Al Nofi's CIC
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Issue #57, November 02, 2001 |
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This Issue...
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Infinite Wisdom
For a soldier I �listed,
to grow great in fame,
And be shot at for sixpence a day
--Charles Dibdin, 1745-1814
La Triviata
- Of some 240,000 wounds treated by Union medical officers during the Civil War, fewer than a thousand had been inflicted by the bayonet.
- Although the use of the spontoon � a short halberd-like weapon � as a sign of officer's rank had been abandoned by the troops in the field as early as 1755, its use was not officially abolished by the British Army until 1786.
- The most successful air attack against shipping of World War II was undoubtedly that made on February 22, 1940 by a Ju-88A of KG30 off the coast of Borkum, in the North Sea, when it accounted for two destroyers in a single bomb run, Lebrecht Maas and Max Schultz, though unfortunately both happened to be German, a case of poor ship recognition skills on the part of the Luftwaffe.
- The Italian term for "theater of operations" is scacchieri, which literally means "chessboard."
- Elvis Aron Presley entered the United States Army at Memphis, Tennessee, on March 24, 1958, served in Germany with the 3rd Armored Division, was released from service at Fort Dix, New Jersey, on March 5, 1960, and discharged from the Army Reserve on March 23, 1964.
- The term "Shavetail" originated in the practice of shaving the tail of a new mule, so that the troops would know that they were untrained and apt to do something stupid.
- By the end of WW I the Grand Fleet's maximum complement of ship-borne and carrier-borne heavier-than-air aircraft was over 300.
- Of every seven U.S. casualties in World War II, one died either in combat or from wounds, five were wounded not mortally, and one was a psychoneurotic case.
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