Al Nofi's CIC
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Issue #36, May 25, 2001 |
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This Issue...
- Infinite Wisdom
- la Triviata
- Short Rounds
- Military Unionization?
- The Custer Clan at the Little Big Horn
- Testimony of the Witnesses: - ". . . Ignorance, indolence, and egotism are to blame for our misfortunes."
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Infinite Wisdom
''What brave men I must this day lose."
-- George Washington
Long Island
August 27, 1776
La Triviata
- Although the Soviet Union had 289 submarines in commission during World War II, they were only able to sink only 128 enemy vessels, in the process losing 110 of their number, perhaps the worst loss-to-kill ratio in the history of submarine warfare.
- During the Gulf War an American armored division deployed in wedge on a open plain required about 30 minutes to pass a single point.
- In one of the oddest decisions ever made by military bureaucrats, in 1940 the Minnesota National Guard's 206th Infantry was redesignated as the 206th Coast Artillery (Harbor Defense), despite the fact that it was easily about a thousand miles from the nearest salt water.
- The last military operation of the American Civil War occurred on June 28, 1865, when the Confederate cruiser Shenandoah burned ten U.S.-flag whalers in the Bering Sea; not until 35 days later did skipper Lt. James Waddell learn that the war had ended in April.
- In 1896 the daily ration for a common soldier in the Argentine Army included 3.3 pounds of fresh beef and 1.8 pounds of other comestibles, plus 4.4 pounds of firewood, with which the troops were presumably supposed to barbecue all that beef.
- It is said that a governor of Louisiana once formally commissioned three friends as "Buck Privates," so that the numerous honorary colonels on his staff could have someone to salute.
- In 1918 the first American troops to cross the Rhine and undertake occupation duties in Germany were black National Guardsmen from New York's 369th Infantry,
- So efficient an organizer was the Duke of Alba that in Naples between May and July of 1567 he managed to raise, organize into regiments, train, and put on the march for the Netherlands an army of 10,000 men and 2,000 courtesans.
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