Some HIstorical Issues

Please forgive me in advance, because I'm sure this has been discussed here before (it certainly appeared on the HBO message boards during Carnivale's original run), but have some of the historical oddities regarding Carnivale, & especially its backstory, ever been resolved or hashed out?

I followed a couple links to discussions with Daniel Knauf, but they didn't address those.

Namely, according to HBO, Henry Scudder had served with Canadian forces in the Great War & was "an observer" with the Austrian army. True, he & Ben wear Canadian uniforms while in the trench & the dead appear to be Austrian or Axis. But Austria & Canada were enemies in the Great War. Scudder would have been a POW not an observer.

Another, seemingly small issue, but which sums up the oddity, is when Stumpy's wife tries to seduce the fellow come to collect his gambling debt. He tells her he was maimed in field "near Avignon" & so doesn't respond to her. Presumably he also meant during the war, but Avignon is in the south of France, nowhere the lines. It would have been very difficult to be injured in combat in Avignon during the Great War.

The show is described by many as "meticulously researched" but these aren't small issues, unless there was some sort of explanation--even something like a transcribing error by HBO on their website. Some folks wondered at the time was Carnivale perhaps set in a slightly alternate universe in which history was mostly, but not entirely the same as this one (witness Susanna Clark's astonishing Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell).

Some other issues were the juxtaposition of images of men in Templar garb & the phrase "in hoc signe vinces" the latter associated with Constantine & not a Templar motto at all. Furthermore, were the men at the club Samson visited supposed to be real Templars, despite the order having been officially disbanded by Pope Clement V in 1308?

Then, in the prologue to season two, Samson states the the dark one fled to the new world or something along those lines. But if Scudder was the dark one, how could he be said to have fled to the place he was from? Sounds picky, I know, but I assume lines like that were written with care & intended to have meaning.

Finally, being maimed by a stray circus bear on a Great War battlefield is just ridiculous. It's not tragic so much as plain silly. When first presented with the idea, I, & I"m sure others, assumed the bear wasn't actually real, or a metaphor, or a malign spirit or something ... other than a freakin' circus bear.

I did like the show, & was sorry to see it deteriorate towards the end as writers strove to give the growing mystery & circumstance some kind of cohesive finale.

But I still wonder if any of the above has been discussed &/or resolved.