They started again to the work early in the morning and by breakfast time, by constant steaming ahead and backing, had burrowed a channel in the sand; then went back and clawed on to the flat and steamed away for Chittagong distant a mile or two.
"From Edinburgh to India & Burmah"
William G. Burn Murdoch
The Chief's hand clawed at Dirrul's tunic, ripping the disk away from him.
"The Instant of Now"
Irving E. Cox, Jr.
But I understood this Australian's craving for open-air life, even such open air as this, when he told me that he had been working underground for nearly two years in the dark saps pierced under the German lines, and running very close to German saps nosing their way, and sometimes breaking through, to ours, so that the men clawed at each other's throats in these tunnels and beat each other to death with picks and shovels, or were blown to bits by mine explosions.
"From Bapaume to Passchendaele, 1917"
Philip Gibbs