Word: runway
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...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...
There were many "Kriegies,"* former prisoners of war, bitterly unforgiving of the Germans. There were sick and wounded. There were 1,700 airmen in one day at Connecticut's windswept Bradley Field. One jubilant man jackknifed to kiss the good, solid U.S. runway (see cut). Most of them were pretty certain to be off to the wars again soon...