Word: brenning
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Past us, on the roads and in the fields, rumbled Shermans (to deal with Jerry tanks), Crocodiles (British flame-throwing tanks) and Bren-gun carriers carrying canvas assault boats. It had been bitterly cold all day and drizzling. Now the combination of smoke and rain reduced visibility to almost nothing, so that a tank 80 yards away was invisible...
They wore rakish straw and panama hats gleaned on the march. One Maori wheeled his Bren gun in a streamlined perambulator. Another wore a silk hat and carried a walking stick, his Bren gun strapped across his back. One company marched into a village, captured outlying houses in the midst of their own barrage. Complained a prisoner: "We didn't think you would come until the barrage lifted...
Parachutes bloomed in fluffy skies as airborne troops rehearsed their desperate act. Cowslips gleamed in English meadows and harebells nodded by English streams as toiling infantrymen sweated and wriggled through the final stages of their training. Across the pale green of awakening countryside, endless convoys lurched, Bren gun carriers clattered, jeeps buzzed and tanks clanked. Assault troops splashed wearily ashore on countless nameless stony beaches; the thunder of artillery practice on Salisbury Plain mounted toward unbearable climax...
Hours too late, the German Command recovered: 18 dive-bombers came over to attack the invasion ships. But the beachhead was already secure, Allied patrols were halfway to Rome, tanks and Bren gun carriers were ashore, Allied airmen controlled the skies. If the Germans planned a strong counterattack, no hint of it had come in the first, crucial 48 hours. Instead, Berlin reported new Allied landings at Gaeta and Terracina, just behind the German defense lines...
...swim, fully equipped, holding their firearms above water; to know about mortars, anti-tank rifles, high explosives. They also had to learn the double lesson of cooperation, individual initiative. Each man was encouraged "to do everything with a friend"-fall in beside him, handle the magazine of his Bren gun, scout with him, conquer with him the tough assault-training course known...