Word: flotilla
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...evacuation from Dunkirk of 338,226 British and French troops, soundly whipped by the German army but rescued by an improvised flotilla of 1,200 ships under week-long bombardment, was closer to triumph than to tragedy. By rights, the saga of Dunkirk deserves a Homer, but even in the jabbing, boilerplate prose of British Journalist Richard Collier, a reliable but uninspired artisan of "The Day That" books (The City That Would Not Die-TIME, Jan. II, 1960), the story vividly recalls the curious, human mosaic of heroic and horrifying experience that was pre-Hiroshima warfare...
...Sheik Abdullah as Salim as Sabah's cry for help, Britain in a matter of hours poured 3,000 crack troops, with their tanks and troop carriers, into Kuwait from bases in Kenya, Aden and Bahrein. A British aircraft carrier and a fleet of warships appeared offshore; another flotilla steamed toward the area from the Mediterranean. After the fiasco at Suez, the British were delighted at the chance to demonstrate that they could still defend the vital areas of the Middle East that are the source of Britain...
Downrange, to the north of Grand Bahama Island, was an even weightier deployment. Circling near the calculated impact area of the Mercury capsule, Lake Champlain bristled with helicopters, and a flotilla of six destroyers strung out along the range. Watching the range with sharp electronic eyes were the swarming radars of Cape Canaveral, and high overhead soared monstrous aircraft burdened with more radars. Neither money, men nor equipment had been spared to protect the life of U.S. Astronaut...
...Knightsbridge. when he received radio orders to go to Belgrave Square. As he swung his trim, tiny black-and-white Fiat Multipla into the square with its swank, yellow-white Regency houses, the enemy struck. "Baker four, I'm in trouble!" Buntin shouted over his intercom as a flotilla of tall, black, box-shaped London taxis bore down on him, their "For Hire" flags raised high, their exhaust pipes billowing clouds of diesel smoke, their cabbies shaking irate fists and shouting unprintable war cries...
...demonstrators managed to recapture their flotilla in time, but when the Proteus finally sailed into view, an escort of Royal Navy launches swamped one rowboat and a canoe and chased the others off. The demonstrators wound up in jail, the kind of mild martyrdom they had obviously had in mind. "We called the local police," said one, "to be sure there were enough cells for us." Next day a crowd of 1,000 appeared at Holy Loch waving placards. But the Proteus was on station, and Dunoon welcomed it with a civic reception and a dance. Said Town Clerk Duncan...