Word: aba
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...Commando Brigade. Commanded by nine white mercenaries, the Fourth spent the first three months of the year operating behind Nigerian lines. Later, it held sectors on the Western front but, outgunned and outmanned by the federals, was forced to retreat. By early September, after a doomed attempt to defend Aba with supplies equal to only a daily average of five rounds of ammunition per man, the Fourth was down to barely 1,000 effectives. Of the 7,000-odd men with whom it had started the campaign, more than 300 had been killed and 2,200 had been wounded...
...front at least 100 miles long, operating in a deep arc that curves east from a point near Orlu. Under the iron command of Colonel Benjamin Adekunle, it is far more aggressive, daring and successful than the other two federal divisions combined, having captured the other primary strongholds of Aba and Owerri in the past month. Both towns, as well as Umuahia, are in territory originally assigned to the other divisions...
Orders with Kick. To reach Aba, federal forces had to cross the swift cur rents of the Imo River, which the Bi-afrans had established as the major defense line protecting Aba by the simple expedient of blowing up the main bridges. They had left just one bridge intact-at Awaza-and it was heavily mined. When federal marine comman dos stepped onto the bridge, it, too, exploded and vanished. The blast, however, failed to stop federal soldiers from running across the catwalk on top of a natural-gas pipeline that spanned the river parallel to the bridge...
Outside, monsoon rain was falling on a blue-and-white plaster Madonna whose forehead had been punctured by a bullet. Steiner was standing in the refectory, the strain of the war lining his face. "You must save Aba at any cost," pleaded Ojukwu. "You must hold the place-is that clear?" Steiner hesitated. "Mon colonel, I was only a sergeant in the Legion," he said. "I cannot command a division." Replied Ojukwu: "Oh, but you will. And you will hold...
Bridge to Firepower. Steiner moved his headquarters to Aba, pushing through the panicked flight of thousands of townspeople. He found that the Nigerians had split into two groups. In two days of pitched battles, the five brigades under Steiner's command managed to blunt the advance of both federal columns, which, unable to get their cannon across the river, were fighting without their usual massive artillery support. At week's end, the Biafrans were dug in near two vital crossroads, while the Nigerians were repairing the bridge in order to move across their heavy firepower. Ojukwu...