Word: mortaring
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Master Gunnery Sergeant Lou Diamond is not 167 years old, but the oldest generals cannot remember when the Marines' famed mortar expert was not somewhere around. Lou Diamond's age is a secret between him and his service-record book, but his friends remember his pitching a one-hit game for the Quantico Marines many years ago, when he must have been at least 50. He rested on that feat, never pitched again...
Last week stories of Lou Diamond's prowess in the Solomons began drifting back to the U.S. On Tulagi he demolished 14 Jap buildings with his trusty 81-mm. mortar. Then he turned to the colonel and bet him $50 he could put a mortar shot down the chimney of the 15th. Lou Diamond won his bet. He was not so successful when a Jap destroyer came prowling around the island one morning before artillery had been hauled in, and planes were not available. His shell fell in the water behind...
...Come on, you mortar men, rise and shine," he says softly, before reveille. The ensuing scramble is pure bedlam, because the last two men of the platoon to answer roll call get the "yardbird" detail. When the Marines sailed for the Solomons, officers debated whether to take ancient Lou Diamond overseas. Lou bellowed orders to his platoon so boisterously that he sounded like all the sergeants in the Corps. He went along...
Major Charles Dinwiddie, Army Provost Marshal in Houston, Tex., strode into the Texas Washer Co.'s plant not long ago and didn't like what he saw. Texas Washer makes fins for Army mortar shells, but Major Dinwiddie could find not one armed guard around its plant. Whereupon Owner Wayne A. Baird grinned at the irate Major, told him to "walk through that door." As Dinwiddie obeyed, Baird pushed a button and every one of Texas Washer's 100-odd workmen dropped his tools, trained a sawed-off shotgun at the startled officer. "Just double duty," said...
...quit; or by a naturally courageous man doing a brave deed. It was at this moment that Charles Alfred Rigaud, the boy with tired circles under his eyes, showed himself to be a good officer and grown man. Despite snipers all around us, despite the machine guns and the mortar fire, he stood right up on his feet and shouted out: 'Who in Christ's name gave that order...