Word: bridgehead
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...dreary, flat battleground, covered with scrub, relieved by occasional stands of trees around farm buildings, was raked by fire from end to end. Shattered trees, shattered buildings and the shattered corpses of Germans lay before the Canadians. At one time, part of the bridgehead across the 100-foot canal was only ten yards deep. Gradually, units from western Canada pushed forward, wet and bedraggled, until they had carved out an area more than five miles by three...
Pocket Amphibians. But progress this way was slowed by bitter resistance. Another Canadian force knifed through the German pocket at its weakest point, and bisected it, reaching the Scheldt at Terneuzen. The design was to jump off from Terneuzen and land among the Germans downstream, creating a bridgehead within a bridgehead. Amphibious equipment could not be brought up the river, under the guns of German batteries at Breskens and Flushing, and had to be improvised on the spot...
...front strategists who had talked of "debouching into the plain" with tanks had failed to consider these obstacles, failed to consider the skill and determination of Field Marshal Albert Kesselring's armies. German tanks were still able to counterattack. They contrived to drive the Eighth from a small bridgehead across the Fiumicino River swollen into a deep, swift torrent by steady rains...
...Bridgehead on the Lek. Nijmegen was a 24-hour sweet dream of tactical triumph. Arnhem, ten miles to the north, was a week-long nightmare. The British airborne division had descended north of Arnhem (pop. 80,000), which lies on the north side of its river. The airborne British, storming in to seize the bridge, had run into hot trouble half a mile short of it. Germans in force held houses, parks and wooded sections in the faubourg. The paratroops fought house to house, day & night. They occupied a small area, battered by big guns, thumped by mortars, clipped...
Despite destruction, disease, famine and continued German shelling, the outlook for the Warsaw patriots under their pseudonymous commander Bor, now promoted to Major General, was improving. Crossing the Vistula under enemy fire from the bluffs, Russian units carved out a modest bridgehead on the west bank, made contact with Bor's forces...