Al Nofi's CIC
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Issue #301, June 28th, 2010 |
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This Issue...
- Infinite Wisdom
- la Triviata
- Short Rounds
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Infinite Wisdom
"The battlefield is the most empirical and, thus, most unforgiving place of a soldier's experience."
-- | Richard A. Gabriel,
Royal Military College of Canada
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La Triviata
- Reportedly, seeking to justify an offensive war against
Russia,
King Gustavus III of Sweden (r. 1771-1792) dressed some of his
cavalrymen as Cossacks and had them skirmish with elements of his advanced
guard as he marched his troops to the border.
- During the German attempt to break out of the Falaise
Pocket, German Generalmajor Rudolph-Christoph von Gersdorff, scion of a
long line of soldiers, was struck by lightning, an experience which he
survived, and which very likely also enabled him to survive his participation
in the anti-Hitler "July Plot," to die in 1980.
- It is said that when the Duke of Wellington once
consulted a phrenologist, the pseudo-scientist was much struck by his “bump of
caution”.
- While Governors of Kentucky are well known for
appointing honorary colonels for more than a century, since 1931 their
counter-parts in Nebraska
have been appointing honorary admirals, to the number of about 100,000.
- During the Second Boer War (1899-1902), British Lt.-Gen.
Sir Leslie Rundle proved so poor a manager that his division was nicknamed “The
Hungry Eighth”
- By the late 1920s, the German Weimer Republic, with
armed forces of hardly 130,000 men and perhaps 300,000 paramilitary troops and
secret reservists had a defense budget that was nearly 60 percent that of
Kaiser Wilhelm's Second Reich on the eve of World War I, which had standing
forces of nearly a million, not to mention enormous reserves.
- At the height of the "Spanish Influenza"
pandemic, of 130,000 troops carried to Europe in
October 1918 by the U.S. Navy's Cruiser & Transport Force, more than 15,000
became ill and almost 2,500 died.
More...
Portions
of "Al Nofi's CIC" have appeared previously in Military Chronicles,
Copyright
© 2005-2010 Military Chronicles (www.militarychronicles.com), used with permission, all rights reserved.
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