Word: mortaring
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...field and come in sight of its immediate objective. It was a long concrete fort, ringed with mines and dominating a ridge barring the way to Cherbourg. There the battalion used time and metal to save men. Instead of assaulting the fort, the commander called for drenching artillery and mortar fire, then sifted his infantry in cautiously to clear up what resistance was left...
Even after they had pushed through the zone of mortar and artillery fire the going was hard. German skirmishers and delaying parties fought stubbornly, fell back slowly. Lovat's men pushed on in a continual process of dashing forward, dropping in their tracks, firing a few rounds, snatching up pack and gun and dashing forward again...
...wore on, the beleaguered paratroops, under merciless enemy pressure, began to steal glum looks at their watches. At 12:14 a weary officer muttered: "They'll never make it now." At that moment, through the crash and rattle of gunfire and mortar shells, came a distant skirling of bagpipes, the Commandos' signal. A paratroop bugler answered with "Defaulters,"* indicating that the road immediately ahead had Germans on it, and that the first Commando-men should go around them...
...artillery and mortar fire had cut down many a U.S. fighting man, and there was bloody fighting ahead. But the crushing logic of war was against the minions of the Emperor. Saipan was bound to fall...
Penned in a Normandy farmhouse, 13 paratroopers of the crack 82nd Division heard the rising crash of American rifle and mortar fire outside. Downstairs their German captors fought savagely in de fense of the house: the American prisoners heard the German commander tell his troops to fight to the last...