Word: pontoon
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...next morning reconnaissance elements from the south had circled both "enemy" flanks, the river crossing had been forced in two places with pontoon bridges, the armored division was pressing north so vigorously that the defenders seemed in a fair way to be driven right back into the airborne division's command post...
While the French, with heartbreaking effort, improvised a pontoon bridge over the River Tagus, Dodd crawled the better part of 50 miles, among enemies, to destroy it. When, at last, Dodd tried to tell his story, "it was hard for a later generation to realize that [honor and duty] had meant anything...
...Army engineers, interrupted by enemy fire, had labored to lay rubber pontoons, then wood crosspieces, finally steel tracks just wide enough for the 28-ton General Grants. At dusk the light tanks had crept out of the woods and skipped across the oily Cumberland River on the new pontoon bridge. When the mediums came down to cross, puncturing the dark with their exhaust flashes and red signal lights, the shore was lighted for safety's sake, making a 200-yard circle of yellow dust-fog through which turrets poked, each with its pygmy...
Behind the Russians in Stalingrad a two-mile pontoon bridge, built of rough planks supported by empty gasoline cans, gave access across the Volga. Since Sept. 18 German bombers had dropped tons of explosives attempting to smash the bridge, but had done only minor damage and that was quickly repaired. But the floating bridge was a slender thread...
...first Army exercises were fought out in North Carolina and Louisiana. Men slogged through river mud throwing pontoon bridges across turgid rivers. They trudged down back roads in flanking maneuvers, dust caking sweaty faces. They took cover (as they did not last year) when strafing "enemy" planes swooped over. They used motorized, mechanized spearheads, employed fifth columnists to gain objectives...