The artillery barrage before Pickett's Charge

Very soon the smoke and dust blotted out everything. 'Twas like being shut up in the dark with a cloth over your head. All that reached me from the outside was the feel of Marse Robert's hands, and Marse Robert's voice saying, "Easy, Traveller - easy, now, boy!" You seemed to be choking on that gun smell, 'twas so thick in the air. You couldn't see the sun nor hardly the sky - only great streams of black smoke a-floating  high up, like clouds.

(from Traveller, by Richard Adams)