The Spartans at
Thermopylae - 480 B.C. |
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In 490 B.C., Miltiades and his 11,000 Greek hoplites repulsed a Persian
expedition of 15,000 warriors, routing them severely at the Battle of Marathon.
Nine years later, the Persians launched another even more massive assault.
Xerxes, the son of Darius I, led a force of 100,000 Persians across the
Dardanelles over a bridge of boats. The Persians marched through
Thrace and Macedonia and into Thessaly. The Greeks took up strong
defensive positions at Thermopylae Pass, guarding the entrance to Boeotia
and Attica. |
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Xerxes reached Thermopylae in the spring of 480 B.C., and found the
Greeks could not be budged. Eventually after three days of fighting,
a Greek traitor showed the Persians a flanking route through another pass.
To give the main army of 5,000 Greek hoplites time to withdraw, King Leonidas
I of Sparta remained at the pass with 300 of his bodyguards and small contingent
of Thespians to fight a rear-guard action against overwhelming odds.
All of the Spartans and Thespians died in the battle, but they delayed
the Persians long enough to allow the Greek force to escape and reform
at the Isthmus of Corinth. |
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Herodotus reports that one of the reasons Leonidas volunteered to fight
the suicidal rear-guard action was because of an earlier Delphic prophesy:
"Hear your fate, O dwellers in Sparta of the wide spaces; Either your
famed, great towns must be sacked by Perseus' sons, Or, if that be not,
the whole land of Lacedaemon shall mourn the death of a king of the house
of Herakles, For not the strength of lions or of bulls shall hold him,
Strength against strength; for he has the power of Zeus, And will not be
checked until one of these two he has consumed."
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Just before the Spartans engaged the Persians, one of the departing hoplites
reported that "Such was the number of the Persians, that when they shot
their arrows the sun was darkened by their multitude." A Spartan,
Dieneces, was not at all frightened and joked about the strength of enemy,
announcing to all within earshot that "Our friend brings us good news.
If the Persians darken the sun with their arrows, we will be able to fight
in the shade."
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An epitaph to commemorate the heroic last stand at Thermopylae was written
by Simonides: "Go tell the Spartans, thou who passest by, that
here obedient to their laws we lie."
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For more information:
The
Battle of Thermopylae
Xerxes
Invades Greece from The History by Herodotus
Leonidas at Thermopylae
by David
The Thermopylae
Monument |
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Recommended reading:
Thermopylae:
The Battle for the West by Ernle Bradford |
The Saxon Housecarls
at Hastings - 1066 |
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On January 6, 1066, Harold Godwinson became King Harold II following
the death of his brother-in-law, Edward the Confessor. By late summer,
he was faced with two imminent attempts to invade England. The first
came in the northeast from his traitorous brother, Tostig, and King Harald
Hardraada of Norway. Tostig, Hardraada, and the Viking army landed
in three hundred ships at Fulford, near York. They quickly dispatched
forces led by local earls and began to advance southward. Harold
II, who had been waiting in London to see which invasion would occur first,
marched north. His quick forced march (two hundred miles in four
days) took the Vikings by surprise at their encampment near Stamford Bridge.
Hardraada and the Vikings had no desire to meet Harold's legendary bodyguard,
the housecarls, so Tostig was sent to negotiate. When an agreement
could not be reached, Harold and the Saxons attacked. Tostig, Hardraada
and almost every Norseman were killed. |
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While celebrating his defeat of Hardraada at a victory feast, Harold
received word that Duke William the Bastard had landed at Pevensey in the
south with 7,000 men. Harold gathered his forces, marched south to
London, and by the evening of October 13, deployed his forces along Battle,
or Senlac, Ridge near Hastings. The battle developed into a deadly
engagement between the Saxon infantry and the Norman cavalry and archers.
Initially, Norman arrows were harmlessly deflected by Saxon shields, and
Saxon axes and spears shattered the first Norman charge. Overcome
by confidence, the Saxon infantry unwisely followed the retreating cavalry
in reckless pursuit and were cut down by the Norman reserve. Harold
reformed his forces and the Saxons braced for additional charges.
The battle evolved into relentless pounding on the Saxon line by the Norman
cavalry. The Saxons more than held their own and inflicted heavy
casualties. |
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Just before evening, William feigned a general withdrawal and many
Saxons again broke ranks to pursue. The knights wheeled round and
destroyed the Saxon infantry in the open field, but Harold and his housecarl
bodyguard remained intact and just as formidable on the ridge. William
ordered final charge. This time he first had his archers aim not
at the Saxon shields but release their volleys into the air so the arrows
would fall on the Saxons from above. The tactic worked, but the Harold
and his housecarls fought on until an arrow struck the king in the eye.
As Harold struggled to pull it free, four Norman knights (one of whom may
have been William) attacked. One speared Harold in the chest, and
a second nearly decapitated him with a sword. As he fell, the other
two Normans delivered additional blows. With Harold's fall, the Saxon
forces panicked and retreated into the nearby woods except for the housecarls
who fought to the death around the body of their dead king. |
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During the negotiations at Stamford Bridge, Harold offered Tostig one-third
of the kingdom. Although tempted, Tostig realized that the Vikings
would not be satisfied with this offer and asked Harold what he would give
to Hardraada as well. "Seven feet of English ground, or as much
more as he may be taller than other men" came Harold's famous reply.
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While Harold's last words are unknown, a chronicler recorded the housecarls'
final battle-cries as "Ut! Ut! Godemite! Olicrosse!
(Out! Out! God Almighty! Holy Cross!)"
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For more information:
The Battle of Hastings
Battle of Hastings
Homepage
The Bayeaux Tapestry |
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Recommended reading:
1066:
The Year of the Conquest by David Armine |
The Swiss at Sempach
- 1386 |
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When Leopold III of Austria led his 5,000 knights and 1,500 infantry
into Switzerland in 1386, it was the culmination of numerous attempts by
the Hapsburgs to force feudal claims upon the cantons. In the past,
the highly respected Swiss infantry had always successfully defended their
freedom. The citizens were summoned to arms, and 1,500 men assembled
to meet the Austrians at Sempach. As the immediate terrain was not
conducive to a cavalry charge, Leopold ordered his men to dismount and
form into bristling phalanx of spearmen. Although unplanned, this
trapped the Swiss. For the Swiss to attack a force that was
four times larger seemed suicidal, and to withdraw they would have to retreat
over ground that favored a cavalry attack. Their cause appeared
hopeless until one man, Arnold von Winkelreid devised a plan. |
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Arnold convinced his comrades to form a wedge, and he stood at the
apex of the triangle. At the command to charge, the Swiss rushed
forward with Arnold at the point. As he approached the Austrians,
he stretched out his arms and legs and hurled himself into the enemy line,
simultaneously impaling himself on ten spears. The Swiss rushed through
the gap that Arnold created and broke the Austrian line. Those Austrians
on the flanks and in the reserve panicked and began to flee the battlefield.
This was fatal mistake for any army to make when fighting the Swiss.
They pursued the Austrians relentlessly and killed them almost to a man,
Leopold included. The Austrians never attempted to invade Switzerland
again. |
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As Arnold von Winkelreid lunged at the Austrian spears, he is alleged to
have shouted "Make way for liberty!" Although this sounds
like no more than a battlefield legend and a similar incident is also said
to have occurred over a century later, a man named Winkelreid is, in fact
, listed in records of the Swiss killed that day, and at least one contemporary
ballad records the deed as happening at Sempach.
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Recommended reading:
The
Swiss at War 1300-1500 (Men-At-Arms Series No. 94) by Douglas Miller |
The Old Guard at
Waterloo - 1815 |
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Napoleon, accompanied by the several hundred imperial guardsmen who
had accompanied him into exile at Elba, returned to France and landed at
Cannes on March 1, 1815. He immediately marched to Paris and assumed
power once more. Within three months, he raised an army of nearly
200,000 regulars and 400,000 garrison and reserve troops. The allies
declared him an international outlaw at the Congress of Vienna and began
to prepare their armies to invade France. |
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After defeating, though not destroying, the Prussians at Ligny on June
16, Napoleon turned toward Waterloo to finish off Wellington and the Anglo-Dutch
Army, who had withdrawn to a low, narrow ridge just south of the town.
There the French charged, but could not pierce, the center of the British
line. The French attacked twice more, but the squares of British
infantry continued to hold. By this time the Prussians, who had regrouped
after Ligny, began to arrive on the field, and Napoleon committed the first
wave of his Imperial Guard. The attacking columns were soon targeted
by British artillery and suffered staggering casualties. Still they
continued to advance expecting to see the enemy infantry break and run
as had always happened in the past. This time, however, was different.
Wellington had given the order for his infantry to remain somewhat hidden,
lying flat on the earth. When the Guard had closed to within forty
yards, the British ranks rose on command and fired a volley; three hundred
of the Guard went down. Immediately the British charged with fixed bayonets
and forced the Guard to retreat down the slope. |
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The immediate reaction in the French lines was disbelief. It
soon changed to despair, for never had this happened before. If the
Guard was forced to withdraw, then the situation must be hopeless.
Wellington ordered his entire force to advance, and within fifteen minutes
most of the French army was in full retreat. Only the remaining Old
Guard battalions that had been held in reserve stood fast. Then,
as Wellington's cavalry and infantry surrounded their squares, they too
began to withdraw, but in good order and beating off repeated assaults.
As they retreated, more and more of the guardsmen fell, and the squares
were redressed into ever diminishing triangles. With time, the triangles
were reduced to isolated groups and eventually destroyed. |
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At one point during the Guard's retreat, a British officer closed in an
shouted that the Guard had fought long and well and could honorably surrender.
Major General Pierre Cambronne responded with the, now famous, excretory
epithet, "Merde!" Almost immediately he was struck
by a spent round, knocked from his horse, and captured.
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A Paris journalist, seeking to make the most of the French disaster, gave
much copy to the guard's last stand and published a story that Cambronne
rejected the British call to surrender with the nobler, and even more famous
phrase, "La Garde meurt, mais ne se rend pas!" (The Guard dies,
but never surrenders!).
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For more information:
Cambronne's
Words
The
Imperial Guard of Napoleon
The
Battle of Waterloo |
|
Recommended reading:
One
Hundred Days: Napoleon's Road to Waterloo by Alan Schom |
The
Defenders of the Alamo - 1836 |
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By 1836, tension between the government of Mexico and one of its states,
Texas, had finally led to a demand, primarily from American settlers, for
Texan independence. To put down the rebellion, General Antonio de
Santa Anna led an army of 6,000 men north of the Rio Grande. In San
Antonio, 188 troops (including such American frontier legends as Jim Bowie,
Davy Crockett, James Bonham, and William B. Travis) garrisoned the Alamo,
an old Catholic mission that had been turned into a fort. Santa Anna
laid siege to the fort on February 23 with three thousand men. The
Texan riflemen held off repeated assaults over a twelve day period and
inflicted heavy of casualties upon the Mexican army. Finally in a
massive assault, in which Santa Anna declared he would give no-quarter
to any of the defenders except for the women and children, he took the
fort, but not before every defender and over fifteen hundred Mexican soldiers
were killed. |
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On February 24, William Travis, the commander of the Alamo sent an appeal
for help that has become justly famous. It reads in part: To
the People of Texas and All Americans in the World . . . I
am besieged with a thousand or more of the Mexicans under Santa Anna. I
have sustained a continual Bombardment and cannonade for 24 hours and have
not lost a man. The enemy has demanded surrender at discretion, otherwise,
the garrison is to be put to the sword, if the fort is taken. I have answered
the demand with a cannon shot, and our flag still waves proudly over the
wall. I shall never surrender or retreat.
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On March 3, Travis sent out a courier with his last report from the
garrison to the Texas Independence Convention at Washington-on-the-Brazos.
The report closed: I will, however, do the best I can under the
circumstances; and I feel confident that the determined valor and desperate
courage heretofore exhibited by my men will not fail them in the last struggle;
and although they may be sacrificed to the vengeance of a Gothic enemy,
the victory will cost the enemy so dear, that it will be worse to him than
a defeat. I hope your honorable body will hasten on reinforcements ammunition,
and provisions to our aid as soon as possible. . . . The power of
Santa Anna is to be met here, or in the colonies; we had better meet them
here than to suffer a war of devastation to rage in our settlements. A
blood red banner waves from the church of Bexar, and in the camp above
us, in token that the war is one of vengeance against rebels; they have
declared us as such; demanded, that we should surrender at discretion,
or that this garrison should be put to the sword. Their threats have
had no influence on me or my men, but to make all fight with desperation,
and that high souled courage which characterizes the patriot, who is willing
to die in defense of his country's liberty and his own honor. The citizens
of this municipality are all our enemies, except those who have joined
us heretofore. . . . God and Texas---Victory or Death. P.S.
The enemy's troops are still arriving, and the reinforcements will probably
amount to two or three thousand.
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"Thermopylae had its messenger of defeat; the Alamo has none." -
graffito found on a wall of the Alamo, 1836
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In 1878, Louis "Moses" Rose, who long claimed to be a survivor of the Alamo,
related the famous story of Travis's line in the dirt. He claimed
that, during a lull in the bombardment, Travis assembled the garrison's
defenders and gave them one final address ending "My choice is to stay
in this fort and die for my country, fighting as long as breath should
remain in my body. This I will do even if you leave me alone.
Do as you think best, but no man can die with me without affording me comfort
at the moment of my death." Following the speech, Travis drew
his sword, used it to draw a line in the dirt, and asked all those willing
to fight to the death to step over. All but one man did including
Jim Bowie who, as he was to sick to walk, asked that his cot be carried
across. Of course, Rose admitted that he was the only man not to
cross Travis's line.
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For more information:
The
Alamo
Casualties at the
Siege of the Alamo
The Gonzales
Relief Force |
|
Recommended reading:
Three
Roads to the Alamo: The Lives and Fortunes of David Crockett, James Bowie,
and William Barret Travis by William C. Davis
The
Alamo and the Texas War of Independence: Heroes, Myths, and History
by Albert A. Nofi |
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Recommended viewing:
Alamo
starring John Wayne |
The French Foreign
Legion at Camerone - 1863 |
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In 1862, Spain, France, and Great Britain sent a combined expeditionary
force to Mexico to protect their interests and collect international debts.
Britain and Spain soon withdrew after it became obvious that try as they
might, they could recover no debts from the near bankrupt country.
With their withdrawal, Napoleon III decided to attempt to overthrow the
ruling regime and establish a puppet Mexican Empire; he knew that the United
States was too preoccupied with its Civil War to enforce its Monroe Doctrine.
A contingent of the French Foreign Legion arrived in March, 1863, and was
soon pressed into service securing inland convoy routes. |
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During a reconnaissance mission on April 30, the Third Company of the
1st Battalion encountered a much larger enemy force on the Vera Cruz Road.
The company had an official strength of 120 men, but had been reduced to
62 men by disease. As the company's officers were as sick as its
men, the Legion's contingent commander had appointed staff officers, Captain
Jean Danjou and Second Lieutenants Villain and Maudet, to lead the mission.
When the Mexicans attacked the patrol, Danjou led the force in a bayonet
attack to gain relative safety in an abandoned homestead known as Camerone.
There, for the next ten hours, the sixty-five men fought off repeated attacks
by 2,000 Mexican soldiers. At one point during the battle a Mexican
Lieutenant called on the legionnaires to surrender. Danjou assembled
his men and asked all to swear that they would never surrender; they did.
After the refusal was delivered, the Mexicans sounded the degueno, a drum
and bugle call indicating that survivors would be given no quarter.
Repeatedly, the Mexicans attacked until finally after a massive general
assault they subdued all fires and overran the entire homestead except
for its stable. There Maudet and five legionnaires, out of ammunition,
launched a bayonet charge into the mass of Mexican infantry. One
man was instantly killed, riddled with nineteen rounds as he tried to shield
Maudet. Maudet and another were mortally wounded, and three legionnaires
found themselves surrounded. A senior Mexican officer stepped forward
and again asked them to surrender. "On the condition we keep our
weapons and you look after our officer," replied Legionnaire Maine.
The terms were accepted by the officer who stated, "To men such as you,
one refuses nothing." Thirty-three legionnaires died in
the battle and of the thirty-one who were captured, nineteen soon died
of their wounds. Only one man, a drummer, was neither captured or
killed. He was rescued by French troops the following day.
He had been left for dead after receiving two bullet and seven lance wounds. |
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When the final three defenders were brought to the Mexican commander, Colonel
Milan, he initially could not believe that they were the only standing
survivors. When he was finally convinced, he exclaimed, "Truly,
these are not men, they are demons." One of the men, Legionnaire
Berg received permission from Milan to write a short note to the Legion
commander: "The Third Company of the 1st is dead, my Colonel,
but it did enough to make those who speak of it say, 'It had nothing but
good soldiers.'"
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In honor of the battle, Napoleon II ordered the names Camerone, Danjou,
Maudet, and Vilain to be inscribed in gold letters on the walls
of the Invalides in Paris
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Even today, in Mexico, formal military ceremonies are conducted annually
at the site of the battle memorial which reads: "They were less than
sixty here--Opposed to a whole army--Its mass crushed them--Life instead
of courage--Abandoned these French soldiers."
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For more information:
Camerone
The
French Foreign Legion in Mexico |
|
Recommended reading:
Camerone:
The French Foreign Legion's Greatest Battle by James W. Ryan
The
French Foreign Legion: A Complete History of the Legendary Fighting Force
by Douglas Porch |
The 7th Cavalry
at the Little Big Horn - 1876 |
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In 1876, the northern Sioux tribes, led by chiefs Crazy Horse and Sitting
Bull, refused to return to their reservations and were soon joined in their
resistance by the Cheyennes. From February through June, Generals
Crook and Terry attempted, without success, to maneuver the tribes back
to their assigned homes. In mid-June, Crook caught up with Crazy
Horse who had assembled a force of over 5,000 warriors and, although out-numbered
by five to one, fought a violent, though drawn, battle. After the
battle, General Terry's force crossed Crazy Horse's trail of withdrawal
and sent Lieutenant Colonel George Custer's 7th Cavalry Regiment to pursue
the Indians and box them in between the converging major Army columns. |
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Custer rapidly advanced along the trail and encountered Crazy Horse's
camp near the Little Big Horn River. Custer unwisely divided his
600 man command into three columns. Major Marcus Reno and three troops
of cavalry moved upstream to attack from the south. Captain Frederick
Benteen and three troops moved to the high bluffs where they would be able
to observe the entire battlefield and take appropriate action if any of
the Sioux tried to escape. Custer personally led five troops downstream
toward the center of the Indian camp. |
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Reno and his column soon encountered a superior force of Sioux and
were driven back across the river into a defensive position on the high
bluffs where he was later joined by Benteen's forces. Together they
withstood repeated attacks for two days. Despite incurring heavy
casualties, fifty-three killed and fifty-two wounded, they fared far better
than the Custer column which was surprised by an overwhelming Indian assault.
Within one hour Custer and his entire 211 man force were annihilated.
One of the Sioux, Crow King, reported that "They kept in order
and fought like brave warriors as long as they had a man left." |
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No one really knows what Custer's last words were because no soldiers from
his column survived the battle. However, troopers in other columns
last heard him as he stood on a ridge overlooking the Sioux camp, waving
his hat and shouting, "We've caught them napping!"
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Shortly thereafter, Custer sent a messenger to Benteen with his final dispatch.
It read: "Benteen. Come on. Big village. Be
quick. Bring packs. W.W. Cooke. PS Bring pacs."
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There are many Sioux accounts of the Custer's last stand. White Bull's
relates the last words of one of the casualties. Isaiah Dorman, Custer's
interpreter, was a black man who had married a Hunkapapa woman. Badly
wounded in the chest, he addressed the warriors and women that surrounded
him, "My friends, you have already killed me, don't count coup on me."
Sitting Bull approached and instructed the others, "Don't kill that
man, he is a friend of mine." Sitting Bull then, after giving
Dorman a drink of water, rode off. Soon after Sitting Bull left,
Dorman was killed; his entire body was slashed with knives and riddled
with arrows. He was nailed to the ground with an iron pin driven
through his groin, and his genitals were cut off and stuffed into his mouth.
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For more information:
Custer at the Little
Big Horn
Custer,
the Sioux, and the Little Big Horn
Custer Battlefield
Historical & Museum Association |
|
Recommended reading:
Crazy
Horse and Custer: The Parallel Lives of Two American Warriors by
Stephen E. Ambrose
The
Story of the Little Big Horn: Custer's Last Fight by W. A. Graham
Marching
to Valhalla: A Novel of Custer's Last Days by Michael Blake |
The 24th Regiment
at Isandhlwana and Rorke's Drift - 1879 |
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In 1872, Great Britain recognized Cetewayo as King of the Zulu nation
and acknowledged his rule in southeast Africa. Within seven years,
however, Cetewayo had built a formidable army, and a British regiment of
about 1,800 men, the 24th Foot, was sent to disarm the warriors.
The regiment, except for a company of about 140 men left to defend a small
hospital-outpost at Rorke's Drift, was surrounded and destroyed by 20,000
Zulu's at the great rock of Isandhlwana on January 22, 1879. Well
over 2,000 Zulus were killed in the attack, but only fifty-five British
soldiers survived the massacre. |
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Following the battle, although Cetewayo and the majority of his impis
marched into northern Natal, 4,000 Zulu warriors advanced on Rorke's Drift.
Throughout that evening and night, they repeatedly attacked the British
defenses. There the defenders, led by Captain John Chard of the Royal
Engineers, beat off every assault. By the time the Zulus withdrew
the next morning, they had lost over 400 warriors. The heroic British
defenders suffered twenty-five casualties and received eleven Victoria
Crosses as a result of the action. |
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As the Zulus overran the regiment at Isandhlwana, Colonel Pulleine charged
Lieutenant Mehlvill to carry the Queen's Colour to safety,
"You will take the colour and Godspeed and God be with you, boy."
Despite a valiant effort by Mehlvill and two other officers, the Colors
were lost as they tried to swim the Buffalo River to relative safety.
Only one of the officers, Walter Higginson, survived. A patrol was
sent out two weeks later to the place where the officers had crossed the
river. There, at the river's bank, they found the Color case, and
a little way downstream they recovered the Colors.
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At one point during the defense of Rorke's Drift, Zulus swarmed into the
front rooms of the outpost hospital. Several men, including Private
Harry Hook, fought them off heroically while patients were dragged to safety.
Just following the battle, when a cask of rum was produced, Hook--a life-long
teetotaler, passed a cup to the Sergeant who was pouring rounds and said,
"I feel I want something after that."
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When Cetewayo reviewed his victorious impis following the battles, he noted
the many gaps in the ranks of his regiments and sadly declared, "An
assegai has been thrust into the belly of the nation. There are not
enough tears to mourn for the dead."
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For more information:
The
Battle of Isandhlwana
Fugitives'
Drift
The
Battle of Rorke's Drift |
|
Recommended readings:
By
the Orders of the Great White Queen: Campaigning in Zululand Through the
Eyes of the British Soldier, 1879, edited by Ian Knight
Zulu
War 1879: Twilight of a Warrior Nation by Ian Knight and Ian Castle |
|
Recommended viewing:
Zulu
starring Michael Caine |
The
British Eighth Army at El Alamein - 1942 |
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The greatest North African battle of World War II came after two years
of desert warfare. Field marshal Erwin Rommel's Panzerarmee Afrika
had driven the British Eighth Army back to within sixty miles of the
Nile. The troops and officers were dispirited and demoralized.
The army was in real danger of complete destruction. In August, 1942,
its commanding general was relieved and replaced by a relative unknown,
Lieutenant General Bernard Law Montgomery. |
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Montgomery immediately took command and set about reinstilling confidence
into his armored force, pledging first to defend in place (or die fighting)
and then follow with a counter-offensive that would destroy the Africakorps.
True to his word, General Montgomery took the battle to Rommel in October
by cutting the German line of supply. After Rommel launched a massive
counterattack that was stopped by the Eight Army and the Royal Air Force,
the British attacked again in force and broke through the German lines
on November 4. Immediately the Germans began a withdrawal that lasted
two days and covered 1,500 miles. The stage was set for Operation
Torch--the Allied invasion of Morocco, Algeria, and Tunis--on November
8. |
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After taking command on August 13, General Montgomery spoke to assembled
his officer corps in Cairo: I want first of all to introduce myself
to you. You do not know me. . . . I have only been here a few
hours. But from what I have seen and heard since I arrived I am prepared
to say . . . I have confidence in you. . . .
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I believe that one of the first duties of a commander is to create
what I call "atmosphere," and in that atmosphere his staff, subordinate
commanders, and troops will live and work and fight. I do not like
the general atmosphere I find here. It is an atmosphere of doubt,
of looking back to select the next place to which to withdraw, of loss
of confidence in our ability to defeat Rommel, of desperate defense measures
by reserves in preparing positions in Cairo and the Delta. All that
must cease. . . .
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The defense of Egypt lies here at Alamein and on the Ruweisat Ridge.
. . . Here we will stand and fight; there will be no further withdrawal.
I have ordered that all plans and instructions dealing with further withdrawal
are to be burned, and at once. We will stand and fight here.
If we can't stay here alive, then let us stay here dead. . . .
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Now I understand that Rommel is expected to attack at any moment.
Excellent. Let him attack. . . . Meanwhile, we ourselves
will start to plan a great offensive; it will be the beginning of a campaign
which will hit Rommel and his army for six right out of Africa. . . .
The great point to remember is that we are going to finish with this chap
Rommel once and for all. It will be quite easy. There is no
doubt about it. He is definitely a nuisance. Therefore we will
hit him a crack and finish with him.
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On the eve of the Brisith offensive, Montgomery sent the following message
to his 8th Army, "Let no man surrender so long as he is unwounded
and can fight."
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In his book, The Second World War, Winston Churchill assessed the
importance of the battle as a turning point in the war. "Before
Alamein we never had a victory. After Alemein we never had a defeat."
|
|
For more information:
The
Battle of El Alamein
El Alamein
1942: Sands of Death and Valor |
The 101st Airborne
Division at Bastogne - 1944-5 |
|
In December, 1944, Hitler ordered a last gasp offensive designed to
split the Allied Armies in two and destroy all Allied forces north of the
line from Antwerp to Bastogne. To succeed, the attack required an
initial breakthrough, subsequent widening of the gap, and seizure of fuel
supplies and road networks at St.Vith and Bastogne. Despite reservations,
the German commander, Field Marshal Karl von Rundstedt, followed his orders
and launched the attack on December 16 while fog, rain, and snow inhibited
Allied air support. With the assault, the 101st Airborne Division
rushed to protect the vital road junction at Bastogne only to find itself
completely surrounded and heavily outnumbered by German panzer forces.
The German drive continued, forming a massive bulge in the Allied line,
until the attack was blunted by the 2nd Armored Division. With the
assault halted, the 4th Armored Division began punching a narrow relief
corridor that finally reached Bastogne on December 26. |
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When General Troy Middleton dispatched the 101st Airborne on December 18,
the only standing order that he issued to its commander, Major General
Anthony McAuliffe, was "Hold Bastogne." This McAulliffe did
despite a severe shortage of ammunition and ever increasing enemy pressure
that continuously shrank his defensive perimeter.
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On December 22, the Germans realized the 101st Airborne Division's dire
straits. A group of two officers and two soldiers approached the
lines of the 2nd Battalion, 327th Infantry under a white flag. They
issued an ultimatum, signed by "The German Commander," that described the
success of the German spearheads in the west and demanded the Americans
to honorably surrender the encircled town within two hours or be annihilated
by German artillery. The message was quickly forwarded to division
where General McAuliffe was just leaving the headquarters to congratulate
the defenders of a roadblock who had beaten back a German attack.
He read the message, said "Nuts," threw it to the floor, and left.
Upon returning, he was reminded about the ultimatum. After giving
it some thought, he asked his staff how they thought he should reply.
The senior operations officer commented that "That first remark of yours
would be hard to beat." "What did I say?" asked McAuliffe.
When he was told, McAuliffe had a formal response typed on bond paper that
read: To the German Commander: Nuts! From the American
Commander. The note was then delivered to the German officers
waiting at the 327th by Colonel Joseph Harper. Of course, the Germans
were unfamiliar with the American slang and arrogantly demanded Harper
explain the note's meaning. He did, "If you don't understand what
'Nuts' means, in plain English it is the same as 'Go to hell.' I
will tell you something else. If you continue to attack, we will
kill every goddamn German that tries to break into this city."
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Upon learning of the initial German success, Lieutenant Colonel Creighton
Abrams, then a tank battalion commander in the 4th Armored Division, made
the second most famous remark of the battle as his unit prepared to launch
its counter-offensive, "They've got us surrounded again, the poor bastards."
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For more information:
The Battle of Bastogne |
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Recommended readings:
Nuts!:
The Battle of the Bulge: The Story and Photographs by Donald M.
Goldstein, Katherine V. Dillon, J. Michael Wenger
A
Time for Trumpets: The Untold Story of the Battle of the Bulge
by Charles B. MacDonald |
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Recommended viewing:
Battle
of the Bulge starring Henry Fonda |
Some Useful References: |
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