page_title: The Defence of Duffer's Drift
section_title: Influence
hierarchical_section_title: The Defence of Duffer's Drift / Influence
caption_attribution_description: English: The Defence of Duffer's Drift, prologue
context_page_description: The Defence of Duffer's Drift is a short 1904 book by Ernest Dunlop Swinton. It purports to be a series of six dreams by "Lieutenant Backsight Forethought" about the defence of a river crossing in the Boer War. The infantry tactics in the early dreams are disastrous, but each time BF learns something until in the final defence he is successful.
context_section_description: The Defence of Duffer's Drift's style of literary fiction has been copied by several authors, making this author an influence upon the writings of others. Some examples are provided below, including: a primer on World War I battalion level combined arms tactics incorporating new types of warfare (tanks, machine guns, and aviation), a mechanized battalion level primer, a military combat service support example, one that is non-military related, and one adopting the parable to operations in Iraq.
  The first example is Battle of Booby's Bluffs, originally published in 1921 by an Army officer under the pseudonym Major Single List. It is important for its "lessons-learned" examination of the new weapons introduced in the Great War (most notably tanks, machine guns and aero planes) and how these innovations required learning new combined arms tactics. In the style of Duffer's Drift, a hapless battalion commander faces a battle scenario in a series of six dreams. In the first dream, he makes so many mistakes as to prove catastrophic for him and his men. But he learns a few more things about tactics and leadership through each dream, until at last he leads his men to victory through the treacherous terrain of Booby's Bluffs. Included with the dreams are notations to real life mistakes made by American commanders during the War.
  Defense of Hill 781, written by James R. McDonough in 1988, deals with a somewhat larger combat element than Duffer's Drift, and having a slightly different reason for the "dreams."
  The Defense of Duffer's Drift Brigade Support Area was written by Staff Sergeants Reginald Scott and Steve Newman, along with Sergeants William Baucom, Rodney Weathers, and Louise Chee in the September 2001 edition of NCO Notes, number 01-2, from the Association of the United States Army (AUSA) Institute of Land Warfare.   Instead of trying to teach infantry tactics, the authors of this story focused upon a supply company of a forward support battalion in an effort to teach units inside of a Brigade Support Area to become more effective in defensive operations during combat.
  Premonitions of the Palladion Project: A Modern Project Management Fable, was written by Dr. Scott S. Haraburda, PhD, PE, in 2008 for a non-military topic, even though it involved the Department of Defense.  It contains information about what works and what does not work when managing a project, which can be used to assist anyone in managing a more successful project. This book provided a project management framework illustrating twenty-four project management rules.  The general thesis in this book was that using just the best project management tools while forgetting everything else about running the project would doom the project to failure.
  The Defense of Jisr al-Doreaa was written by Albert J. Marckwardt and Michael Burgoyne. The book follows a young lieutenant through successive lessons while conducting stability and counterinsurgency operations in Iraq.
  The winter 2005 edition of the Canadian Army Journal contained the following praise:
  The South African War (1899–1902) provided the next opportunity for literary fiction to play a role in future army concepts. The publication of The Defence of Duffer's Drift by Captain (later Major-General Sir) Ernest Swinton, KBE, CB, DSO, in 1905, was extremely well received and became required reading for many subsequent generations of young officers. Set at a river choke point on some generic veldt anywhere in the Transvaal, the story's main character, a young and energetic Lieutenant Backsight Forethought, has a series of nightmares in which he loses battle after battle against his Boer adversaries. After each dream, however, a series of lessons are highlighted, and each of these was incorporated into the next battle, which eventually leads Lieutenant Forethought to victory and relief in the final dream. Although written as a fictional tale, Swinton's aim was to teach tactical lessons as well as generate discussion and debate on the planning and execution of operations.
  — Godefroy, Andrew B., "Fictional Writing a
caption: Start of the prologue. The book is attributed to a Lieutenant N. Backsight Forethought, otherwise known as Major General Sir Ernest Dunlop Swinton.
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