Al Nofi's CIC
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Issue #125, April 11, 2004 |
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This Issue...
- Infinite Wisdom
- la Triviata
- Short Rounds
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Infinite Wisdom
"Of all the people in the world, generals are those who have the least courage to act."
| -- | Marie E. P. M. de Macmahon,
Mar�chal de France |
La Triviata
- The first American combat airborne jump occurred on November 8, 1942, when 556 men of the 509th Parachute Infantry Battalion hit the silk near Tafarooui and La Senia, Algeria, during Operation Torch.
- During the late 1920s, the cost of horses � which had to be of "the Spanish race" � produced by the Spanish Army Remount Service, which employed 17% of the cavalry officers on active duty, was a bit over 4,000 pesetas a head, a sum equal to the annual salary of a second lieutenant.
- When, in 1893 Alfred Thayer Mahan asked permission to postpone sea-duty for a short time, as he was trying to finish his newest book, The Influence of Sea Power Upon the French Revolution and Empire, he was told by a superior, "It is not the business of a naval officer to write books."
- When the wily Carthaginian general Hannibal deliberately spared the estates of his principal opponent Quintus Fabius Maximus Cunctator in an effort to cast suspicion on his loyalties, the equally wily Roman cleverly sold the property and donated the proceeds to the state in order to ransom prisoners of war.
- During the Russian Campaign of 1812 Napoleon had two 5th Heavy Cavalry Divisions, one in the I Cavalry Corps and the other in the III Cavalry Corps; the enumeratin error occurred when the divisions were forming and the Emperor never got around to correcting it, which appears to have led to some confusion at the Battle of Borodino.
- The United States produced about 88,000 tanks and similar armored tracked combat vehicles during the Second World War.
- Shortly after the Battle of Palestro (30 May 1859), where they had to restrain him from charging into the fray, the Zouaves of the French Imperial Army elected King Victor Emmanuel II of Sardinia-Piedmont a corporal, arguing that, "He fights so well that he deserves the honor."
- A feud between two noble families in Burgundy during the eleventh century lasted some 30 years and included several pitched battles, in one of which about a dozen men were killed on each side.
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