Word: desertion
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...slowed and stopped the Willkie car the way a flood does in the desert when it washes out the road. Before the car reached his old high school for a brief preliminary ceremony, it was stuck solidly for 15 minutes, in a temperature of 102°; only Wendell Willkie's 220 lb. kept him from being pulled from the car by handshakers; he shook each hand that was offered and did not lose his smile. But in the school building from which as a boy he had been twice expelled, he seemed to lose his vitality and sat down...
...agricultural districts irrigation projects have transformed semi-deserts into fertile land. The reddish soil of some of the regions of central Asia is almost fantastically fertile. Since the days of Tamerlane peoples have fought wars for water, have dug aryks (irrigation canals). In periods of peace when the primitive irrigation systems functioned well, the country bathed in prosperity. In wars the aryks were destroyed and the desert advanced again. Soviet irrigation systems for cotton land were completed under the first and second Five-Year Plans, but only in 1939 and 1940 did crop yields become impressive...
...coast, which rise as high as 6,500 ft. in a wall behind Berbera, it rains only 2½ inches per year. In July and August a hot, dry monsoon blows from the blazing Ethiopian hinterland. Nothing grows in British Somaliland except thorn trees, dense dry "bush" and tough desert fodder to keep alive the nomadic natives' herds of sheep, goats, camels, ostriches...
...company, one pony company, one mechanized company with armored cars, manned by dark-skinned Somali Arabs and officered by Britons. Total with reserves: about 560 men. Beside these stood another 560 native mounted police with rifles, machine guns, British officers. Their leader was Lieut. Colonel Arthur Reginald Chater, oldtime desert fighter. Governor and Commander in Chief of the protectorate is Vincent Goncalves Glenday, 49, an Oxonian sportsman careerist in Britain's colonial service...
...protect the orchards from floods. Stephen with his goats conquers the trees in Amanda's heart. But a flash flood drowns Stephen, leaves unwed Amanda to raise figs, peaches and Stephen's posthumous baby. Author Gillmor's tale has some of the fresh clarity of desert...