Infinite Wisdom

"The battlefield is the most empirical and, thus, most unforgiving place of a soldier's experience."

La Triviata

• Reportedly, seeking to justify an offensive war against Russia, King Gustavus III of Sweden (r. 1771-1792) dressed some of his cavalrymen as Cossacks and had them skirmish with elements of his advanced guard as he marched his troops to the border.
• During the German attempt to break out of the Falaise Pocket, German Generalmajor Rudolph-Christoph von Gersdorff, scion of a long line of soldiers, was struck by lightning, an experience which he survived, and which very likely also enabled him to survive his participation in the anti-Hitler "July Plot," to die in 1980.
• It is said that when the Duke of Wellington once consulted a phrenologist, the pseudo-scientist was much struck by his “bump of caution”.
• While Governors of Kentucky are well known for appointing honorary colonels for more than a century, since 1931 their counter-parts in Nebraska have been appointing honorary admirals, to the number of about 100,000.
• During the Second Boer War (1899-1902), British Lt.-Gen. Sir Leslie Rundle proved so poor a manager that his division was nicknamed “The Hungry Eighth”
• By the late 1920s, the German Weimer Republic, with armed forces of hardly 130,000 men and perhaps 300,000 paramilitary troops and secret reservists had a defense budget that was nearly 60 percent that of Kaiser Wilhelm's Second Reich on the eve of World War I, which had standing forces of nearly a million, not to mention enormous reserves.
• At the height of the "Spanish Influenza" pandemic, of 130,000 troops carried to Europe in October 1918 by the U.S. Navy's Cruiser & Transport Force, more than 15,000 became ill and almost 2,500 died.

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