Infinite Wisdom

"War is a violent teacher."

La Triviata

• During the Peninsula Campaign, British troops seem to have had a penchant for plundering beehives of their honey, much to the annoyance of the local people, prompting the Duke of Wellington to several times issue orders prohibiting the practice, though he never declared it punishable by death, as was the case with men stealing peasants’ hogs.
• Desiring to “test” security arrangements, on October 8, 1948, a young reporter donned the uniform of a Red Army officer and wandered down to a beach near Oceanside, California, where he spent several hours observing amphibious exercises before he was noticed by some Marines.
• Wounded during the Battle of Dettingen (June 24, 1743), at which his father, King George II, routed the French, the Duke of Cumberland refused treatment for his wounds because the Count of Fenelon, who had been captured, was “more dangerously hurt than I am, and stands more in need of assistance.”  
• When he was just 16, Marcus Manlius had already slain two enemies in single combat, and in the course of his military career would gain thirteen Civic Crowns for saving the life of a citizen in battle, as well as thirty other decorations and many other honors, including the cognomen Capitolinus, for holding the Capitoline Hill against the invading Gauls in 390 B.C., a deed for which he was also awarded the very first Mural Crown, though this did not prevent the Senate from executing him when he attempted to organize debt relief for plebians .
• In the late Nineteenth Century compulsory military service in Russia was reduced from 25 years to 15, and of that a young draftee would spend only six with the colors and then nine in reserve.
• During World War I many prominent German women conducted a campaign to institute a year’s compulsory military service for young women.
• For many years the USS Missouri (BB-63) had a small upright piano in her flag cabin, installed for the use of President Harry S Truman, during his voyage home from the Rio Conference in 1946.
• Among the Hazara, a Shi’a people of Afghanistan, a Nineteenth Century Briton reported that, “The women are proud of being able, when necessity requires, to mount a horse and use a firelock or sword with an intrepidity equal to that of their warlike brothers and husbands,” a custom that they continue to the present, some having seen action against the Russians and the Taliban.

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