Word: mortars
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Tommies Forward. Under savage artillery and mortar fire the Eighth Army leveled a road across the dried river bed of the Dittaino. This was part of the "left hook." In the first were the British 78th Division (veterans of Tunisia's Long Stop Hill), the soth Northumbrians and the 51st Highlanders. Between Centuripe and Paterno they tangled in the hardest struggle of the campaign. But the men that punched forward and the men left behind broke the Etna line, tore away Catania's flank...
...direct assault sometimes took the Allied soldiers five or ten minutes, and the Jap popped out swiftly to man his machine guns. Occasionally cliffs had to be scaled, hand over hand with the help of thorny lawyer vines: the Jap, creeping from his caves, pulled the pins from mortar bombs, dropped them on the attackers. Such fighting necessarily slowed the Allied onslaught. Patrols probed ahead to pinpoint enemy positions. Plane and artillery bombardment constantly softened the Jap defenses. But direct assaults had to be made against limited objectives because of the tangle and sheerness of the country. Gradually, however...
Lieut. Walter Bowland knelt on the crest of our hill directing mortar fire. His judgment had to be fine, as Kelly was getting closer to the Germans...
...grinning newlywed. And why? Simply because of unpreparedness. "Know your protagonist" to paraphrase a current war-poster, that's part of the answer. You too can suffer your own personal Pearl Harbor. This dissertation is designed to fill in the gaps and to cover your Achilles Heel with moral mortar...
...mine rifleman, Lou developed an accuracy famed in an outfit noted for its shooting, once he took up mortars. On Guadal he boasted he could lob a shell down a chimney, and did. When a Jap cruiser closed in to shore, Lou lobbed a few shells at it (like firing bee-bees at a bomber), explained, "I wanted to check my azimuth and it's just right." Many a mortar crew in the Solomons was Diamond-polished...