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Incompetence That Shaped History

Khalid Elhassan March 9, 2020 33 min

Nineteenth century Washington Metropolitan Police Force officers. Washington Metropolitan Police

8. Believing in the Existence of Nonexistent Defenses

Boer raid on a British position during the Siege of Mafeking. Pinterest

Another of Robert Baden-Powell’s ruses involved barbed wire, of which Mafeking’s defenders had none. Barbed wire was effective in slowing down a charge, and since he wanted to discourage the numerically superior Boers from charging and overrunning his defenses, Baden-Powell set out to convince them that he had plenty of barbed wire.

He had no barbed wire, but he had plenty of the wooden posts from which barbed wire was strung. So he had them hammered into the ground all around the defensive perimeter. From a distance, even with binoculars, barbed wire is difficult to see. However, the wooden posts from which it is usually strung are readily visible, and the sight of a line of such posts in the distance is indicative of barbed wire fences. Seeing the wooden posts, the Boers assumed that they were strung with barbed wire.

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.