Infinite Wisdom

"Expediency and strategy are not always in accord"

La Triviata

• As of late-2010, the U.S. Army and the U.S. Air Force, which total about 850,000 men and women, have 15 full generals on active duty and five pending confirmation, for a total of twenty, compared with four Generals of the Army and 14 full generals on active duty at peak strength in the Spring of 1945, when their personnel totaled some 8.5 million.
• In 1764, Frederick the Great proposed establishing a special military school in which some 15 or so promising young officers would receive special tutoring in the arts, sciences, protocol, languages, diplomacy, manners, and so forth from a half-dozen or so noted scholars and specialists, among whom he hoped to include Giacomo Casanova, who turned him down.
• Introduced to Wellington, a visiting American said, "Pleased to meet you, sir", to which the Duke replied icily "And you damned well ought to be."
• When, in October of 1870, 63-year old Giuseppe Garibaldi sailed with a band of volunteers to help the French fight the Prussians, a Deputy arose in Parliament to ask, "Now that these people have left Italy, what work is there for the police? "
• Beginning in September of 1941, several RAF Hurricane squadrons operated out of Archangel, in the Soviet far north, but as they were very difficult to support properly, the personnel were withdrawn in December and the aircraft turned over to the Red Air Force.
• During the entire seventeenth century, there were only two years in which there were no international wars somewhere in Europe, 1670 and 1682.
• The first Japanese attempt to storm Port Arthur, on August 7-8, 1904, left only six of the 56 line officers of the 44th Infantry Regiment unscathed, the commander and five lieutenants, the rest having all either been killed or wounded.
• During the opening weeks of World War I, in August of 1914, a rumor spread through Britain that several divisions of Russian troops had landed in the country for transfer to France, many still with snow on their boots.

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