Word: mortars
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Somehow, the flow of bright ribbons was still not trickling down to the enlisted ranks.* Near Waegwan a few months ago, a corporal named Everett L. Elmore headed his boat across the bullet-torn Naktong River for the enemy-held shore. Mortar shells crashed alongside, machine-gun bullets stitched a pattern against its sides. Corporal Elmore rallied his panic-stricken passengers, delivered them to the beachhead, and went back for more. On his last trip, Corporal Elmore was mortally hit. He got the Bronze Star Medal-posthumously-an award for "heroic achievement" not deemed to be of sufficient degree...
Seoul, it seemed, was not to be yielded easily. Two South Korean patrols that crossed the river to reconnoiter were driven back by salvos of mortar and artillery fire. Associated Press Correspondent Stan Swinton, who flew over Seoul in a spotter plane, reported the capital a "hornet's nest" of entrenchments, gun positions and Red defenders...
...General Ridgway, the Eighth Army commander. No doubt this, and the toll of enemy casualties, comforted the G.I.s-if anything could comfort them in the dreadful mountain winter. In a grim dispatch describing their ordeals in the "awful, bitter, uncompromising, relentless cold," Scripps-Howard Reporter Jim Lucas quoted a mortar platoon lieutenant addressing a handful of green replacements...
...worst series of avalanches in Alpine history. Tons of thick wet snow crashed down on the valleys of eastern and central Switzerland. Roads were blocked, including the St. Gotthard rail line between Italy and central Europe. Swiss army detachments futilely tried to break up the giant snowslides with mortar barrages...
...only Catholic bishop in the world (besides the Pope) with his own private army: two battalions of regular troops, five battalions of militia. His cathedral enclosure includes an army barracks. Adjoining the priests' quarters is a small factory for making grenades, mortar bombs and grenade throwers. The two bishops are temporal as well as spiritual rulers over a principality of 1,070 square miles and 2,600,000 population, of whom one-quarter are Catholics, the rest mostly Buddhists. The flat skyline of the two bishoprics is spiked by the tall spires of no less than 650 churches...