From sotiris@hermesnetwork.com Sun Apr 30 00:23:56 2000 Received: from mxu1.u.washington.edu (mxu1.u.washington.edu [140.142.32.8]) by lists.u.washington.edu (8.9.3+UW99.09/8.9.3+UW99.09) with ESMTP id AAA52570 for ; Sun, 30 Apr 2000 00:23:55 -0700 Received: from sungod.ccs.yorku.ca (IDENT:l1xI7R4v5ZZ6Vu6Kd0M3qUVwckNBrS02@sungod.ccs.yorku.ca [130.63.236.104]) by mxu1.u.washington.edu (8.9.3+UW00.02/8.9.3+UW99.09) with ESMTP id AAA27044 for ; Sun, 30 Apr 2000 00:23:54 -0700 Received: from hermesnetwork.com (bones14.slip.yorku.ca [130.63.190.69]) by sungod.ccs.yorku.ca (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id DAA18764 for ; Sun, 30 Apr 2000 03:23:49 -0400 (EDT) Message-ID: <390BDEAC.315ABC0C@hermesnetwork.com> Date: Sun, 30 Apr 2000 03:20:13 -0400 From: Sotiropoulos X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.7 [en] (Win98; I) X-Accept-Language: en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: classics@u.washington.edu Subject: Re: Bragging and Fragging (was: Michael Taylor) References: <200004300513.AAA27092@darwin.helios.nd.edu> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Alfred M Kriman wrote: > David Lupher wrote: > > the commentaries and recollections unleashed by the 25th anniversary > > of the fall of Saigon have duly mentioned "fragging" (i.e. attempts > > by soldiers to murder their own officers---intentional "friendly > > fire," as it were), usually with the suggestion that this was a > > practice unheard of until the Vietnam War. Has it been recorded > > for earlier wars? Are there ancient examples? > > Not exactly the same thing, but what David did to Uriah was tantamount > to intentional friendly fire. > > I think some of the internecine fighting Josephus describes might > qualify as zealot fragging in Jerusalem. Almost any disunited > rebellion should have something like this. It may also be difficult > to draw a sharp distinction between fragging and mutiny. > > The American Revolution was surely a disunited rebellion, and Benedict > Arnold only the most famous traitor. Any loyalist in command of a > local colonial militia would have been at risk. Within the Continental > Army there were various mutinies, perhaps the best known being the one > in June 1783 that sent the Continental Congress packing to Princeton. > In other words, I can't think of a single specific instance of fragging, > but I'd be amazed if it didn't happen. And who could forget Joab the son of Zeruiah and what he did to Abner the son of Ner and Amasa the son of Jether, commanders of the armies of Israel under King David? Sotiris. .