Word: mortared
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...ground combat and the artillery fire persisted as the fledgling Lebanese Army fought Syrian-backed Druze forces for control of the strategic hill town of Suq al Gharb. The Marines, after savoring a brief lull in artillery fire directed at the airport, were forced back into their bunkers when mortar rounds began falling near them. And as they hunkered down, a political battle erupted in Washington between Congress and the President over the thorny issue of who has final authority to keep U.S. forces deployed in a foreign combat zone...
...only by the new crisis in U.S.-Soviet relations. Other urgent turns in overseas affairs were demanding the Administration's attention. Last week the nation suffered its first combat fatalities among the 1,370 U.S. Marines assigned to peacekeeping duties in Lebanon: two Marines were killed, hit by mortar fire...
...hours, the mortars, shells and rockets crashed down on the lightly reinforced encampment around the runways at Beirut International Airport. Crouched in their bunkers, the 1,200 U.S. Marines who form part of a four-nation, 5,400-man peace-keeping force could do little more than keep their heads low and occasionally fire back. "We could hear bullets whizzing above us, and others were impacting on our sand bags," Sergeant Donald Williams, 28, later recalled. Whenever they saw a muzzle flash or some other indication of where the large rounds were coming from, the Marines retaliated with their rifles...
...time the island was also home to a prison. In another time there was a drug rehabilitation center here. Neither is in operation any more, and the red brick buildings now resemble what one imagines would be left after the bomb. Creepers embellish low walls fashioned from mortar and smooth river rocks by some forgotten mason-an ax murderer...
Since then, Ramirez says, the U.S. military has taken over an additional 5,400 acres of his ranch without paying him anything. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and construction crews from Litton Industries have built an ammunition dump, a mortar range for test firing and a 1,000-man tent camp on his land for the Salvadorans. Ramirez says U.S. Army personnel have twice opened valves to his water lines, causing his meat-packing plant to remain idle for two days because of inadequate water pressure. Green Berets visiting the ammunition dump have left open the cattle gate, allowing...