Word: desertion
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Where the desert abruptly broke and dropped down a pitted, 40-foot slope to a lower plain, the scout cars had to stop. But the horses did not. Over the brow of the slope, down the sandy ridge they leaped and slid. All along the ridge poured a river of men & horses, breaking at the edge, spilling downward and riding on. Half a mile beyond, they clustered again. Riflemen dismounted, jerked guns from holsters. Machine-gunners ripped at their packs, vanished into the brush with the guns. Within five minutes the squadron was deployed for battle, the horses had disappeared...
Last week General Richardson, his officers, his men, his horses toiled like mules, trying to wangle more than their allotted two divisions in the new Army. The Eighth Cavalry's Troop A night-marched into the desert, taught raw recruits to find their way by moon and stars across the trailless land. Commanding officers slaved at newfangled exercises, learning to use radio and motorcycle communication, use also the squadron of reconnaissance tanks which will be part of each new cavalry division. On the chill, white expanse of the drill ground or in the dank corrals, recruits learned the manual...
...remarkable rush, from Matruh the day and night before, 60 miles in one haul, and now they settled down on the cold sands for a valuable nap. Mechanized forces had deployed earlier in a sharp curve to the south and west, using the moonlight to dodge scrub and big desert boulders...
...delay in Britain's follow-up of her great naval coup at Taranto last fortnight, when Fleet Air Arm fliers knocked holes in half of Italy's battle line, or in new British pressure on Marshal Graziani's time-marking expeditionary force in the western desert. Knowing that Graziani had completed an advance camp 15 miles east of Sidi Bārrani, had drilled new water wells and about finished a hard-surface supply road along the coast, British naval units last week hove up and shelled the new outpost, road and wells. Motorized units on land...
...Outwardly, they pretend that they groan under the burden and would be glad to lay it down, but in their secret souls they cling to their places. . . . The friends and sycophants of the incumbent . . constantly assure their chief that the public good demands that he should not desert the ship. This . . . sweet music that is a curse of kings...