Al Nofi's CIC
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Issue #54, October 5, 2001 |
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This Issue...
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Infinite Wisdom
"Control of troops closely engaged with the enemy is the most difficult feat of leadership and requires the highest state of discipline and training."
--George C. Marshall
La Triviata
- It is unclear whether it was a Yank or a Reb who first made the momentous discovery, but very early in the Civil War the troops realized that with the touchhole plugged the barrel of a musket could hold nearly a pint of whiskey.
- As a wartime measure, in 1942 the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade was canceled, and the famous balloons were donated to the war effort, yielding 650 pounds of scrap rubber.
- Between February and October of 1916, approximately 1,700 French artillery pieces involved in the Battle of Verdun fired and estimated 23 million rounds (16 million of them 75-mm), or slightly more than 13,500 rounds per tube.
- In 1639, discovering that her son, the Marquis of Hamilton, was preparing to land a Royalist Army on the shores of the Firth of Forth, the Dowager Marchioness, a staunch opponent of the Crown, organized a troop of horse and rode out to oppose him, keeping a special pistol ready and loaded, should she encounter her errant offspring.
- In an effort to deny the enemy forest cover, the U.S. appears to have used about 90,000 tons of herbicide - including the notorious Agent Orange - during the Vietnam War.
- The first Soviet citizen to be received at the White House was Ludmilla Pavlichenko, one of the Red Army's famed "girl" snipers, with a score of 309 kills, who made a tour of the U.S. and Canada in 1943.
- Two of the most noted commanders in World War II were adopted, Isoroku Yamamoto, the Japanese naval strategist, and Erich von Manstein, the masterful German tactician.
- Army hospital admissions for alcoholism in the 1880s ran about 44.4 per thousand men on strength for white troops, but only about 4.6 per thousand for black troops.
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