Word: runway
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Shortly after noon, the Sacred Cow lifted its tail, charged down the slushy runway, and lumbered off into the chill mist that veiled Washington's National Airport. All commercial flights that day had been canceled. Harry Truman, as he climbed aboard, turned to the 18 shivering newsmen and grinned: "I'm sorry to bring you boys out in this bad weather...
...last, the sky lane over "the Rock Pile" had been fraught with danger. At the Kunming field, a mud-brick Chinese village at one end of the runway snagged so many incoming planes into wreckage that ground crews finally leveled it with bulldozers. At one stage more than 700 crashes-including many bombers and tactical aircraft-were spotted on the map at Search and Rescue headquarters in Chabua. India...
...transport was oven-hot before it left the baked, gleaming coral of the runway. Fifteen of the Japs took off their heavy boots and lolled in the plush, adjustable seats-even more luxurious than the famous "MacArthur chairs." The 16th kept his boots on. He was grey, roundheaded Lieut. General Torashiro Kawabe, vice chief of the Army General Staff...
...instance I worked on a British field near here on the runway making repairs, and had as my commander on that job a group captain in the R.A.F. His family was 'in trade' in England, and his brother owns a pub in London. For my money he is the finest gentleman I've met over here in any army. There was not any rank between us; it was man-to-man on that job. But the men under him, the little civil servants in his command, were as near to perfect examples...
...trouble is the way we Americans go at a job. We waste materials in a criminal manner and we cut corners in a way which makes a man who is wedded to paperwork tear his hair. But, man, how we get the job done! The day I turned the runway over to , finished and ready to use, he said to me as we were leaving: 'Now I will tell you a secret. If I had asked my Commander to get the Government chaps to build this, I would have waited six months for some bloke in London to approve...