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learning > grammaire anglaise - niveau avancé
groupe verbal > temps > passé
valeurs énonciatives
passé sans be + -ing
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passé en be + -ing
passé sans be + -ing
fait, information brute
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passé en be + -ing
1 - dramatisation, focalisation, dilatation temporelle / "arrêt sur image"
2 - action secondaire, toile de fond, contexte
Crossing the Channel was absolute hell. Imagine 300 people in a flat-bottom boat, going up, down, left, right, for 24 hours. Add the smell of cigarettes and engine oil, and the fact that we could not go on deck because the sea was rough: 90% of us ended up seasick. When we got to the beach, it was chaos. The noise was indescribable: everything on God's earth that could make [a noise] did. Battleships, destroyers, corvettes were firing; planes were coming in; stuff was coming back at you. Everything you could think of was burning, and there weren't a lot of houses on that beach. Men were running around, others were lying still. It was absolutely terrifying [ terrifying = adjectif ], but you quickly accepted it as normal. Our training had taught us that we should anticipate heavy casualties. Somehow, it was helpful, because if you are told before, then it's not unexpected. You don't think it's going to happen to you. Instead, you look at the bloke next to you and think: "Poor sod." Coping with our fear was similar to dealing with today's problems. If you let them get on top of you, you can't deal with them. You have to sit on top. So we did our training and ran like hell out of the beach. It was fairly easy for us: we only had one dead and six wounded. Other regiments suffered much higher casualties. We got to a town called Meuvaines, where we met a sniper who was more scared of us than we were of him. The following morning, we got to Bayeux. The French gave us wine and French sticks full of eggs and bacon. In the afternoon, we were playing basketball on the town's square, and there were girls. I did not think war was too bad then. I found out what it was all about at Tilly-sur-Seulles, where we fought against crack Panzer divisions. We fought well for young boys but it was too much for us. The town changed hands more than 20 times and, by the end of it, it was completely destroyed. Most fighting is on remote targets, but one day, on my own, I fell upon a young, tall, blond German soldier. I can still remember his face today. His weapon dangled wrong, mine hung right. My weapon cut him in half. I sat on the floor and cried. I had killed a human being. A few days later, as we were pulling back to allow more space for our bomber planes, we came across a chicken farm. We should never have gone there, but we were very hungry, as we never carried any food with us. A small bomb fell between my mate and I. A piece of shrapnel entered my jaw, fractured my skull and bounced out. I looked at my mate: he was covered in blood, but it was mine, not his. I managed to walk back to my unit. There, everything went red and I passed out. I woke up 10 days later at Swindon airport. A nurse asked me whether I needed anything. I asked whether she was doing anything that evening.
I had killed a human being'
:
Saudi special forces were guarding the BBC's security correspondent, Frank Gardner, in a Riyadh hospital last night as doctors worked to save his life.
New threats to west as Saudi
forces guard wounded BBC man,
Tony Blair was battling to defend his timetable for the government's proposed referendum on the EU constitution last night as Downing Street faced accusations that its handling of the strategic u-turn had been shambolic.
Blair
suffers first Europe defeat, G, §1, 20.4.2004,
The excitement was mounting on Palestine Street as the body approached its first destination. Some 20,000 men and boys pointed their index fingers in the air.
A funeral in Gaza - and birth of a new resistance,
Voir aussi > Anglonautes > Grammaire anglaise explicative - niveau avancé
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