Word: roer
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...area, six miles above the 38th parallel, Colonel Harris' regiment was in a desperate fight for control of floodwaters-a scrap such as U.S. troops had not seen since the early part of 1945, when First Army doughfeet fought through the Hürtgen Forest to seize the Roer River dams in Germany's Rhineland...
...other side of the world, Japan's war lords could watch these events with profound and somber interest. They might or might not reflect that less than six months ago Germany had still owned the strength to inflict cruel setbacks on her foes at the Roer and in the Ardennes forest. They might or might not see that some breaking point had been reached, after which the German catastrophe had gathered volume and speed like an Alpine avalanche. And they might or might not wonder when the breaking point would come for Japan...
Scottish veterans of far-off El Alamein heard it in the whine of shells, and they skirled bagpipes and sang Annie Laurie as they crossed the Rhine. Canadians who remembered their dead at Dieppe could scent victory in the smoke. U.S. doughboys, who had learned bitterly before the Roer and in the Ardennes that pessimism could also be a virtue, spilled out of the Navy's inland fleet (see below) with more than usual speed. There was confident enthusiasm now in the workmanlike way they went about their jobs...
Southwest of Cologne, Rundstedt still had a salient with its tip in the Roerdam area, where presumably a few Germans still lingered. But the Roer, which had caused the Allies so much trouble, had passed into bloody history. The Rhine was ahead...
Beyond the Roer. From the air in a Piper Cub the tank drive was a thing of the sheerest military beauty: First came a long row of throbbing tanks moving like heavy dark beetles over the green cabbage fields of Germany in a wide swath-many, many tanks in a single row abreast. Then, a suitable distance behind, came another great echelon of tanks even broader, out of which groups would wheel from their brown mud tracks in green fields to encircle and smash fire at some stubborn strong point. Behind this came miles of trucks full of troops, maneuvering...