19. The Mysterious Landmines
Baden-Powell’s ruse to get his force into Mafeking set the tone for the string of deceptions he would use to hang on to the town. When the war began soon thereafter, Baden-Powell found himself besieged by a Boer force five times as big as his own. To keep them wary of a direct attack, he began burying mysterious boxes around the town’s periphery. When asked, he responded that they were powerful new landmines, the latest in British technology.
To demonstrate, he had a couple blown up within sight of Boer sympathizers, whom he then allowed to slip out of town to inform the enemy. In reality, the boxes blown up had been stuffed with the town’s entire stores of dynamite, while the other boxes buried around the defensive perimeter contained nothing but sand.