Infinite Wisdom

"Guard against arrogance, avoid underestimating the enemy, and be well prepared."

La Triviata

• In 1894 the average age of a lieutenant in the Royal Navy was 32.2 years, which might seem rather old but for the fact that in the German Imperial Navy it was 41.3, and in the French Navy, 52.3!
• Of approximately 620,000 Soviet troops who served in Afghanistan 1980-1988, 14,403 were killed in action or died in accidents and 53,753 required hospitalization for wounds or other injuries, while fully 415,932 were hospitalized for disease.
• By the end of the Thirty Years’ War in 1648, it appears that about 0.5-percent of the population of Central and Western Europe were under arms, something like 550,000 men.
• The Italian Air Force traces its origins back to 1884, when the Ministry of War ordered the formation of an "Aeronautical Service," to oversee the operation of observation balloons for the artillery.
• During its famous 14 month voyage, the Great White Fleet consumed 430,000 tons of coal, which was supplied by 49 strategically located colliers, all hired, 41 from Britain, seven from Norway, and one from Austria-Hungary.
• The British actor Richard Todd, a captain in the 7^th Battalion, Parachute Regiment, jumped into Normandy just before 0100 Hours on D-Day, and was among the first troops to reach the Pegasus Bridge at Benouville, already taken by an advanced party from the 2^nd Battalion, Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry, commanded by Major John Howard, whom Todd later portrayed in the film The Longest Day, in which an unaccredited actor played Todd.
• In 1832, the French Army, with 380,000 troops, had 6,033 courts martial (an average of 1 for every 70 officers and men), which led to 4,655 convictions (77.2 percent), of which 106 resulted in death sentences, though most of these were commuted to jail time.
• ·         Following the Anschluss in 1938, the Austrian Army was reorganized into five divisions by the Wehrmacht, which then proceeded, over the following six years to raise 20 more divisions from Austrian manpower.
• For much of the Nine Years’ War (1688-1687), England subsidized the Duke of Savoy’s war effort against France, though each year, when the Savoyard ambassador received the first installment of the annual subsidy, he promptly distributed 400 ecus to the very Treasury officials who had just issued the money, by way of “gratifying” their interest in his efforts to secure financial assistance.
• In March 1757 the slaughter during the sack of the Hindu holy city of Brindaban by a Moslem Afghani army under Amhad Shah Durrani was so great that the Jumna River reportedly became so choked with bodies it overflowed its banks.
• Formed around a cadre of veteran officers and NCOs, in 1918 the 6^th Marine Regiment consisted largely of recent volunteers, nearly two-thirds of whom had some college education, making it possibly the best educated regiment in American service.
• Of 235 young Roman nobles conscripted by Napoleon who set out for France on August 1, 1813, only 120 actually made it into the ranks, the rest having decided being fugitives or bandits in the mountains was preferable to the “honor” of serving the emperor.
• The first American ambassador to the Socialist Republic of Vietnam was Douglas Brian "Pete" Peterson, who arrived in Hanoi on May 9, 1997, for what was essentially his second “visit,” having, while a U.S. Air Force pilot, spent over six years (September 10, 1966–March 4, 1973) as a “guest” in the “Hanoi Hilton.”

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