Word: backwash
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Flaming Hillsides. Now, to disturb its serenity, comes the ragged backwash of war, refugee Laotians and Thais, men from the hills, a few weary, bearded soldiers, the remnant of overtaken outposts, who have escaped over jungle trails or by floating down chutelike rapids on improvised rafts. Behind them come five Viet Minh columns, the nearest now within sight of us. They have traveled fast, but they have not had an easy passage. On the way in, we saw Hellcat and Bearcat fighters filling the tight green valleys with the orange-red bursts and the soot-black smoke of napalm...
...national outdoor titleholder at distances ranging from 400 to 1,500 meters. At 17, as a crewcut, prep schoolboy (Andover), he became the Olympic 1,500-meter champion. But from then on, Jimmy McLane spent a good part of his swimming time gulping the backwash of such stars as Japan's Hironoshin ("The Flying Fish") Furuhashi, Australia's Marshall and Hawaii's Ford Konno. It was not because he slowed down; the others just got faster...
This ironic and touching war story is told in terms of the backwash of war: only far-off conflagrations are hinted at after the opening sequence. But for all its symbolic overtones, it is no stiff, self-conscious allegory. It has a biting vitality and, at times, a macabre humor. The direction of René Clément, who adapted the story from François Boyer's 1950 novel Jeux Interdits, is as exact as a machine; it also has a brooding, dreamlike quality. Making their debuts as the two juvenile leads, blonde, fragile Brigitte Fossey and sturdy...
...heart's blood passes to the great artery for distribution to the rest of the body. As the inflammation died down, the healing valve tissues became scarred and failed to close. Instead of a one-way pulsing flow of blood, there was an unsteady flow with a backwash. For a dozen years the patient got along with rest and digitalis, but six months ago she became much worse. Anginal pain and failing strength forced her to stop working. Her future looked bleak indeed...
...disdain for the parochialism and vulgarity of America is sobering. Anyone who, like myself, loves Harvard, must inevitably be shaken by the fact that Santayana found Harvard merely genteel and grubby a cultural backwash...