Word: blasts
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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They followed the trails left by the Burmese who had fled from Jap troops in the interior. The trails, sometimes less than a foot wide, trickled through the matted jungles and crossed ledges which dropped hundreds of feet into gorges. Dynamiting crews went first to blast away the heaviest barriers. Behind them bulldozers slashed into the undergrowth, rocky banks, viscous...
...knocked over mountainsides in drops of hundreds, sometimes thousands of feet. One 'dozer operator ducked as a clod of dirt hit his head, looked up and saw a whole mountaintop coming down on him. He jumped clear. His bulldozer was buried. To exhume it the engineers had to blast away tons of rocks...
Last week Butte, like other U.S. communities, was busy about its bustling, wartime present. The mines were going at their fullest blast since the depression, Butte's 300 saloons still worked nightily to quench its thirst, the girls of its ' Venus Alley" still sat in front of their cribs as did those of oldtime Galena Street, its cuisine still ranged from fried bear steak to Cornish pastries, its inhabitants still quarreled in some 30 different languages and dialects. In war as in peace, Butte was still a mining camp, still one of the rowdiest towns...
...loud explosion lit the tracks and started a spat of rifle fire. Shadowy figures ran crouching through the tall kaoliang grass and the southbound express whistled in the distance. The Japanese blamed the Chinese and said the blast had torn up 31 inches of track. Nevertheless, the train passed over the spot at full speed without mishap...
...trailers. A station fire engine dashed up in a brave, hopeless effort to halt the fire. But before it could go into action the 24 cordite-loaded charges exploded like a salvo of blockbusters in a blinding flash and shattering concussion. The toll: 25 dead*; 249 injured. The blast and fire wrecked a hangar and eight barracks, damaged other hangars filled with aircraft. Tight-lipped Navy and FBI men began their investigations...