Oil rig workers

Usage examples of roughnecks.

Armed with shovels, the four roughnecks were digging up the thorny prickle-bushes near the hollow where Andrew had fallen, while Reade, in the lee of a rock, was scowling over the fine print of an Army manual of Martio-biology.

But, less than a week later when we had made one combat drop with them, we were full fledged Roughnecks, members of the family, called by our first names, chewed out on occasion without any feeling on either side that we were less than blood brothers thereby, borrowed from and lent to, included in bull sessions and privileged to express our own silly opinions with complete freedomand have them slapped down just as freely.

Lieutenantthere was never a court-martial among the Roughnecks and no man was ever flogged.

But so far as the Roughnecks were concerned, these gas bombings were simply another drill, to be done according to orders, by the numbers, and on the bounce.

Which was the way it should be, of coursewhy, if they let the Roughnecks vote, the idiots might vote not to make a drop.

In many respects they were very similar to the pioneers of the past, the oil-field roughnecks of the previous century, or the trailblazers who had opened up the American continent a hundred years earlier.

His eyes darted in the direction of the properly attired roughnecks who had been with him in a skin-stealing operation and then a revolution.

There are boorish men and roughnecks among the Terrans as well as on the streets of Thendara.

Those roughnecks had no sense of what was decent, bringing the two of us into it like that, when everyone knew we had nothing to do with anything.