Infinite Wisdom

"The art of war is a deplorable art."

La Triviata

• In November of 1942 the Army PX system calculated that the average American soldier in Britain was smoking 30 cigarettes a day.
• Out of power when Britain went to war with Napoleonic France in 1802, former Prime Minister William Pitt the Younger, who had led the United Kingdom through the long war with Revolutionary France, raised the Cinque Port Volunteers, a militia regiment of three battalions, and commanded it until he returned to 10 Downing Street in 1804.
• In A.D. 368, a band of marauding Alamanni sacked the Roman city of Moguntiacum (Mainz), by attacking at a time when most of the garrison was at church.
• Although the U.S. had recently been at war with France and tensions with Britain were rising, between 1800 and 1807 Congress allocated no funds for coast defense installations; the only harbor defenses built in the period were around New York and Boston harbors, and were paid for by their states.
• The only American who attended all of the top level Allied summits during World War II was Army Chief-of-Staff George C. Marshall.
• Under some of the earliest militia laws adopted by Massachusetts Bay Colony in the seventeenth century, Blacks, Indians, young boys, and even Scotsmen were required to serve, though the first two groups were later specifically barred from receiving training or arms.
• Lest they be mistaken for malingerers, during World War I the British Army issued a special uniform to enlisted men recovering from wounds, to be worn while on convalescent leave, of a distinctive blue with a red tie, while officers were required to wear a white arm band decorated with a King's Cross.
• For the Battle of Trenton (Dec. 26, 1776), George Washington committed only about 2,100 troops but fully 18 cannon, a ratio of guns-to-troops that was over three times the norm for the period, because he realized that given the dampness -- it had been raining and snowing for several days -- artillery was more reliable than musketry.

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