Word: tankful
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Typical was the fighting in central Tunisia, near Sened, where battle-green U.S. troops got a fiery baptism. Their objective was the Sened railroad station, 50 miles from the coast. As their half-tracks and anti-tank guns advanced through a sandy valley, German 75s and 88-mm.s in the hills opened up. German planes dive-bombed them, strafed infantrymen as they rolled up in trucks...
...force was inexperienced, but it quickly became less so. A gunner drew a bead on a dive-bomber, said: "Here's where I get one for my brother." He did. Captain Sidney Combs, of Lexington, Ky., took cover behind a tank until a land mine exploded under it and injured the crew. Combs amputated the tank captain's leg with a knife, crawled into a foxhole and directed the artillery fire. Pounded by Stukas, the U.S. force pressed on, reached its objective, destroyed enemy installations and withdrew...
...hardened, battlewise troops, including the remnants of Erwin Rommel's tough if battered army, and at least one crack Panzer division-the Tenth, which had fought in Poland, France, Russia. German equipment was excellent. On to the battlefields last week rumbled the new, mighty Mark VI tank, heavily armored and hard to stop. Hitler had poured an estimated one-third of his entire air force into the North African area. The Allies have been unable to stop the flow of Axis reinforcements...
...until last week did the Russians reveal how nearly the German Sixth Army had come to capturing Stalingrad. In September the Germans actually occupied the central part of the city. Concentrating their power in the industrial districts, they then stormed into the Stalingrad tank factory, but failed to drive on to the Volga. Often the opposing lines were only 15 yards apart. Most of the fighting was done with hand grenades, one Russian division using more than 100,000 in a single month's fighting...
Leader at Voronezh, where the Red Army is driving on Kursk and Kharkov, is Colonel General Filip I, Golikov, 48. A tall, husky man with a broad face, he is one of Russia's principal tank experts. At war's start he was a key member of the General Staff, but when Moscow was threatened he took command of a field army. His offensive may well turn out to be the most important of all the winter drives...