Al Nofi's CIC
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Issue #107, February 18, 2003 |
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This Issue...
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Infinite Wisdom
"War is indescribably disgusting."
| -- | Theodore Percival Cameron Wilson, 29,
10th Battalion, Sherwood Foresters
17th Division, B.E.F.,
Killed-in-action, March 23, 1918 |
La Triviata
- The Battle for Hue City in February 1968 was covered by perhaps as many as one reporter for every 50 American and South Vietnamese troops.
- Only one of four "flying cruisers" � rigid airships � commissioned in the U.S. Navy during the 1920s and 1930s survived to be decommisioned, USS Los Angeles (ZR-3); the other four all crashed disastrously.
- During World War I, King George V made over 450 visits to troops in teh field and over 300 to hospitals.
- By the end of World War II some 350,000 American women had served in uniform.
- Of the first 200 men recruited for the Spanish Foreign Legion in 1920, most were actually Spaniards, with a leavening of Latin Americans, plus "a Chinese, three Japanese, a Russian prince, a German, an Austrian, an Italian, two Frenchmen, four Portuguese, a Maltese, a Belgian, and an African American from New York," not to mention one woman.
- Although the U.S. ordered several thousand tanks during World War I, it was not until November 20, 1918 � nine days after the Armistice � that the first two American built M1917 tanks were issued to the Tank Corps in France.
- During the 1981-1988 Iran-Iraq War, Iran attacked 207commercial vessels using mines, naval gunfire, shoulder-mounted rocket launchers, and nine Silkworm anti-ship missiles.
- The U.S. Olympic rifle team had some problems getting to the 1912 games, in Stockholm, as the German border patrol detained them on suspicion of smuggling firearms.
- So hot was the fighting for Monte Nero on the Austro-Italian Front, on June 2, 1915, that when the troops ran out of ammunition they began hurling rocks at each other.
- In 217 B.C., after his victory at Lake Trasimenus, Hannibal expressed the wish to honor his fallen opponent with a suitable burial, but the remains of the Roman Consul Gaius Flaminius could not be found.
- On May 30, 1936, during its annual maneuvers, the U.S. Fleet crossed the equator, with the result that 29,752 pollywogs � including one vice admiral � were formally initiated into the mysteries of the sea by Neptunus Rex and his Court.
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