Infinite Wisdom

"The concept that guerrilla warfare is an end in itself and that guerrilla activities can be divorced from those of the regular forces is incorrect."

La Triviata

• The Maji Maji War, in southwestern Tanganyika (1905-1907), sparked by German efforts to confiscate tribal lands and institute forced labor on cotton plantations, left 15 Europeans and 389 of their African mercenaries dead, as well as some 300,000 tribesmen, the latter mostly from starvation and disease due to a systematic campaign to destroy their crops and carry off their cattle.
• By the end of June of 1940, in the aftermath of the Fall of France and the evacuation of over 330,000 British and French troops from Dunquerque, a further 150,000 Allied troops from other ports, and the surrender of France to the Germans, the U.S. had initiated the shipment to Britain of 500,000 Enfield rifles and 80,000 machine guns, with 130 million rounds of ammunitions, as well as nearly 1,000 pieces of artillery with a million rounds, along with other materiél.
• During World War I approximately 14,000 Swiss citizens served in the French Foreign Legion, of whom half died in combat.
• The last notable occasion on which elephants played a role on a “Western” battlefield seems to have been at Thapsus (Feb 5, 46 BC) in what is now Tunisia, when about thirty were employed by Publius Cornelius Scipio Salvito and King Juba of Numidia, though they did not prevent Caesar from achieving a crushing victory.
• On June 5, 1916, the second day of Russia’s “Brusilov Offensive,” the Austro-Hungarian 1^st (Vienna) Reserve Rifle Regiment lost 77 percent of its personnel killed in action and most of the rest wounded, captured, or both.
• During the South African War (1899-1902), Morning Post correspondent Winston Churchill, officially on leave from the army, was being paid £250 month, plus expenses, arguably equal to £20,000 today.
• Roman Catholics, who numbered about a fifth of the U.S. population during World War I, comprised 35 percent of American servicemen.
• At the time of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, on December 7, 1941, the Imperial Army had over one million troops in China, where ongoing combat operations since 1937 had already cost about 180,000 dead and 425,000 wounded, and another 700,000 in Manchuria, watching the Soviets.

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