Infinite Wisdom

"Those dogs of war, once loosed, seldom go where we want them to go. Once slipped, they run wild."

--	Emory Thomas The Dogs of War: 1861

La Triviata

• Despite the German Imperial Army’s reputation as an aristocratic bastion, by 1914, 36 percent of division commanders and 20 percent of corps commanders were of common origins (though all but one had been ennobled), figures that compared favorably with those of the British Army. 
• Between 1689 and 1765 there were 28 riots in Boston and at least seven in New York by sailors and other members of the maritime community protesting the impressment of seamen for service in the Royal Navy.
• Although the Masai are among the great warrior peoples of Africa, they never had any serious conflicts with the British who colonized much of the region, because the settlers didn’t have any cattle worth stealing.
• Although Napoleon abdicated for the second time on June 22, 1815, Brig.-Gen. Pierre Daumesnil (1776-1832), commanding the fortress of Vincennes (in what is now the eastern part of Paris) refused to haul down the Imperial tricolor until mid-August, and then, in connivance with Royalist authorities, refused to admit Allied troops into the place until November 15^th; for which he was rewarded with his name on a boulevard in the district.
• The mass redesignation of state units into their colorless U.S. Army numbers in 1917 was originally suggested in 1910 by National Guard officers, who hoped the measure would make the Regulars think better of the militia.
• By some accounts, during the British Army maneuvers of 1913, Maj. Gen. Henry Rawlinson (who later commanded an army in France) sent his wife on a reconnaissance mission in their chauffer-driven car, as a result of which he supposedly initiated a night attack on a concentration of “enemy” troops who turned out to be some of the umpires.
• Of 110 awards of the Medal of Honor for actions during the Spanish-American War, only one was granted posthumously, to Theodore Roosevelt on January 16, 2001, nearly 103 years after his impressive performance on the Heights of San Juan on July 1, 1898, and 82 years and 10 days after his death.
• When Sealion (SS-315) torpedoed and sank the Japanese battleship Kongo off Formosa on Nov 21, 1944, skipper Cdr. E. T. Reich was wearing robin's egg blue silk pajamas, having been rousted from bed when the old battlewagon was sighted. 

More...