Word: ammouda
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Perched on orange-colored canvas chairs atop fern-scented Mount Ammouda, smiling King Paul of the Hellenes, grim U.S. General James Van Fleet and several Greek army commanders awaited the signal for the attack. At daybreak, newly arrived U.S.-made Helldivers cut across the pale blue sky to unload their cargo of Napalm fire bombs. In a few minutes, the sleepy purple mountains seemed ablaze. At week's end, King Paul and his party could celebrate a smashing victory...
...original plan for Operation Coronet had been to prevent just this by slicing in between Markos and the Albanian border. The taking of Mount Ammouda, in the northern cornerstone of the Gramos redoubt, finally slid the knife in almost far enough to do the job. Reported TIME Correspondent Mary Barber...
...story of Ammouda was a story of tanks-obsolescent, underpowered, British 18-ton Centaurs, packing puny 50-mm. pieces. In order to get them into position, a tank recovery team went first with a crane mounted on a U.S. Sherman chassis. The Sherman scrabbled up the steeper slopes, then towed up the Centaurs with its power winch. Out of seven Centaurs, two finally made the grade. Two got stuck a few hundred yards from their goal, and one blew its tracks on a mine. Getting the tanks down again for another sortie was almost as hard as getting them...
Elusive Souvenir. Another visitor to the front was King Paul. From his observation post, with field glasses, he could see a big sign in the thick pine woods atop Mount Ammouda bearing the letters D.S.E. (Democratikos Stratos Ellados-Democratic Army of Greece). Artillerymen explained that they were trying not to hit the sign, since they hoped to capture it as a souvenir...
...week's end, the Greek army had not yet captured the sign; Mount Ammouda was stubbornly defended. On all fronts Greek troops had found Markos' mountains pocked with strong log emplacements and fortified caves like those the Japanese used in the Pacific war. Moreover, the rebels, instead of melting away under attack to pop up elsewhere, were standing firm. But the Greek army had captured peaks on both sides of Markos' stronghold area, and were beginning to draw the neck strings of the bag in which they hoped to catch him. Said Van Fleet: "We are trying...
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