War Strategies Quotes
The Indian allies of the French scalped some American colonists which for some whites was akin to the modern reaction to terrorist atrocities. The British and Americans then justified the scalping of their Indian allies as simple retaliation. While Indians had scalped before the whites ever came, the whites accelerated the practice. There was an economic element to scalping. The French “paid” their Indian allies in arms, blankets, trinkets and alcohol by the scalp as it was a crude way of “performance measurement.” Not to be outdone, the English adopted the same custom with the French allied Indians as targets. In North Carolina, for example, the “volunteer” rangers were paid the enormous rate of 10 pounds a scalp.
During WWII, Mauldin was at the front lines and in the fox holes with the troops getting ideas for his cartoons most of which were drawn on the battle field. Much of that experience was with Patton’s Third Army. While Mauldin’s cartoons were wildly popular with the troops, some of the officers thought that the humor undermined discipline. Patton was one of those. See {629523}. Patton was somewhat mentally unbalanced with attitudes that were unacceptable to most Americans, but he was one of America’s greatest fighting generals of WWII.
