Word: smokes
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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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...
Lesson Learned. He had telegraphed his punch for weeks, for three days had stoked a 66-mile smoke screen in hundreds of chemical generators strung along the river. The Germans had advertised their anticipation of airborne drops. But when they were made, German reaction was surprisingly light. One reason: the enemy had expected the drops farther east. Cautious Monty profited by the Arnhem lesson. This time the First Allied Airborne Army chuted to within artillery range of the ground forces...
...Germans, preoccupied with the Montgomery-Simpson threat in the north (see above}, let part of Lieut. General George S. Patton's dashing Third Army out of sight for a night along the Rhine last week. Using no chemical smoke, but combining the elements of speed and daring, the Third quietly jumped the barrier near Worms that night. It did not lose a man, did not draw a shot until the crossing had been made solid...
...Silk. On the roads below the roaring air fleet, guns, trucks and marching men were raising dust clouds. Farther ahead were smudges of black smoke where heavy bombers were still beating up the target area. Suddenly, out of the smoke, the now bridgeless Rhine appeared, flowing placidly. In the lead transports gum-chewing paratroops were tense. From the jumpmaster in each plane came a curt command: "Stand up!" Then, "Hook up! . . . Stand in the door! . . . Go!" They went tumbling out, 15 men in ten seconds...
...attack. Crossroads villages became the rims of great craters. Towns burned like torches for a night, smoldered for a day, then lay blackened and dead. The rain of bombs knocked out cities' antiaircraft defenses, and the flak vanished. Then the cities themselves vanished under clouds of flame-streaked smoke...