Word: ponton
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Last week the bridge caught particular hell. It was then less important than the ponton bridges the Americans had slung together downriver. The 1,200-foot bridge no longer carried heavy traffic and was frequently blocked off for repairs. But the Germans were determined to avenge the Ludendorff's betrayal of their cause. In six days they sent 104 dive bombers, singly and in threes, to blast at the bridge. It trembled to a thunderous barrage of ack-ack all around...
Americans died by the dozens in the crash of tons of steel. Others drowned in the Rhine's swift current. Many were swept to the first ponton bridge and dragged to safety...
...Vibrant, gimlet-eyed Octavio Vejar Vasquez succeeded leftist Luis Sanchez Ponton as Minister of Education. He is a conservative, close to Mexico's powerful Catholic Church. To him goes the praise, and the blame, for abolishing coeducation in Mexican schools. He also recently ordered all schoolteachers to abandon their political activity...
...Engineer recruits get their primary soldiering in big doses, soon pass on to specialized training. Some will join combat regiments and battalions, will go into battle with infantry and artillery, lugging in motor trains a fantastic assortment of bulldozers, water-purification outfits, pneumatic drills, earth-borers. Some will join ponton (Engineer for pontoon) companies, will learn to sweat hip-deep in rivers, laying bridges for the infantry. Others will go to topographical (mapmaking) outfits, to railroad-operating companies, to general service regiments, to camouflage battalions, dump-truck companies, water-supply battalions, shop companies, depot companies...
Before and after Belvoir's review, the center's recruits worked hard at their trades. On pine-rimmed Gunston Cove, a ponton outfit in dungarees and hip boots got its first look at its equipment, blinked when its officer-instructor said: "If you aren't handy with it, one day you may get shot." Farther down the shore, a purification outfit ran off drinking water, checked its chlorinated product in test tubes. Off in the woods camoufleurs practiced hiding barracks buildings under false roofs, pine boughs, strips of brown flannel. Elsewhere on Belvoir's rolling, wooded...