Word: martials
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Show Trial. The Jordanians evidently intended the trial to be a showpiece, proving how firmly King Hussein's government acts against saboteurs. Public and press were invited to the officers' mess hall where it was held. But the trial also showed how ineptly the government ran courts-martial and condoned torture. Overnight, Radio Cairo began hailing Nadia as a new "Moslem Joan of Arc," ignoring the fact that she is actually a Christian. Cried the Cairo newspaper Al Shaab: "The coward King, feeling his weakness and impotence before his giant people, has chosen to fight women...
Last week, still uncomfortable in his new uniform, Wayne Powers was brought up before his court-martial in Verdun, pleaded guilty to the charge of desertion, waited for a light sentence. After all it had been a long time. But deserting, especially in war, is a high crime, and so the court-martial viewed it. The sentence: ten years at hard labor (maximum for desertion: death). The sentence is subject to review, and it may be drastically reduced. Said sturdy Yvette: "I've only one wish -that he be released soon so that we can get married and lead...
Within hours after proclaiming martial law, buses were running as usual in Baghdad, and shops were open. So far as any outsider could tell, many Iraqis welcomed the coup and almost all accepted it. Yet it was only a handful of plotters who changed the history of Iraq. Later intelligence suggests that they acted earlier than they had intended, worried by Nuri's dispatch of one of the crucial colonels to Jordan...
...though the Tigers were all technically civilians, Greg found himself jousting with superiors again. There was the old, retread captain who turned the boys out for a military muster every morning, and the group adjutant in Toungoo who threatened so many of his men with so many courts-martial that Boyington suspected "he must have been at least one jump ahead of a few himself in his military days." There was Chennault himself, who "thought his face was a piece of Ming-dynasty chinaware he was afraid might break if he were to show emotion of any kind...
Abruptly, as if by some magical cue from the conductor, the 1,695 hypnotized customers in the audience begin to slam their hands together in rhythm to the march. The music wells, and the actors turn, dip, twist and prance. The applause pounds on in martial time as, a-tatatatat, a-tatatatat, the music pours up from the pit and gilds the hall with shimmering sheets of brass. At last the house lights come on, and the customers shoulder their way to the door, hands burning and hearts still tingling with a rediscovery of a bygone Fourth of July...