Word: thickness
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Creeping Vines and Metaphors. Conselheiro was a genuine fanatic, a 2nd Century hermit born in the days of railroads. In his own way, Euclides da Cunha, his biographer, was as fanatical. Rebellion in the Backlands is Brazil's great classic, 476 pages of prose, thick as the jungles of Matto Grosso, through which (even in translation) a North American must hack his way blindly, barely able to make out the thread of history in the overhanging metaphors and the creeping vines of Da Cunha's philosophizing. Conselheiro's teachings soon led to open revolt, in which...
Tactics. After Stalingrad came other triumphs. At Kursk last summer Hitler made his final, desperate attempt to win in Russia. Voronov's cannon mauled many hundreds of the thick-skinned, monstrous "Tigers" (60-ton Mark VI tanks) and "Ferdinands" (70-ton self-propelled guns), crushed Hitler's hopes. At Leningrad, two months ago, Voronov's guns reduced to rubble one of the Wehrmacht's most powerful defense systems...
...Japs counterattacked strongly two days and a night, but the Chinese beat them all off. When the Japs started to pull out the Chinese crawled through thick elephant grass within a few feet of the road and cut down the retreating column by scores...
...history, and sharp-eyed Bob Sherrod has recreated it in a sharply etched picture. More than that, his book records the simple, human qualities of the fighting Marines. Sherrod watched them give away their last drops of precious drinking water to wounded men, saw them in the thick of battle giving away their last cigarets and bulging out the empty packs so their buddies wouldn't suspect it was the last one. They joked incessantly. In the face of whistling sniper-fire one boyish Marine was seen dashing madly across the beach-he was chasing a chicken for supper...
...never forget Béla Kun as I now saw him at close quarters and cheek-by-jowl with his coterie of conspirators. . . . He had a round bulbous head and his hair was so closely shaven that he seemed to be bald; he had a short, squat nose, ugly thick lips, but undoubtedly his outstanding physical feature was his great pointed ears. Some people suggested, but under their breath, that with his great abnormal head and his small but very active body he looked like a lizard. . . .") The second trip was to Berlin. The third and most difficult...