Infinite Wisdom

"The Nazis entered the war under the rather childish delusion that they were going to bomb everyone else and no one was going to bomb them. At Rotterdam, London, Warsaw, and half a hundred other places, they put that naive theory into operation. They sowed the wind and now they are going to reap the whirlwind."

La Triviata

• The longest-range air assault of World War II occurred during Operation Torch, the Allied invasion of northwest Africa, when the 2^nd Battalion, 503^rd Infantry was lifted by elements of the 60^th Troop Carrier Group from bases in England some 1,100 miles to La Senia in Algeria, though only 28 of the original 39 aircraft made it, the rest landing in Spain, Morocco, or Gibraltar.
• In 1740 about one out of every 25 Prussians was in the Army, in contrast to only about one in every 150 Frenchmen.
• In the aftermath of his victories over the Teutones and the Cimbri in 102-101 B.C., Gaius Marius granted citizenship to over a thousand allies from Camerinum, stifling criticism that his action was probably illegal by saying “The clash of arms prevented me from hearing the voice of the law.”
• During World War II, the British sent eight "Q-Ships" to sea, which accounted for not a single u-boat, and lost two of their number to enemy action in the bargain.
• In 1729 the minimum heights for recruits in various branches of the British Army were: Horse and Dragoons, 5 feet 10 inches in stockings; Foot Guards, 5 feet 9 inches; line infantry, 5 feet 8 inches in shoes.
• At one point during World War I, Franz Conrad von Hotzendorff, chief of staff of the Austro-Hungarian Army, is reported to have asked his personal representative to his principal ally’s high command, “Well, what are our secret enemies, the Germans and the Kaiser, that comedian, up to?”
• During the Russian Civil War (1917-1922), Red Army casualties totaled 939,755 dead and a further 6.8 million sick and wounded.
• The United States Army was the first to use universal vaccination against smallpox, introducing the practice in limited fashion during the Revolutionary War.

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