Humorous Item of the Day

In response to the question "What do you want to learn about in U.S. History?" one of my college-bound juniors wrote this: "I would like to learn a lot about battles . . . I want to learn about the different groups of fighters such as: cavalry: infantry: archers and what role they played in the battles."

While an English teacher may shudder at the grammar, my primary concern is what U.S. battle he is thinking employed any significant use of archers. I suppose I could get creative and talk about the arrows that just didn't seem to hit their mark in, say, the battles of the Civil War. (You want to know the real reason the South lost? They didn't have any good places to sharpen their arrow tips, so most of them just clanged off the body armor of the Union troops rather than reaching their mark.) But that would be taking my story-telling to a level with which even I am uncomfortable...