Word: pile
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...last ditch of defense, the one on which London relied most heavily by night, was anti-aircraft fire. The organizer of London's anti-aircraft defenses is Lieut. General Sir Frederick Alfred ("Tim") Pile, a short, dapper, witty, sporty Irishman who can speak Persian and Hindustani. He won the D. S. O. in 1918 for outstanding artillery work near Arras, a decade later helped devise Britain's first practical light tank. His personnel is an entirely civilian group from territorial regiments...
Last week Tim Pile was told that his men must bear a heavier burden of defense. One night air-raid wardens circulated through their districts, saying: "There'll be a hell of a racket tonight, but don't worry, it's something our boys are putting up." When the enemy came over, the noise broke out, like dozens of summer storms. It was Tim Pile's new tactic. Instead of trying to hold enemy planes in the long fingers of searchlights and aiming at them, AA defenses set up a box barrage, all the guns firing...
...Pile's box barrage was a measure of desperation. Such heavy fire could not be long maintained. The average anti-aircraft gun of the 3.7-and 4.5-inch types used by Britain can fire about 300 rounds, then it must be dismantled and its liner shrunk, removed, replaced. London could not possibly muster more than 5,000 antiaircraft guns (including machine guns), and if the 400,000 rounds claimed in one night were actually fired, the Tommies were shooting the guts out of their guns. Neutral observers thought the slackening of German attack in the face of this barrage...
...cower in his great creamy palace on Calea Victoriei while the mob screamed and the Iron Guard fired shots in the air, but the rioting never got beyond Army control. It was the Army's redheaded General Ion ("Red Dog") Antonescu who suddenly emerged on top of the pile at Bucharest...
...Ironsides" in 1830, to remind patriots that the U. S. Frigate Constitution had served well against the Barbary pirates, the French, the British (in her most famous battle in the War of 1812 she reduced the lighter Guerriere to smoking smithereens). The poem saved the Constitution from the junk pile. From grog tub to untattered sails, she was still shipshape last week, afloat at the Boston Navy Yard and useful mainly for show to visitors. Similarly listed "in service, out of commission" until last fortnight was Constitution's contemporary, Constellation, stationed at Newport, R. I. and used to school...