Word: bridgehead
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1940-1949
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
This week the Japanese defending Mandalay suddenly found themselves in the middle of a semicircle. General Slim had sprung tanks and airborne troops in a swift 85-mile dash from one bridgehead into Meiktila (70 miles south of Mandalay), to seize eight Jap airfields. There and on the way there the British killed 1,600 Japs. With one punch they had severed the enemy's land and water links from Rangoon to Mandalay, and had virtually cut off the main forces defending Burma. The next move was up to the Japs -if they could make...
...began to yell for the bridge and for tanks. The engineers, now raked by a murderous spray of German machine-gun fire, coolly and swiftly worked on. Just as the German tanks struck, the last plank fell into place and U.S. tanks rolled across the bridge. They saved the bridgehead and opened the road to Cologne...
Over the Rivers. The main battle for Warsaw had not been fought among its ruins, but for miles around them. Zhukov forced a crossing of the unfrozen Vistula 57 miles south of the city, widened his bridgehead and then struck with the full weight of his armor to carve out a breakthrough. Zhukov's tanks fought and won two battles as they sped northward to the Warsaw-Lódź highway. Eighteen miles north of the city another Russian force made its crossings, struck through to join the main column on the highway. Warsaw was taken from...
Squeeze on Strasbourg. Liberated France, cold, hungry and disillusioned, waited tensely for news as the threat to her beloved Strasbourg increased from day to day. At Gambsheim, eleven miles north of Strasbourg, the Germans beefed up their bridgehead with men and tanks from across the Rhine. From it, they struck north, west and south. On the north, they joined with other Nazi units attacking Hatten-a village whose shell-torn, fire-blackened ruins had been fought over for more than a week-and thus established a front from Gambsheim clear across to the Lorraine salient south of Bitche. The blow...
...Russians had pierced 40 miles, had spread their break to a width of 65 miles. They had taken their first prize: Kielce (pop. 58,000), a hub of roads and railways 20 miles west of the point where Konev stopped last August after he had bloodily won his Vistula bridgehead...