Word: mortaring
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There was another kind of hero forged by the heat and pressure of battle. There was the private, foot all but blown off, chest punctured with machine-gun bullets, face mangled by a mortar chunk, who kept going until he got nearly to the top of the ridge. There, he died, and only then fell down. There were the two Kentuckians who rushed up a hill screaming hillbilly songs and dived into a North Korean bunker with their hand grenades, blowing it up. There were also men who went to pieces in the strain of battle, and dashed forward, screaming...
...Koreans. The courage of the South Koreans was a different kind: to G.I.s it seemed not sacrificial, not fanatical, but resigned. One bearded old "Papa-san" of the Korean Service Corps "choo-gied" mortar ammunition up one hill, then caught a bullet in his chest as he was starting back down the trail for more. He lay by the mortar position, blood leaking from his chest, and passed shells to the shorthanded mortar crew as he died. Each time the tube fired, the old man muttered a Korean word, but the Americans on the mortar never knew what...
...Korea, Ireland led an infantry rocket section, and in due course he got shrapnel in the neck, leg and hand, mortar fragments in the face. That was too much for the Marine Corps, which in December 1951 sternly shipped Ireland home, despite his protests that he was still able and willing to fight...
...shaky scaffolding of Italian politics, Premier Alcide de Gasperi worked warily to mortar together a new government for Italy, his eighth since the war. He could no longer count on the three small parties of his coalition to help carry the hod. Two were so hurt by the June elections that they barely counted any more, and the Democratic Socialists of Giuseppe Saragat, cut down to 19 seats, decided to quit the team...
...helped with the wounded. He saw the army "doctors operate ceaselessly, their hands bare, blood spattered down their fatigues. No rubber gloves, no white smocks here. Stitch this, clip that, sponge, stitch, clip, saw-faster, faster, faster, there are more waiting." At the front, he was wounded by mortar fire and ran a gauntlet of fire back to temporary safety as the Communists overran the U.S. positions. On the morning of July 23, Deane went forward to join the single tank company that covered the U.S. retreat. He never reached...