Word: ponton
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Dates: during 1941-1941
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...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...