Word: paratrooper
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1960-1969
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Hastening the End? The government forces did not attack the pagoda that night. There was no need to. Hopelessly surrounded and outgunned, its besieged defenders surrendered the next day, led by a paratroop captain who laid his carbine down at the foot of a tough young government colonel and saluted. That ceremonial gesture signaled an end to the city's nightmare of hysteria...
...months the small West African country of Dahomey had been racked by a three-way tug of war among rival politicians. The tugging ended abruptly one morning late last month when a burly general in a French paratroop uniform with a chest full of medals led his 1,000-man army into the commercial capital of Cotonou. "I am taking over," declared General Christophe Soglo, 56, "because of the incapacity of the politicians to govern." With that, he dissolved the government and declared himself chief of state...
...Mischief. Volunteering for Korean duty in 1952, Westmoreland went over as commander of the tough 187th Regimental Combat Team, made a couple of paratroop jumps before the armistice was signed. Fretful that the cease-fire was playing havoc with his men's discipline, Westmoreland set them a spartan regimen: reveille at 5, a two mile run, digging fortifications all day, baths in an icy creek and, after dinner, 2½ hours of intramural sports, especially boxing. "By 10 o'clock every night," grins Westmoreland, "they were so exhausted they couldn't make mischief of any kind...
Burros, the Times story made clear, had spent a frustrated youth. He told Phillips that he had been "disgusted with left-wing kids in school." He had been turned down by West Point, joined the Army, was sent to paratroop school, rose to the rank of specialist third class and served a stint under General Edwin A. Walker, a "man of destiny." Later he joined one extremist group after another: the American Nazi Party, the National Renaissance Party and the Klan. He was arrested in Washington for defacing a Jewish building, and he served two years in jail...
...official, "that the hard-core people would somehow get out of the city." One afternoon, a band of rebels fought a four-hour battle with loyalist troops at the national cemetery. Snipers killed a marine near the Hotel Embajador, on the border of the supposedly safe International Zone; a paratroop lieutenant was killed and seven men were wounded in a vicious north-south crossfire near the supply corridor. The rebels even managed to whomp two mortar rounds smack into the front yard of Marine headquarters...