Word: thickness
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1940-1949
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...year-old frame farmhouse, tall, strapping Ralph Delair crawled out of bed at 5:30, pulled on long underwear, two heavy shirts, ankle-high shoes, blue denim overalls, two sweaters, a thick mackinaw, a battered felt hat. He started a roaring wood fire in the nickel-plated kitchen range, touched a match to ash and hackberry logs in the living-room fireplace...
...Japanese continued futile resistance to the end with tenaciousness. . . . For some days our troops were able to advance only three to five yards through underbrush that was so thick it was impossible to see an arm's length ahead. Our troops were forced to crawl, inching their rifles forward with their fingers on the triggers...
...open-air wards of Bataan Hospital lie U.S. and Filipino soldiers, women, children, Japanese prisoners. Nurses sleep under trees, near fox holes, wash their own overalls, bathe in streams. Food is cooked on two old-fashioned wood stoves. All equipment is sterilized, but the thick Bataan dust is everywhere, and assistants must constantly flap fly swatters...
Irwin Shaw's material is fresh, and he handles it with rich understanding and superb technique-up to a point. Then he lays it on too thick or too pat. Perhaps his professionalism is to blame. Perhaps the author of Bury The Dead is more naturally a playwright than a storyteller. Tricks of overemphasis, which get by on stage, look as uneasy in print as theatrical make-up does in a living room...
...Bataan the dust is thick. It fills the eyes and throat. Men and officers along the way all like to talk. The big item is guessing when help will come. Nailed to a tree in one headquarters was a big calendar with a picture of a full-rigged sailing ship. Under it someone had written sardonically: 'We told you so, help...