Infinite Wisdom

"Naturally, orders must be obeyed, but in military service the danger is that this may become fetish, and be overdone."

La Triviata

• During the Second World War, Robert Runcie (1921-2000) received a commission in the Scots Guards, earned two awards of the Military Cross while serving in the Guards Armoured Division, and later studied for the clergy, eventually becoming Archbishop of Canterbury (1980-1991), the first combat veteran in that post since the Middle Ages.
• It is estimated that in the course of the Revolutionary War, about a third of all American regulars -- "Continentals" -- and half of all militiamen deserted.
• Although American planners estimated that the Japanese had about 7,000 aircraft ready to defend the Home Islands against the Allied invasion scheduled for November of 1945, the actual figure was 12,700, for which there was an enormous stockpile of fuel and more than 18,000 pilots, who, while mostly indifferently trained, would be available for suicide missions.
• During World War I, Australia managed to raise armed forces of 417,000 men, of whom about 332,000 served at the fronts in Europe, Gallipoli, or the Middle East, out of a population of only five million, and without counting men serving in British uniform.
• During World War II, Winston Churchill was fond of the resident rat control officer of the Cabinet War Rooms, hidden under London, a black cat named  "Nelson, " after the Prime Minister's great personal hero.
• In 1804 the annual report of the Adjutant General of Kentucky to the Secretary of War indicated that 60 percent of the state's militiamen were properly armed, a figure that fell to only 40 percent by 1811, and by the time they arrived to join the for the Battle of New Orleans in earely 1815, Andrew Jackson found they were so ill-prepared they didn’t even have whiskey, a state in which he had never seen Kentuckians before.
• Within six months of the Armistice of November 11, 1918, the U.S. Army discharged 2,608,218 enlisted personnel and 128,436 officers, more than half the force.
• Although after World War II they blamed the Air Force or Duce Benito Mussolini for their lack of aircraft carriers, at a high level joint staff conference on August 11, 1925, the senior admirals of the Regia Marina declared that they did not want such vessels, because air support from the land would be sufficient.

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