← Back to the front page

Great Daring Moments From History

Khalid Elhassan September 28, 2020 31 min

Josip Broz Tito - World War II — Yugoslav partisans wading across a river. Wikimedia

10. Getting Supplies From the Enemy

Still from the movie ‘Red Cliffs’, depicting Zhuge Liang’s exploit. YouTube

Zhuge Liang waited for a foggy night on the Yangtze, then quietly rowed his riverboat flotilla across the river to carry out his daring plan. Undetected, he positioned his riverboats in a line close to the enemy camp. Then at a signal, his crews erupted with loud noises to break the night’s silence, shouting, beating drums, clanging gongs, and creating an unholy din.

Still from the movie ‘Red Cliffs’, depicting Zhuge Liang’s return to camp with the promised arrows. China Business Gather

Startled, the enemy camp awoke in a panic. Convinced that they were facing a surprise night attack, they unleashed a storm of arrows at the boat silhouettes flitting in the murk – arrows that were embedded in the wet bales of straw. Then, his pin-cushioned boats groaning with the weight of more than 100,000 captured arrows, Zhuge Liang departed.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.