Word: beachhead
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...bald communiqué from Bougainville said: "Our ground forces enlarged their perimeter. ..." From that bleached and pickled bit of news, one Marine, back in Washington from the beachhead on Empress Augusta Bay, reconstructed a nightmare narrative. The story of stocky, red-haired Technical Sergeant Harold Azine, in civilian life a radio-program director, on Bougainville a combat correspondent...
Into the Jungle. One night, early in the Empress Augusta Bay operation, Sergeant Azine's company slipped into the jungle to hold a "road-block," an outpost guarding the approach to the Marines' beachhead. Miasmal swamp and forest hemmed the area. Most of the company bivouacked smack on the trail. Flank units took position in the jungle; they alone might use firearms, because they alone could shoot without danger of hitting their comrades. Marines on the trail were limited to knives, entrenching tools, fists, or any weapon that would do a job silently...
This kind of fighting wrenched the jungle from the Jap, slowly enlarged the Empress Augusta Bay beachhead. Now, after six weeks of fighting, it runs roughly 10,000 yards along the shore, 8,000 yards inland. Last week came the announcement that U.S. engineers had completed a runway within the beachhead. The Allied command could now count on better fighter cover for air and sea attacks on Rabaul, the Jap Southwest Pacific strongpoint...
...command post on the wrecked beachhead, the Marines' Major General Julian Smith proposed a dual ceremony. Up a coconut palm, stripped of fronds by shellfire, rose the Stars & Stripes. Simultaneously, up an adjacent tree, soared the Union Jack...
Luck: Good & Bad. "Luck played a big part in our getting stories out. At third day's end, when the battle was all but won, reporters returned to their ships to write. They never try to rush onto a beachhead typewriter in hand...