Word: commandos
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Misguided Dogs. On the first day of the Franche-Comte tour, police arrested six persons charged with being part of an S.A.O. commando intending to assassinate De Gaulle. Police claimed the plotters had hoped to plant explosives at a railway underpass near Vesoul and blow up the presidential auto as it went through. Imitating smugglers, the S.A.O. group were also reported to have trained bomb-carrying dogs to respond to ultrasonic whistles: they could then be directed near De Gaulle in a crowd and the bombs exploded by remote control...
Confident that Boualem would help him, Gardes slipped into the countryside and headed for the Ouarsenis region with a commando of 140 men. Disguised in French uniforms, they captured three French outposts en route before their startled army defenders could fire a shot...
Under current treaty arrangements, the U.S. has virtual veto power over the use of force by the Nationalists. But in Washington there was scant support for an invasion. Although State Department experts agreed that severe economic troubles have greatly weakened Mao's regime, most were skeptical that any commando raids by Chiang would touch off a general revolt. The U.S. also could not believe that Khrushchev would sit back and watch the Chinese Communists fall, whatever his disagreements with his rival in Peking. Still, the question of support for the Nationalists was not easily dismissed...
...group, the U.S. guerrillas are the best combat troops in the Army. Their badge is their green beret, authorized by the President to set them apart as elite troops. All are volunteers. All are paratroopers. About 40% of the officers and 25% of the enlisted men have had commando-like Ranger training. Officers can speak at least one, and often two, foreign languages. Every enlisted man has one specialty and a grounding in two others, e.g., weapons, demolitions, medical care. The training is intensive: demolition experts can fashion explosives out of fertilizer; medics can amputate limbs and treat any kind...
Despite De Gaulle's bold words, it was a bad week for the government. Yet there was one piece of good news from Algeria: a military patrol near Philippeville rounded up 40 uniformed men wearing S.A.O. armbands; they called themselves the "Bonaparte Commando." The entire group was captured without a shot being fired, and their sheepish surrender strengthened those Gaullists who have maintained that the S.A.O. detachments, though capable of bombings and isolated assassinations, have no stomach for a showdown fight...