Word: beachhead
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...been completed. Almost a hundred craft under Rear Admiral Arthur Dewey Struble, a Normandy veteran, lay off shore. At 6:30 the destroyers opened up on the beaches with 5-inch guns; after 20 minutes, LCIs carrying rocket launchers belched their loads onto a 1,200-yd. beachhead. At 7:07 (because General Bruce likes sevens for his 77th), the first troops sloshed up the beaches, without a casualty. Most of the Japs had been sucked into the interior; the rest had been dazed by the barrage, although this strip of beach which might decide the entire campaign for Leyte...
...Navy had won a great victory. But among pundits in & outside the Navy, there was nevertheless a question still to argue. Its nub: had Admiral William F. Halsey Jr., commander of the mighty Third U.S. Fleet, taken a long chance and endangered the safety of the Leyte beachhead...
...admirals in battle, the chance came to "Bull" Halsey at a moment when the big decision had to be made quickly and followed fearlessly. At that point the southernmost of the Jap's three prongs was thrusting east through Philippine waters toward Surigao Strait, south of the Leyte beachhead, while another was in a position to attack the beachhead from the north...
Leading his battalion of the 8th Marines into another beachhead landing-at Saipan last June - 6-ft, 200-lb. Lieut. Colonel Henry Pierson Crowe came about as near to getting killed as a man could, and still live. First a Jap bullet pierced his left lung, not far from his heart. Then he was almost killed by one of his own men who mistook him for a Jap. Just as the man was aiming, Jim Crowe raised his head feebly, identified himself by twirling his famed red mustache. Finally dragged back to a shell hole in the sand near...
...that time mortar and artillery shells were dropping on the slender beachhead every 30 seconds. Colonel Crowe covered his chest wound with his poncho, covered his face with his helmet. A shell fragment tore through the poncho, pierced his chest in two more places. Five other fragments hit him in the left arm and shoulder, another in the right leg. A sliver tore off his thumbnail. A doctor who examined him said, "Not much chance...