Al Nofi's CIC
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Issue #22, Febuary 15, 2001 |
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This Issue...
- Infinite Wisdom
- la Triviata
- Short Rounds
- His Majesty's Deserters.
- The European Great Powers Defense Expenditures, 1905-1914
- Briefing - Mobilization for the War with Mexico
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Infinite Wisdom
"When you are winning a war, almost everything can be claimed to be right and wise."
--Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill
La
Triviata
- During the Vietnam War the U.S. Army officially reported 4,643 helicopters lost in action: a further 6,000 were so severely damaged as to required extensive rebuilding.
- Kaiser Wilhelm II was so fond of uniforms that whenever he went to see Wagner's opera The Flying Dutchman he always wore his uniform as a Grand Admiral of the Imperial German Navy.
- In 1655 the Jewish residents of the Dutch colony of New Amsterdam (i.e. New York City) won the right to serve in the militia.
- In horsed armies, for every three animals used as mounts or to haul artillery or supplies, two additional ones are needed each week to transport fodder.
- At the height of American participation in the Second World War (1944-1945) ports of embarkation in the U.S. shipped a monthly average of 65,000 measurement tons of mail overseas, the peak being the November 1944 pre-Christmas load of 178,000 tons, nearly 50 pounds for every man and woman overseas.
- The principal reason the Florentines won the Battle of Cascina on July 28, 1364, was because they surprised their Pisan enemies while most of them were bathing in the River Arno and bereft of arms, not to mention clothing..
Short Rounds
His Majesty's Deserters.
The first regular British Army regiment to serve in the American colonies was the Grenadier Guards. In 1675 a battalion of about a thousand men of the regiment, then designated the King's First Guards, was sent to Virginia to cope with Bacon's Rebellion (1673-1676), a confusing contretemps that was either a massive outbreak of banditry thinly disguised by political rhetoric or a precursor to the American Revolution.
The regiment did not stay long in the colonies, departing after only five months, Virginia not being willing to foot the bill for any longer period. Nevertheless, this was sufficient time for the regiment to lose about 100 men to disease and 300 to desertion, the latter fleeing into the wilderness, from whence a few of them would later emerge to help found some of the First Families of Virginia.
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