Firewall!

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The Firewall!

Where ever you find large expanses of grasslands throughout the world, you find horse borne militaries that employ a similar tactic, that of the firewall.

A military force launches a guerilla attack upon an enemy.

A hit and run style attack of the type favored by guerrillas.

The attacking force then disengages and retreats, leaving the scene of the battle by usually riding into the wind while setting the grass on fire as they retreat. The grass burns toward the potential pursuer and impedes any pursuit.

This tactic of the firewall has been used in the Eurasian steppe land, the prairie of North America, and the veldt of southern Africa.

The first recorded instance of the use of the firewall was by the Scythians, who lived in the area north of the Black Sea 2500 years ago. To harass and impede the advance of the Persian army under Darius III, the Scythians would launch horse borne guerilla style attacks and then retreat behind a firewall.

"In 514 BC. a very important event took place in the steppe. Herodotus described this account in full details. Darius, the third of the Persian great Kings, decided to invade Scythia. With Darius himself in command, the Persian army of 700,000 soldiers marched across the Danube to the Russian steppes. The Scythians steadily retreated while the Persians pursuit. Darius failed the attempt to force the Scythians to confront the Persians with head-on battle. The Scythians did not abandon their tactic of withdrawal and replied to Darius when he demanded an battle action:

"There is nothing new or strange in what we do. We follow our mode of life in peaceful times. We have neither towns nor cultivated lands in these parts which might induce us, through fear of their being ravaged, to be in any hurry to fight you. But if you must needs come to blows with us speedily, look about you, and behold our fathers' tombs. Attempt to meddle with them and you shall see whether or not we will fight with you."

To read more about the Scythians, click here.

Both the American Indians and the U.S. American Indian fighting cavalry employed the firewall. American Indians would use the firewall exactly as the Scythians did, while the U.S. Cavalry would burn whole sections of the prairie to limit the supple of fodder for the Indian ponies. Where the prairie was burned, you would not expect to find the roving Indian bands, making the cavalry's job of locating the "hostiles" that much easier.

And in the Boer war of the year 1900, the highly mobile Boer commando units employed the firewall with great success. Just as the Scythians and the American Indians had done, the Boers burned the grasslands to prevent pursuit by the much less mobile British forces.

The use of fire in warfare is not confined to the firewall as practiced by mobile bands of horsemen.

A. Solzhenitsyn describes in the "GULAG Archipelago" how determined prisoners would escape Siberian prison camps fleeing with an axe and a means of making fire. A fire would be started in the taiga [northern boreal forest] that would sometimes burn for hundreds of miles without being put out. Anyone using tracking dogs would be hard pressed to follow a person through a burnt area.

During the Korean War the Chinese Communist forces set enormous forest fires in the mountainous areas of North Korea. These fires burned without any suppression and created such conditions of smoke and haze that U.S. reconnaissance aircraft were unable to take photos that would have revealed the massive buildup and movement south of Chinese troops prior to their intervention in the Korean War.

coolbert.