Word: patroled
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1980-1989
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...might have been a scene from one of Africa's guerrilla wars: four men wearing green fatigues and packing FN assault rifles fanned out across a wooded ridge. The bush crackled under a punishing afternoon sun as the government patrol scoured the hillside for enemy tracks. Then they heard it: the low murmur of voices drawing closer. Below them, a file of four men -- three carrying AK-47 rifles -- slowly advanced through a yellow sea of elephant grass. Without warning, the government patrol opened fire, gunning down all four in 40 seconds. When the bodies were searched, they recovered...
This recent skirmish in Zimbabwe's Zambezi Valley was no military operation. The government patrol consisted of game rangers from the country's Department of National Parks and Wild Life Management. The enemy was a gang of poachers that had crossed the border from neighboring Zambia to plunder one of Zimbabwe's most treasured resources -- the last great population of black rhinos living in the wild...
...speed and conviviality as the wind opened eyes and mouths. Wayne, Eddie and Jimmy might fall in line just west of the town square, and by the time the boys were skirting the sagging remains of the tin livery stable they were no longer kids. They were the dawn patrol in Spads and Sopwith Pups, cruising in perfect formation, hats raised over their heads in exuberance and defiance of common sense, steering by the seats of their pants and the exquisite balance God gave such young animals. They would take the stretch of rippled pavement with whoops...
...that corner was a weather-beaten house with hollyhocks out back, like so many other tiny homes in a vast land that time seemed to have punished. Nobody in the dawn patrol paid much attention as they trimmed their machines for the final approach to landing and learning...
...force is the old familiar one of want. Back then President Franklin Roosevelt was an ethereal radio voice so far removed from the people at the bottom of the Depression that there was no thought of ever being directly touched by the presidency. But the world moved. The dawn patrol went off to real war. Postwar prosperity banished the hollyhocks and the clapboard house in favor of a red tile farm-implement garage, which succumbed to modern recession, only to be replaced by a Sears catalog store, which gave way to even harder times...