Manipulated bullets are still being used by field troops.  Although totally illegal by today's standards and "the rules of war" I know from personal experience in the Vietnam War that American GI's doctored their cartridges with hash marks (dum-dum) and used them.  Done mostly by rear echelon troops, by my experience, forward line (combat) troops didn't fool with it for fear of retaliation from the enemy if found out, and as one told
me "he didn't always have the time" .

Bly Straube wrote:

> I don't know if you are interested in an earlier time frame, but we have manipulated lead bullets from the site of James Fort (Jamestown, Virginia) in c.1607-1610 contexts. These include halved and quartered balls as well as lead cubes. We also have the balls with large holes in the center, hundreds bearing teeth marks, and a couple of wired shot (2 balls connected by twisted brass wire as was found on the 1629 shipwreck Batavia.
> Bly Straube
> Curator, Jamestown Rediscovery
>
> At 12:53 PM 1/2/00 -0500, you wrote:
> >I am posting this query for William Norman, a graduate student at
> >Monmouth University. William is interested in locating Revolutionary
> >War era musket balls which were manipulated in order increase
> >lethality. He is familiar with the examples Calver and Bolton recovered
> >in their NYC excavations, including the famous musket ball with a nail
> >driven through it. He also has examined some split musket balls from
> >Monmouth Battlefield, and knows about the mutilated musket balls found
> >by Hanson and Hsu at Fort Stanwix. Letters from General Howe and George
> >Washington referring to musket balls altered to increase lethality also
> >exist. William's hope is to determine how widespread this practice was,
> >the ways in which musket balls were altered, and the social reasons for
> >this practice.
> >
> >He, and I, appreciate your help.
> >
> >Rich Veit
> >
> >Attachment Converted: "c:\program files\eudora\attach\vcard22.vcf"
> >