Word: southwester
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...strategists figured Singapore could endure a siege of six months with its 85,000 soldiers and those 15-in. guns that couldn't turn toward land. Churchill's instructions were explicit: "Singapore must be . . . defended to the death. No surrender can be contemplated." The Allied supreme commander in the southwest Pacific, General Sir Archibald Wavell, was even more explicit: "There must be no thought of sparing troops or the civil population . . . Senior officers must lead their troops and if necessary die with them . . . I look to you and your men to fight to the end to prove that the fighting...
Then he began moving his Luzon troops, 65,000 Filipinos and 15,000 Americans, into the mountainous Bataan peninsula, which juts out to the southwest of Manila. Admirers have praised MacArthur's skill in carrying out ! this tactical retreat. "A masterpiece," said his World War I commander, General John Pershing, "one of the greatest moves in all military history." Even the Japanese general staff called it a "great strategic move." But it was a great move only if reinforcements really were on the way. If not, MacArthur was simply marching his men into a death trap...
...January 1942 we moved to Kamakura, southwest of Tokyo. A teacher there asked my three-year-old son, "What will you do if the enemy attacks?" He replied, "I'll kick them." That's military education for you. They were teaching that a kamikaze ((divine wind)) would blow Japan to victory...
Logan County is a remote and isolated pocket in the southwest corner of West Virginia, an undulating succession of mountains rounded by eons and carpeted with hardwood forests. Many residents live in trailer parks and frame houses that hug the Guyandotte River system. The people are proud and charitable, rugged and patriotic. "Culturally speaking, Logan Countians will damn sure fight for what they believe in, whether it's fighting the coal companies, the Iraqis or each other," says Logan council member Stan Morgan...
Jean Richard, 79, a retired watchmaker from nearby Rayne ("Frog Capital of the World"), recalls an earlier time, when almost everybody in southwest Louisiana played an instrument. "My daddy could play harmonica, crow like a rooster and bark like a dog all at the same time." He shakes his head sadly. "That trait is gone today -- nobody practices that anymore...