Word: deserting
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...just risen when a squadron of Air Force C-130's and C-141 Starlifters appeared over the Mojave Desert at Fort Irwin, Calif., some 130 miles northeast of Los Angeles. From three landing zones on the desert floor, plumes of colored smoke began to rise. At that go-ahead signal, the sky blossomed with parachutes as 2,300 troops of the elite 82nd Airborne Division from Fort Bragg, N.C., began the first phase of operation Gallant Eagle '82, a massive $45 million mock invasion by the Rapid Deployment Joint Task Force. It was one of the largest...
...m.p.h. But almost three miles away at the western end, where most of the injuries occurred, they were surprised to find that the gusts measured more than 20 m.p.h. Some investigators theorize that these winds had careened off a nearby range of low mountains and swept back across the desert, creating crosscurrents and general turbulence. Said 82nd Airborne Major John Dye: "Desert people have seen the phenomenon before. We had not, even though we jumped into this place four weeks ago on another exercise." The military investigation is expected to continue for several weeks. One grim lesson already has been...
...Jerusalem, Israelis were locked in a series of struggles on a number of fronts. They were striving to maintain a tight hold on the occupied Arab territories and trying to adjust at the same time to the trauma of withdrawing at long last from the Sinai, the great desert barrier that separates them from Egypt...
...Israelis forcibly reunified Jerusalem in 1967, the population has climbed from 275,000 to 407,000, and more than 1.1 million visitors pour in every year. The fortress-like apartment towers clustered on the once bare hills surrounding the city now extend to the very edge of the desert wilderness where Satan tempted Jesus; and though the walled Old City surrounding the holy shrines is still redolent of cinnamon and roasting lamb and hashish and donkey turds, the twisting alleys leading onto the Via Dolorosa (Sorrowful Way) are covered with paving stones rather than mud. Even the cats-Jerusalem...
...used regularly by the shuttle, NASA has not yet tested the bird's landing characteristics in the crosswinds that might be encountered there. An even less desirable option: putting Columbia down on a concrete strip at California's Edwards Air Force Base, near the muddy, rain-soaked desert lake bed where Columbia touched down on its two earlier missions. Laconically acknowledging the ship's dwindling fuel supplies, Flight Director Neil Hutchinson explained: "We are in a finite situation, and the longer you wait the fewer options you have...