Word: perthus
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Admiral Leahy drove toward the silent town, through war-stricken countries where life was at a low ebb. He had left the cruiser Tuscaloosa at Barcelona, had driven through the mountains to Le Perthus, where only 23 months ago masses of defeated Loyalists jammed the narrow roads trying to reach the border. When he arrived at Lyon a special railway car was waiting. The diplomatic Admiral, long-faced, forceful, tactful, had come a long way to enter the world's most perplexing diplomatic labyrinth. It was a France in which most Frenchmen believed that their fate depended...
...main Loyalist job in the closing hours of the retreat from Catalonia was to get as much war supplies as possible into France and out of General Franco's hands. Tanks and heavy artillery pieces rumbled over the frontier in endless lines. At Le Perthus alone more than 10,000 trucks rolled into France between midnight and noon of the last day. Overhead roared squadrons of Loyalist airplanes, headed for landing fields in the interior of France. Many of the troops found their own way of disposing of small arms. They shot their cartridges away at birds...
Premier Negrin soon found a way out. In the half-Spanish, half-French border village of Le Perthus he established his Government in a house, No. 22 on the main street of the village, the back door of which was in Spanish territory, the front in French. The Spanish section of the town was temporarily made the fifth capital of Loyalist Spain. But not for long. When the triumphant Rebels pressed forward to the frontier (see p. 16), Premier
...conditions were bad enough. For almost a week France had refused admittance to all but a selected few. Wounded soldiers, civilians injured in air raids had been turned back. There were no hospital facilities, on the Catalonian side not even the most primitive medical attention. Piled up opposite Le Perthus was a mass of suffering humanity that sprawled all over the roads, even covered the fields...
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