Did someone bite this miniball?? >>UPDATE<<

relic lover · Oct 13, 2009

I found my first mini today it looks unfired but it looks like teeth marks what do you think? Anyone know what era or type it is?

ivan salis · Oct 16, 2009

Re: Did someone bite this miniball??

badly wound helpless and dead folks with bullets in em , would get eat by wild hogs as their bodies laid upon the battlefeild and the bullets in them would easily get "caught up " in the hogs feeding process -- at times long peroids of time went by before the dead got buried sadly

wild hogs will happily eat your dead body if given the chance .

BioProfessor · Oct 16, 2009

Re: Did someone bite this miniball??

Or your "half-dead" body.

If you read some of the journals from soldiers who survived the battles, they could hear the severely wounded - but still alive - soldiers left on the battlefield screaming as the hogs ate them alive. Now that's a bad way to go.

Daryl

ivan salis · Oct 16, 2009

Re: Did someone bite this miniball??

yep

dick99344 · Oct 17, 2009

Re: Did someone bite this miniball??

BioProfessor said:
FINALLY!!! We have gotten away from the notion that soldiers bite into these bullets while their legs were being sawed off. The field hospitals DID have anesthesia and if there were ever a case when there was a procedure done without anesthetic or very little anesthetic, they would given them a leather strap or piece of wood to bite on. If you are going to experience great pain, giving the person who is going to be in great pain, an object that will fall down their throat as soon as they open their mouth to scream would cause more harm than good. It is a well documented fact that most all the screaming in the field hospitals was not done by people having their limbs being sawn off but from people waiting their turn to have THEIR limbs cut off.

Be gone medicine bullet myth. Be gone.

There is another explanation floating around about where the term "Bite the Bullet" came from. It has to do with the fact that when some bullet/paper casing units were lubed, they used lard. When these bullets and powder holders were used in British colonies by soldiers that were Muslim, they were forbidden from eating pork or pork product. They were very careful not to get any of the pig lard in their mouth when they tore open the paper to be able to pour the powder down the barrel and then pack the paper and bullet behind it. It time of intense fighting or even fast pace drills, they would sometimes get iin a hurry and put the wrong end of the unit in their mouth - the bullet and not the paper - and get a good dose of pork lard from the bullet. This was not a good thing for them and they were guilty of biting the bullet and therefore breaking with their religious beliefs. So "Biting the Bullet" was not something regarded as a good thing for Muslims.

Pigs root for their food. They eat just about anything. They would even eat soldiers left on the battle field - dead or wounded. Ever hear of the phrase "Where have you been, we thought you went to take a dump and the pigs ate you." In third world countries, they waste nothing. They stake out a pig and it has a circular area they can use. People from the village go there and defecate at the edge of the circle. Sometimes they loose their balance and if the pig is large enough and mean enough, they will kill and eat the unfortunate villager.

When pigs are rooting for food, they can't tell the difference between an acorn and a bullet. They put both iin their mouth and chew. If it is an acorn or other edible, their powerful jaws will crush it and they eat it. It it is a bullet, they try a few times and if it doesn't crush, they spit it out. It shows the tooth marks from the VERY powerful jaws of a full-grown boar. So they may have been attracted to them for stuff left on them but when they chewed on them, they chewed them very hard, and if they didn't crush, out they go.

People sometimes talk about finding a bunch of "medicine bullets" at the site of a field hospital. These bullets are round or conical and heavy. When there is a lot of rain and moving water, they will be roll down to the bottom of a hill and concentrate in an area where the water stops moving fast enough to move them any more. So it is not uncommon or unexpected to find a group of bullets and the bottom of wash.

And Monty is 100% correct. Soldiers chewed them to stimulate salivation. America indians used the seeds of plants or pebble to accomplish the same thing. These bullets have hundreds of small marks and may even be worked flat like a piece of gum if they are chewed long enough.

Thank God for the history channel.

Daryl

Absolutely about the lard lube. My fifth grade teacher told us a story about a battle in the Khyber pass about a Muslim regiment under the command of the British that revolted or nearly revolted because of these cartridges. If my memory serves me the Khyber pass is in the afghan. mountains. I have a friend that served in Turkey during the late 50's early 60's. He told me that the American Army would hire Turkish civilians to work in the MESS halls. At breakfast time, they would serve soldiers. They were so afraid of serving the the bacon and ham they would wear plastic aprons and would wear long rubber gloves. They were also careful to use the longest tongs that they could find.

oldgoat · Oct 18, 2009

Re: Did someone bite this miniball??

Another part of the story about the British colonizers was that when they were in India, using Indian allies, the quartermasters put out the story that the cartridges were lubed with beef tallow, since the troops held the cow to be sacred, there was very little ammo stolen...

relic lover · Oct 18, 2009

Re: Did someone bite this miniball??

Update... I am posting from my motel room in Gettysburg now. I just returned from the soldiers museum where I saw a display of items recoverd from a hospital site and low and behold there were several chewed bullets found with the other medical items. The story was the severly wounded chewed them to distract them from the pain. sorry no flash photos were allowed. They were chewed flat.

ivan salis · Oct 18, 2009

some might have been used that way --some chewed on to promote spit during lack of water -- some hog gnawed --some bullets were pre made into "paper cartridge" speed loader type rolls --powder and bullet together --one bit the paper tip off off took the bullet in hand poured the powder in the barrel --then placed the bullet in place ramrodding it in -- in the heat of battle bet more than one bullet got teeth marks from some excited fellow biting into the lead as he tried to bite the paper tip off the paper "cartridge"

so theres no one size fits all answer

BioProfessor · Oct 18, 2009

Professionals may be debating it but I am not sure what profession they are in. Not physiology, anatomy, veterinary medicine, and other professional that deal with teeth, muscles, etc. All the studies that have been conducted have concluded that the human jaw is not powerful enough to put the individual and deep tooth marks in lead bullets. Just not possible with what we have. The studies have concluded that animals like feral hogs and boars DO have the jaw strength. All the studies of the tooth marks have concluded that the shape and ridges of the teeth are NOT human.

This myth just won't go away. Seeing it in a display somewhere or talking to a person reenacting a battle just perpetuates the myth.

Stop the madness. Please.

Daryl

BioProfessor · Oct 18, 2009

My point exactly.

eggbag · Oct 18, 2009

My father told me when he was a kid growing up in the projects of hartford ct. he used to eat the lead paint chips off the window sill because they were sweet to the taste. This is is one of the reasons lead paint is illegal now. It also may explain why animals like to chew on lead objects(sweet?) ,and why my father is so screwed up in the head :tongue3:

. It may of passed on to me :dontknow:

:P ?

BioProfessor · Oct 18, 2009

Yes, lead paint has a sweet taste and that is why kids will peel it off windows sills and eat it. That attraction is enough to make it illegal.

I am not sure if soldiers who chewed on bullets during a march to stimulate the production of saliva got any sweet taste or not. Interesting thought. Never thought about that before but it would be an added benefit. Sort of.

To a pig, the sweet taste is not as important as the shape. They are used to putting acorns and nuts in their mouth and the shape is close enough for them to not spit it out but give it a hard bite to break it open so they can eat it. That can't swallow it whole and get any nutrition as it will pass through their digestive systems pretty much intact if they are not split open before being swallowed. When they bite it, they most likely spit it out but they may swallow it and get rid of it later.

If your father ate a lot of paint chips, it very well could have interfered with his neurological development. Don't worry, it didn't do any genetic damage below the belt. If you are screwed up, it's may be because of you father or more likely your mother (psychologists always ask - "Tell me about your mother.") but not the lead paint he ate. Now if you are about my age and don't remember all the 60's. That may be a contributing factor.

Daryl

Montana Jim · Oct 18, 2009

I stopped the madness and deleted my posts. :P

Silver Searcher · Oct 18, 2009

Some intetesting reading

http://www.military-quotes.com/forum/bite-bullet-origin-meaning-t495.html

http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_is_the_meaning_of_the_Idiom_Bite_the_Bullet

SS

ivan salis · Oct 18, 2009

of course they knew nothing of lead poisoning back then -- (lead was ok unless shot by it in their veiw) --pewter items for eating and drinking were common -- (pewter was mainly lead alloyed with other metals for hardness)