Infinite Wisdom

"In war, everything is dangerous."

La Triviata

• The only Coastguardsman to have been awarded the Medal of Honor was Signalman 1st Class Douglas A. Munro (1919-1942) who, while commanding a landing craft in a flotilla evacuating Marines from an unsuccessful amphibious “end run” on Point Cruz, Guadalcanal, September 27, 1942, was killed while deliberately using his boat to draw Japanese fire and thus help cover the withdrawal.
• During the First World War, King George V of Great Britain banned wine from the royal table for the duration.
• In February of 1945 Soviet Marshal Georgy Zhukov threatened to have the “field service wife” of First Guards Tank Army commander Mikhail Katukov arrested by Smersh as a spy because the general was spending so much time with her he was neglecting his duties.
• William G. K. Elphinstone (1782-1842), arguably the worst battalion commander in any of the armies during the Waterloo Campaign (when he commanded the British 33rd Foot), later went on to prove quite possibly the most inept officer ever to command an army, when, as a major general during the First Afghan War (1839-1842), he dithered on so heroic a scale tha, of his 4,000 troops and 10,000 camp followers, only one man escaped death or capture.
• During WW II the USAAF procured 188,880 aircraft, including 61,221 bombers and 57,050 fighters.
• As they marched off to war in 1914, some German troops were issued ready-made nooses in the event that they encountered franc-tireurs (irregulars) during the invasion of France and Belgium, with the result that hundreds, perhaps thousands, of innocent civilians were hanged on the slightest pretext.
• On 8 August 1944, the floating dock in which the British battleship Valiant was resting at Trincomalee, Ceylon, collapsed, damaging the ship’s two inner screws and one of her rudders so severely that, although she eventually made it back to Britain, she never returned to active service and was sold for scrap in 1948.
• During the Neo-Assyrian Empire (934-609 BC), allied cities that revolted had their gods confiscated and transferred to the capital, on the grounds that the rebels’ defeat proved that their gods had abandoned them.

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