Infinite Wisdom

"I am too old a soldier to surrender a garrison of such strength without bloody noses."

La Triviata

• In 1916, the German General Staff over-estimated the strength of the neutral Dutch Army by 50 percent, at 300,000 rather than 200,000, despite having flooded the Netherlands with spies for more than two years.
• In 1842, during the First Anglo-Chinese (Opium) War (1839-1842), the Royal Navy used steamers to tow two wooden-hulled sail ships-of-the-line 200 miles up the Yangtse to lend their firepower to an attack on Nanking, after which, on August 29^th, a peace treaty was signed ending hostilities aboard the 74-gun HMS Cornwall.
• When the Aetolians of western Greece sacked Pellene (c. 241-240 BC), their officers designated their share of the human loot by placing their helmets on the heads of the most attractive women.
• During the First World War, Italy probably had more flag officers of the Jewish faith than any other nation, indeed perhaps all other nations, fully fifteen generals and three admirals.
• When a certain high nobleman requested that his grandson, offspring of his recently deceased younger son, a major general, be given a commission in his late father’s regiment, The Duke of Marlborough replied that it was "contrary to the rules the queen has prescribed for herself in that matter”, noting that the lad was only five years old.
• In 1950, during the filming of The Desert Fox, director Henry Hathaway decided to shoot the incident on which Erwin Rommel (played by James Mason) was wounded in a strafing run by a Canadian Spitfire on July 17, 1944, at the actual site in France, and in the process found the wreckage of the field marshal’s staff car.
• During Operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm (1991-1992), US Navy SEALs conducted 270 missions, including hydrographic reconnaissance, strategic reconnaissance, direct action, and combat search and rescue, without sustaining a single casualty.
• By a curious coincidence, three of the nation’s most famous presidents, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Abraham Lincoln, all worked as surveyors as young men.
• Although the fall of Sebastopol to the British and French in September of 1855 is generally regarded as the decisive action of the Crimean War (1853-1856), the Russian government was equally concerned with the fact that, although they had successfully beat off an Anglo-French naval assault on Helsinki, the Allies were preparing for a major effort against Kronstadt, which would have directly threatened St. Petersburg.

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