'The defence of Duffer’s Drift' - Review
- rdfreeman987
- 4 days ago
- 1 min read
When I was working on Be Very Afraid! (see below) one of the authors was Major-General Sir Ernest Dunlop Swinton, who wrote The Green Curve. Amongst his other (non-scaremongering) works was The Defence of Duffer’s Drift. I thought this sounded intriguing and decided to buy a copy. I expected it to be some kind of velt adventure story, but it turned out to be something different and perhaps unique.
The book has its origins in the Boer War, in which the British forces found themselves utterly unprepared for the guerrilla warfare conditions in South Africa. Swinton noticed that a well-trained and conscientious officer who adhered to the advice in the army’s Field Exercises handbook would be quickly overcome by Boer methods. Whising to provide a warning of how inappropriate Field Exercises was, he concocted this work of fiction.
The author, an army officer, commands a detachment that has to keep Duffer’s Drift open for a larger force that is to pass that way. Six times he falls asleep, and each time he adopts various practices that are recommended in Field Exercises. His approach to defending the drift leads to defeat and Boer capture of the drift in the first five dreams. Progressively through the dreams he departs more and more from recommended practice as he adapts his tactics to the mobile and deceptive Boers. Finally, in the last dream, he has crafted techniques that match the practices of velt warfare and, as a result, his men hold the drift. Duffer’s Drift, therefore, is a serious contribution to combatting guerrilla warfare, disguised as an intriguing story.
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