't wounded till late in 1916.
We'd just come out of the trenches and were marching over a bit of road a mile or so back which was supposed to be safe, but which the Germans must have got the range of some time earlier. Suddenly they started putting a few shells over--it was heavy H.E. stuff, and they were only firing about one a minute. There was the usual zwee-e-e-e! and then BOOM! in a field somewhere over to the right. I think it was the third shell that got me. I knew as soon as I heard it coming that it had my name written on it. They say you always know. It didn't say what an ordinary shell says. It said 'I'm after you, you b--, YOU, you b--, YOU!' --all this in the space of about three seconds. And the last you was the explosion.