Word: riviera
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Oleander and Hyacinth. As the invasion entered its second week the Seventh was beyond such tactical baubles; it was swooping out northwest and northeast at top speed. Already it had secured for its supply establishments a good portion of the Riviera land of pink oleander, grassy seaside terraces, garden walls, pastel villas, lush shrubbery, handsome estates, hyacinths, white beaches and mountain roads that hang like cornices over the cliffs and sea. Already Allied fighter planes were fly ing from southern France...
Wherever it could, the Eighth Army pushed patrols out to test the forward positions of the Gothic Line. By all reasonable standards the Nazis should have been ready to pull out: the landings on the Riviera to their rear were cutting off one of their escape routes; they were reduced to twelve battered divisions...
Four days before the landings, some of the German suspense was lifted. Allied air fleets began an unmistakable preparation of the southern coast for invasion. They bombed Toulouse, railroad nerve center for the southwest, beat up the naval base at Toulon, strafed the once gilded Riviera. Fighter-bombers meticulously blasted out German radio direction-finding stations. The stage...
West from the Riviera. Apparently the Allies achieved at least tactical surprise. It was several hours before the Germans announced the area where they had been struck-a 70-mile stretch of coast between Toulon and Cannes. Allied correspondents reported that the invasion army, chiefly of Americans but heavily sprinkled with French and British troops, made its first beachheads without great loss, grabbed its first objectives within an hour. In less than two hours, seven waves were ashore-perhaps 14,000 men-with many more still to come. The beachhead grew to 100 miles, from Nice to Marseilles...
...Mediterranean, Jimmy Doolittle's newly formed Fifteenth U.S. Air Force got away with murder all the way from the Riviera to the Peloponnesus. To stop Doolittle, the Germans would have to drain fighters from northern airfields...