Word: platooning
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...shoreward to chest-deep water. Reilly gasped: "I'm O.K." Martinez left him-and Reilly disappeared. Recruit Joseph Anthony Moran (son of Actress Thelma Ritter) brought Leroy Thompson to relative safety and went out again. Thompson went under. So did little Jerry Thomas. So did Tom Hardeman, the platoon's best swimmer, who had been helping others...
Half a dozen men locked arms, others seized hold. One by one, the exhausted men of Platoon 71 reached the mudbank. The last two half dragged to safety Staff Sergeant Matthew McKeon, who had worked himself to near-exhaustion trying to correct his dreadful mistake...
McKeon staggered away to report the tragedy. On his own initiative. Recruit Leader Gerald Lagone ordered Platoon 71 to fall in and report. The reports came: "First squad, one man missing." "Second squad, one man missing." "Third squad, one man missing . . ." At that point McKeon returned and silently led his men back to their barracks...
...Cork for Svengali. The time is after Stalingrad; the place is the Black Sea area. The German situation is hopeless, and the task of Corporal Rolf Steiner's wounded platoon is near-suicidal. Its job is to stay behind as a rearguard while the rest of the battalion withdraws. In the fluid state of the front, this means only one thing, that the hapless platoon will soon be a cork abob in a sea of Russians. The platoon has small faith in its chances, but believes mesmerically in Corporal Steiner, who has assumed command from his wounded sergeant. Steiner...
Steiner's platoon is a batch of human putty. Among them are: trusty, pipe-smoking Schnurrbart, a born second-in-command; Dietz, a mamma's boy with the puppy-dog look; Dorn, an overage misclassified philosophy professor; Kern, a blowhard rookie; and Zoll, a pornography-minded tub of lard. "Anyone who gives out is going to be left behind," Steiner warns them. When their rations give out, Steiner tells them to eat tree bark, but he also shares the last of his own rations. When Dietz is critically wounded in a night skirmish, it is Steiner who holds...