Word: mule
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Though you would never guess it from its expression, a mule, whether pack, draft or riding animal, costs more than a horse. A riding horse for the Army costs around $162, a pack or riding mule around $184. From its hybrid ancestry, the mule inherits some sturdily pig-tailed virtues. It is as tough, wise and sure-footed as the ass, as strong and willing as the horse. Under fire, when horses go mad with fear, mules wait philosophically until led to safety...
...butt for dreary jests, a homely beast to look upon, the U.S. mule-4,500,000 strong-is again coming into his own. Farmers, threatened with a tractor shortage, are buying mules. The U.S. Army is getting set to bargain for more than 15,000. Dealers in such mule marts as Memphis and East St. Louis, Ill. think a mule boom is in the making...
Though the Army today has only about 7,000 mules-about half the number it had ten years ago-it has never discovered anything on wheels that could replace the mule. As careless of heat and cold as of man's advice, the mule has no substitute as troop or cargo carrier in jungle, desert, or mountain pass. In Panama the mule has proved far better than trucks in climbing steep trails, working through lush forests...
...mule has served on both sides during World War II. The Italians, who used to buy 1,000 U.S. mules a year, used the beast constantly in Ethiopia, honored it afterward with a monument in a park in Rome. The Germans also favor the U.S. mule, and wherever their 800,000 horses go, the pack mule goes too. The British Army in India adds hundreds of U.S. mules every year to its thousands already in service...
Jails. In Mexico City when a jailer stopped letting a prisoner go out every day the prisoner protested to a court on the ground that his constitutional rights were being denied him. In Louisville, when a drunken teamster fell asleep on his wagon his mule pulled him to a police station, stopped at the door...