THE NATIONS: Operation Bird Dog

Night after night in Frankfurt, U.S. Army trucks had been backing up to the Reichsbank, then driving off with loads of heavy wooden cases cryptically marked "Clay" and "Bird Dog." Officially, what was in the cases was a secret. Said one G.I. truckman to another after a week of it: "They can't fool me. Know what we're carrying in them boxes? Ammunition for the Israelites!" His companion replied: "It's ammo all right, but something tells me it's going to the A-rabs."

Both were wrong, though the Western powers hoped that it was "ammo" of a sort. The cases contained crisp new...

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