Infinite Wisdom

"None but fools can deny that they are afraid in battle."

La Triviata

• Storming the rebellious city of Alexandria-by-Egypt in 297, the Roman Emperor Diocletian ordered his troops not to stop killing until the blood came up to the knees of his horse, but when the beast stumbled and fell to its knees as the Emperor entered the city, he ordered an end to the slaughter.
• About 200 tons of ammunition left over from World War I, including many gas shells, are uncovered annually in Belgium.
• When the Duke of Alba set out from northern Italy for the Netherlands in 1573, his army consisted of about 9,600 troops and nearly 7,000 camp followers.
• In the 151 instances on which a death sentence was handed down for rape by U.S. Army courts martial in the European Theater of Operations during World War II, 65 percent of the men convicted were African Americans, and of the 29 executions that actually took place, 25 – 87 percent – were of black soldiers.
• In mid-1776, the rum ration of a British soldier in North America was about a gallon a month, which was issued in daily doses of five ounces.
• Roland Friesler, the maniacal Nazi judge who presided over the "trial" of the anti-Hitler conspirators in 1944, was killed when his courtroom was struck by bombs on February 3, 1945, during a major B-17 raid on Berlin.
• In 1898 only 47 percent of the enlisted men in the U.S. Navy were native born citizens, though 11 percent more were naturalized citizens.
• The only Prussian battle flag captured by French forces during the Franco-Prussian War was that of the 61^st Pomeranian Infantry Regiment, taken by Riccioti Garibaldi in fighting at Dijon on January 21-24, 1871, during which his father’s Italian Legion successfully defended the city from an attack led by Edwin Freiherr von Manteuffel, who would later have a grandson who would attain some distinction as a soldier.

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