Anecdote From The Recent War by Heinrich von Kleist
"The most horrendous pun ever to pass human lips, perhaps since the world began, was made in the course of the recent war by a drummer; the drummer, I believe, of what was then the Puttkamer regiment; a man of whom, as we shall now hear, neither Greek nor Roman history can show the equal. This fellow, after the rout of the Prussians at Jena, managed somehow to scare up a musket, and with it carried on the war single-handed; with the result that, having struck down and fleeced everything French that let itself be seen within range on the road, he was searched out and captured by a troop of gendarmes, taken to the city, and, as his fate would have it, sentenced to be shot. Arriving at the square where the execution was to take place, and seeing that all efforts in his own defense had failed, he requested one last favor of the colonel in command of the detachment; and when the colonel, his officers collecting about him in suspense, asked the man his wish, he pulled down his trousers and asked, could they please shoot him in the ass, so as not to tear a hole in his skin. And one must note the Shakespearean propriety of the drummer, who in making his joke remained true to his calling as a beater on skins." - Heinrich von Kleist. "An Abyss Deep Enough: Letters of Heinrich von Kleist with a Selection of Essays and Anecdotes. Edited, Translated, and Introduced by Philip B. Miller." (1982). E. P. Dutton: New York. Pg. 268.
