12. Having Seized Mafeking by Trick, Robert Baden-Powell Used More Trickery to Keep It
To keep the Boers wary of attacking Mafeking, Robert Baden-Powell began burying mysterious boxes around the town’s periphery. When asked, he responded that they were powerful new landmines, the latest in British technology. To demonstrate, he had a couple blown up within sight of Boer sympathizers, whom he then allowed to slip out of town to inform the enemy. In reality, the boxes blown up were stuffed with the town’s entire dynamite stores, while the other boxes buried around the defensive perimeter contained nothing but sand.
Another of Baden-Powell’s tricks revolved around barbed wire, of which Mafeking’s defenders had none. Barbed wire was known to be effective in slowing down a charge, and its presence in front of a defensive position was enough to give attackers pause. Mafeking’s British commander wanted to discourage the numerically superior Boers from charging and overrunning his defenses – something they could have easily done had they made a determined attempt. So he set out to convince them that he had plenty of barbed wire.
