Word: merchantable
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1950-1959
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...best working soldiers in the 27th last week were young (26), blond Captain Martin Merchant of Ilion, N.Y., and Merchant's lead platoon leader, Lieut. Doyle D. Lummis of Waco, Texas. For four long nights, Merchant, Lummis and their men had held the most advanced position on the "bowling alley." Each night, they had heard the enemy tanks, trucks and self-propelled guns approach with a roaring and purring of motors, and a babble of voices. Each night, Lummis and his platoon sergeant had calmly told the artillery and mortars in the rear to get ready, warned the platoon...
Like Willie & Joe. On the morning of the fifth day, Merchant and Lummis sat wearily by the road. They looked like Bill Mauldin's Willie and Joe. Both wore filthy fatigues and a week's growth of beard. Their shoulders slumped and their buttons were unbuttoned. They were perfect examples of what-according to officer candidate schools-officers should never, never look like...
...Martin Merchant, long unwashed, his red beard tangled with sweat and dust, sat on a can of mortar ammunition and savored a cup of C-ration coffee. Three flies took swan dives into the coffee. Merchant looked at them philosophically. "You're not going to drink that stuff now, are you?" a correspondent asked. "Those flies just came off those dead over there in the ditch...
...Merchant looked at the flies without emotion. "What the hell," he said, "I've been drinking coffee with flies in it for a month and it ain't hurt me yet." He took a big swallow...
...escapists could pick up a historical novel confident of finding a simple mixture of sword play and midnight love. Nowadays, as part of the now fashionable pedantry that corrodes everything from highbrow poetry to lowbrow science fiction, the historical novel is often as minutely researched as a Ph.D. thesis. Merchant of the Ruby, a fearsomely thorough drenching in the 15th Century Wars of the Roses, is a prime example. Readers of the Merchant need a refresher course in history, an elaborate diagram of royal genealogy, and a passionate interest in the problem of which English kings were legitimate and which...