Two of my favorite authors (at least on the military) are James Dunnigan and Albert Nofi, authors of the "Dirty Little Secrets..." series and "How to Make War". How are some...
During WWII one of Britain's most critical war materials, right after ammunition, was tea. They stockpiled 150 million tons of tea at the height of the war...thats about 6 trillion cups of the stuff!
The armies of WWII went into action with two rather odd types of units (and these units are still around today). These are the mobile bakery and mobile butchering detachments which are able to process large amounts of raw material into rations. A typical mobile butchery could provide half-pound meat rations from a typical animal: 40 head of cattle would provide 40,000 rations; 80 pigs would provide 24,000 rations and 240 head of sheep would provide 19,000 rations. A field bakery, depending upon the season and weather conditions could provide between 15,000 and 19,200 rations of bread (1 pond per ration).
What does "USA" really mean? During WWII, the US shipped thousand of trucks to the Russians. Needless to say, these military vehicles had "USA" painted on them. One popular "translation" concocted by the political officers was that USA meant "Ubiyat Sukensyna Adolfa or..."Kill that son of a bitch Adolf!"
As the US Army advanced across France in 1944, it entered ground familiar to the oldermen, the battlefields of WWI and there are two stories that came out.
A regimental commanding officer was pouring over some maps when he came across some familar village names. Turning to his operations officer he asked, "Major, any chance we can go around this town? Back in 1918 I made some pretty tall promises to a young lady there and I'd rather not run into her just know."
A pillbox in Lossarine, in NE France was taken by American troops twice, once in each world war. On one of the walls is written a doughboy's name and a date in late 1918. Just under it appears the same name with a date in late 1944. Beneath that is scrawled "This is the last time I want to be in this damned bunker."
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The reason that the American Army does so well in wartime, is that war is chaos, and the American Army practices chaos on a daily basis.
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