Infinite Wisdom

"Success in war cannot be expected unless all ranks have been trained in peace to use their wits."

La Triviata

• In 1913 the German General Staff estimated that a European war would cost the Reich 10 to 11 billion marks a year, less than a quarter of what the 1914-1918 war actually cost.
• Following the Third Mithridatic War (66-61 BC), Pompey the Great claimed to have inflicted over 12 million casualties on enemy troops, to have sunk or captured 846 enemy ships, and to have accepted the surrender of 1,538 towns and cities, claims which many Romans took with a grain of salt.
• During World War II, the British Army fielded eight battalions of the Northern Rhodesia Regiment, plus associated support troops, many of whom saw combat service in Somaliland, Ethiopia, Madagascar, and Burma.
• On March 18, 1786, even before there was a Navy, Secretary of War Henry Knox issued a "Plan for the General Arrangement of the Militia of the United States", which included a provision for the enrollment of seamen on a separate register, so that a naval force could be quickly formed in an emergency, an idea that went nowhere.
• Tired of frequent stories by John O’Donnell of The New York Daily News that were widely perceived as undermining the war effort, on December 18, 1942, President Roosevelt announced that he was awarding the reporter the Iron Cross.
• In preparation for her wedding ceremony, a Roman woman’s hair was parted into six broad locks using a special spear that had a bent iron head, believed by some to have been a ritual intended to avert bad luck.
• Because the French used the Chassepot, the best infantry rifle of the age, but had obsolete muzzle loading artillery, while the Prussians used the obsolete Dryse “Needle Gun” but had superb Krupp breech-loading rifled cannon, during the 1870-1871 Franco-Prussian War approximately 70 percent of Prussian casualties were caused by infantry fire, while about the same proportion of French casualties were due to artillery.
• While serving as chief-of-staff of the 42^nd “Rainbow” Division in 1918, Douglas MacArthur's disdain for the prescribed uniform once resulted in his being arrested as a suspected German spy.

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