June 25, 1876. The Battle of Little Bighorn. Custer’s Last Stand. Everybody knows the story. But not everyone knows that 12 years earlier — almost to the day — Custer had his first Last Stand. On June 11, 1864, “the Boy General” and the Michigan Cavalry Brigade almost got the chop in a place called Trevillian Station, Virginia, at the hands of Custer’s West Point roommate and then Confederate Brigadier General Tom Rosser.  

After weeks of fighting, Union General Ulysses Grant was still hemmed in on the Peninsula, like McClellan before him. He needed to bust out. Grant planned to slip the Union army away from Lee and steal a march towards Petersburg before Lee even knew he was gone. To do this, he needed to distract Lee.

Grant and his cavalry commander, General Phil Sheridan, planned one of the largest cavalry raids of the war, deep into Virginia, to destroy the Virginia Central Railroad. This would cut Lee’s army off from its supply larder in the Shenandoah Valley and provide cover for Grant’s move to Petersburg.

I liked the one-armed bandits. I liked putting the coin in the slot and pulling the lever. Usually, three mismatched images came up (playing cards, stars, animals, whatever) and nothing would happen, but sometimes two of a kind – even three of a kind – would come up. Coins came clinking down into the tray, and that was pretty cool. 

Occasionally, I’d see someone else hit a jackpot. A gusher of coins would flood over the tray onto the floor, and that was very cool.

It was Napoleon who famously said that an army marches on its stomach.  And it’s true.  While nobody pens epics about the Quartermaster Corps, without the tools necessary to do the job, victory is nigh impossible.  Confederate General Nathan Bedford Forest perhaps said it best… Victory goes to him who “Get(s) there firstest with the mostest.”

One of the reasons Normandy was not more stoutly defended, and that even after the landings had begun the invasion was thought to be a diversion, is that there are no adequate port facilities nearby to support a massive invasion.  A reinforced infantry division in WW2 consumed between 600 and 700 TONS of supplies daily.  The first day of the Normandy Invasion called for five reinforced infantry divisions on the beaches.  That’s a minimum of 3,000 tons of supplies needed on D+1 and every day thereafter.  Plus, the needs of the three Airborne divisions once they hooked up with the beachhead units.  That’s now about 4,800 – 5,000 tons daily…just for the original units.  A total of 46 divisions were earmarked for Operation Overlord.  And that’s just basic stuff…food, ammunition, equipment and fuel.  Add to that the required stream of replacements and follow-on forces coming in and wounded going out, and the numbers quickly get mind boggling.

From Lincoln’s letter to Henry Pierce on April 16, 1859:

One would start with great confidence that he could convince any sane child that the simpler propositions of Euclid are true; but, nevertheless, he would fail, utterly, with one who should deny the definitions and axioms.  The principles of Jefferson are the definitions and axioms of free society.

Harry Enten made a strong argument on CNN that no one had an incentive to cheat in the LA mayoral election. He points out that Bass would beat Pratt by 18 points in the general but would beat Rahman by only 4, according to an LA Times poll. The argument is that the Democratic establishment would prefer a Bass-Pratt matchup to Bass versus Rahman. Thus, the party establishment had no incentive to cheat.

He also looked at the favorability ratings of all three candidates. Rahman is +5, Bass -22, Pratt -32. He argued that based on favorability, Rahman has a decent chance of beating Bass. Again, the Dem establishment would not want Rahman to advance to the general.

Russia and Ukraine have expended vast amounts of resources in a brutal war of attrition. The Ukrainians have fewer people to lose, of course. The Russians, who had assumed that the “winning” tactic of WW2, throwing people into the front lines, was also going to work in Ukraine… are running out of people to lose.

Both sides have increasingly, and to an extent only previously imagined in science fiction novels, come to wage war using unmanned systems. Airborne drones get most of the news because they are highly visible, effective, and make for great viewing. But seaborne drones (essentially smarter, long-range torpedoes) and tracked or wheeled robots have become the default for new initiatives.

Seventy-seven years ago today, on Jun 8, 1949 (please check the math; it’s never my strongest suit), the British firm Secker & Warburg published George Orwell’s ninth, and last, completed book.

Nineteen Eighty-Four was first touted as a novel, but it’s come to represent far more than that. Today’s quotes of the day:

“Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.”