Word: arounders
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...million men surged around Suchow in the greatest battle in China's history. A Communist victory would open the way to Nanking and probably seal the fate of the reeling Nationalist regime. A government victory might buy enough time for Chiang's harried forces to recover from their recent string of shattering defeats-and for effective aid to arrive from the West...
Suchow, junction point of the south-north rail line from Nanking and the east-west Lunghai line to the coast, is a drab, unlovely city, protected by a rim of well-fortified, rocky hills. By week's end Communist General Chen Yi's mobile columns had swung around Suchow, cut all rail lines and brought the main airfield under artillery bombardment. Officers of Nationalist "Bandit Suppression Headquarters" hastily flew south to set up quarters nearer Nanking...
...penniless students from Honan and Shantung are camped on the dirty cement floor, waiting for a train to resettle them somewhere below the Yangtze. One plays a forlorn tune on a two-stringed Chinese violin. Others huddle beneath filthy grey quilts, while streams of noisy, heavy-laden travelers flow around them. The pump is their lavatory. Their guardian, the Education Ministry, can feed them only one rice meal daily-usually around midnight...
...huffed a police sergeant at the palace gates, "there's nothing to see 'ere. Nobody need wait who don't know what 'e's waitin' for. Step along now. Step along." All around him the milling crowd grinned self-consciously and held its ground. For a week or more, curious and sentimental Londoners had gathered outside the gates of Buckingham Palace to gaze curiously at a third-floor window, wait aimlessly for a while, drift away and return again to renew the vigil...
Thus, exclaimed the usually businesslike Associated Press, as its clacking teletype machines began to carry the news around the world, "the fairy-tale drama of Britain's exciting weekend closed...