Word: ragtag
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...frustrate efforts to reunite his rebellious, copper-rich province with the rest of the Congo. Now, U.N. Secretary-General U Thant, with U.S. encouragement, was determined to end the Katanga problem once and for all. The occasion happened to be the collapse of discipline among Tshombe's boozy, ragtag 20,000-man gendarmerie. When they began shooting at U.N. soldiers in Katanga a fortnight ago, the U.N. replied with all the power at its command...
...predawn darkness, the ragtag irregulars set up roadblocks, sabotaged communications lines, and overran police stations all over the country. In the town of Seria, Shell Oil's Brunei headquarters, the rebels rounded up 55 hostages, formed them into a human shield, and marched them to a nearby police barracks. But when the police fired on the shield, both prisoners and rebels broke...
Wily Nasser agreed to pull out his soldiers-but only after Jordan and Saudi Arabia "stop all aggressive operations on the frontiers." Feisal and Hussein peremptorily rejected Kennedy's plan, since it would involve U.S. recognition of the "rebels." Though the Imam's ragtag army has been pushed from the cities and now occupies only a worthless fringe of eastern desert, Feisal and Hussein insist that, given a chance, the Imam will regain all of Yemen. For that reason, they argue that the U.S. should withhold recognition of President Sallal. But Washington is in a bind...
...Budd, a handsome and guileless young sailor, steps on deck of H.M.S. Avenger one day in 1797, impressed into naval service at a time when the French threatened the British navy on one hand and the spirit of mutiny sapped it on the other. His shipmates are a sorry, ragtag lot, full of hate and fear for the sadistic master-at-arms, Mister Claggart. They find in Billy Budd's artless warmth a hope that somehow he can save them from Claggart's bullying; even the Avenger's aloof Captain Vere takes a liking to the pure...
...ruling monarchs, Saud and Hussein were worried that revolution in Yemen might easily spread to their own lands.* Two armies of about 1,000 men each, most raised from Yemenite tribesmen in Saudi territory, invaded Yemen, but Sallal swiftly assembled his ragtag Yemenite army and, with the help of Soviet arms and Egyptian planes, drove the royalists back across the border into Saudi Arabia and Britain's Aden Protectorate. Twenty-five nations, from Russia to Indonesia, promptly recognized Sallal's regime. The U.S. and Britain, trapped between their alliances with the remaining Arab monarchies and their concern...