Word: caissons
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Manhattan Project engineers had named No. 5 "Helen of Bikini." As the concrete caisson to house Helen was lowered from the weapons ship Albemarle to LSM 60, Senator Carl Hatch got in a plug for his home state by chalking on its side "Made in New Mexico." Through a specially designed opening in the tank-deck of the landing ship, the caisson was lowered several fathoms into the limpid waters of Bikini lagoon. Then all except a few specialists headed out to open water...
...same in Washington, in the thousands on thousands of grief-wrung faces which walled the caisson's grim progression with prayers and with tears. It was the same on Sunday morning in the gentle landscape at Hyde Park, when the burial service of the Episcopal Church spoke its old, strong, quiet words of farewell; and it was the same at that later moment when all save the gravemen were withdrawn and reporters, in awe-felt hiding, saw how a brave woman, a widow, returned, and watched over the grave alone, until the grave was filled...
...leafed shade trees; the soft, rhythmic scuffing of massed, marching men in the street; the clattering exhaust of armored scout cars moving past, their machine guns cocked skyward. And the beat of muffled drums. As Franklin Roosevelt's flag-draped coffin passed slowly by on its black caisson, the hoofbeats of the white horses, the grind of iron-rimmed wheels on pavement overrode all other sounds...
...White House. The caisson and its bright-colored burden rolled slowly along, small in the broad street from which Franklin Roosevelt had so often waved to cheering thousands. The sun seemed to grow hotter, the drums throbbed and muttered on & on. At last, the caisson ground up the graveled White House drive. The coffin was carried out of sight into the executive mansion...
...morning, the Hudson Valley countryside-where as a boy Franklin Roosevelt had run and played and ridden his pony beside his father's horse-lay fresh and green in the sunshine. Once more the coffin moved on a black caisson. This time it was followed by a black-hooded horse, with a saber hung on the near side and empty boots in the stirrups of an empty saddle. It was the old military tradition for a leader who was dead. The valley began to echo with the sound of cannon, firing the presidential salute from the Hyde Park grounds...