Infinite Wisdom

"Why can't we stop all the political nonsense and get on with the war?"

La Triviata

• When, in September of 1944, his Quartermasters informed Lt. Gen. George S. Patton that along with mountains of ammunition, rations, uniforms, and other supplies his Third Army had captured from the Germans were 50,000 cases of champagne, he promptly order the booze issued to the troops.
• The Italian motion picture Scipio Africanus (1937), a particularly good sword-and-sandal epic with amazing battle scenes (largely because they actually did slaughter the elephants during the fighting, though not before some of them had stomped an occasional actor), featured Camillo Pilotto as the famed Carthaginian commander Hannibal, while in the title role as his great Roman opponent was Annibale (i.e., Hannibal) Ninchi!
• While overall, 51.3 percent of the 45,582 officers in the Russian Army in August of 1914 were blue bloods, noblemen only comprised about 40 percent of infantry officers, as many of the company grade officers were former enlisted men.
• During his nearly 50 years of active military service, Douglas MacArthur attended neither the Command and General Staff College, the Army War College, nor the Naval War College.
• From the time of the Emperor Claudius (A.D. 41-54), Roman soldiers were prohibited from entering the homes of Senators to pay their respects as their clients, to eliminate the danger of the troops forming personal ties to members of the political elite.
• When Tsar Nicholas I remarked that that Turkey was a " sick man," the great Austrian diplomat Metternich, promptly replied, "Are you speaking as physician or as heir?"
• In addition to pressing for the adoption of the escort carrier on the eve of World War II, F.D.R. also proposed that they be equipped with autogiros, an early type of rotary-wing aircraft, which he believed might be useful in anti-submarine operations, an idea that was rather ahead of its time.
• The senior general de brigada on active duty in the Mexican Army in 1911 was Rafael Benavides, who had been in grade for 51 years.

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