Infinite Wisdom

"War is horrible, slavery is worse."

La Triviata

• During the War of 1812, the nickname of the 13th Infantry (later incorporated in today’s 5th Infantry), was “The Snorters,” because its commander, Col. Robert Chrystie, insisted everyone wear a moustache.


• Of some 330,000 men who served in the Australian Imperial Force in Europe and the Middle East during World War I, 58,132 (17.6 percent) died and 156,232 (47.3 percent) were incapacitated to some degree, a staggering permanent casualty rate of nearly 65 percent.


• During his first consulship (59 B.C.), G. Julius Caesar gave his mistress Servillia, who had a young son named Marcus Junius Brutus, a pearl reportedly worth six million sestertii, enough to pay 10,000 legionaries for a year.


• Of 579 men who graduated from West Point in 1966, 30 were killed in Southeast Asia over the following six years, the greatest loss by any Military Academy Class in the Vietnam War.


• Satirical cartoonist George C. Woodbridge, who helped fill the pages of Mad for some 50 years, was also a military artist of note, and author or contributor to several books on arms, uniforms, and equipment, such as American Military Equipage, 1851-1872.


• Founded in 1764, Almack’s, a club in Pall Mall, London (today known as Brookes’), was so snooty that the Duke of Wellington, no slouch himself in the snobbery department, was once refused entry for being improperly dressed.


• During World War II, British intelligence operatives paid some $13 million in bribes to about 30 senior Spanish military officers, right up to the four-star level, to help keep tabs on the Franco regime.


• The Second Company, Governor’s Foot Guard of Connecticut, an historic military command that performs ceremonial duties on special occasions, was chartered on March 2, 1775, and immediately elected its first captain Benedict Arnold.

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