Word: guardsmen
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Instead of being welcomed as liberators, they were met by apathy or open hostility. They were also greeted by security police, civil guardsmen and soldiers stationed at one of Tito's heavily guarded hunting lodges a few miles away. Yugoslav authorities claim they "broke up and destroyed" the Ustaše unit, killing a dozen of the attackers and wounding another dozen. One Yugoslav officer and nine soldiers were killed, and half of the raiders escaped into the mountains. The age of the invaders -most were in their early 20s and had emigrated only in the past year...
...damage in the city was a series of fires that could be fought only by chemical-spraying helicopters: fire trucks could not reach the scene. Most buildings burned to the waterline. Perhaps the grisliest scene was at nearby Forty Fort, where flood waters churned up some 200 coffins. National Guardsmen were assigned to rebury the dead. "I can't stop vomiting," one Guardsman said. "I think I'm losing my mind." Said Pennsylvania Governor Milton Shapp: "WilkesBarre took the worst beating of any community in the state...
Steel bridges were reduced to twisted ruins as if shelled by flocks of F-111's. Empty hulks with blackened windows remained where entire blocks of the downtown area had been burned out. National Guardsmen in muddy Jeeps patrolled the streets and MP's directed traffic through intersections choked with mud. Most grotesquely, twisted and mangled mannequins lying outside shattered store windows grimly suggested the carnage of a beseiged city...
...find housing, dispatched food by horseback to volunteers working on threatened dams in the hills, and scouted campsites where some 4,000 people had been vacationing. The Salvation Army set up three food lines to serve more than 10,000 meals a day. Some 2,500 South Dakota National Guardsmen pitched into the rescue and cleanup operation. Airmen from Ellsworth Air Force Base directed traffic and drove emergency vehicles. Boy Scouts helped clean the main streets, picking up litter. The entire staff of South Dakota Governor Richard Kneip moved into the city to help. Indian tribes from as far away...
...dawn the rains began to subside, but a fog shrouded the city. Some 1,800 South Dakota National Guardsmen attending a summer camp joined the rescue operations. Mayor Donald Barnett ordered police to arrest any sightseers who ghoulishly descended on the stricken city. All gas service was shut off. The injured filled the city's hospitals and overwhelmed medical facilities at nearby Ellsworth Air Force Base. But for many there was no help. At week's end the toll of known dead passed 125, and another 500 were still missing...