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Pilot Accidentally Lands in Enemy Airfield and Other Historic Mistakes

Khalid Elhassan October 5, 2020 31 min

Focke-Wulf Fw 190 Würger - Focke-Wulf — Fw 190 dogfighting a Spitfire over the English Channel. Pintrest

19. Moment of Truth Becomes an Oops Moment

The Battle of Carrhae. Battles of the Ancients

To get himself some military glory, Crassus led an army of 50,000 to invade Parthia, a wealthy kingdom spanning today’s Iraq and Iran. He trusted a local chieftain to guide him, but the guide was in Parthian pay. He led Crassus along an arid route, until, hot and thirsty, the Romans reached Carrhae in today’s Turkey. There, Crasus had his oops moment when he and his army encountered a Parthian force of 9000 horse archers and 1000 armored cataphract heavy cavalry.

Although they outnumbered the Parthians 5:1, the Romans were demoralized by the rigors of the march and by Crassus’ uninspiring leadership. The mounted Parthian archers shot up Crassus’ men from a distance, retreating whenever the Romans advanced. As casualties mounted, morale plummeted. Crassus, unable to think of a plan, rested his hopes on the Parthians running out of arrows. The Parthians however had a supply train of thousands of camels loaded with arrows.

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.