Infinite Wisdom

"We were there to help make peace, the only way the Germans would understand."

--	Sgt. Alvin York

La Triviata

• The heaviest loss of life in the history of the Coast Guard occurred at Lunga Roads, Guadalcanal, on January 29, 1945, when a load of depth charges stowed aboard the USS Serpens (AK-97) exploded, killing all but two of the ship's 198-man crew, as well as 57 Army ammunition handlers who had also been aboard.


• In 1804 the Royal Navy experimentally substituted tea for the traditional daily toddy of grog, a decision that provoked so much unrest it was quickly rescinded, and British seamen continued to toast the sovereign's health for another 150 years.


• When his warriors fled before the attacking Spanish during a battle in 981, the Moorish Emir Almanzor (Ibn Ab� 'Amir Al-Mans.�r) reportedly sat down on the field and cried out that, "As I am forsaken by my army, I will wait here for death!," which so shamed his troops that they returned to the fray and secured a major victory.


• Between 1700 and 1900 the population of Europe grew by some 400-percent, but the number of men under arms increased by over 800-percent.


• The campaign in France, Belgium, The Netherlands, and Germany from D-Day (6 Jun 1944) through VE-Day (8 May 1945) cost the Allied armies 766,294 casualties � including some 200,000 dead � of whom about 60% were Americans, out of a total of 5,412,219 troops landed, for a casualty rate of 14.2%, or roughly one in seven.


• It is said that a French marshal who had received his baton through court favor rather than the merits of war, was given a gift by a certain lady a drum on which was inscribed, "Made to be Beaten."


• According to the historian Zosimus, at the battle of Mursa (A.D. 351) against the usurper Magnentius, the commander of victorious Emperor Constantius's Armenian horse archers, one Manelaus was so adept with the bow that he could shoot three arrows simultaneously, allegedly to the misfortune of three of the enemy at once.


• Asked by one of his officers during the Battle of Trafalgar why he was wearing particularly elaborate gold encrusted cocked hat and epaulettes that marked him as an easy target for enemy sharpshooters, Capt. Edward Rotheram, of HMS Royal Sovereign, replied, "I've always fought in a cocked hat, and I always will!"

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