Word: troop
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...biggest, fastest troop lift ever attempted. For three days and three nights, the endless whine of jet engines and the thunder of a thousand propellers pierced the air at a dozen U.S. airbases from Texas to Virginia as 206 Military Air Transport Service planes hauled 15,278 soldiers to bases in Germany. Normally it would take six weeks to transport a full division overseas, even longer to get it into combat. Big Lift was designed to move a full armored division from the U.S. to Europe in 72 hours, equip it with heavy hardware "prepositioned" at depots near the front...
Ringing in German ears were the words of a former U.S. President and leader of NATO, Dwight D. Eisenhower. "I believe the time has now come when we should start removing some of those troops," declared Ike in a Saturday Evening Post article. "One American division in Europe can 'show the flag' as definitely as several." Next came a speech by U.S. Deputy Secretary of Defense Roswell Gilpatric, who forecast a "new phase" in American troop commitments abroad and "useful reductions in overseas military expenditures...
Some believe that a U.S. force re duction in Europe would improve the climate of detente with the Soviet Un ion. The Communists themselves have at times suggested various forms of a Western troop "thinout." But this is certainly not what Ike and others have in mind; a pullback offered as a concession to the Russians might be near-suicidal...
...Elusive Trip Wires. The most serious argument for a troop pullback is the "trip wire" theory, advanced by Eisenhower, among others. The notion is that if the Russians were to attack Berlin or West Germany, for example, this would lead to a nuclear war anyway; thus even a handful of U.S. soldiers on the scene would be enough to engage America and to invite immediate nuclear retribution...
...Mafra and 20 engineers roared out of the base in two troop trucks. To avoid downtown traffic, Mafra guided his tiny convoy through the coastal hills, only to run into a traffic jam caused by an accident. By the time they finally reached the hospital, it was 8 a.m. Lacerda had just left-after his secret service got a last-minute tip that troops were...