Word: ditchful
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Author Heinrich is at his best as he describes the last-ditch stand of decimated German regiments against Russian divisions led by a hundred tanks. Towns burn, civilians are blown to bits, whole battalions are destroyed as they try to carry out orders from an incompetent division adjutant. Over the ghastly scene the snowy Carpathians loom like symbols of nature's indifference. But Heinrich neither needs nor uses literary symbolism. With a spare, brutal directness of language, he is able to show how men fight and die, convey the pressing of a trigger, the spreading stain of blood...
...neutrons in the reactor rise above a critical level, showing that an excursion has started, the uranium fissions at a rate that creates enough heat to melt the solder. Then high-pressure gas will shoot neutron-absorbing poison into the reactor. Even if other controls have failed, this last-ditch nuclear fire extinguisher will keep the reactor from exploding or melting itself into radioactive...
...pressing rank, and line supporting line. The red flags wave, their horsemen gallop up and down; the arms of eighteen thousand men, barrel and bayonet, gleam in the sun, a sloping forest of flashing steel. Right on they move, as with one soul, in perfect order, without impediment of ditch, or wall or stream, over ridge and slope, through orchard and meadow, and cornfield, magnificent, grim, irresistible...
...bank dropped hints on how Nasser might more profitably operate the canal. He might pay the company in installments out of his $115 million-a-year canal tolls, and the bank might consider advancing him cash, and is already offering him technical advice, to widen and deepen the ditch for the ever-growing oil traffic...
...confer with colleagues in the capital on how best to defeat the candidates of Obafemi Awolowo, Prime Minister of Western Nigeria and chief of the industrious Ijebu tribe. Returning home, Adelabu was speeding through the constituency of his rival, Awolowo, when his car sideswiped another and crashed into a ditch, killing Adelabu and two of his relatives. Many of his supporters could not believe his death: having survived 18 "political" trials in five years with no more punishment than a few chiding words from presiding judges, Adelabu was believed to have a charmed life. A hundred thousand mourners gathered...