Word: battalion
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...work. The rewards were scarcely commensurate with the efforts. Ike's rise up the promotion ladder was painfully slow. In 1922, he was transferred to the Canal Zone?an inhospitable place in those days?where he became executive officer to Brigadier General Fox Conner, commander of the 20th Infantry Battalion. Next to Eisenhower's parents, Conner was probably the strongest influence in his life, introducing him for the first time to the serious study of military history and strategy. At West Point, Eisenhower remembered with distaste, this had been "an out-and-out memory course." Ike later wrote: "It took...
...midafternoon, the hottest part of the day, and the world seemed made of glaring dust and prickly sweat. The men of the Biafran 55th Battalion were a motley group, mostly barefoot, lacking uniforms, and so short of weapons that a single bolt-action rifle served two or even three men. They had taken up positions around Umuneke in the thick, bone-dry bush. A blocking party had infiltrated the rear of the village and set up the homemade electrically detonated mines the soldiers call Ojukwu's kettles. The strategy was simplicity itself: drive the Nigerians back onto the mines...
...account. Both Moscow and Peking agree, however, that the violence along the Ussuri was for several hours as close to war as the two countries have come in the long succession of border incidents and shoot-outs since their ideological split in 1960. At least the equivalent of a battalion of men were engaged on either side, and armor, artillery, mortars and heavy machine guns were employed before the battle was over. The Russians claim that 31 Soviet border guards were killed and 14 wounded; the Chinese casualties are unknown. Along any other frontier in the world, the scale...
...death commodity. Ski troopers in the desertlike dry cold require between three and five quarts of water daily. While equipment designers have achieved some success in producing insulated canteens and tanks to transport water into the field, the delay caused by a flat tire can turn an entire battalion's supply into...
...after World War II, when the nation returned to its traditional military stance: a small number of voluntary regulars, backed up by reserves and the National Guard. The Army managed to attract 300,000 volunteers, of whom West Point's Colonel Samuel H. Hays wrote: "In an infantry battalion during that period one might find only two or three high school graduates in nearly a thousand men. Technical proficiency was not at a high level; delinquency and court-martial rates were." Getting choosier, the Army raised qualifying scores on aptitude tests from 59 to 70, 80, and finally...