Infinite Wisdom

"Provided he brought our men into the field well appointed and with sixty rounds of good ammunition each, he never looked to see whether their trousers were black, blue, or grey; and as to ourselves, we might be rigged out in all the colors of the rainbow if we fancied it."

La Triviata

• In his first report on the state of the militia in 1804, the U.S. Secretary of War reported that there were 525,000 men enrolled (including nearly 30,000 officers), only one in ten of whom was in possession of a proper firearm.
• Although by March of 1936, the Germany armed forces had a paper strength of 39 divisions, only four were rated as combat ready, as the Army was just then undergoing a massive expansion.
• After his death, the sash worn by British Maj. Gen. Edward Braddock on July 9, 1755, when he was mortally wounded during the Battle of the Monongahela, was presented to Col. George Washington, whose heirs later gave it to Zachary Taylor.
• By early 1943, Sgt. Katue of the Papua Infantry had been officially credited with killing 26 Japanese soldiers (almost all NCOs and officers, because privates had no insignia of rank that he could pin to his tunic), which would rise to over 35 and earn him the Military Cross before the fierce warrior was himself killed in action.
• Robert H. Weir, who taught drawing at West Point from 1833 until 1877, was a noted artist, painting, among other works, “The Embarkation of the Pilgrims” in 1843, which hangs the Rotunda of the U.S. Capitol.
• Although not themselves Moslems, it was customary for Ashante warriors during the nineteenth century to go into battle wearing charms inscribed with quotations from the Koran.
• Among other specialized personnel on the staff of a Roman Legion were the victimerius, who tended animals needed for religious sacrifices, and the pullarius, who looked after the sacred chickens that were consulted in hopes of determining the will of the gods.
• In November of 1944, as punishment for the loss of their flag in combat and for general ineptitude on the battlefield, Stalin sent all of the officers and men of the Soviet 214^th Cavalry Regiment to penal battalions.
• In the years following the Napoleonic Wars, promotion in the Austrian Army was so slow it was not unusual for captains to wait 20 years to make major.

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