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Al Nofi's CIC
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Issue #446, July 26th, 2015 |
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This Issue...
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Infinite Wisdom
"So come along and die, it shall be great fun."
| -- | Rupert Brooke,
Sub-Lieutenant,
Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve,
d. April 23, 1915,
of septicemia
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La Triviata
- As a young man Alfred von Schlieffen, who became the mastermind of the German sweep through Belgium in 1914, was studying law, only deciding to become a soldier after he did his bit as an “Einjährig-Freiwilliger – one year volunteer” in 1853.
- Between 1980 and 2001, interest in the First World War grew so significantly that the number of works on the subject in the British Library quadrupled.
- By the end of August 1914, after only about three weeks of fighting, French casualties had exceeded 300,000 men, including about 10 percent of the officer corps.
- From August 23, 1914 through the 25th, the men of the German II Corps, of the First Army, on the outermost edge of the “Right Wing Sweep” through Belgium, marched an average of 30 kilometers a day.
- On Aug. 26, 1914, the day of the Battle of Le Cateau, the BEF suffered 8,217 casualties out of about 90,000 men present for duty, while on June 18, 1815, at Waterloo, the c. 31,000 British troops present suffered 8,458 casualties.
- Between In 1914, a German field telegraph company was able to string about five miles of wire a day.
- In 1914 Austro-Hungarian cavalry regiments had a biblically ominous 666 mounted combatants.
- The dubious distinction of being the first aviator killed in action probably belongs to Leutnant Franz von Hiddeson of the German Air Service, who was shot down over the Bois de Vincennes in France on Sept. 2, 1914.
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