Word: commando
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Ships and Bombs. D-day was Aug. 15. It began in cloudy night with a crescent moon shining fitfully through the overcast upon calm sea. Before the day was 30 minutes old the attack began with a commando landing on the Hyères Islands off Cap Bénat-where the now sunken French fleet used to take its exercise on sunny days. A few hours later more parachutists and gliders landed beyond the Monts des Maures -the Moorish Mountains-that rise between Toulon and Saint-Raphael...
Morning came and the Commando-men splashed ashore, each carrying his 60-lb. pack and wearing a green beret (they scorn the steel helmet as a needlessly heavy encumbrance). They skirted beach mines, passed pillboxes, dodged gunfire, and started the long, tough fight inland...
...beleaguered paratroops, under merciless enemy pressure, began to steal glum looks at their watches. At 12:14 a weary officer muttered: "They'll never make it now." At that moment, through the crash and rattle of gunfire and mortar shells, came a distant skirling of bagpipes, the Commandos' signal. A paratroop bugler answered with "Defaulters,"* indicating that the road immediately ahead had Germans on it, and that the first Commando-men should go around them...
...Payoff. At exactly 12:17½ a tall, slim officer with a rifle slung over one shoulder scrambled up the bank of the Caen Canal. Behind him came a sweating, 21-year-old Glasgow piper, behind the piper a long line of grim-bereted Commando troops. The paratroop brigadier came up to shake Lord Lovat's hand. Their greeting was brief and British...
Born in Scotland 50 years ago, she came to South Africa with her father shortly before the Boer War. A burgher of the Orange Free State, her father rode in a commando against the British. When union came, Margaret, a homely girl with an intelligent face, began a schooling that carried her through South Africa's colleges and England's Oxford...