Word: combativeness
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Dates: during 1980-1980
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graduated 214th in his West Point class of 310. But after that his career was meteoric. Though he saw combat in Korea...
...skillful military management, Haig forged the various NATO members into a more cohesive fighting unit. He conducted more realistic maneuvers, with tanks and trucks squeezing through narrow village streets instead of rolling along the autobahns. Units were ordered to engage in simulated combat with no advance warning-a genuine test of readiness. Says one of Haig's top commanders: "He revitalized NATO." A British army general agrees: "As Supreme Commander, he was both impressive and persuasive. When Al Haig fixes those eyes on you and urges you to do this or that, there is virtually no way to refuse...
...English major at Harvard ('40) and avid golfer (he shoots in the low 90s), Regan learned his hard-driving management style as a Marine lieutenant colonel during combat in the Pacific. Says Regan, whose Irish temper flares quickly at subordinates who do not meet his expectations: "I don't like laziness or sloppiness or slovenliness." After World War II, he joined Merrill Lynch, became its president in 1968 and chairman in 1971. Under his leadership, the firm, already biggest in the U.S. securities industry, became a financial supermarket with thriving new lines of business in insurance, real estate...
...finally confounding facts of the killing were examined like runes and held up to the light like talismans, small shards of some awful psychic puzzle. A pudgy Georgia-born ex-security guard from Hawaii named Mark David Chapman fired his shots at Lennon from what the police call "combat stance": in a stiff crouch, one hand wrapped around the butt of his newly purchased revolver, the other around his wrist to steady it. As Lennon took six staggering steps, Chapman, 25, simply stood still, and then went with the arresting officers like a model citizen who had been unfairly rousted...
...demonstrates just how poorly he learned at least one of those lessons as he expectorates a stream of hilariously garbled obscenities. A Saigon prostitute, blinking and cooing like a neon China doll, whispers rote nothings into our hero's ear; he thinks she's talking politics. A combat photographer boasts of the limbs he has lost in action and lures the reporter into the fray. "These flights are ab-stract!" he exults as the bomber tails into its fatal dive...