Word: training
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...dawn broke, a thick mist rolled across the pastureland around the Dutch hamlet of De Punt, enveloping the motionless yellow train. Inside, nine jittery Moluccan hijackers and 51 exhausted hostages were beginning their 20th day of cold fear together, a grisly endurance record of its kind. At a primary school in the nearby village of Bovensmilde, four other Moluccan terrorists kept four schoolteachers prisoner. Deployed around both the train and the school was an estimated 2,000-man army of crack Dutch commando marines, a special squad of sharpshooters, and armored military-police units...
...convinced that the terrorists were prepared to hold out indefinitely despite the exhausting psychological toll on their unwilling prisoners, the Dutch government decided to end the hostages' agony. In the most dramatic rescue operation since Entebbe, a Dutch military team mounted a commando-style dawn assault on both train and school. Six of the 13 Moluccan terrorists and two of the hostages were killed. One terrorist, two marines and nine of the prisoners were wounded. It was a heavy toll, but at least the long ordeal had ended...
...marines jumped off at 5 a.m., firing submachine guns as they raced toward the train, scattering panicked cattle in nearby pastures. Six Starfighter jets of the Royal Netherlands Air Force, with afterburners roaring, streaked out of the sky and dropped smoke bombs to give the troops cover. The air attack was meant to confuse and intimidate the terrorists; clearly, no strafing or bombing was possible while the hostages were inside the train. TIME'S Peter Kronenberg, who witnessed the operation, reported that "the howling of the planes was terrifying. They came back five times and then there was only...
Plastic Charges. As they charged, the marines concentrated much of their fire on the first-class front of the train, where the Moluccans had established their command post. Demolition experts with plastic charges blasted down the doors, and the marines ducked inside, shooting as they went. As the assault began, 13 armored cars in nearby Bovensmilde started racing toward the school building. One of them burst through the main doors while three others took up positions around the building...
...exiles in The Netherlands (they now number 40,000) cling fanatically to the dream of a future free "Republic of the South Moluccas" in the Indonesian archipelago. Angered by the refusal of the Hague government to support their cause, seven of the young Moluccans now in prison hijacked a train for 13 days in December 1975, killing three people. At the same time, another terrorist squad occupied the Indonesian consulate in Amsterdam for 15 days...