Word: raid
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Bush Fighters. As the woodsman became bolder, his sorties changed from mere reconnaissance missions to raids in force. The commando warfare was brand-new to the British and confounding to the French. A Rogers raid against Ticonderoga in December 1757 was typical of his methods. In weather that would have clogged ordinary troop movements, Rogers led 150 men through the untracked forest, ranged them about the fort, and, when the French refused to stir outside, slaughtered their cattle and burned their wood supplies, leaving a receipt for what he had destroyed...
...blitz raid of Sunday, Dec. 29, 1940, was one of the worst. "The weight of the attack," wrote Sir Winston Churchill later, "centered upon the City of London itself. It was an incendiary classic. Nearly 1,500 fires had to be fought. Eight Wren churches were destroyed or damaged. The Guildhall was smitten by fire and blast, and St. Paul's Cathedral was only saved by heroic exertions. A void of ruin at the very center of the British world gapes upon us to this day." But for all its grim destruction, the "incendiary classic" may yet have some...
...kept his promise grandly. London's great Westminster clock was soon overseeing London's pace, keeping accurate time within a tenth of a second a day; one of its few respites from clockwork occurred in World War II when its works were shaken during a German air raid. One morning last week, when its hands stood at 11 o'clock and its sonorous bell, nicknamed Big Ben after Sir Benjamin, boomed the hour (in E below middle C), Prime Minister Harold Macmillan and other parliamentary dignitaries gathered to tender happy 100th anniversary greetings...
Within minutes after the news was broadcast, the prostitutes, pimps, pickpockets and pot peddlers who were to be the raid's targets started clearing out of the area. When the police arrived at midnight, the dock country was as quiet as a park after a Sunday-school picnic. Rummaging through one hotel, cops found a sailor bedded down with a woman, but she claimed she was a bride, and had a marriage license to prove it. Desperate for dirt, the raiders were reduced to little more than issuing a summons for an uncovered garbage...
...U.P.I.'s grief was nothing compared to the tabloid New York Mirror's gaffe. Relying on the advance briefing, the Mirror assumed that the raid had run according to form, made it the banner story (lOO POLICE RAID B'KLYN VICE DENS), and hit the street next morning playing the farce for fact...