5 Ingenious “Great Escapes” in War

Paul Gwamanda
6 min readMay 24, 2021

During the War of the Three Kingdoms in 1639, Chuko Lian was in a town with a consort of 100 soldiers while the rest of his army of 20 000 was garrisoned several miles away.

While in the town, Chuko was informed of a large army belonging to his enemy, Sima Yi, approaching with well over 100 000 men.

Sima Yi was a well experienced veteran who had encountered Chuko on many occasions in battle and was well accustomed to Chuko’s clever ways.

Thus, this time, he decided to take no chances, and brought as many soldiers as he could to capture Chuko once and for all.

When Chuko’s consort saw the approaching army, they panicked, but Chuko who was never short of stratagems, ordered his men to go into hiding, and commanded the guards to leave the gates wide open.

He requested a lute and climbed atop the city walls, positioning himself openly so that the approaching army could see him from a distance, and calmly began stringing a solo on his lute.

The massive army approached and garrisoned, but Sima Yi, who had fallen victim to many a Chuko-led ambush before, studied Chuko’s calm manner intently, not long afterwards, Sima Yi ordered a hasty retreat convinced this was a trap he could not yet comprehend.

Hannibal Barca

The famous general who made famous the phrase saying, “I will find a way, or make one” had again found himself in a pickle.

When Eumenes found him in the isle of Bithynia, he set sail with a huge fleet with the aim of capturing Hannibal once and for all. The Bythinian fleet was so heavily outnumbered that the odds were impossible against them in open sea combat.

Realizing his disadvantage, Hannibal met again with his Generals and devised an ingenious strategy; Have the soldiers collect as many snakes as they could and put them into clay jars and seal them.

Once the battle began, Hannibal’s ships launched clay pots at the enemy. When Eumenes’s army saw the clay pots being hurled at them as projectiles, they laughed — thinking it was a last-ditch effort of a depleted army.

But when the pots fell and broke on the decks of the ships, they quickly stopped laughing — for thousands of venomous snakes slithered about. The men quickly retreated and the ones that straggled on had to fight off both the snakes and the oncoming barrage of arrows.

It was a sure victory for Hannibal.

Meinertzhagen

During the first world war, the British and Turks were in a stalemate, so an intelligence officer named Meinertzhagen was charged with enacting a disinformation campaign that involved dropping cigarettes with propaganda leaflets hoping the Ottomans would surrender.

The Ottomans were grateful for the cigarettes, but had no intention of surrendering. So later in the campaign, while the Ottomans were making their last stand against the British and were holed up in a city stronghold. The British bombarded their positions day and night but to no avail.

Meinertzhagen devised an ingenious plan: He ordered the pilots drop thousands of cigarettes onto the Ottomans as per usual.

But this time, the cigarettes had been dipped in opium and dried. When the Ottomans saw the airplanes — they never opened fire on them as they were so used to these free cigarettes that they just waited for the parcels to drop. The cigarettes were always welcome.

This time, however, when the Ottomans smoked them, they got an unintended high as well.

The British shortly attacked afterwards to great success, the Ottomans were too high to make a stand, and the British took them with very few casualties.

The dead man’s tales

During the second world war In 1942, the allies had their sights on Sicily. Capturing it would make the Mediterranean impenetrable by German ships.

The challenge was that the Germans knew the strategic advantage of Sicily and made it their highest priority to protect it from any invasion.

The Allies, however, devised a clever strategy: plant a body with fake intel so as to dissuade the Germans. The plan worked well, the Germans intercepted the body. It was that of Major William Martin, in important figure in the war.

They also filled the casket with letters and a picture of his fiance. Most importantly, the briefcase attached was filled with military intel and documents indicating that Greece was the main target, and that Sicily was merely a diversion.

When the Germans got a hold of this, they bought the story completely.

Rommel acted swiftly and moved the bulk of his army, including troops, panzers and supplies, to Greece, and strongly fortified it.

Sicily was then so under resourced that the allies took it without losing a single man. The invasion was a complete success.

Drip rifles

In 1915, an ingenious plan was set in place that would see the Allies evacuate over 80,000 soldiers at Gallipoli.

The ruse was quite simple, to use a “drip” or “self-firing rifle”.

These Drip rifles were rigged with bits of string and old ration tins. They would station these weapons in particular positions across the line of the trenches, and had two kerosene tins placed one above the other; the top one full of water and the bottom one empty with the trigger string attached to it.

Small holes were then punched in the top tin so water could drip down slowly into the lower one, resulting in the rifle firing as soon as the lower tin had become sufficiently heavy.

The devices provided consistent sporadic fire from the trench lines, effectively convincing the Turks that the soldiers were still fighting hard at the front lines and heavily defending their fort.

Meanwhile over 80, 0000 soldiers had successfully evacuated and were sailing safely away on ships. When the Turks finally discovered the — , it was several hours later and there was not a single soldier in sight.

The entire battle cost the allies 6 casualties out of 80,000. It was one of the most remarkable displays of military genius.

The great spirit

“We have been among you several weeks,” said Columbus to the Native Indian chiefs, who had now grown weary of their lengthy occupation, “and, although at first you treated us like friends, you are now jealous of us and are trying to drive us away. You brought us food in plenty every morning, but now you bring very little and the amount is less with each succeeding day.”

Columbus knew that there was to be a solar eclipse of the sun in seven days, and told them the exact day and hour in which it would occur.

“The Great Spirit is angry with you,” he proclaimed, “for not doing as you agreed in bringing us provisions. To show his anger, he will cause the sun to be in darkness.”

The natives did not believe him, and continued to reduce their supply of rations. On the appointed day, the sun rose without a cloud in the sky and the Indians shook their heads, beginning to show signs of open hostility to the settlers as the hours passed by without a shadow on the face of the sun. But around noon, a dark spot was seen on one side of the Sun; and, as it became larger and larger, taking up a third of the sun, the natives began to panic.

They fell prostrate before Columbus and entreated his help and forgiveness. Columbus said he would pray, and stoically retired to his tent, promising to save them all only if the Great Spirit was willing.

About the time for the eclipse to pass away, he came out and said that the Great Spirit had heard their prayers and would pardon their transgression by driving away the monster from eating the sun, But only on one condition: That they never offend his messenger, Columbus again.

They promised in earnest, and when the shadow had passed away from the sun, they leaped and danced and sang for joy.

The Spaniards had all the provisions they needed for the remainder of their occupation that year.

It was a sure victory for Hannibal.

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Paul Gwamanda

“Either write something worth reading, or do something worth writing.” Ben Franklin