Word: cannoneer
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...proper courting gift for a Dhagestan maiden was a dozen or so severed male right hands, strung on a thong. Imaginative bloodletting was much admired; Afghanistan's rulers executed prisoners by tying them across the muzzles of cannon (until Western diplomats complained of flying flesh) and the Shah of Persia delightedly invented another sort of extinction: extracting the teeth and hammering them into the skull...
...British used the cannon-muzzle method in putting down India's bloody Sepoy Mutiny...
Once the nations of the world were fortresses lying snugly behind their three-mile limits, a tradition established 250 years ago, when three miles was the span of a cannon's shot. In the modern world of atoms, rockets, and planes swifter than sound, the wall of the fortress is invisible. The wall is electronic-an outthrust barrier of radars, direction-seeking radios and - aiming instruments. For both the U.S. and the Soviet Union, it has become vital to spot and plot the ever-shifting shadows and strengths of the adversary's invisible frontier...
...have the highest tower. It was also a key vantage point from which to rain down rocks on an enemy neighbor's marble roof. As soon as one member of a family was killed, clan warfare was declared, with the towers as citadels. When gunpowder was introduced, cannon fired away at point-blank range across the narrow streets, and not a move could be made by day without a fusillade of gunshots. Food and ammunition were smuggled into the towers by night, and since the feuds sometimes went on for years, each newborn boy was hailed as "another...
...First. Almost half a century later, the war Gary saw seems primitive. It was fought over a stunning mountainous terrain, so arid and devoid of shelter that the troops were almost constantly exposed. Cannon and shells were hauled by hand to summits where only the native goats were at home, and since the Montenegrin army had no stretcher bearers, the casualties often simply crawled off to die. The troops were spectacularly brave, attacking with gusto at point-blank range and accepting decimation with stoicism bordering on indifference. Before one attack, volunteers rushed forward to blow the Turkish wire with bombs...