Review of Defence of Duffers Drift

The Defence of Duffers Drift
• Genre: Military (Small Unit tatics)
• Author: Ernest Dunlop Swinton
• Overall rating: 9 of 10
• How I heard about it: Dr. Sean McBride M.D. USN
• Suggested Audience: Those interested in military tactics any infantry officer needs to read this.
This book is a crash course basics course in defending of a position with inferior numbers but superior firepower and positional knowledge. The story is based in modern day South Africa during the Boer War (1892-1902) between the Dutch colonists and the British army that wanted to place South Africa under British rule. The Boer’s (Dutch for farmer) as well as the local tribesman were not all on board with this Idea so a war was waged. Now I must say reading the history books I don’t agree with this war from a morale standpoint nor do I fully endorse all of the British tactics. Many believe the concept of a concentration camp was conceived by the Nazi leaders but this is not true the British actually won this war by capturing the wives and children of the Boers as they were trying to organize a fighting effort eventually the Boers lost the will to fight and continue to see their wives and kids treated horribly in these camps the British were hoarding them in.

Moral objections aside the book was great. The format of the book is interesting to start with. A young British officer has a series of dreams in which he is placed in charge of defending Duffers Drift the only river crossing for several hundred miles. His men, weapons and resources are layed out in the book. In the first dream he fails to defend the drift when he is unknowingly ambushed, not really expecting an attack in the first place. The next dream he is given the same mission and learns from his mistakes and makes a much better effort to defend the drift. After 6 dreams he has learned enough lessons from being ousted by the Boers that he succeeds in defending the drift against a superior force. After each dream notes are made about the lessons he has learned from the previous battle.

The best part about this book is the reader gets to learn right along with the young officer. In war when life and death are on the line you usually don’t get to make mistakes more than once this book allows you to see what sort of things you miss when setting up a defense on a position. It was a short and sweet book. Despite its unorthodox format it was a relatively easy story to follow. I actually found Rifleman Dodd harder to follow than this one. While the ethics of some of these tactics needs to be put through a filter, there are plenty of great military tactics to be gleaned from the pages of this great read.