Friday, March 19, 2010

This Day in History: March 19

March 19 was D (for drill) day. The baron arose at 3:00 a.m. and spent some time trying to memorize the English words for the first lesson. On Valley Forge’s grand parade, his 100 men, carefully selected from all 14 brigades, were waiting for him, along with the 14 brigade inspectors. Steuben ordered a dozen men to form a squad and began with a fundamental: how a soldier stood and carried himself. Here are the exact words from Steuben’s manual: “He is to stand straight and firm upon his legs, with his head turned to the right so far as to bring his left eye over the waistcoat buttons; the heels two inches apart; the toes turned out; the belly drawn in a little, but without constraint; the breast a little projected; the shoulders square to the front and kept back; and the hands hanging down the sides, close to the thighs.” [More]

3 comments:

tjbbpgobIII said...

David, the link for today in history goes to the Constitution of South Carolina.

David Codrea said...

Thanks, fixed.

Isn't it amazing, that this has been up all day, for thousands of page views, and this is the first notice that I messed up and accidentally put in the url for one of the competing entries I had considered?

As an aside, it does explain why my metrics show such a lousy return from WoG--that not only aren't the regulars here sharing my GRE links, they're not even clicking on them.

I wish I knew why that was. It is most discouraging and I don't know what I can do differently, if anything.

straightarrow said...

I don't share them from here, because I have them all bookmarked and go to them from my favorites file. This is the first read of my day every day. Then all the others come later.

I suspect others do the same thing.