Word: spans
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...hours and 20 minutes the triple-span Ludendorff Bridge over the Rhine at Remagen had served its American captors well. But it had taken a terrible beating for most of that time. First there had been the charges set off by the Germans when the Americans came to grab the bridge. Then, for three or four days of terrible urgency, it bore the quaking weight of tanks, big guns, heavy trucks, the tread of thousands of men as they hurried across the Rhine. Hour after hour shells had screamed through its beams; several had gouged big chunks...
...spotty opposition, then almost none. They picked up speed, rumbling through the Eifel hills. 'By late afternoon they sighted Remagen through a break in the hills, the four towers of its Apollinariskirche glistening in the drizzle. Beyond the church was Remagen's 400-yard-long, three-span bridge. The bridge still stood, but that was hardly worth remarking: the Germans usually waited until the last moment...
...country without any close objective of strategic importance. To realize Remagen's fullest value, ten or even 20 more crossings of the Rhine were needed, crossings by every means possible: assault boats, amphibious armor and carriers, motor-driven rafts, pontoon bridges, pneumatic-float bridges, even perhaps by multiple-span Bailey bridges longer than any yet thrown together. In the north, the Rhine is wide...
...training for Bailey bridge-building, U.S. engineers practiced day after day through the pre-invasion summer of 1943, laying Bailey bridges across the Thames and tearing them down again. Today, under perfect conditions, a team of 115 engineers can build a five-span Bailey Bridge in 32 minutes flat. And its inventor, 42-year-old Donald Bailey, wears the Order of the British Empire...
...Ernest Truex adds an eerily funny moment as a mad millionaire who likes to cry hopefully to his guests, "Happyhappy-HAPPY!" In the course of their work the tourists watch a Mexican peasant wedding and several pieces of professional entertainment, notably by Miss Brazil (Louise Burnett), who can span three octaves without turning a hair, and Cuba's dionysian Miguelito Valdes, who suggests a three-power compromise between Cab Galloway, Orson Welles and Rube Bandleader Spike Jones...