Word: faults
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Plastic Wedding. The silicones are a new type of plastic-an unusual wedding of organic and inorganic chemistry. Organic plastics have poor resistance to heat and cold; at extreme temperatures they become brittle or soft. This fault is overcome in the silicones by replacing the carbon atoms in organic compounds with a much tougher combination of silicon (basic ingredient of sand) and oxygen. The result is a material combining the flexibility of plastics with great resistance to heat, water and air. Some silicones can withstand temperatures from 60 below zero Fahrenheit to 575 above...
That the problem of jungle equipment is still far from solved is nobody's fault in particular. Natives of the jungles learned through the centuries that the best clothing was no clothing; the best shoes, no shoes; the best rations, whatever grows in the jungles. But the white man, with his civilized stomach, his vulnerability to ringworm, malaria and leeches, is far from being acclimated...
...even know there's a war on. No bombers flew over us in a storm of death, chums. No snipers lurked at the corner of 3rd and Market; no ack-ack batteries picked us off in our penthouses. But that isn't our fault. It's a tribute to you. You kept us safe and we appreciate...
Readiness to spread and act upon rumor and exaggeration is a fault to which Chinese and U.S. soldiers are especially prone. The Chinese like to indulge "the vicious habit" of self-dramatization, and flattery of their superiors. But, "of the many exaggerated stories I have heard in seven years . . . none can surpass those told by American pilots and infantrymen...
...Japs in caves. When it began to look as if what had been gained might be lost, Fourth Marine Division troops even moved in front of a sector of the 27th's line to save it. From the Marine point of view, General Ralph Smith's chief fault was that he had long ago failed to get tough enough to remove incompetent subordinate officers...