Al Nofi's CIC
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Issue #133, July 9, 2004 |
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This Issue...
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Infinite Wisdom
"The fierce glory that plays on red, triumphant bayonets dazzles the observer, nor does he care to look behind to where along a thousand miles of rail, road, and river, the convoys are crawling to the front in unnoticed succession"
| -- | Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill,
The River War (1899)
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La Triviata
- The first woman to sponsor an American warship was Miss Lavinia Fanning Watson, daughter of a prominent Philadelphian, who broke a bottle of wine over the bow of the sloop-of-war Germantown at the Philadelphia Navy Yard on August 22, 1846
- A study of recruits being processed at Camp Jackson, South Carolina, in 1917, determined that while only 7.9-percent of white Northern men were illiterate, fully 36.5-percent of Southern whites were.
- Despite the fact that 68% (255,000) of the 375,000 Austrian reservists mobilized on the eve of the Italian War of 1859 were found to be so-devoid of training as to be incapable of loading a musket, Austria decided to go to war anyway, with disastrous consequences.
- Of every 100 Soviet men drafted in 1941, only three remained alive on VE-Day.
- In the late Sixteenth Century a single 24-pounder cannon cost 1,000 florins, enough money to buy 100 muskets, or 33 sets of pike-and-armor, or 24,000 daily rations, or about 36,000 pounds of bread, or pay 4,000 troops for a day.
- When the Germans and Italians captured Tobruk on June 20, 1942, they discovered that the garrison, largely South African troops, had a large supply of genuine L�wenbr�u, shipped from Germany to Portugal, and then sold to the British Army.
- At the onset of the Civil War Hungarian General George Klapka offered to serve as general-in-chief of the Union armies, provided he recieved a cash advance of $100,000 plus an annual salary of $25,000 for the duration, with a provision for a period of service as chief of the general staff while he learned English.
- When the 79th Cameron Highlanders was being raised in 1793 a recruiting party billed regimental headquarters for 66 gallons of whiskey, which had been used to help "convince" prospects of the joys of military life.
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