Compass Points - Duffer's Drift

The search for a better global strategy

Compass Points - Duffer's Drift

The search for a better global strategy

May 30, 2025

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The simple solution may not be the best solution.

In the great infantry training book, The Defense of Duffer's Drift, a young British lieutenant fighting in South Africa in the Boer War is tasked with holding a river crossing. In a series of dreams, he gets to fight the battle for the drift over and over again, learning more lessons each time.

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I felt lonely, and not a little sad, as I stood on the bank of the river near Duffer's Drift and watched the red dust haze, raised by the southward departing column in the distance, turn slowly into gold as it hung in the afternoon sunlight. It was just three o'clock, and here I was on the banks of the Silliaasvogel river, left behind by my column with a party of fifty N.C.O.'s and men to hold the drift. It was an important ford, because it was the only one across which wheeled traffic could pass for some miles up or down the river.

-- The Defence of Duffer's Drift

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Despite his best efforts to guard the river crossing, the lieutenant and his men are quickly defeated again and again. One of the early lessons learned by the lieutenant is that the simple solution may not be the best solution. He learns that just because your aim is to guard a river crossing, that does not mean having your men stand on top of the crossing.

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Eventually the following lessons framed themselves in my head—some of them quite new, some of them supplementing those four I had already learnt:

5. With modern rifles, to guard a drift or locality does not necessitate sitting on top of it (as if it could be picked up and carried away), unless the locality is suitable to hold for other and defensive reasons. It may even be much better to take up your defensive position some way from the spot, and so away from concealed ground, which enables the enemy to crawl up to very close range, concealed and unperceived, and to fire from cover which hides them even when shooting. It would be better, if possible, to have the enemy in the open, or to have what is called a clear "field of fire."

-- The Defence of Duffer's Drift

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The lieutenant in Duffer's Drift learned that he needed to take a broader view. Decades later, General Douglas MacArthur used the same lesson in Korea. North Korea invaded South Korea on June 25, 1950. The surprise attack drove the South Korean forces quickly the length of the peninsula into a small defensive perimeter at Pusan. If Pusan was lost, the war was lost. Pusan had to be defended at all costs.

MacArthur, however, took a broader view of defending Pusan. Instead of putting every soldier on the line at Pusan, MacArthur began removing some of his best troops off the line and loading them onto amphibious ships. Was MacArthur surrendering Pusan? Not at all. He was finding a way to stop fighting only where the enemy was strong, and start hitting them where they were weak. MacArthur's brilliant Inchon amphibious landing, led by Marines, cut the enemy supply lines, ended the threat to Pusan, and transformed the conflict. It all came from MacArthur stepping back and thinking broader about what needed to be done.

Do historical military examples have value today? Perhaps. Perhaps the lesson as the US works to deter and defeat China is that the simple solution may not be the best solution. Like the hapless lieutenant tasked with defending Duffer's Drift, the US today is too often focused on standing right on top of China, massing forces just off the coast of China where China is logistically strongest and the US and allies are logistically weakest.

Perhaps the US needs to incorporate a broader, global view into its China strategy. China has interests all over the world. If the US had a mobile force that could threaten or strike China's interests around the globe, it would make the overall US China strategy even stronger.

Douglas MacArthur did not defend Pusan by fighting harder at Pusan. He won at Pusan by stepping back, taking a broader view of the situation, and using a mobile force to attack against enemy weakness, instead of against enemy strength.

In The Defense of Duffer's Drift, the young lieutenant finally learned that the simplest solution is not always the best. When he stepped back and took a larger view, he came up with a better solution.

It is time for the US to take a broader view of the China threat. Instead of only focusing on the territory just off the coast of China, take a broader view, incorporate the power and flexibility of a global combined arms expeditionary force like the Navy and Marine Corps ARG/MEU. The expandable Marine MAGTF embarked on Navy ships is a global force that can suddenly appear anywhere around the globe, threatening a hostile nation's interest in a way they did not expect and cannot easily defend.

The US needs to consider using mobile, global forces like the US Marine combined arms MAGTF against China's interests worldwide. This is pitting US strength against China's weakness. It would be better, instead of always pitting US weakness against China's strengths near its own shore, to find a way to pivot and do the reverse.

When the British lieutenant woke from his dreams at Duffer's Drift, and when MacArthur woke from the nightmare at Pusan, they both took a broader view of the challenge and they both found their way to victory.

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The Defence of Duffer's Drift

By E. D. Swinton

https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/24842/pg24842-images.html