Infinite Wisdom

"The officer counts no more than the soldier."

La Triviata

• As part of a package of economy measures adopted in late 1871, Congress decided to cut the pay for army privates from $16 a month to $13, with the result that about a third of the enlisted men deserted in the course of 1872.
• During 1943 some 850 airmen were killed in. accidents while training in B-24s.
• World War I cost Italy some 148 billion lire, or roughly twice all government outlays from the unification of the country in 1861 until the eve of the war.
• The Emperor Trajan's army during the Second Dacian War (A.D. 105-106), was apparently the largest Rome ever fielded for a single campaign, some 120,000 men.
• Of about 11,000 men from Manchester who attempted to enlist in the British Army for the Boer War in 1899, 8,000 were rejected as physically unfit.
• Between 1937 and 1938, Stalin executed 35,000 military officers, among them three of the five newly appointed Marshals of the Soviet Union, 13 of 15 army commanders, 57 of 85 corps commanders, 110 of 195 division commanders, and 220 of 406 brigade commanders, for about 90-percent of all general officers, plus about 80-percent of all colonels.
• Prince Wilhelm von Hohenzollern, later Kaiser Wilhelm I of Germany (1871-1888), received a commission as a subaltern at the age of 10, in 1807, and saw active service against Napoleon that same year.
• So airborne troops could take carrier pigeons into action on combat jumps, during World War II the U.S. Army issued special vests, manufactured by the Maidenform Brassiere Company.

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