Word: ragtag
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...Sweepers. As the war progressed, the chants turned into terrible reality. In captured village after village, frontline troops were followed by ragtag "sweepers" from Northern Nigeria. They nailed Ibo tribesmen to the walls of their wooden huts, then sprayed them with automatic-rifle fire or set torches to their clothes. "Mop-up" soldiers raped women, sometimes lined up whole villages to be shot. The Ibos concluded that the Hausa tribesmen fully intended to use the war to systematically exterminate them. This fear, more than anything else, has hardened the Biafran determination to fight on to the end. "We shall...
...July 26, 1953, a ragtag band of 160 Cubans tried to trigger an uprising against Dictator Fulgencio Batista by attacking Santiago de Cuba's Moncada Army barracks. The chancy venture was squashed, and half of the partisans were killed. Among those imprisoned was 25-year-old Fidel Castro, a lawyer turned revolutionist, who drew a 15-year sentence. In an act more merciful than wise, Batista granted Castro amnesty after only two years. In 1956, after a brief Mexican exile, Fidel was back in Cuba with another guerrilla band; but this time he was not to be caught...
...Korea and Viet Nam as a tank commander. He has frequently turned up in Asian hot spots on assignment for the CIA. As commander of the Marines' Combined Action Program in Viet Nam, he led 13-man squads of feisty young leathernecks who gave fresh heart to local ragtag village guards by living and fighting beside them in ex posed hamlets...
...Raymond I. Petersen ar rived from Chicago and formed a flying service to compete with Wien and others. After taking over some smaller operators, Petersen renamed his operation Northern Consolidated Airlines, an impressive title for a ragtag conglomeration of hard-drinking pilots and overworked aircraft. Petersen, who will be chairman of the new company, recalls that the biggest toll of pilots was not taken by crashes, but by alcohol...
When the Flying Tigers' boss, General Claire Chennault, domesticated some war-weary military transports and U.S. fighter pilots following World War II, hardly anyone expected the ragtag operation to last for long. In fact, his CAT (for Civil Air Transport) blossomed into one of the best-run airlines in all of Asia, flying out of Taipei around the Communist perimeter from Seoul to Bangkok. But now, CAT's string seems to have...