CCB
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Joined: 3/21/2002 Status: offline
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It was eighty-three degrees on the Fahrenheit scale at dawn on D-day, June 16, 1944, as the forward elements of the Second and Fourth Marine divisions began to go ashore in more than seven hundred landing craft. The two regimental combat teams that led the assault came under heavy fire from strongly protected and well concealed artillery, mortars, and heavy machine guns. Some of the Japanese fire was coming from the eastern side of Saipan, almost three miles away, and even from the adjacent island of Tinian to the south. This added to the confusion, some of it avoidable, most of it unavoidable, of the intricate landing plan, which nevertheless put eight thousand men on the beach in twenty minutes. So intense and sustained was the welcoming barrage and lashing crossfire that it took the Americans three days to attain their modest objective for day one, a notional line up to one mile inland across a front of nearly four miles. (from The Pacific Campaign, Dan van der Vat, p. 320.) Let us not forget.
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Peux Ce Que Veux in den vereinigten staaten hergestellt
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