title: Stalag Luft III

text: The first compound of the camp (East Compound) was completed and opened on 21 March 1942. The first POWs, or , as they called themselves (from "Kriegsgefangene", German for "Prisoner of War"), to be housed at Stalag Luft III were British and other Commonwealth officers, arriving in April 1942. The Centre Compound was opened on 11 April 1942 and originally held British and other Commonwealth NCOs. By the end of 1942, however, they were replaced by USAAF personnel. The North Compound for British airmen, (where the "Great Escape" later occurred) opened on 29 March 1943. A South Compound for Americans was opened in September 1943. USAAF prisoners began arriving at the camp in significant numbers the following month and the West Compound was opened in July 1944 for US officers. Each compound consisted of fifteen single-story huts. Each bunkroom slept fifteen men in five triple-deck bunks. Eventually the camp grew to approximately in size and housed about 2,500 Royal Air Force officers, about 7,500 US Army Air Forces, and about 900 officers from other Allied air forces, for a total of 10,949 inmates, including some support officers.


title: Stalag Luft III

text: The prison camp had a number of design features that made escape extremely difficult. The digging of escape tunnels, in particular, was made difficult by several factors: the barracks housing the prisoners were raised approximately off the ground to make it easier for guards to detect tunnelling; the camp had been constructed on land that had a very sandy subsoil; the surface soil was dark grey, so it could easily be detected if anyone dumped the brighter, yellow sand found beneath it above ground, or even just had some of it on their clothing. The loose, collapsible sand meant the structural integrity of any tunnel would be very poor. A third defence against tunnelling was the placement of seismograph microphones around the perimeter of the camp, which were expected to detect any sounds of digging.


title: Stalag Luft III

text: A substantial library with schooling facilities was available, where many POWs earned degrees such as languages, engineering or law. The exams were supplied by the Red Cross and supervised by academics such as a Master of King's College who was a POW in Luft III. The prisoners also built a theatre and put on high-quality bi-weekly performances featuring all the current West End shows. The prisoners used the camp amplifier to broadcast a news and music radio station they named "Station KRGY", short for "Kriegsgefangener" (POWs) and also published two newspapers, the "Circuit" and the "Kriegie Times", which were issued four times a week.


title: Stalag Luft III

text: POWs operated a system whereby newcomers to the camp were vetted, to prevent German agents from infiltrating their ranks. Any POW who could not be vouched for by two POWs who knew the prisoner by sight was severely interrogated and afterwards escorted continually by other prisoners, until such time as he was deemed to be a genuine Allied POW. Several infiltrators were discovered by this method and none is known to have escaped detection in Luft III.


title: Stalag Luft III

text: The German guards were referred to by POWs as "goons" and, unaware of the Allied connotation, willingly accepted the nickname after being told it stood for "German Officer Or Non-Com". German guards were followed everywhere they went by prisoners, who used an elaborate system of signals to warn others of their location. The guards' movements were then carefully recorded in a logbook kept by a rota of officers. Unable to stop what the prisoners called the "Duty Pilot" system, the Germans allowed it to continue and on one occasion the book was used by Kommandant von Lindeiner to bring charges against two guards who had slunk away from duty several hours early.


title: Stalag Luft III

text: The camp's 800 Luftwaffe guards were either too old for combat duty or young men convalescing after long tours of duty or from wounds. Because the guards were Luftwaffe personnel, the prisoners were accorded far better treatment than that granted to other POWs in Germany. Deputy Commandant Major Gustav Simoleit, a professor of history, geography and ethnology before the war, spoke several languages, including English, Russian, Polish and Czech. Transferred to Sagan in early 1943, he proved sympathetic to allied airmen. Ignoring the ban against extending military courtesies to POWs, he provided full military honours for Luft III POW funerals, including one for a Jewish airman.


title: Stalag Luft III

text: Food was an ongoing matter of concern for the POWs. The recommended dietary intake for a normal healthy inactive adult male is . Luft III issued "Non-working" German civilian rations which allowed per day, with the balance made up from American, Canadian, and British Red Cross parcels and items sent to the POWs by their families. As was customary at most camps, Red Cross and individual parcels were pooled and distributed to the men equally. The camp also had an official internal bartering system called a "Foodacco" – POWs marketed surplus goods for "points" that could be "spent" on other items. The Germans paid captured officers the equivalent of their pay in internal camp currency (lagergeld), which was used to buy what goods were made available by the German administration. Every three months, weak beer was made available in the canteen for sale. As NCOs did not receive any "pay" it was the usual practice in camps for the officers to provide one-third for their use but at Luft III all "lagergeld" was pooled for communal purchases. As British government policy was to deduct camp pay from the prisoners' military pay, the communal pool avoided the practice in other camps whereby American officers contributed to British canteen purchases.


title: Stalag Luft III

text: Stalag Luft III had the best-organised recreational program of any POW camp in Germany. Each compound had athletic fields and volleyball courts. The prisoners participated in basketball, softball, boxing, touch football, volleyball, table tennis and fencing, with leagues organised for most. A pool used to store water for firefighting, was occasionally available for swimming.


title: Stalag Luft III

text: As described by J. Frank Diggs, many amenities were made possible by Swedish lawyer Henry Söderberg, who was the YMCA representative to the area, and frequently brought to its camps not only sports equipment, and religious items supporting the work of chaplains, but also the wherewithal for each camp's band and orchestra, and well-equipped library.


title: Stalag Luft III

text: In an (unwitting?) homage to Stalag Luft III prisoner Howard Cundall, RAF, the fictional American Staff Sergeant Kinchloe of the 1960s' American TV parody (Colonel) "Hogan's Heroes" operates a clandestine radio transmitter (and receiver) from a POW camp ("Stalag 13") and is in contact with London.


title: Stalag Luft III

text: Howard Cundall volunteered to ride a night bombing mission to make "... radio and radar observations over France.  Specialist observers from the Telecommunications Research Establishment had volunteered for the flights, and had received RAF commissions in case they were lost on operations.


title: Stalag Luft III

text: "This indeed happened to one of the first observers, Howard Cundall."  Cundall and all crew bailed out "in the early hours of 4th November 1941, ... The loss of a crew would have been a serious enough matter, anyway, but Cundall knew a good deal about our own radar, ... and might thus be a valuable prisoner for the Germans to capture."  All of the crew survived the bail out and were captured "except for the second pilot, who succeeded in escaping to Spain.  This was fortunate because the Germans thought that they had captured a full crew, and therefore did not suspect the nature of Cundall's duties.  While in Stalag Luft 3 he not only concealed his knowledge of our new radar devices, but built a radio transmitter with which he opened contact between camp and London, maintaining it even during the long march eastwards as the Germans pulled back the prisoners in the late stages of the war.  In this way he provided information from captured air crew regarding their experiences with the German night defenses, and thus aided our offensive even from behind the barbed wire."


title: Stalag Luft III

text: There were secret efforts, not exclusively American (since they learned the 'need for' and the 'how to' from British programmes), to train aircrew in secret letter writing home from the POW Camps.  In the US, these were MIS_X and P.O. Box 1142 run out of Fort Hunt in Virginia, as well as a secret programme of sending escape aids into camps disguised inside care packages from two covert relief agencies.  These went to American prisoners in many camps, including Stalag Luft III.  However, the American POWs in Stalag Luft III were moved weeks prior to the ‘Great Escape’ attempt and were not able to participate.


title: Stalag Luft III

text: Even more secret than the strategic interrogation programme was Fort Hunt’s escape and evasion (E&E) program (MIS_X). Even the fort’s commandant was unaware of this mission to prepare US servicemen to evade capture and, if captured, to escape, modelled on the existing British programme. One mission of the E&E programme was to create maps of areas where bombers were going so downed airmen could use them to find their way back. Silk maps created at P.O. Box 1142 were distributed to the Air Force, and five million uniform buttons were created containing hidden compasses. For five months prior to the escape of March 1944, MIS-X had been sending escape aids to the camp.


title: Stalag Luft III

text: The first escape occurred in October 1943 in the East Compound. Conjuring up a modern Trojan Horse, "kriegies" (prisoners) constructed a gymnastic vaulting horse largely from plywood from Red Cross parcels. The horse was designed to conceal men, tools and containers of soil. Each day the horse was carried out to the same spot near the perimeter fence and while prisoners conducted gymnastic exercises above, a tunnel was dug. At the end of each working day, a wooden board was placed over the tunnel entrance and covered with surface soil. The gymnastics disguised the real purpose of the vaulting horse and kept the sound of the digging from being detected by the microphones. For three months three prisoners, Lieutenant Michael Codner, Flight Lieutenant Eric Williams and Flight Lieutenant Oliver Philpot, in shifts of one or two diggers at a time, dug over of tunnel, using bowls as shovels and metal rods to poke through the surface of the ground to create air holes. No shoring was used except near the entrance. On the evening of 19 October 1943, Codner, Williams and Philpot made their escape. Williams and Codner were able to reach the port of Stettin where they stowed away on a Danish ship and eventually returned to Britain. Philpot, posing as a Norwegian margarine manufacturer, was able to board a train to Danzig (now Gdańsk) and from there stowed away on a Swedish ship headed for Stockholm, from where he was repatriated to Britain. Accounts of this escape were recorded in the book "Goon in the Block" (later retitled "The Wooden Horse") by Williams, the book "Stolen Journey" by Philpot and the 1950 film "The Wooden Horse".


title: Stalag Luft III

text: In March 1943, Royal Air Force Squadron Leader Roger Bushell conceived a plan for a mass escape from the North Compound, which took place on the night of 24/25 March 1944. He was being held with the other British and Commonwealth airmen and he was in command of the Escape Committee that managed all escape opportunities from the north compound. Falling back on his legal background to represent his scheme, Bushell called a meeting of the Escape Committee to advocate for his plan.


title: Stalag Luft III

text: "Everyone here in this room is living on borrowed time. By rights we should all be dead! The only reason that God allowed us this extra ration of life is so we can make life hell for the Hun ... In North Compound we are concentrating our efforts on completing and escaping through one master tunnel. No private-enterprise tunnels allowed. Three bloody deep, bloody long tunnels will be dug – Tom, Dick and Harry. One will succeed!"


title: Stalag Luft III

text: Group captain Herbert Massey, as senior British officer, authorised the escape attempt which would have good chance of success; in fact, the simultaneous digging of three tunnels would become an advantage if any one of them was discovered, because the guards would scarcely imagine that another two were well underway. The most radical aspect of the plan was not the scale of the construction, but the number of men intended to pass through the tunnels. While previous attempts had involved up to 20 men, in this case Bushell was proposing to get over 200 out, all wearing civilian clothes and some with forged papers and escape equipment. As this escape attempt was unprecedented in size, it would require unparalleled organisation; as the mastermind of the Great Escape, Roger Bushell inherited the codename of "Big X". More than 600 prisoners were involved in the construction of the tunnels.


title: Stalag Luft III

text: Three tunnels, "Tom", "Dick", and "Harry" were dug for the escape. The operation was so secretive that everyone was to refer to each tunnel by its name. Bushell took this so seriously that he threatened to court-martial anyone who even uttered the word "tunnel".


title: Stalag Luft III

text: "Tom" began in a darkened corner next to a stove chimney in hut 123 and extended west into the forest. It was found by the Germans and dynamited.


title: Stalag Luft III

text: "Dick"'s entrance was hidden in a drain sump in the washroom of hut 122 and had the most secure trap door. It was to go in the same direction as "Tom" and the prisoners decided that the hut would not be a suspected tunnel site as it was further from the wire than the others. "Dick" was abandoned for escape purposes because the area where it would have surfaced was cleared for camp expansion. "Dick" was used to store soil and supplies and as a workshop.


title: Stalag Luft III

text: "Harry", which began in hut 104, went under the "Vorlager" (which contained the German administration area), sick hut and the isolation cells to emerge at the woods on the northern edge of the camp. The entrance to "Harry" was hidden under a stove. Ultimately used for the escape, it was discovered as the escape was in progress with only 76 of the planned 220 prisoners free. The Germans filled it with sewage and sand and sealed it with cement.


title: Stalag Luft III

text: After the escape, the prisoners started digging another tunnel called "George", but this was abandoned when the camp was evacuated.


title: Stalag Luft III

text: The tunnels were very deep – about below the surface. They were very small, only square, though larger chambers were dug to house an air pump, a workshop and staging posts along each tunnel. The sandy walls were shored up with pieces of wood scavenged from all over the camp, much from the prisoners' beds (of the twenty or so boards originally supporting each mattress, only about eight were left on each bed). Other wooden furniture was also scavenged.


title: Stalag Luft III

text: Other materials were also used, such as Klim tin cans that had held powdered milk supplied by the Red Cross for the prisoners. The metal in the cans could be fashioned into various tools and items such as scoops and lamps, fuelled by fat skimmed off soup served at the camp and collected in tiny tin vessels, with wicks made from worn clothing. The main use of the Klim tins was for the extensive ventilation ducting in all three tunnels.


title: Stalag Luft III

text: As the tunnels grew longer, a number of technical innovations made the job easier and safer. A pump was built to push fresh air along the ducting, invented by Squadron Leader Bob Nelson of 37 Squadron. The pumps were built of odd items including pieces from the beds, hockey sticks and knapsacks, as well as the Klim tins.


title: Stalag Luft III

text: The usual method of disposing of sand from all the digging was to scatter it discreetly on the surface. Small pouches made of towels or long underpants were attached inside the prisoners' trousers; as they walked around, the sand could be scattered. Sometimes, they would dump sand into the small gardens they were allowed to tend. As one prisoner turned the soil, another would release sand while they both appeared to be in conversation. The prisoners wore greatcoats to conceal the bulges from the sand, and were referred to as "penguins" because of their supposed resemblance. In sunny months, sand could be carried outside and scattered in blankets used for sun bathing; more than 200 were used to make an estimated 25,000 trips.


title: Stalag Luft III

text: The Germans were aware that something was going on but failed to discover any of the tunnels until much later. To break up an escape attempt, nineteen of the top suspects were transferred without warning to Stalag VIIIC. Of those, only six had been involved with tunnel construction. One of these, a Canadian called Wally Floody, was actually originally in charge of digging and camouflage before his transfer.


title: Stalag Luft III

text: Eventually the prisoners felt they could no longer dump sand above ground because the Germans became too efficient at catching them doing it. After "Dick"'s planned exit point was covered by a new camp expansion, the decision was made to start filling it up. As the tunnel's entrance was very well hidden, "Dick" was also used as a storage room for items such as maps, postage stamps, forged travel permits, compasses, and clothing. Some guards cooperated by supplying railway timetables, maps and many official papers so that they could be forged. Some genuine civilian clothes were obtained by bribing German staff with cigarettes, coffee or chocolate. These were used by escaping prisoners to travel from the camp more easily, especially by train.


title: Stalag Luft III

text: The prisoners ran out of places to hide sand, and snow cover made it impractical to scatter it undetected. Under the seats in the theatre there was a large empty space, but when it was built the prisoners had given their word not to misuse the materials; the parole system was regarded as inviolate. Internal "legal advice" was taken and the SBOs (Senior British Officers) decided that the completed building did not fall under the parole system. A seat in the back row was hinged and the sand-dispersal problem was solved.


title: Stalag Luft III

text: German prison camps began to receive larger numbers of American prisoners. The Germans decided that new camps would be built specifically for US airmen. To allow as many people to escape as possible, including the Americans, efforts on the remaining two tunnels increased. This drew attention from guards and in September 1943 the entrance to "Tom" became the 98th tunnel to be discovered in the camp; guards in the woods had seen sand being removed from the hut where it was located. Work on "Harry" ceased and did not resume until January 1944.


title: Stalag Luft III

text: "Harry" was finally ready in March 1944. By then the Americans, some of whom had worked on "Tom", had been moved away; despite the portrayal of three in the Hollywood film, only one American, Major Johnnie Dodge, participated in the "Great Escape", and he had become a British citizen. Previously, the attempt had been planned for the summer for its good weather, but in early 1944 the Gestapo visited the camp and ordered increased effort to detect escapes. Rather than risk waiting and having their tunnel discovered, Bushell ordered the attempt be made as soon as it was ready. Many Germans willingly helped in the escape itself. The film suggests that the forgers were able to make near-exact replicas of just about any pass that was used in Nazi Germany. In reality, the forgers received a great deal of assistance from Germans who lived many hundreds of miles away on the other side of the country. Several German guards, who were openly anti-Nazi, also willingly gave the prisoners items and assistance of any kind to aid their escape.


title: Stalag Luft III

text: In their plan, of the 600 who had worked on the tunnels only 200 would be able to escape. The prisoners were separated into two groups. The first group of 100, called "serial offenders," were guaranteed a place and included 30 who spoke German well or had a history of escapes, and an additional 70 considered to have put in the most work on the tunnels. The second group, considered to have much less chance of success, was chosen by drawing lots; called "hard-arsers", they would have to travel by night as they spoke little or no German and were only equipped with the most basic fake papers and equipment.


title: Stalag Luft III

text: The prisoners waited about a week for a moonless night, and on Friday 24 March, the escape attempt began. As night fell, those allocated a place moved to Hut 104. Unfortunately for the prisoners, the exit trap door of Harry was frozen solid and freeing it delayed the escape for an hour and a half. Then it was discovered that the tunnel had come up short of the nearby forest; at 10.30 p.m. the first man out emerged just short of the tree line close to a guard tower. (According to Alan Burgess, in his book "The Longest Tunnel," the tunnel reached the forest, as planned, but the first few trees were too sparse to provide adequate cover). As the temperature was below freezing and there was snow on the ground, a dark trail would be created by crawling to cover. To avoid being seen by the sentries, the escapes were reduced to about ten per hour, rather than the one every minute that had been planned. Word was eventually sent back that no one issued with a number above 100 would be able to get away before daylight. As they would be shot if caught trying to return to their own barracks, these men changed back into their own uniforms and got some sleep. An air raid then caused the camp's (and the tunnel's) electric lighting to be shut down, slowing the escape even more. At around 1 a.m., the tunnel collapsed and had to be repaired.


title: Stalag Luft III

text: Despite these problems, 76 men crawled through to freedom, until at 4:55 a.m. on 25 March, the 77th man was spotted emerging by one of the guards. Those already in the trees began running, while a New Zealand Squadron Leader Leonard Henry Trent VC who had just reached the tree line stood up and surrendered. The guards had no idea where the tunnel entrance was, so they began searching the huts, giving men time to burn their fake papers. Hut 104 was one of the last to be searched, and despite using dogs the guards were unable to find the entrance. Finally, German guard Charlie Pilz crawled back through the tunnel but found himself trapped at the camp end; he began calling for help and the prisoners opened the entrance to let him out, finally revealing its location.


title: Stalag Luft III

text: An early problem for the escapees was that most were unable to find the way into the railway station, until daylight revealed it was in a recess of the side wall to an underground pedestrian tunnel. Consequently, many of them missed their night time trains, and decided either to walk across country or wait on the platform in daylight. Another unanticipated problem was that this was the coldest March for thirty years, with snow up to five feet deep, so the escapees had no option but to leave the cover of woods and fields and stay on the roads.


title: Stalag Luft III

text: Following the escape, the Germans made an inventory of the camp and uncovered how extensive the operation had been. Four thousand bed boards had gone missing, as well as 90 complete double bunk beds, 635 mattresses, 192 bed covers, 161 pillow cases, 52 twenty-man tables, 10 single tables, 34 chairs, 76 benches, 1,212 bed bolsters, 1,370 beading battens, 1,219 knives, 478 spoons, 582 forks, 69 lamps, 246 water cans, 30 shovels, of electric wire, of rope, and 3,424 towels. 1,700 blankets had been used, along with more than 1,400 Klim cans. Electric cable had been stolen after being left unattended by German workers; because they had not reported the theft, they were executed by the Gestapo. Thereafter each bed was supplied with only nine bed boards, which were counted regularly by the guards.


title: Stalag Luft III

text: Of 76 escapees, 73 were captured. Adolf Hitler initially wanted every recaptured officer to be shot. Hermann Göring, Field Marshal Keitel, Major-General Westhoff and Major-General Hans von Graevenitz (inspector in charge of war prisoners) pointed out to Hitler that a massacre might bring about reprisals to German pilots in Allied hands. Hitler agreed, but insisted "more than half" were to be shot, eventually ordering SS head Himmler to execute more than half of the escapees. Himmler passed the selection on to General Arthur Nebe, and fifty were executed singly or in pairs. Roger Bushell, the leader of the escape, was shot by Gestapo official Emil Schulz just outside Saarbrücken, Germany. Bob Nelson is said to have been spared by the Gestapo because they may have believed he was related to his namesake Admiral Nelson. His friend Dick Churchill was probably spared because of his surname, shared with the British Prime Minister.


title: Stalag Luft III

text: Two captured escapees were sent to Oflag IV-C Colditz, and four were sent to Sachsenhausen concentration camp, where one quipped "the only way out of here is up the chimney." They managed to tunnel out and escape three months later, although they were recaptured and returned;


title: Stalag Luft III

text: Bergsland and Müller escaped together, and made it to neutral Sweden by train and boat with the help of friendly Swedish sailors. Van der Stok, granted one of the first slots by the Escape Committee owing to his language and escape skills, travelled through much of occupied Europe with the help of the French Resistance before finding safety at a British consulate in Spain.


title: Stalag Luft III

text: The Gestapo investigated the escape and, whilst this uncovered no significant new information, the camp commandant, von Lindeiner-Wildau, was removed and threatened with court martial. Having feigned mental illness to avoid imprisonment, he was later wounded by Soviet troops advancing toward Berlin, while acting as second in command of an infantry unit. He surrendered to British forces as the war ended, and was a prisoner of war for two years at the prisoner of war camp known as the "London Cage". He testified during the British SIB investigation concerning the Stalag Luft III murders. Originally one of Göring's personal staff, after being refused retirement, von Lindeiner had been posted as Sagan commandant. He had followed the Geneva Accords concerning the treatment of POWs and had won the respect of the senior prisoners. He was repatriated in 1947 and died in 1963 aged 82.


title: Stalag Luft III

text: On April 6, 1944 the new camp "commandant" Oberstleutnant Erich Cordes informed Massey that he had received official communication from the German High Command that 41 of the escapees had been shot while resisting arrest. Massey was himself repatriated on health grounds a few days later.


title: Stalag Luft III

text: Over subsequent days, prisoners collated the names of 47 prisoners they considered to be unaccounted for. On 15 April (17 April in some sources) the new senior British officer, Group Captain Douglas Wilson (RAAF), surreptitiously passed a list of these names to an official visitor from the Swiss Red Cross.


title: Stalag Luft III

text: Cordes was replaced soon afterwards by Oberst Werner Braune. Braune was appalled that so many escapees had been killed, and allowed the prisoners who remained there to build a memorial, to which he also contributed. (The memorial still stands at its original site.)


title: Stalag Luft III

text: The British government learned of the deaths from a routine visit to the camp by Swiss authorities as the protecting power in May; the Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden announced the news to the House of Commons on 19 May 1944. Shortly afterwards the repatriated Massey arrived in Britain and briefed the Government regarding the fate of the escapees. Eden updated Parliament on 23 June, promising that, at the end of the war, those responsible would be brought to exemplary justice.


title: Stalag Luft III

text: General Arthur Nebe, who is believed to have selected the airmen to be shot, was involved in the 20 July plot to kill Hitler and was executed by Nazi authorities in 1945.


title: Stalag Luft III

text: After the war ended, Wg Cdr. Wilfred Bowes of the RAF Police Special Investigation Branch (SIB) began to research the Great Escape and launched a manhunt for German personnel considered responsible for killing escapees. As a result, several former Gestapo and military personnel were convicted of war crimes.


title: Stalag Luft III

text: Colonel Telford Taylor was the US prosecutor in the German High Command case at the Nuremberg Trials. The indictment called for the General Staff of the Army and the High Command of the German Armed Forces to be considered criminal organisations; the witnesses were several of the surviving German field marshals and their staff officers. One of the crimes charged was of the murder of the fifty. Colonel of the Luftwaffe Bernd von Brauchitsch, who served on the staff of Reich Marshal Hermann Göring, was interrogated by Captain Horace Hahn about the murders. Several Gestapo officers responsible for the murders were executed or imprisoned.


title: Stalag Luft III

text: Just before midnight on 27 January 1945, with Soviet troops only away, the remaining 11,000 POWs were marched out of camp with the eventual destination of Spremberg. In freezing temperatures and of snow, 2,000 prisoners were assigned to clear the road ahead of the main group. After a march, the POWs arrived in Bad Muskau where they rested for 30 hours, before marching the remaining to Spremberg. On 31 January, the South Compound prisoners plus 200 men from the West Compound were sent by train to Stalag VII-A at Moosburg followed by the Centre compound prisoners on 7 February. Thirty-two prisoners escaped during the march to Moosburg but all were recaptured. The North, East and remaining West compound prisoners at Spremberg were sent to Stalag XIII-D at Nürnberg on 2 February.


title: Stalag Luft III

text: With the approach of US forces on 13 April, the American prisoners at XIII-D were marched to Stalag VII-A. While the majority reached VII-A on 20 April, many had dropped out on the way with the German guards making no attempt to stop them. Built to hold 14,000 POWs, Stalag VII-A now held 130,000 from evacuated stalags with 500 living in barracks built for 200. Some chose to live in tents while others slept in air raid slit trenches. The US 14th Armored Division liberated the prisoners of VII-A on 29 April. Kenneth W. Simmons's book "Kriegie" (1960) vividly describes the life of POWs in the American section of Stalag Luft III in the final months of the war, ending with the winter forced-march from the camp, ahead of the advancing Soviet troops and eventually being liberated.


title: Stalag Luft III

text: The POW camp was actually officially referred to as Stalag Luft 3 by the Germans in their documentation and on the ID tags issued to inmates, and Paul Brickhill, in his early writings about the escape, also wrote it that way. For his book "The Great Escape", his English editors changed it to Stalag Luft III, and such has been its influence on popular culture that Stalag Luft III it has remained.


title: Stalag Luft III

text: Eric Williams was a navigator on a downed bomber who was held at Stalag Luft III. After the war, on the long sea voyage home, Williams wrote "Goon in the Block", a short book based on his experience. Four years later, in 1949, he rewrote it as a longer third-person narrative under the title "The Wooden Horse", which was filmed as "The Wooden Horse" in 1950. He included many details omitted in his first book, but changed his name to "Peter Howard", Michael Codner to "John Clinton" and Oliver Philpot to "Philip Rowe". Williams also wrote a prequel, "The Tunnel", an extended study of the mentalities of life as a prisoner of war. Although not an escape novel, it shows the profound urge to escape, and explores the ways that camp life affected men's emotions.


title: Stalag Luft III

text: Paul Brickhill was an Australian-born Spitfire pilot, shot down in 1943 over Tunisia to become a prisoner of war. While imprisoned at Stalag Luft III, he was involved in the escape attempt. He did not take part in tunnelling but was in charge of "stooges", the relay teams who would alert prisoners that German search teams had entered the camp. He was originally scheduled to be an early escapee but when it was discovered he suffered from claustrophobia, he was dropped down to the bottom of the list. He later said that this probably saved his life. After the war, Brickhill co-wrote "Escape to Danger" (with Conrad Norton, and original artwork: London: Faber and Faber, 1946). Later Brickhill wrote a larger study and the first major account of the escape in "The Great Escape" (1950), bringing the incident to a wide public attention. This book became the basis of the film (1963). The film was based on the real events but with numerous compromises for its commercial appeal, such as including Americans among the escapees (none of whom were actually American). While some characters were fictitious, many were amalgams of and some based on real people. There were no actual escapes by motorcycle or aircraft (the sequence involving an escape in a German trainer may have been inspired by Bob Hoover's escape from Stalag Luft I in a FW 190), nor were the recaptured prisoners executed in one place at the same time. The film has resulted in the story and the memory of the fifty executed airmen remaining widely known, if in a distorted form.


title: Stalag Luft III

text: The search for those responsible for the murder of the Allied officers, and the subsequent trials, was depicted in a 1988 television film named "". The murder of the prisoners in this film is more accurate than in the 1963 original, with the POWs being shot individually or in pairs but other portions of the film are fictional.


title: Stalag Luft III

text: The camp was the basis for a single-player mission and multi-player map in the first "Call of Duty" video game. Most of the buildings and guard towers were identical to the camp and the single-player mission involved rescuing a British officer from a prison cell that closely resembled the camp's solitary confinement building. Stalag Luft is also a playable POW camp in the computer and Xbox game "The Escapists", but with a slightly different name of "Stalag Flucht".


title: Stalag Luft III

text: "The Great Escape" is a video game which shares a title and similar plot to the movie. for the Sinclair ZX Spectrum computer published by Ocean Software in 1986, and later ported for the Commodore 64, Amstrad CPC, and DOS computers. The game surroundings were similar to the actual camp but the supposed location was in Northern Germany, and one side of the camp overlooked the North Sea. The Spectrum version of "The Great Escape" was placed at number 23 in the Your Sinclair official top 100,


title: Stalag Luft III

text: "The Great Escape" also was a game for Xbox and PlayStation 2 released in 2003. The plot-line follows that of the 1963 film, except there are also levels featuring some of the character's first captures and early escape attempts, as well as a changed ending.


title: Stalag Luft III

text: A DVD of a 1983 reunion held in Chicago includes a reenactment of an interrogation between Hans Scharff, master Luftwaffe interrogator known for his subtle approach, and American flying ace Francis Gabreski. This segment is hosted by Ray Tolliver, author of The Interrogator. Also included are short interviews with some of the former POWs.


title: Finite difference

text: A finite difference is a mathematical expression of the form . If a finite difference is divided by , one gets a difference quotient. The approximation of derivatives by finite differences plays a central role in finite difference methods for the numerical solution of differential equations, especially boundary value problems.


title: Finite difference

text: The difference operator, commonly denoted formula_1 is the operator that maps a function to the function formula_2 defined by


title: Finite difference

text: A difference equation is a functional equation that involves the finite difference operator in the same way as a differential equation involves derivatives. There are many similarities between difference equations and differential equations, specially in the solving methods. Certain recurrence relations can be written as difference equations by replacing iteration notation with finite differences.


title: Finite difference

text: In numerical analysis, finite differences are widely used for approximating derivatives, and the term "finite difference" is often used as an abbreviation of "finite difference approximation of derivatives". Finite difference approximations are finite difference quotients in the terminology employed above.


title: Finite difference

text: Finite differences were introduced by Brook Taylor in 1715 and have also been studied as abstract self-standing mathematical objects in works by George Boole (1860), L. M. Milne-Thomson (1933), and (1939). Finite differences trace their origins back to one of Jost Bürgi's algorithms () and work by others including Isaac Newton. The formal calculus of finite differences can be viewed as an alternative to the calculus of infinitesimals.


title: Finite difference

text: Depending on the application, the spacing may be variable or constant. When omitted, is taken to be 1; that is,


title: Finite difference

text: Finite difference is often used as an approximation of the derivative, typically in numerical differentiation.


title: Finite difference

text: If has a fixed (non-zero) value instead of approaching zero, then the right-hand side of the above equation would be written


title: Finite difference

text: Hence, the forward difference divided by approximates the derivative when is small. The error in this approximation can be derived from Taylor's theorem. Assuming that is twice differentiable, we have


title: Finite difference

text: However, the central (also called centered) difference yields a more accurate approximation. If is three times differentiable,


title: Finite difference

text: The main problem with the central difference method, however, is that oscillating functions can yield zero derivative. If for odd, and for even, then if it is calculated with the central difference scheme. This is particularly troublesome if the domain of is discrete. See also Symmetric derivative


title: Finite difference

text: Authors for whom finite differences mean finite difference approximations define the forward/backward/central differences as the quotients given in this section (instead of employing the definitions given in the previous section).


title: Finite difference

text: In an analogous way, one can obtain finite difference approximations to higher order derivatives and differential operators. For example, by using the above central difference formula for and and applying a central difference formula for the derivative of at , we obtain the central difference approximation of the second derivative of :


title: Finite difference

text: These equations use binomial coefficients after the summation sign shown as . Each row of Pascal's triangle provides the coefficient for each value of .


title: Finite difference

text: Note that the central difference will, for odd , have multiplied by non-integers. This is often a problem because it amounts to changing the interval of discretization. The problem may be remedied taking the average of and .


title: Finite difference

text: Forward differences applied to a sequence are sometimes called the binomial transform of the sequence, and have a number of interesting combinatorial properties. Forward differences may be evaluated using the Nörlund–Rice integral. The integral representation for these types of series is interesting, because the integral can often be evaluated using asymptotic expansion or saddle-point techniques; by contrast, the forward difference series can be extremely hard to evaluate numerically, because the binomial coefficients grow rapidly for large .


title: Finite difference

text: The relationship of these higher-order differences with the respective derivatives is straightforward,


title: Finite difference

text: Higher-order differences can also be used to construct better approximations. As mentioned above, the first-order difference approximates the first-order derivative up to a term of order . However, the combination


title: Finite difference

text: approximates up to a term of order . This can be proven by expanding the above expression in Taylor series, or by using the calculus of finite differences, explained below.


title: Finite difference

text: If necessary, the finite difference can be centered about any point by mixing forward, backward, and central differences.


title: Finite difference

text: For a given polynomial of degree , expressed in the function , with real numbers and and "lower order terms" (if any) marked as :


title: Finite difference

text: After pairwise differences, the following result can be achieved, where is a real number marking the arithmetic difference:


title: Finite difference

text: Only the coefficient of the highest-order term remains. As this result is constant with respect to , any further pairwise differences will have the value .


title: Finite difference

text: Let be a polynomial of degree where and the coefficient of the highest-order term be . Assuming the following holds true for all polynomials of degree :


title: Finite difference

text: As , this results in a polynomial of degree , with as the coefficient of the highest-order term. Given the assumption above and pairwise differences (resulting in a total of pairwise differences for ), it can be found that:


title: Finite difference

text: This identity can be used to find the lowest-degree polynomial that intercepts a number of points where the difference on the x-axis from one point to the next is a constant . For example, given the following points:


title: Finite difference

text: We can use a differences table, where all cells to the right of the first , the following relation to the cells in the column immediately to the left exists for a cell , with the top-leftmost cell being at coordinate :


title: Finite difference

text: This arrives at a constant . The arithmetic difference is , as established above. Given the number of pairwise differences needed to reach the constant, it can be surmised this is a polynomial of degree . Thus, using the identity above:


title: Finite difference

text: Then, subtracting out the first term, which lowers the polynomial's degree, and finding the finite difference again:


title: Finite difference

text: Without any pairwise differences, it is found that the 4th and final term of the polynomial is the constant . Thus, the lowest-degree polynomial intercepting all the points in the first table is found:


title: Finite difference

text: Using linear algebra one can construct finite difference approximations which utilize an arbitrary number of points to the left and a (possibly different) number of points to the right of the evaluation point, for any order derivative. This involves solving a linear system such that the Taylor expansion of the sum of those points around the evaluation point best approximates the Taylor expansion of the desired derivative. Such formulas can be represented graphically on a hexagonal or diamond-shaped grid.


title: Finite difference

text: This is useful for differentiating a function on a grid, where, as one approaches the edge of the grid, one must sample fewer and fewer points on one side.


title: Finite difference

text: The Finite Difference Coefficients Calculator constructs finite difference approximations for non-standard (and even non-integer) stencils given an arbitrary stencil and a desired derivative order.


title: Finite difference

text: An important application of finite differences is in numerical analysis, especially in numerical differential equations, which aim at the numerical solution of ordinary and partial differential equations. The idea is to replace the derivatives appearing in the differential equation by finite differences that approximate them. The resulting methods are called finite difference methods.


title: Finite difference

text: Common applications of the finite difference method are in computational science and engineering disciplines, such as thermal engineering, fluid mechanics, etc.


title: Finite difference

text: The Newton series consists of the terms of the Newton forward difference equation, named after Isaac Newton; in essence, it is the Newton interpolation formula, first published in his "Principia Mathematica" in 1687, namely the discrete analog of the continuous Taylor expansion,


title: Finite difference

text: which holds for any polynomial function and for many (but not all) analytic functions. (It does not hold when is exponential type formula_36. This is easily seen, as the sine function vanishes at integer multiples of formula_36; the corresponding Newton series is identically zero, as all finite differences are zero in this case. Yet clearly, the sine function is not zero.) Here, the expression


title: Finite difference

text: is the "falling factorial" or "lower factorial", while the empty product is defined to be 1. In this particular case, there is an assumption of unit steps for the changes in the values of of the generalization below.


title: Finite difference

text: Note the formal correspondence of this result to Taylor's theorem. Historically, this, as well as the Chu–Vandermonde identity,


title: Finite difference

text: (following from it, and corresponding to the binomial theorem), are included in the observations that matured to the system of umbral calculus.


title: Finite difference

text: Newton series expansions can be superior to Taylor series expansions when applied to discrete quantities like quantum spins (see Holstein–Primakoff transformation), bosonic operator functions or discrete counting statistics.


title: Finite difference

text: To illustrate how one may use Newton's formula in actual practice, consider the first few terms of doubling the Fibonacci sequence One can find a polynomial that reproduces these values, by first computing a difference table, and then substituting the differences that correspond to (underlined) into the formula as follows,


title: Finite difference

text: In analysis with -adic numbers, Mahler's theorem states that the assumption that is a polynomial function can be weakened all the way to the assumption that is merely continuous.


title: Finite difference

text: Carlson's theorem provides necessary and sufficient conditions for a Newton series to be unique, if it exists. However, a Newton series does not, in general, exist.


title: Finite difference

text: The Newton series, together with the Stirling series and the Selberg series, is a special case of the general difference series, all of which are defined in terms of suitably scaled forward differences.


title: Finite difference

text: The forward difference can be considered as an operator, called the difference operator, which maps the function to . This operator amounts to


title: Finite difference

text: The finite difference of higher orders can be defined in recursive manner as . Another equivalent definition is .


title: Finite difference

text: where denotes the continuum derivative operator, mapping to its derivative . The expansion is valid when both sides act on analytic functions, for sufficiently small . Thus, , and formally inverting the exponential yields


title: Finite difference

text: This formula holds in the sense that both operators give the same result when applied to a polynomial.


title: Finite difference

text: Even for analytic functions, the series on the right is not guaranteed to converge; it may be an asymptotic series. However, it can be used to obtain more accurate approximations for the derivative. For instance, retaining the first two terms of the series yields the second-order approximation to mentioned at the end of the section "Higher-order differences".


title: Finite difference

text: The calculus of finite differences is related to the umbral calculus of combinatorics. This remarkably systematic correspondence is due to the identity of the commutators of the umbral quantities to their continuum analogs ( limits),


title: Finite difference

text: For instance, the umbral analog of a monomial is a generalization of the above falling factorial (Pochhammer k-symbol),


title: Finite difference

text: hence the above Newton interpolation formula (by matching coefficients in the expansion of an arbitrary function in such symbols), and so on.


title: Finite difference

text: and hence "Fourier sums of continuum functions are readily mapped to umbral Fourier sums faithfully", i.e., involving the same Fourier coefficients multiplying these umbral basis exponentials. This umbral exponential thus amounts to the exponential generating function of the Pochhammer symbols.


title: Finite difference

text: Thus, for instance, the Dirac delta function maps to its umbral correspondent, the cardinal sine function,


title: Finite difference

text: and so forth. Difference equations can often be solved with techniques very similar to those for solving differential equations.


title: Finite difference

text: The inverse operator of the forward difference operator, so then the umbral integral, is the indefinite sum or antidifference operator.


title: Finite difference

text: Finite differences can be considered in more than one variable. They are analogous to partial derivatives in several variables.


title: Finite difference

text: Alternatively, for applications in which the computation of is the most costly step, and both first and second derivatives must be computed, a more efficient formula for the last case is


title: Finite difference

text: since the only values to compute that are not already needed for the previous four equations are and .


title: Battle of the Yarmuk

text: The Battle of the Yarmuk (also spelled Yarmouk) was a major battle between the army of the Byzantine Empire and the Muslim forces of the Rashidun Caliphate. The battle consisted of a series of engagements that lasted for six days in August 636, near the Yarmouk River, along what are now the borders of Syria–Jordan and Syria-Israel, southeast of the Sea of Galilee. The result of the battle was a complete Muslim victory that ended Byzantine rule in Syria. The Battle of the Yarmuk is regarded as one of the most decisive battles in military history, and it marked the first great wave of early Muslim conquests after the death of the Islamic prophet Muhammad, heralding the rapid advance of Islam into the then-Christian Levant.


title: Battle of the Yarmuk

text: To check the Arab advance and to recover lost territory, Emperor Heraclius had sent a massive expedition to the Levant in May 636. As the Byzantine army approached, the Arabs tactically withdrew from Syria and regrouped all their forces at the Yarmuk plains close to the Arabian Peninsula, where they were reinforced, and defeated the numerically superior Byzantine army. The battle is widely regarded to be Khalid ibn al-Walid's greatest military victory and cemented his reputation as one of the greatest tacticians and cavalry commanders in history.


title: Battle of the Yarmuk

text: In 610, during the Byzantine–Sasanian War of 602–628, Heraclius became the emperor of the Byzantine Empire, after overthrowing Phocas. Meanwhile, the Sasanian Empire conquered Mesopotamia and in 611 they overran Syria and entered Anatolia, occupying Caesarea Mazaca (now Kayseri, Turkey). In 612, Heraclius managed to expel the Persians from Anatolia but was decisively defeated in 613 when he launched a major offensive in Syria against the Persians. Over the following decade, the Persians were able to conquer Palestine and Egypt. Meanwhile, Heraclius prepared for a counterattack and rebuilt his army.


title: Battle of the Yarmuk

text: In 622, Heraclius finally launched his offensive. After his overwhelming victories over the Persians and their allies in the Caucasus and Armenia, Heraclius launched a winter offensive against the Persians in Mesopotamia in 627, winning a decisive victory at the Battle of Nineveh thus threatening the Persian capital city of Ctesiphon. Discredited by the series of disasters, Khosrow II was overthrown and killed in a coup led by his son Kavadh II, who immediately sued for peace and agreed to withdraw from all occupied territories of the Byzantine Empire. Heraclius restored the True Cross to Jerusalem with a majestic ceremony in 629.


title: Battle of the Yarmuk

text: Meanwhile, there had been rapid political development in the Arabian Peninsula, where Muhammad had been preaching Islam and, by 630, had successfully annexed most of Arabia under a single political authority. When Muhammad died in June 632, Abu Bakr was chosen as caliph and his political successor. Troubles emerged soon after Abu Bakr's succession, and several Arab tribes openly revolted against Abu Bakr, who declared war against the rebels. In what became known as the Ridda wars of 632–633, Abu Bakr managed to defeat his opponents and unite Arabia under the central authority of the caliph at Medina.


title: Battle of the Yarmuk

text: Once the rebels had been subdued, Abu Bakr began a war of conquest, beginning with Iraq. Sending his most brilliant general, Khalid ibn al-Walid, Iraq was conquered in a series of successful campaigns against the Sassanid Persians. Abu Bakr's confidence grew, and once Khalid established his stronghold in Iraq, Abu Bakr issued a call to arms for the invasion of Syria in February 634. The Muslim invasion of Syria was a series of carefully planned and well-co-ordinated military operations, which employed strategy, instead of pure strength, to deal with the Byzantine defensive measures.


title: Battle of the Yarmuk

text: The Muslim armies, however, soon proved to be too small to handle the Byzantine response, and their commanders called for reinforcements. Khalid was sent by Abu Bakr from Iraq to Syria with reinforcements and to lead the invasion. In July, the Byzantines were decisively defeated at Ajnadayn. Damascus fell in September, followed by the Battle of Fahl in which the last significant garrison of Palestine was defeated and routed.


title: Battle of the Yarmuk

text: After Abu Bakr died in 634, his successor, Umar, was determined to continue the Caliphate's expansion deeper into Syria. Though previous campaigns led by Khalid had been successful, he was replaced by Abu Ubaidah. Having secured southern Palestine, Muslim forces now advanced up the trade route, and Tiberias and Baalbek fell without much struggle and conquered Emesa early in 636. The Muslims then continued their conquest across the Levant.


title: Battle of the Yarmuk

text: Having seized Emesa, the Muslims were just a march away from Aleppo, a Byzantine stronghold, and Antioch, where Heraclius resided. Seriously alarmed by the series of setbacks, Heraclius prepared for a counterattack to reacquire the lost regions. In 635 Yazdegerd III, the Emperor of Persia, sought an alliance with the Byzantine Emperor. Heraclius married off his daughter (according to traditions, his granddaughter) Manyanh to Yazdegerd III, to cement the alliance. While Heraclius prepared for a major offensive in the Levant, Yazdegerd was to mount a simultaneous counterattack in Iraq, in what was meant to be a well-coordinated effort. When Heraclius launched his offensive in May 636, Yazdegerd could not co-ordinate with the maneuver, probably owing to the exhausted condition of his government, and what would have been a decisive plan missed the mark.


title: Battle of the Yarmuk

text: Byzantine preparations began in late 635 and by May 636 Heraclius had a large force concentrated at Antioch in Northern Syria. The assembled Byzantine army contingents consisted of Slavs, Franks, Georgians, Armenians and Christian Arabs and Lombards, Avars, Khazars, Balkans, Göktürks. The force was organized into five armies, the joint leader of which was Theodore Trithyrius. Vahan, an Armenian and the former garrison commander of Emesa, was made the overall field commander, and had under his command a purely Armenian army. Buccinator (Qanatir), a Slavic prince, commanded the Slavs and Jabalah ibn al-Aiham, king of the Ghassanid Arabs, commanded an exclusively Christian Arab force. The remaining contingents, all European, were placed under Gregory and Dairjan. Heraclius himself supervised the operation from Antioch. Byzantine sources mention Niketas, son of the Persian general Shahrbaraz, among the commanders, but it is not certain which army he commanded.


title: Battle of the Yarmuk

text: The Rashidun army was then split into four groups: one under Amr in Palestine, one under Shurahbil in Jordan, one under Yazid in the Damascus-Caesarea region and the last one under Abu Ubaidah along with Khalid at Emesa.


title: Battle of the Yarmuk

text: As the Muslim forces were geographically divided, Heraclius sought to exploit that situation and planned to attack. He did not wish to engage in a single pitched battle but rather to employ central position and fight the enemy in detail by concentrating large forces against each of the Muslim corps before they could consolidate their troops. By forcing the Muslims to retreat, or by destroying Muslim forces separately, he would fulfil his strategy of recapturing lost territory. Reinforcements were sent to Caesarea under Heraclius' son Constantine III, probably to tie down Yazid's forces, which were besieging the town. The Byzantine imperial army moved out from Antioch and Northern Syria in the middle of June 636.


title: Battle of the Yarmuk

text: The Muslims discovered Heraclius' preparations at Shaizar from Byzantine prisoners. Alert to the possibility of being caught with separated forces that could be destroyed, Khalid called a council of war and advised Abu Ubaidah to pull the troops back from Palestine and Northern and Central Syria and concentrate the entire Rashidun army in one place. Abu Ubaidah ordered the concentration of troops in the vast plain near Jabiyah, as control of the area made cavalry charges possible and facilitated the arrival of reinforcements from Umar, so that a strong, united force could be fielded against the Byzantine armies. The position also benefited from close proximity to the Rashidun stronghold of Najd, if retreat became necessary. Instructions were also issued to return jizya (tribute) to people who had paid it.


title: Battle of the Yarmuk

text: However, once concentrated at Jabiyah, the Muslims were subject to raids from pro-Byzantine Ghassanid forces. Encamping in the region was also precarious as a strong Byzantine force was garrisoned in Caeseara and could attack the Muslim rear while they were held in front by the Byzantine army. On Khalid's advice the Muslim forces retreated to Dara’ah (or Dara) and Dayr Ayyub, covering the gap between the Yarmuk Gorges and the Harra lava plains, and established a line of camps in the eastern part of the plain of Yarmuk. This was a strong defensive position, and the maneuverers brought the Muslims and Byzantines into a decisive battle, which the latter had tried to avoid. During the maneuvers, there were no engagements except for a minor skirmish between Khalid's elite light cavalry and the Byzantine advance guard.


title: Battle of the Yarmuk

text: The battlefield lies in the plain of Jordanian Hauran, just southeast of the Golan Heights, an upland region currently on the frontier between Jordan and Syria, east of the Sea of Galilee. The battle was fought on the plain south of Yarmuk River. That ravine joins the Yarmuk River, a tributary of the Jordan River, on its south. The stream had very steep banks, ranging from – in height. On the north is the Jabiyah road and to the east are the Azra hills although the hills were outside the actual field of battle. Strategically, there was only one prominence in the battlefield: a elevation known as "Tel al Jumm'a", and for the Muslim troops concentrated there, the hill gave a good view of the plain of Yarmuk. The ravine on the west of the battlefield was accessible at a few places in 636 AD, and had one main crossing: a Roman bridge ("Jisr-ur-Ruqqad") near "Ain Dhakar" Logistically, the Yarmuk plain had enough water supplies and pastures to sustain both armies. The plain was excellent for cavalry maneuvers.


title: Battle of the Yarmuk

text: Most early accounts place the size of the Muslim forces between 36,000 and 40,000 and the number of Byzantine forces between 60,000 and 70,000 (This number has been estimated by taking into account the logistical situation of the Empire and with the view that they could never have mustered such troops when the Empire was at its apex but especially not with the especially weak and exhausted realm of 628 onwards). Modern estimates for the sizes of the respective armies vary: some estimates for the Byzantine army are between 80,000 and 150,000, while other estimates are 15,000 to 20,000. Estimates for the Rashidun army are between 25,000 and 40,000. Original accounts are mostly from Arab sources, generally agreeing that the Byzantine army and their allies outnumbered the Muslim Arabs by a 2 to 1. The only early Byzantine source is Theophanes, who wrote a century later. Accounts of the battle vary, some stating it lasted a day, others more than a day.


title: Battle of the Yarmuk

text: During a council of war, the command of the Muslim army was transferred to Khalid by Abu Ubaidah, Commander in Chief of the Muslim army.


title: Battle of the Yarmuk

text: After taking command, Khalid reorganized the army into 36 infantry regiments and four cavalry regiments, with his cavalry elite, the mobile guard, held in reserve. The army was organised in the "Tabi'a" formation, a tight, defensive infantry formation.


title: Battle of the Yarmuk

text: The army was lined up on a front of , facing west, with its left flank lying south on the Yarmuk River a mile before the ravines of "Wadi al Allan" began. The army's right flank was on the Jabiyah road in the north across the heights of "Tel al Jumm'a", with substantial gaps between the divisions so that their frontage would match that of the Byzantine battle line at . The centre of the army was under the command of Abu Ubaidah ibn al-Jarrah (left centre) and Shurahbil bin Hasana (right centre). The left wing was under the command of Yazid and the right wing was under Amr ibn al-A's.


title: Battle of the Yarmuk

text: The centre, left and right wings were given cavalry regiments, to be used as a reserve for a counterattack if they were pushed back by the Byzantines. Behind the centre stood the mobile guard under the personal command of Khalid. If Khalid was too occupied in leading the general army, Dharar ibn al-Azwar would command the mobile guard. Over the course of the battle, Khalid would repeatedly make critical and decisive use of that mounted reserve.


title: Battle of the Yarmuk

text: Khalid sent out several scouts to keep the Byzantines under observation. In late July, Vahan sent Jabalah with his lightly armoured Christian-Arab forces to reconnoitre-in-force, but they were repulsed by the mobile guard. After the skirmish, no engagement occurred for a month.


title: Battle of the Yarmuk

text: Helmets used included gilded helmets similar to the silver helmets of the Sassanid empire. Mail was commonly used to protect the face, neck, and cheeks as an aventail from the helmet or as a mail coif. Heavy leather sandals, as well as Roman-type sandal boots, were also typical of the early Muslim soldiers. Armour included hardened leather scale or lamellar armour and mail armour. Infantry soldiers were more heavily armoured than horsemen. Large wooden or wickerwork shields were used. Long-shafted spears were used, with infantry spears being long and cavalry spears being up to long. Short infantry swords like the Roman gladius and Sassanid long swords were used; long swords were usually carried by horsemen. Swords were hung in baldrics. Bows were about long when unbraced, similar in size to the famous English longbow. The maximum useful range of the traditional Arabian bow was about . Early Muslim archers, while being infantry archers without the mobility of horseback archer regiments, proved to be very effective in defending against light and unarmoured cavalry attacks.


title: Battle of the Yarmuk

text: A few days after the Muslims encamped at the Yarmuk plain, the Byzantine army, preceded by the lightly armed Ghassanids of Jabalah, moved forward and established strongly fortified camps just north of the Wadi-ur-Ruqqad.


title: Battle of the Yarmuk

text: The right flank of the Byzantine army was at the south end of the plains, near the Yarmuk River and about a mile before the ravines of "Wadi al Allan" began. The left flank of the Byzantines was at the north, a short distance before the Hills of Jabiyah began, and was relatively exposed. Vahan deployed the Imperial Army facing east, with a front about long, as he was trying to cover the whole area between the Yarmuk gorge in the south and the Roman road to Egypt in the north, and substantial gaps had been left between the Byzantine divisions. The right wing was commanded by Gregory and the left by Qanatir. The centre was formed by the army of Dairjan and the Armenian army of Vahan, both under the overall command of Dairjan. The Byzantine regular heavy cavalry, the cataphract, was distributed equally among the four armies, each army deploying its infantry at the forefront and its cavalry as a reserve in the rear. Vahan deployed Jabalah's Christian Arabs, mounted on horses and camels, as a skirmishing force, screening the main army until its arrival.


title: Battle of the Yarmuk

text: Early Muslim sources mention that the army of Gregory had used chains to link together its foot soldiers, who had all taken an oath of death. The chains were in 10-man lengths as a proof of unshakeable courage on the part of the men, who thus displayed their willingness to die where they stood and not to retreat. The chains also acted as an insurance against a breakthrough by enemy cavalry. However, modern historians suggest that the Byzantines adopted the Graeco-Roman testudo military formation in which soldiers would stand shoulder-to-shoulder with shields held high and an arrangement of 10 to 20 men would be completely shielded on all sides from missile fire, each soldier providing cover for an adjoining companion.


title: Battle of the Yarmuk

text: The Byzantine cavalry was armed with a long sword, known as the "spathion". They would also have had a light wooden lance, known as a "kontarion" and a bow ("toxarion") with forty arrows in a quiver, hung from a saddle or from the belt. Heavy infantry, known as "skoutatoi", had a short sword and a short spear. The lightly armed Byzantine troops and the archers carried a small shield, a bow hung from the shoulder across the back and a quiver of arrows. Cavalry armour consisted of a hauberk with a mail coif and a helmet with a pendant: a throat-guard lined with fabric and having a fringe and cheek piece. Infantry was similarly equipped with a hauberk, a helmet and leg armour. Light lamellar and scale armour was also used.


title: Battle of the Yarmuk

text: Khalid's strategy of withdrawing from the occupied areas and concentrating all of his troops for a decisive battle forced the Byzantines to concentrate their five armies in response. The Byzantines had for centuries avoided engaging in large-scale decisive battles, and the concentration of their forces created logistical strains for which the empire was ill-prepared.


title: Battle of the Yarmuk

text: Damascus was the closest logistical base, but Mansur, leader of Damascus, could not fully supply the massive Byzantine army that was gathered at the Yarmuk plain. Several clashes were reported with local citizens over supply requisition, as summer was at an end and there was a decline of pasturage. Greek court sources accused Vahan of treason for his disobedience to Heraclius' command not to engage in large-scale battle with Arabs. Given the massing of the Muslim armies at Yarmuk, however, Vahan had little choice but to respond in kind. Relations between the various Byzantine commanders were also fraught with tension. There was a struggle for power between Trithurios and Vahan, Jarajis, and Qanatir (Buccinator). Jabalah, the Christian Arab leader, was largely ignored, to the detriment of the Byzantines given his knowledge of the local terrain. An atmosphere of mistrust thus existed between the Romans, Greeks, Armenians and Arabs. Longstanding ecclesiastical feuds between the Monophysite and Chalcedonian factions, of negligible direct impact, certainly inflamed underlying tensions. The effect of the feuds was decreased coordination and planning, one of the reasons for the catastrophic Byzantine defeat.


title: Battle of the Yarmuk

text: The battle lines of the Muslims and the Byzantines were divided into four sections: the left wing, the left centre, the right centre and the right wing. Note that the descriptions of the Muslim and the Byzantine battle lines are exactly each other's opposite: the Muslim right wing faced the Byzantine left wing (see image).


title: Battle of the Yarmuk

text: Vahan was instructed by Heraclius not to engage in battle until all avenues of diplomacy had been explored, probably because Yazdegerd III's forces were not yet ready for the offensive in Iraq. Accordingly, Vahan sent Gregory and then Jabalah to negotiate, but their efforts proved futile. Before the battle, on Vahan's invitation, Khalid came to negotiate peace, with a similar end. The negotiations delayed the battles for a month.


title: Battle of the Yarmuk

text: On the other hand, Umar, whose forces at Qadisiyah were threatened with confronting the Sassanid armies, ordered Sa`d ibn Abi Waqqas to enter negotiations with the Persians and to send emissaries to Yazdegerd III and his commander Rostam Farrokhzād, apparently inviting them to Islam. That was most probably the delaying tactic employed by Umar on the Persian front. Meanwhile, he sent reinforcements of 6,000 troops, mostly from Yemen, to Khalid. The force included 1,000 Sahaba (companions of Muhammad), among whom were 100 veterans of the Battle of Badr, the first battle in Islamic history, and included citizens of the highest rank, such as Zubayr ibn al-Awwam, Abu Sufyan, and his wife Hind bint Utbah.


title: Battle of the Yarmuk

text: Also present were such distinct companions as Sa'id ibn Zayd, Fadl ibn Abbas, Abdul-Rahman ibn Abi Bakr (the son of Abu Bakr), Abdullah ibn Umar (the son of Umar), Aban ibn Uthman (the son of Uthman), Abdulreman ibn Khalid (the son of Khalid), Abdullah ibn Ja'far (the nephew of Ali), Ammar ibn Yasir, Miqdad ibn Aswad, Abu Dharr al-Ghifari, Malik al-Ashtar, Abu Ayyub al-Ansari, Qays ibn Sa'd, Hudhayfah ibn al-Yaman, Ubada ibn as-Samit, Hisham ibn al-A'as, Abu Huraira and Ikrimah ibn Abi Jahl. As it was a citizen army, in contrast to a mercenary army, the age of the soldiers ranged from 20 (in the case of Khalid's son) to 70 (in the case of Ammar). Three of the ten companions promised paradise by Muhammad, namely Sa'id, Zubayr and Abu Ubaidah, were present at Yarmuk.


title: Battle of the Yarmuk

text: Umar, apparently wanting to defeat the Byzantines first, used the best Muslim troops against them. The continuing stream of Muslim reinforcements worried the Byzantines, who fearing that the Muslims with such reinforcements would grow powerful, decided that they had no choice but to attack. The reinforcements that were sent to the Muslims at Yarmuk arrived in small bands, giving the impression of a continuous stream of reinforcements to demoralize the Byzantines to compel them to attack. The same tactic would be repeated again during the Battle of Qadisiyah.


title: Battle of the Yarmuk

text: The battle began on 15 August. At dawn, both armies lined up for battle less than a mile apart. It is recorded in Muslim chronicles that before the battle started, George, a unit commander in the Byzantine right centre, rode up to the Muslim line and converted to Islam; he would die the same day fighting on the Muslim side. The battle began as the Byzantine army sent its champions to duel with the Muslim mubarizun. The mubarizun were specially trained swordsmen and lancers, with the objective to slay as many enemy commanders as possible to damage their morale. At midday, after losing a number of commanders in the duels, Vahan ordered a limited attack with a third of his infantry forces to test the strength and strategy of the Muslim army and, using their overwhelming numerical and weaponry superiority, achieve a breakthrough wherever the Muslim battle line was weak. However the Byzantine assault lacked determination; many Byzantine soldiers were unable to press the attack against the Muslim veterans. The fighting was generally moderate although in some places, it was especially intense. Vahan did not reinforce his forward infantry, two thirds of which was kept in reserve with one third deployed to engage the Muslims, and at sunset, both armies broke contact and returned to their respective camps.


title: Battle of the Yarmuk

text: Phase 1: On 16 August, Vahan decided in a council of war to launch his attack just before dawn, to catch the Muslim force unprepared as they conducted their morning prayers.


title: Battle of the Yarmuk

text: He planned to engage his two central armies with the Muslim centre in an effort to stall them while the main thrusts would be against the wings of the Muslim army, which would then be driven away from the battlefield or pushed towards the centre. To observe the battlefield, Vahan had a large pavilion built behind his right wing with an Armenian bodyguard force. He ordered the army to prepare for the surprise attack.


title: Battle of the Yarmuk

text: However, Khalid had prepared for such a contingency by placing a strong outpost line in front during the night to counter surprises, which gave the Muslims time to prepare for battle. At the centre, the Byzantines did not press hard, intending to pin down the Muslim centre corps in their position and preventing them from aiding the Muslim army in other areas. Thus the centre remained stable, but on the wings the situation was different. Qanatir, commanding the Byzantine left flank, which consisted of mainly Slavs, attacked in force, and the Muslim infantry on the right flank had to retreat. Amr, the Muslim right wing commander ordered his cavalry regiment to counterattack, which neutralized the Byzantine advance and stabilized the battle line on the right for some time, but the Byzantine numerical superiority caused them to retreat towards the Muslim base camp.


title: Battle of the Yarmuk

text: Phase 2: Khalid, aware of the situation at the wings, ordered the cavalry of the right wing to attack the northern flank of the Byzantine left wing while he with his mobile guard attacked the southern flank of the Byzantine left wing, and the Muslim right wing infantry attacked from the front. The three-pronged attack forced the Byzantine left wing to abandon the Muslim positions they had gained on, and Amr regained his lost ground and started reorganizing his corps for another round.


title: Battle of the Yarmuk

text: The situation on the Muslim left wing, which Yazid commanded was considerably more serious. The Muslim right wing enjoyed assistance from the mobile guard but not the left wing, and the numerical advantage the Byzantines enjoyed caused the Muslim positions to be overrun, with soldiers retreating towards base camps. There, the Byzantines had broken through the corps. The testudo formation that Gregory's army had adopted moved slowly but also had a good defence. Yazid used his cavalry regiment to counterattack but was repulsed. Despite stiff resistance, the warriors of Yazid on the left flank finally fell back to their camps and for a moment Vahan's plan appeared to be succeeding. The centre of the Muslim army was pinned down and its flanks had been pushed back. However, neither flank had broken though morale was severely damaged.


title: Battle of the Yarmuk

text: The retreating Muslim army was met by the ferocious Arab women in the camps. Led by Hind, the Muslim women dismantled their tents, and armed with tent poles, charged at their husbands and fellow men singing an improvised song from the Battle of Uhud, which then had been directed against the Muslims.


title: Battle of the Yarmuk

text: Phase 3: After managing to stabilize the position on the right flank, Khalid ordered the mobile guard cavalry to provide relief to the battered left flank.


title: Battle of the Yarmuk

text: Khalid detached one regiment under Dharar ibn al-Azwar and ordered him to attack the front of the army of Dairjan (left centre) to create a diversion and threaten the withdrawal of the Byzantine right wing from its advanced position. With the rest of the cavalry reserve he attacked Gregory's flank. Here again, under simultaneous attacks from the front and flanks, the Byzantines fell back but more slowly because they had to maintain their formation.


title: Battle of the Yarmuk

text: At sunset, the central armies broke contact and withdrew to their original positions and both fronts were restored along the lines occupied in the morning. The death of Dairjan and the failure of Vahan's battle plan left the larger Imperial army relatively demoralized, but Khalid's successful counterattacks emboldened his troops despite their being smaller in number.


title: Battle of the Yarmuk

text: On 17 August, Vahan pondered over his failures and mistakes of the previous day, where he launched attacks against respective Muslim flanks, but after initial success, his men were pushed back. What bothered him the most was the loss of one of his commanders.


title: Battle of the Yarmuk

text: The Byzantine army decided on a less ambitious plan, and Vahan now aimed to break the Muslim army at specific points. He decided to press upon the relatively exposed right flank, where his mounted troops could manoeuvrer more freely as compared to the rugged terrain at the Muslims' left flank. The junction was to be between the Muslim right centre, its right wing held by Qanatir's Slavs, to break them apart so that they would be fought separately.


title: Battle of the Yarmuk

text: After holding off the initial attacks by the Byzantines, the Muslim right wing fell back, followed by the right centre. They were again said to have been met by their own women, who abused and shamed them. The corps, however, managed to reorganize some distance from the camp and held their ground preparing for a counterattack.


title: Battle of the Yarmuk

text: Phase 2: Knowing that the Byzantine army was focusing on the Muslim right, Khalid ibn al-Walid launched an attack with his mobile guard, along with the Muslim right flank cavalry. Khalid ibn al-Walid struck at the right flank of the Byzantines left centre, and the cavalry reserve of the Muslims right centre struck at the Byzantines left centre at its left flank. Meanwhile, he ordered the Muslims' right-wing cavalry to strike at the left flank of the Byzantines left wing. The combat soon developed into a bloodbath. Many fell on both sides. Khalid's timely flanking attacks again saved the day for Muslims and by dusk, the Byzantines had been pushed back to the positions they had at the start of the battle.


title: Battle of the Yarmuk

text: Phase 1: Vahan decided to persist with the previous day's war plan as he had been successful in inflicting damage on the Muslim right.


title: Battle of the Yarmuk

text: Qanatir led two armies of Slavs against the Muslim right wing and right centre with some assistance from the Armenians and Christian Arabs led by Jabalah. The Muslim right wing and right centre again fell back.


title: Battle of the Yarmuk

text: Khalid entered the fray yet again with the mobile guard. He feared a general attack on a broad front, which he would be unable to repulse, and so ordered Abu Ubaidah and Yazid on the left centre and the left wings, respectively, to attack the Byzantine armies at the respective fronts. The attack would result in stalling the Byzantine front and prevent a general advance of the Imperial army.


title: Battle of the Yarmuk

text: Phase 2: Khalid divided his mobile guard into two divisions and attacked the flanks of the Byzantine left centre, and the infantry of the Muslim right centre attacked from the front. Under the three-pronged flanking manoeuvre, the Byzantines fell back. Meanwhile, the Muslim right wing renewed its offense with its infantry attacking from the front and the cavalry reserve attacking the northern flank of the Byzantine left wing. As the Byzantine left centre retreated under three-pronged attacks of Khalid, the Byzantine left wing, having been exposed at its southern flank, also fell back.


title: Battle of the Yarmuk

text: While Khalid and his mobile guard were dealing with the Armenian front throughout the afternoon, the situation on the other end was worsening. Byzantine horse-archers had taken to the field and subjected Abu Ubaidah and Yazid's troops to intense archery preventing them from penetrating their Byzantine lines. Many Muslim soldiers lost their sight to Byzantine arrows on that day, which thereafter became known as the "Day of Lost Eyes". The veteran Abu Sufyan is also believed to have lost an eye that day. The Muslim armies fell back except for one regiment, led by Ikrimah bin Abi Jahal, which was on the left of Abu Ubaidah's corps. Ikrimah covered the retreat of the Muslims with his 400 members of the cavalry by attacking the Byzantine front, and the other armies reorganized themselves to counterattack and regain their lost positions. All of Ikrimah's men were either seriously injured or dead that day. Ikrimah, a childhood friend of Khalid, was mortally wounded and died later in the evening.


title: Battle of the Yarmuk

text: During the four-day offence of Vahan, his troops had failed to achieve any breakthrough and had suffered heavy casualties, especially during the mobile guard's flanking counterattacks. Early on 19 August, the fifth day of the battle, Vahan sent an emissary to the Muslim camp for a truce for the next few days so that fresh negotiations could be held. He supposedly wanted time to reorganize his demoralized troops, but Khalid deemed victory to be in reach and he declined the offer.


title: Battle of the Yarmuk

text: Until now, the Muslim army had adopted a largely defensive strategy, but knowing that the Byzantines were apparently no longer eager for battle, Khalid now decided to take the offensive and reorganized his troops accordingly. All cavalry regiments were grouped together into one powerful mounted force with the mobile guard acting as its core. The total strength of the cavalry group was now about 8,000 mounted warriors, an effective mounted corps for an offensive attack the next day. The rest of the day passed uneventfully. Khalid planned to trap Byzantine troops, cutting off their every route of escape. There were three natural barriers, the three gorges in the battlefield with their steep ravines, "Wadi-ur-Ruqqad" at west, "Wadi al Yarmouk" in south and "Wadi al Allah" in east. The northern route was to be blocked by Muslim cavalry.


title: Battle of the Yarmuk

text: There were however, some passages across the deep ravines of Wadi-ur-Raqqad in west, strategically the most important one was at Ayn al Dhakar, a bridge. Khalid sent Dharar with 500 cavalry at night to secure that bridge. Dharar moved around the northern flank of Byzantines and captured the bridge, a manoeuvrer that was to prove decisive the next day.


title: Battle of the Yarmuk

text: On 20 August, Khalid put into action a simple but bold plan of attack. With his massed cavalry force, he intended to drive the Byzantine cavalry entirely off the battlefield so that the infantry, which formed the bulk of the imperial army, would be left without cavalry support and thus would be exposed when attacked from the flanks and rear.


title: Battle of the Yarmuk

text: At the same time, he planned to push a determined attack to turn the left flank of the Byzantine army and drive them towards the ravine to the west.


title: Battle of the Yarmuk

text: Phase 1: Khalid ordered a general attack on the Byzantine front and galloped his cavalry around the left wing of the Byzantines. Part of his cavalry engaged the Byzantine left wing cavalry while the rest of it attacked the rear of the Byzantine left wing infantry. Meanwhile, the Muslim right wing pressed against it from the front. Under the two-pronged attack, the Byzantine left wing fell back and collapsed and fell back to the Byzantine left centre, greatly disordering it. The remaining Muslim cavalry then attacked the Byzantine left wing cavalry at the rear while they were held frontally by the other half of the Muslim cavalry, routing them off the battlefield to the north.


title: Battle of the Yarmuk

text: The Muslim right-wing infantry now attacked the Byzantine left centre at its left flank while the Muslim right centre attacked from front.


title: Battle of the Yarmuk

text: Phase 2: Vahan, noticing the huge cavalry manoeuvrer of the Muslims, ordered his cavalry to group together, but was not quick enough. Before Vahan could organize his disparate heavy cavalry squadrons, Khalid had wheeled his cavalry back to attack the concentrating Byzantine cavalry squadrons, falling upon them from the front and the flank while they were still moving into formation. The disorganized and disoriented Byzantine heavy cavalry was soon routed and dispersed to the north, leaving the infantry to its fate.


title: Battle of the Yarmuk

text: Phase 3: With the Byzantine cavalry completely routed, Khalid turned to the Byzantine left centre, which already held the two-pronged attack of the Muslim infantry. The Byzantine left centre was attacked at its rear by Khalid's cavalry and was finally broken.


title: Battle of the Yarmuk

text: Phase 4: With the retreat of the Byzantine left centre, a general Byzantine retreat started. Khalid took his cavalry north to block the northern route of escape. The Byzantines retreated west towards "Wadi-ur-Ruqqad", where there was a bridge at "Ayn al Dhakar" for safe crossing across the deep gorges of the ravines of Wadi-ur-Ruqqad. Dharar had already captured the bridge as part of Khalid's plan the night before. A unit of 500 mounted troops had been sent to block the passageway. In fact, that was the route by which Khalid wanted the Byzantines to retreat all along.


title: Battle of the Yarmuk

text: Some fell into the deep ravines off the steep slopes, others tried to escape in the waters but were smashed on the rocks below and still others were killed in their flight. Nevertheless, many of the soldiers managed to escape the slaughter. Jonah, the Greek informant of the Rashidun army during the conquest of Damascus, died in the battle. The Muslims took no prisoners in the battle, but they may have captured some during the subsequent pursuit. Theodore Trithyrius was killed on the battlefield, and Niketas managed to escape and reach Emesa. Jabalah ibn al-Ayham also managed to escape and later briefly came to terms with the Muslims, but he soon defected to the Byzantine court again.


title: Battle of the Yarmuk

text: Immediately after the operation was over, Khalid and his mobile guard moved north to pursue the retreating Byzantine soldiers and found them near Damascus and attacked. Vahan, who had escaped the fate of most of his men at Yarmuk, was probably killed in the ensuing fighting. Khalid then entered Damascus, where he was welcomed by the local residents, thus recapturing the city.


title: Battle of the Yarmuk

text: When news of the disaster reached Heraclius at Antioch, the emperor was devastated and enraged. He blamed his wrongdoings for the loss, primarily referring to his incestuous marriage to his niece Martina.


title: Battle of the Yarmuk

text: He would have tried to reconquer the province if he had the resources but now had neither the men nor the money to defend the province any more. Instead, he retreated to the cathedral of Antioch, where he observed a solemn service of intercession. He summoned a meeting of his advisers at the cathedral and scrutinized the situation. He was told almost unanimously and accepted the fact that the defeat was God's decision and a result of the sins of the people of the land, including him. Heraclius took to the sea on a ship to Constantinople in the night.


title: Battle of the Yarmuk

text: His ship supposedly set sail, and he bade a last farewell to Syria,:"Farewell, a long farewell to Syria, my fair province. Thou art an infidel's (enemy's) now. Peace be with you, O Syria—what a beautiful land you will be for the enemy's hands".""Heraclius abandoned Syria with the holy relic of the True Cross, which was, along with other relics held at Jerusalem, secretly boarded on ship by Sophronius, Patriarch of Jerusalem, just to protect it from the invading Arabs. It is said that he had a fear of water, and a pontoon bridge was made for Heraclius to cross the Bosphorus to Constantinople. After abandoning Syria, he began to concentrate on his remaining forces for the defence of Anatolia and Egypt instead. Byzantine Armenia fell to the Muslims in 638–39, and Heraclius created a buffer zone in central Anatolia by ordering all the forts east of Tarsus to be evacuated.


title: Battle of the Yarmuk

text: In 639–642 the Muslims, led by Amr ibn al-A'as, who had commanded the right flank of the Rashidun army at Yarmuk, invaded and captured Byzantine Egypt.


title: Battle of the Yarmuk

text: The Imperial Byzantine commanders allowed their enemy to have the battlefield of his choosing. Even then, they were at no substantial tactical disadvantage. Khalid knew all along that he was up against a force superior in numbers and, until the last day of the battle, conducted an essentially defensive campaign, suited to his relatively limited resources. When he decided to take the offensive and attack on the final day of battle, he did so with a degree of imagination, foresight and courage that none of the Byzantine commanders managed to display. Although he commanded a smaller force and needed all the men he could muster, he had the confidence and foresight to dispatch a cavalry regiment the night before his assault to seal off a critical path of the retreat that he had anticipated for the enemy army.


title: Battle of the Yarmuk

text: Because of his leadership at Yarmuk, Khalid ibn al-Walid is considered one of the finest generals in history, and his use of mounted warriors throughout the battle showed just how well he understood the potential strengths and weaknesses of his mounted troops. His mobile guard moved quickly from one point to another, always changed the course of events wherever they appeared, and, then just as quickly, galloped away to change the course of events elsewhere on the field.


title: Battle of the Yarmuk

text: Vahan and his Byzantine commanders did not manage to deal with the mounted force and use the sizable advantage of their army effectively. Their own Byzantine cavalry never played a significant role in the battle and were held in static reserve for most of the six days. They never pushed their attacks, and even when they obtained what could have been a decisive breakthrough on the fourth day, they were unable to exploit it. There appeared to be a decided lack of resolve among the Imperial commanders, but that may have been caused by difficulties commanding the army because of internal conflict. Moreover, many of the Arab auxiliaries were mere levies, but the Muslim Arab army consisted for a much larger part of veteran troops.


title: Battle of the Yarmuk

text: The original strategy of Heraclius, to destroy the Muslim troops in Syria, needed a rapid and quick deployment, but the commanders on the ground never displayed those qualities. Ironically, on the field at Yarmuk, Khalid carried out, on a small tactical scale, what Heraclius had planned on a grand strategic scale. By rapidly deploying and manoeuvring his forces, Khalid was able to concentrate sufficient forces at specific locations on the field temporarily to defeat the larger Byzantine army in detail. Vahan was never able to make his numerical superiority count, perhaps because of the terrain, which prevented large-scale deployment.


title: Battle of the Yarmuk

text: However, Vahan never attempted to concentrate a superior force to achieve a critical breakthrough. Although he was on the offensive five out of the six days, his battle line remained remarkably static. That stands in stark contrast to the very successful offensive plan, which Khalid carried out on the final day by reorganising virtually all his cavalry and committing it to a grand manoeuvre, which won the battle.


title: Broth

text: Broth, also known as bouillon (), is a savory liquid made of water in which meat, fish or vegetables have been simmered for a short period of time. It can be eaten alone, but it is most commonly used to prepare other dishes, such as soups, gravies, and sauces.


title: Broth

text: Commercially prepared liquid broths are available, typically chicken, beef, fish, and vegetable varieties. Dehydrated broth in the form of bouillon cubes were commercialized beginning in the early 20th century.


title: Broth

text: Broths have been used as a nutrition source for the sick in Great Britain since at least the early 1700s, such as for dysentery patients.


title: Broth

text: Many cooks and food writers use the terms "broth" and "stock" interchangeably. In 1974, James Beard wrote that stock, broth, and bouillon "are all the same thing".


title: Broth

text: While many draw a distinction between stock and broth, the details of the distinction often differ. One possibility is that stocks are made primarily from animal bones, as opposed to meat, and therefore contain more gelatin, giving them a thicker texture. Another distinction that is sometimes made is that stock is cooked longer than broth and therefore has a more intense flavor. A third possible distinction is that stock is left unseasoned for use in other recipes, while broth is salted and otherwise seasoned and can be eaten alone.


title: Broth

text: In Scotland, “Scotch Broth” and the United Kingdom, "broth" can refer to the liquid in a soup which includes solid pieces of meat, fish, or vegetables, whereas "stock" would refer to the purely liquid base. Traditionally, according to this definition, broth contained some form of meat or fish; however, nowadays it is acceptable to refer to a strictly vegetable soup as a broth.


title: The Walking Dead: The Final Season

text: The Walking Dead: The Final Season is an episodic adventure video game developed by Telltale Games and later Skybound Games, and the fourth and final main game in "The Walking Dead" video game series, based on the comic book series of the same name. Taking place some years after "", the game focuses on Clementine's efforts to raise young Alvin Jr (AJ), in the post-apocalyptic world, coming to join with a group of troubled teenagers surviving out of their former boarding school. Their path leads them to encounter a hostile group of raiders led by a figure from Clementine's past.


title: The Walking Dead: The Final Season

text: The game represents the first major release by Telltale after a major restructuring; it was aimed to return to themes and elements from the first season, and expected to be the concluding story for Clementine. The game was anticipated to be released over four episodes, with the first episode released on August 14, 2018, for Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 4, Xbox One and Nintendo Switch. However, due to the sudden closure of Telltale Games on September 21, 2018, the last two episodes were overseen by Skybound Entertainment, the production company of "The Walking Dead" comic creator Robert Kirkman, using as many of the former Telltale development team as possible, as Kirkman had felt it necessary to properly complete Clementine's story.


title: The Walking Dead: The Final Season

text: As with other games in "The Walking Dead" series, "The Final Season" is a graphic adventure game, where the player controls the protagonist Clementine as she struggles to survive in the wake of a zombie apocalypse. The player can move Clementine around the environment to examine and collect items and initiate conversation trees with non-player characters, and progress in the game. "The Final Season" introduces a collectible mechanic, where players can collect certain items in the world and place them in their room later. Some collectibles can only be obtained on the basis of choices. For each episode, a certain amount of collectibles are to be found. Decisions made by the player can affect future episodes, and "The Final Season" can use previous saved games from "The Walking Dead" to bring a player's choices from these games into "The Final Season". Players that have not played previous seasons, or who may want to adjust choices made affecting Clementine's character, will be able to use a web-based Story Builder tool to create a cloud-based save game that can be used to feed into the game. This also addresses issues with various save game limitations due to platform transitions over the course of the series (for example, previous saves from the Xbox 360 or PlayStation 3 from the first two seasons are not compatible with "The Final Season").


title: The Walking Dead: The Final Season

text: "The Final Season" was included in "The Walking Dead: The Telltale Definitive Series" was released on September 10, 2019, for PS4, Xbox, and PC. It included graphical overhauls to the previous releases, concept art, and a way to carry over choices from previous seasons for players willing to play through each season.