Infinite Wisdom

"We make war that we may live in peace."

La Triviata

• In June of 1794 the combined grenadier companies of the British garrison of Guadalupe in the West Indies, with 360 troops on their rolls, had only 152 men fit for duty, while the light infantry companies, with 415 men, had only 33 fit for duty, the rest being down with various tropical ailments.
• During the Laconian-Boeotian War (378-371 BC), Isadas, a young Spartan, ran away from school to help fight, performing so well in a battle that his countrymen rewarded him with a crown, but then fined him for engaging in combat although under the legal age, and for not using the proper equipment.
• During World War II, a local campaign to “protect our boys” from infection caused the closing of the brothels, the whores of Seattle adopted mobile tactics, and began servicing servicemen in the back seats of taxis, which quickly became known as “Chippy Wagons.”
• Apparently seven of every eight carrier pigeons taken to France by the British Army during the opening months of the First World War perished, some disappearing, some shot down, and some -- an unknown number -- eaten by hungry troops during the retreat from Mons.
• In 1772, the lieutenant-colonel commandant and the major of the French Regiment Royal-Comtois, stationed on Mauritius in the Indian Ocean, got along so badly with their subordinates that most of the officers staged a mass protest, which led to 33 of them being cashiered for mutiny, and the promotion of many junior officers and even some enlisted men to fill the resulting empty posts.
• Prince William of Orange (b. 1792), who had put in a rather feeble performance commanding Wellington's I Corps at Waterloo in 1815, nevertheless had his "war horse" stuffed and put on display in the Hague as a reminder of his military career, after he became King William II of the Netherlands (r. 1840-1849).
• Among his many distinctions, King Edward VII of Great Britain was titular colonel of the Spanish Regimento de Zamora, an honor granted by his nephew, King Alfonso XIII of Spain.  
• Under pressure from temperance groups, in the early 1880s Congress banned the sale of intoxicating beverages by post traders and sutlers, which led to an increase in illicit alcohol use, so that at the end of that decade a study determined that about 4 percent of enlisted personnel had been hospitalized due to complications from alcohol consumption.
• Reportedly, while commanding a battalion of the Royal Scots Fusiliers on the Western Front in 1916, Winston S. Churchill would sometimes take over a sentry post to allow a sleepy soldier to get a few winks. 

More...