101st Airborne

WASHINGTON - Hundreds of U.S. and Afghan troops, supported by American warplanes and attack helicopters, launched at dawn yesterday the largest allied ground offensive of the 5-month-old military campaign in Afghanistan, focusing on pockets of Taliban and al-Qaida fighters huddled in the rugged, snow-covered mountains outside the eastern city of Gardez. One American and three Afghan government soldiers were killed in what officials said was fierce fighting. An unspecified number of U.S. and Afghan soldiers were wounded, said Navy Cmdr.

KANDAHAR AIR BASE, Afghanistan - Army Pvt. Justin Lambert has been in this country two weeks without yet meeting a native of Afghanistan. That's exactly as his commanders wished, but they gave him instructions should a chance meeting occur. "Be polite," drawled the 21-year-old soldier from Florida, remembering his orders and keeping a watchful eye from his sand-bagged dugout on the perimeter of the air base. "Try not to use your left hand. No thumbs-up" - gestures considered exceptionally rude.

KANDAHAR AIR BASE - Two Marines were killed - one of them from Maryland - and five injured yesterday when their helicopter crashed in the mountains of northern Afghanistan during a supply mission, U.S. military officials said. The CH-53E Super Stallion helicopter went down about 8 a.m. 40 miles south of Bagram air base, shortly after lifting off on a supply mission, military officials said. Bagram is just north of the Afghan capital, Kabul. Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, appearing yesterday on the NBC News program Meet the Press, said the cause of the crash appeared to be mechanical failure.

William E. Pyne, an award-winning Evening Sun reporter and retired public relations director for the B&O/C&O Railroad, died Wednesday of complications from a stroke at Inova-Fairfax Hospital in Fairfax, Va. He was 88 and lived in Annandale, Va. The former longtime resident of the Hampton section of Baltimore County was born and raised in Milford, Mass., where he graduated from St. Mary's High School. Mr. Pyne began his journalism career in the early 1930s working in Boston as a member of the editorial staff of Poor's Daily Financial Service, later Standard & Poor's.

THE PHOTOGRAPH of Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower speaking to paratroopers of the 101st Airborne Division on the eve of the D-Day invasion remains one of the most compelling and classic images from World War II.Several years ago, the U.S. Postal Service issued a stamp of the historic moment.Eisenhower appears animated, with an intense expression on his face. His right hand is raised and slightly clenched, and he is speaking directly to a young paratrooper."It's almost the most famous picture of Ike, and everyone knows this picture," said Stephen E. Ambrose, author of "Citizen Soldiers: The U.S. Army from the Normandy Beaches to the Bulge to the Surrender of Germany, June 7, 1944-May 7, 1945," published last year.

Frank Thorp III, a former Annapolis civic leader and businessman whose World War II combat experiences included the D-Day invasion of Normandy, died Monday from complications of Alzheimer's disease at a nursing home in Peoria, Ill. He was 79.For nearly two decades, until selling the business in 1973, he was owner and president of Thorp Chevrolet in Annapolis. Active in Republican politics, he ran unsuccessfully for mayor in 1973.Mr. Thorp was born at Fort Knox, Ky., and raised at several military installations where his father, an Army colonel, was assigned.