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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

7. Getting Taken in by Theatrics

The Boers kept getting gulled by Robert Baden-Powell. To strengthen his barbed wire deception and further mislead Boer watchers, he had his men drop to the ground whenever they reached a line of wooden posts – wooden posts that had no barbed wire between them. The defenders would then crawl “beneath” the imaginary barbed wire to get to the other side, before getting back on their feet, dusting themselves off, and carrying on.

Lord Robert Baden-Powell in later years, at an international Boy Scout Jamboree. The Telegraph

Between bluffs such as the fake super landmines and imaginary barbed wire, coupled with a heavy dose of stubborn resistance when the situation warranted, Mafeking’s defenders fought off the enemy and withstood the Boer siege for 217 days. Baden-Powell held on until he was finally relieved by the arrival of a British army that chased off the Boers and lifted the siege.

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.