The Defence of Duffer's Drift

A classic military tactics manual, it is still very relevant to today's wars. A favorite textbook of the United States Army Infantry School, "The Defence of Duffer's Drift" is a valuable instruction in the art of close quarters combat. One veteran recently observed that the war in Afghanistan might have fared better if commanders had not ignored the basic lessons taught in "Duffer's Drift." Originally published in 1904 by Major General Sir Ernest Dunlop Swinton, when he was still a captain, it remains relevant even in today's battlefields. The fictional main character is Lieutenant N. Backsight Forethought, commander of a 50-man reinforced platoon during a fictional encounter in the Boer War. BF, as he is known to his friends, is ordered to hold at all costs a key piece of ground known as Duffer's Drift. This is BFs big chance to prove himself on the battlefield and he is ready for the glory, or so he thinks.

In a series of six scenarios he calls dreams, BF tries to solve tactical issues facing a young commander and his men assigned to a remote location with minimum supplies and maximum exposure to the enemy. In the first dream BF makes basic tactical errors that he summarizes in lessons learned at the end of the dream. In the second dream, he incorporates the lessons learned from the first dream and builds on them to improve his tactical effectiveness. Still, he makes new errors based on new challenges and at the end of the second dream, converts them as well into lessons learned. This continues until the sixth dream when he finally succeeds, drawing on all the lessons learned in the previous five dreams.

General Swinton's contribution to the revolution in military affairs of the 20th century is illustrated in this book and its tutelage in the art of tactical warfare. It presages Swinton's ultimate contribution to tank warfare, which would come to dominate the battlefields of World War II. These lessons remain as relevant today as they were one hundred years ago and as long as our military keeps deploying to remote and austere regions in defense of our country.