Word: combat
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...than once, had been close to engulfing the whole country. Georgios and 200,000 Greek soldiers like him had accomplished this feat with the help of a soldier from a foreign land with a heart every bit as stout as theirs. He was Lieut. General James Alward Van Fleet, combat infantryman, sometime U.S. division and corps commander and now head of the Joint U.S. Military Advisory and Planning Group (JUSMAPG) in Greece...
Doughboy Colonel. James Van Fleet has little knack for the soldier-statesmanship of an Eisenhower or a MacArthur. He is first and foremost a combat soldier who has thoroughly learned his trade. In World War II, under the incomparable George Patton, he learned the value of speed, surprise, audacity. In his imposing collection of medals the one he likes best is the Combat Infantryman's Badge...
Another, all-pervading, source of strain was the impersonality of combat, strengthened by such measures of replacing losses by individuals rather than units. The G.I.s resented being "treated as numbers...
...basic weapon for air combat, thinks McNarney, will be the "air-to-air" rocket. It will not have to be aimed very accurately, for it will "home" on its target (probably attracted by radar-wave reflections), chase after it at supersonic speed, and explode by a proximity fuse when it gets within killing range. Such rockets presumably will be used by bombers for defense as well as by fighters for attack. Their development into "operational missiles," says McNarney, will not take long...
...doing a job he dislikes, that the strain has become second nature. Men of today, says Ogilvie, "are so constantly keyed up to fight the world that is trying to tread them down that they are in a state of continual and futile preparedness." Their nervous systems, "tuned for combat in the day and rehearsing combat during sleep," get out of whack. So do their glands. The result is such "stress diseases" as ulcers, high blood pressure, overactive thyroids...