Wars, Battles, People and Facts
War is never nice, but it can produce interesting facts. Sometimes it brings out the heroism in people you would least expect, or produces strange events. There are even times when the paranormal is suspected to have taken a hand. There are even historical facts that come out that are unusual. One thing comes to mind that makes no sense, except that pride took a part. In World War II the Japanese over ran an American position. They left one guy alive and unharmed, because they wanted to test their sword skills against him. This guy only had an entrenchion tool, which is the fancy name for a small shovel. The first Japanese came at him with sword in hand and the American soldier made short work of him, with a few chops with the sharp edge of the tool. The next Japanese soldier seeing this was infuriated and pulled his sword and attacked. He too was given several deadly blows with the tool and killed. This scenario repeated itself until all 30 of the Japanese soldiers that had decided to attack this guy lay dead with swords scattered all over the field. Why hadn't they just shot him, or all attacked at once? I guess we will never really know the answer to this puzzle. As I said it may have been just pride.
World War I Then there was the time in World War I, in 1914 to be exact, when it was Christmas eve and the German troops began to decorate trees and such and the British troops seeing this also began to celebrate Christmas. It wasn't very long before both sides were fraternizing, to the horror of officers on both sides, who unsuccessfully tried to get their men to fight. The troops from both sides began to travel across the space between them, known as "no man's land" and even exchanged gifts. There was just nothing that the officer corps could do to stop this, so they had no choice but to look the other way and hope that they could get back to the fighting soon. Football matches between the opposing sides took place and the wounded and dead that had been trapped could now be gathered up and proper funerals took place. For one day even the artillery stopped firing. The truce lasted for one day in most places, but stories of the truce continuing until New Year's Day in some areas persisted. Other Christmas truces took place during this war between the Germans and French. It is said that the famous old time comedian W.C. Fields kept a large sum of money in a German bank during World War II. The reason that he was said to have done this, was he didn't want to take any chances and thought that the Germans might win the war and this way he wouldn't lose all his money. While Fields was busy trying to protect his fortune, Jacques Cousteau was in the French resistance and had just invented scuba gear, which was to play an important part in the war. Most of us know that during the American Civil War many hundreds of thousands of troops died, but what many don't know is that disease and infection killed more people than bullets did. Stonewall Jackson, the famous Confederate General, was killed during battle. The odd thing about his death is that he was not shot by the Northern Army, but by his own men who came across him and thought that he was the enemy. When we think of bloody battles, I think that most of us would say that the bloodiest was D-Day in World War II. We would be wrong because the battle at Antietam, during the Civil War produced 9 times the casualties of the D-Day landings. That battle accounted for over 23,000 casualties, which refers to both wounded and killed. Arlington National Cemetery was the land where General Lee had a home. It was confiscated at the end of the war.
Audie Leon Murphy Audile Leon Murphy was the most decorated soldier of World War II. Even today his grave at Arlington National Cemetery is the most visited after that of former President Kennedy. He got into the army after lying about his age, he was only 16 years old. He had tried to get into other forces, but was reject as being too slight of build and passed out during an army drill. No one thought that he was army material and he didn't get into a battle until 1943 after begging to be sent to the war zone. Once in the fight he was promoted rapidly and received the medal of honor and 32 other medals and decorations. Perhaps the thing that he is remembered most for in the war was he single handed used a burning tank destroyer's 50 cal. machine gun to destroy squads of attacking German troops while directing artillery fire on them. He had only 18 US troops from a command of 128 and had ordered them to the rear. During World War I British troops were being routed by the enemy. Just when it looked like like the end for them, A figure dashed out on a white horse. He was wearing a white cape and charging the enemy. Soon he was joined by the combined British forces who then also charged the enemy. The British won the battle, but the figure on the horse was never seen again. The soldiers believed that in their time of need that Saint George and helped them.
Washington Crossing The Delaware During the American Revolutionary war, David Bushnell had invented many different types of weapons, mostly to be used against shipping. He was the inventor of the first American torpedo. One of his inventions were a sort of mine that was built into a keg that was filled with explosive and would explode when it came into contact with anything. The British sailors would panic when they saw anything floating toward their ships and would fire both guns and cannons at the objects and this was called the Battle of the Kegs and a song was even written about it. After his defeat at Waterloo, Napoleon had been banished to the Island of St. Helena by the British. This was one of the most remote places in the Atlantic Ocean. The island was only 6 miles by 8 miles and the nearest land mass was 700 miles away. Napoleon lived there for 6 years and died. Doctors conducted a post mortem on him and stated that he died from an ulcer that had turned to cancer. This would have been the end of the story, except for the fact that some of his companions in exile had saved locks of his hair and when his hair was examined at a much later date, in the 1960s, it was found that it contained large amounts of arsenic. Had the emperor been poisoned or was there another answer, after all the wall paper of the day contained arsenic to help fix the colors? |
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