Word: shell
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...true martyr seeks martyrdom. Robert Gould Shaw loved music and drawing, spoke German and Spanish easily, dropped out of Harvard to try his hand at business (the Shaws had grown rich in the China trade). He was a serious youth but no zealot. Before the first Confederate shell hit Fort Sumter, however, Shaw had already enlisted. When Andrew offered him command of the black 54th, he wrote back saying he lacked experience. He was only 25. Then he sent a countermanding telegram of acceptance. "Now I feel ready to die," said his proud mother, a dedicated abolitionist...
...muttered, "They're firing away like madmen. Let's hope they'll use up all their ammunition." Lieut. Jorge, a squad commander, struggled to set up a 60-mm mortar while his men fired M79 grenade launchers at the enemy gunners. When the first mortar shell overshot its target, a taunting cry echoed from the guerrillas' hilltop position: "Come and get us, you queer cowards...
Sleepy, nervous "good mornings" echo in the strangely quiet locker room, and you steel yourself for the still-cold March air over the river. The rest of your crew arrives and the coxswain organizes you for taking out the shell: Four-man shells today. Your bare feet welcome the warmth of the sun-bathed dock, and the boat slides into the water easily...
...Beanpot. Those two Mondays in February when everybody who had said, "No way, anything can't happen in the Beanpot" had to eat their hockey pucks after the Crimson shell-shocked Northeastern and Boston College, two of the East's best, in consecutive weeks. All right, so "anything" didn't happen. Five elephants didn't sing the national anthem. But Harvard won the Beanpot. That's not just anything, that's something. West of Route 128, something really special...
Despite the incredible good fortune, an early jump on the season does have its drawbacks. Who really wants to spend their mornings and/or afternoons huddled miserably in a wobbly shell over the repugnant Charles working up a drenching sweat in the cold drizzling rain? The crew team does, that's who, and they'll be the first to tell...