Word: trooped
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...troop commander told the sergeant, the troop recorder, to be ready to burn his papers. One of the lieutenants looked over at the sergeant, quietly sorting documents into two piles on a table, and said: "It will be the first time this C.P. ever pulled out of any place...
Another lieutenant appears. Now only flashlights light our blacked-in room, and in their dimness the new arrival looks completely grey. He is all dust, from helmet to boots. He commands the troop's light tanks, which have been up against the Germans' heavier Mark IVs and VIs since the column left the beach. The only break in the tank commander's greyness is a red gash in his right index finger. He inspects the gash and says he got it buttoning up his tank. He tells his story briefly, tiredly, carefully...
...trouble. Some medium tanks, attached to his unit but not in his command, were, in his perhaps biased opinion, being hesitant about coming on up the road and engaging heavier German tanks. Furthermore, said the captain, the little infantry he had attached to the troop, and the little more in position just outside the town, were not enough to keep the Germans back...
...sergeant, a squat Pennsylvanian with a blackly bearded chin and soft black eyes, said that if I'd come out to his jeep I could have some fried potatoes and coffee. As I walked out, I became aware that we were guests. The family whose house the troop had taken was seated in a thickly walled and ceilinged room on the ground level. A young girl, perhaps 15, sat perfectly still and rigid, stretched out in an armchair. As I stepped across her legs, she did not move or speak. All her words were in her shocked eyes...
...gobbled potatoes by the sergeant's jeep, complete darkness and the last shell came together. After that, the only thing bothering the troop commander and his officers was the news from the road. The mediums went up, met the enemy's heavies, had to fall back...