Word: battalion
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...army battalion of 300 guarded the hotel, which is surrounded by extensive gardens. Three thousand plainclothes policemen circulated in the city...
...three days before Sept. 1, our battalion departed -- but not, as in August 1914, with brass bands and in broad daylight. We set off in pitch darkness, taking side streets to the freightyards. Early on the morning of Sept. 1, we crossed into Poland. We soon saw action. Just a few hundred yards from me, my older brother Heinrich fell. We barely had time to bury him and the other dead before we had to hurry on. The suffering had begun...
...howling and screeching and booming of German bombers and artillery. The Messerschmitts came at us in waves. We could do nothing. We had no antiaircraft guns. We had nothing to return fire at their long-range artillery. Two hours after it began we were panic stricken, and our entire battalion jumped out of the trenches and ran toward our regimental headquarters...
Only half the battalion made it. We continued running and walking, but wherever we turned we met German artillery and tank fire. They were in back of us and in front of us. To the right was automatic fire; to the left we were shot at by artillery. One shell hit a mine 300 yards from us and set off a long line of Polish-laid mines; they exploded in domino fashion. We ran, we lay on the ground, we ran. We didn't know which...
Delaware Bay's prime breeding beaches are also a burial ground. Thousands of the crabs lie dead, overturned by breaking waves, their hollow shells littering the sand like the discarded helmets of a defeated German battalion. Just yards away, oblivious to the noxious stench of rotting crabs, migratory shorebirds feast on exposed crab eggs, consuming about 100 tons in just a few weeks...