The Mammoth Book of Losers

by Karl Shaw

  Buller is often cited as an example of the Peter Principle – i.e., that people in a hierarchical organisation are promoted to their level of incompetence. As one military historian put it, “He made a superb major, a mediocre colonel and an abysmally poor general.”

  “Brains! I don’t believe in brains. You haven’t any, I know, Sir.”

  The Duke of Cambridge, complimenting one of his generals. The Duke was commander-in-chief of the British Army from the Crimean War until 1895. He did whatever he could to resist army reform and was particularly hostile to officers who studied warfare.

  Most Expensive Napoleonic Complex

  A Napoleonic complex is a term generally used to describe short men who are driven by their perceived handicap and feelings of inferiority to overcompensate in other areas – in Napoleon’s case by conquering half of Europe.24

  The short, bandy-legged Paraguayan President Francisco Solano López (1827–70) acquired a classic Napoleonic fixation after being told, while on a trip to France in 1853, that he bore a passing resemblance to the late, great Corsican. López returned home and immediately set about redesigning Paraguay’s military uniforms to look identical to those worn by the French. Meanwhile, he ordered for himself an exact replica of Napoleon’s crown, then took to wearing one hand tucked inside his jacket at all times. Before long, he had several wardrobes full of fake Napoleonic military costumes worn so tight he could barely walk.

  His reign alternated between extreme paranoia and brutality. Convinced of a vast conspiracy to overthrow him, López ordered hundreds of random executions, including those of two of his brothers and two brothers-in-law, plus scores of top government and military officials and several foreign diplomats. His victims were usually killed by lance thrusts to save on ammunition.

  Suspicious of yet another intrigue against him, this time by Paraguay’s aristocracy, López solved the problem by putting all of the sons of his country’s ruling class into a single regiment, then sent them on a suicidal attack, unarmed and barefoot; all but two died. He even had his mother and sisters tortured when he suspected them of plotting against him.

  In the grip of Napoleonic delusion, in 1864 López decided that his country (population 500,000) should wage war on three fronts on neighbouring countries Brazil, Argentina and Uruguay (combined population ten million). To any rational observer, Paraguay was doomed, but rational observers were in short supply, because López had long since purged anyone who disagreed with him. Hopelessly outnumbered by his enemies’ armies, el presidente made up the numbers by drafting boys and old men. He once tried to take on the Brazilian Army by sending out a battalion of twelve-year-olds wearing false beards, and having them throw rocks when they ran out of bullets.

  López trained his troops so hard and for so long that many didn’t even live long enough to see a battle. Any show of dissent against the Paraguayan president’s increasingly desperate military campaigns brought imprisonment, torture and lingering death.

  As the military position grew ever more hopeless, López organized a spying system which encouraged every third man in his Army to rat on his comrades and to shoot anyone who showed any sign of cowardice. Many took the opportunity of shooting their officers first to avoid being shot themselves. Widespread paranoia among the ranks led to many of his men marching into battle backwards, more fearful of their own side than the enemy. When López’s most senior commander found himself surrounded and facing certain defeat, he opted to blow his own brains out rather than face his president, but he missed, shooting only one eye out.

  López himself always fled the battlefield at the slightest suspicion of danger and, when he ran, his generals were always obliged to flee with him; to have shown less fear than the commander-in-chief was considered treasonable.

  Meanwhile, López’s mistress Eliza was doing her bit for the war effort by touring the army camps to raise morale in a black coach, followed by several carriage-loads of her extensive wardrobe of Parisian gowns and a grand piano. She once turned up in the middle of a battlefield dressed in a white crinoline.

  In 1870, López declared himself a Saint of the Christian Church. When the matter was put to the bishops of Paraguay, the twenty-three who did not agree were shot. Sainthood did not significantly improve his military options.

  At the battle of Cerro Cora, Brazilian soldiers finally caught up with the overweight and over-decorated López and ended his career with a bullet. By the time it was over, the War of Triple Alliance had almost eliminated Paraguay from the map. It is estimated that 90 per cent of the country’s male population had died.

  The biggest museum in Paraguay, the Museum of Military History, has an entire room given over to their late, notorious dictator. Highlights include a display of his pyjamas and a pair of his giant-sized underpants.

  Most Expensive Napoleonic Complex: Runner-Up

  As one of the generals who liberated his country from Spanish rule, Antonio López de Santa Anna was a Mexican living legend – and another leader whose head was significantly turned by the exploits of M. Bonaparte.

  When his people started calling him “the Napoleon of Mexico”, he took it to heart and took to modelling himself upon the French emperor, right down to his hairstyle. In truth, he couldn’t have been more different from his hero, either on or off the battlefield. Napoleon was shorting and fat; Santa Anna was tall and skinny and only had one leg. Critically, he rather lacked Napoleon’s strategic gifts.

  Apart from an early success at the Alamo, when Santa Anna struggled to defeat around 250 Texans with 2,400 Mexicans, losing nearly 600 of his men, he had the dubious distinction of losing every battle he fought in the Mexican-American War.

  In one particularly inspired “surprise attack”, Santa Anna dressed all of his troops in enemy uniforms. The chaos was predictable; half of Santa Anna’s Army was routed by the other half and the rest were mopped up by the Americans for the loss of only twenty-six casualties.

  At San Jacinto he encamped with his Army in a wood known to be full of Texan soldiers but, as it was after midday, he insisted on taking his usual siesta. While Santa Anna and his men quietly snoozed, the Texans attacked (screaming “Remember the Alamo!”) and routed the entire Mexican Army in less than twenty minutes. Santa Anna himself was enjoying a nap after having pleasured a kidnapped American woman called Emily West.25 He was later found wearing a private’s uniform, hiding in a marsh.

  Santa Anna was a terrible general but a born survivor. He escaped, but two years later had a leg torn off in a skirmish with the French. He recovered the severed leg and, when he eventually became the most powerful man in Mexico, he gave the limb a full State funeral. At public events, he took to riding on horseback waving his new cork leg over his head as a symbol of his sacrifices for his country.

  In 1847, at the Battle of Cerro Gordo, Santa Anna was enjoying a quiet roast chicken lunch when his appetite was ruined by an uninvited regiment of Illinoisans, who stole his cork leg.

  Santa Anna hopped away to fight another day but the iconic limb remained in American hands, despite many requests from the Mexican Government to return it.

  In the 1850s, Army veterans charged a nickel or a dime for curiosity seekers to handle the leg in hotel bars. Santa Anna’s prosthesis, a trophy of war, now resides in the Guard’s Museum, Camp Lincoln, in Springfield, Illinois.

  Most Desperate CIA Cold War Ploy: Part 1

  In the early 1950s, the CIA experimented with mind-altering drugs to see if they could find a foolproof chemical aid to assist them in interrogations. This very scientific trial mostly involved handing out LSD to Pentagon employees to see what would happen.

  The CIA was forced into a rethink in November 1953 when Pentagon guinea pig Frank Olson was administered LSD by an agency representative. An internal memo explained: “On the day following the experiment, Olson began to behave in a peculiar and erratic manner and was later placed under the care of a psychiatrist.”

  The trials were abandoned a few days later af
ter Olson threw himself through a New York hotel window.

  “If Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony is not by some means abridged, it will soon fall into disuse.”

  Philip Hale, Boston music critic, 1837

  Least Effective Attempt to Create a Good First Impression

  The British Vice-Admiral Sir George Tryon (1832–93) was one of the most outstanding and highly decorated naval officers of his generation. He was also one of the most intimidating. A huge, burly man standing well over six feet tall, he had a full beard and a withering stare that was said to frighten his subordinates half to death. So when he ordered his fleet to perform a manoeuvre that would inevitably end in disaster, nobody dared question it until it was too late.

  On 2 June 1893, Tryon was preparing to anchor for the night after a long day in charge of the British Mediterranean fleet on summer manoeuvres near Tripoli off the coast of Lebanon. He couldn’t resist one last opportunity to show off a bit. After all, Britannia ruled the waves and it was his job to make sure that everyone knew it. Tryon wasn’t usually in the habit of consulting with anyone, but on this occasion he discussed his plan with his captains in advance. The ships were to steam towards the coast in two parallel columns 1,200 yards apart; one column was to be led by Tryon on his flagship HMS Victoria, the other by HMS Camperdown under the command of Rear-Admiral Albert Markham. Each column was then to make an inwards U-turn towards each other, until they formed two new columns, sailing in the opposite direction.

  There was only one problem – the warships had turning circles of 800 yards, so they would need to be at least 1,600 yards apart to avoid hitting each other. Tryon’s Staff Commander, Thomas Hawkins-Smith, pointed this out. Tryon, clearly furious at having his wisdom questioned by a junior officer, brusquely overruled him. Flags were hoisted to signal the Admiral’s orders to the fleet.

  Rear-Admiral Markham, in charge of the other column, hesitated. It was his job as second-in-command to tell the vice-admiral that he had got his sums wrong. Tryon grew impatient, hoisting a signal flag ordering Markham to get on with it. So the doomed ships began to turn towards each other.

  Now Tryon was a difficult and often dictatorial man, but he was also known to be quite brilliant at fleet handling and fond of ordering complex, unorthodox formations to keep his officers on their toes. So if any of his subordinates still had any lingering doubts, they all expected him to have a trick up his sleeve. But as the ships got closer and closer to each other, it became horribly obvious that he hadn’t.

  The captain of the Victoria asked Tryon three times for permission to put the engines into reverse. Permission was granted – too late. The ships collided and the Victoria sank in thirteen minutes. HMS Camperdown survived, but only just. The order to abandon ship came too late for many of the crew to save themselves and they went down still at their posts with the loss of 357 lives.

  Tryon had somehow managed to sink one of Her Majesty’s most impressive warships on a sunny day in perfect sailing conditions. Rather than face the shame of the inevitable court-martial, he chose to stay on the bridge and go down with his ship. He was heard to mutter as the waters closed in, “It’s all my fault.”26

  Most Desperate CIA Cold War Ploy: Part 2

  In 1961, the CIA tried to discover Russia’s Cold War secrets by installing bugging devices in a cat. They called it “Operation Acoustic Kitty”.

  The intention was to eavesdrop on private conversations in the vicinity of the Soviet embassy in Washington DC from window sills and park benches. Former CIA officer Victor Marchetti recalled: “They slit the cat open, put batteries in him, wired him up. The tail was used as an antenna. They made a monstrosity. They tested him and tested him. They found he would walk off the job when he got hungry, so they put another wire in to override that.”

  There was another design flaw they had overlooked. Acoustic Kitty was prone to wandering off in search of potential feline romance. More wires were implanted to detect and bypass his urges. After exhaustive testing, the cyborg cat was finally ready for his first assignment and was set loose in the street near the Soviet embassy followed by a CIA support truck loaded with expensive monitoring equipment. The cat was immediately run over by a taxi cab. All the CIA had to show for their efforts was $16 million of roadkill.

  It is by no means certain that this catastrophe finally killed the CIA’s urge to recruit furry animals. In 2007, Iran’s official Islamic Republic News Agency reported that Iranian intelligence had “detained” fourteen squirrels fitted with tiny microphones and webcams, suspected of being American spies.

  To date, neither the CIA nor the Pentagon has owned up to Operation Secret Squirrel.

  “The invention of aircraft will make war impossible in the future.”

  British novelist George Gissing, 1903

  Least Convincing Weapon of Mass Destruction

  During the Second World War, the Allies called upon their finest scientific minds to give them a competitive edge. America turned to the Harvard chemist Dr Louis Feiser, inventor of napalm. Feiser unveiled a brand-new secret weapon he was confident would bring an early conclusion to the war with Japan – the incendiary bat.

  Feiser’s plan was to collect millions of bats and keep them cold, thereby inducing a state of hibernation. The slumbering bats would then be released over Japan, each carrying a tiny incendiary device containing one ounce of napalm. As the bats fell, they would warm up, settle under the eaves of buildings and set fire to them.

  Feiser imagined a “surprise attack” with fires breaking out all over Tokyo at 4 a.m. Specially designed bomb casings to carry incendiary bats were manufactured for American bomber planes in a factory owned by the crooner Bing Crosby.

  The plan was abandoned after trials at the Carlsbad Army Air Field in New Mexico when a number of bats, blown out of the target area by high winds, set fire to and destroyed a US army hangar and a general’s car.

  “There’s no chance that the iPhone is going to get any significant market share. No chance.”

  Steve Ballmer, CEO of Microsoft, 2007

  Most Prolific Inventor of Completely Useless Military Gadgets

  Britain’s secret weapon during the Second World War was Geoffrey Nathaniel Pyke, civilian adviser to Combined Operations, a covert wartime think-tank headed by Lord Mountbatten. Pyke’s brief was to think up new and original ideas for defeating the enemy. Within a matter of days, he was hatching the first of a series of truly eccentric plans that were to earn him the name “Professor Brainstorm”.

  Pyke devised a plan to avert the war by presenting the results of an opinion poll to Hitler showing that the majority of Germans wanted peace. Hitler would see the results, become discouraged and call the whole thing off. As Pyke had correctly assumed that the fascist dictator was probably dead against opinion polls per se, he planned to flood Germany with students, disguised as golfers, carrying clipboards in one hand and golf clubs in the other.

  Although Germany had plenty of bunkers, it was not at that time known to be a nation of golf enthusiasts; however, he did persuade a few students to dress up as golfers and travel to the Third Reich. Hitler had other ideas and invaded Poland anyway. Fortunately, the students were able to flee before the Gestapo spotted them.27

  Although he enjoyed Mountbatten’ support, Pyke’s free-thinking visions did not go down at all well with the military brass, who were convinced that he was mad, a notion his appearance did little to dispel. Always unkempt and shabbily dressed, he wore his flies undone because it was good for his health; he once famously introduced himself in this state of undress to the Canadian Prime Minister, Mackenzie King. He mostly worked from his bed because he couldn’t be bothered to get up and put clothes on and he would summon military chiefs to conferences in his Hampstead flat where they found him lying naked in bed surrounded by piles of papers, bottles, cigarette ends and other debris.

  He wrote obsessively and furiously, scribbling ideas in his notebook. Periods of manic, hyperactive activity were followed
by periods of depression. He would signal to his secretary that a depression was about to overcome him by humming, then shut himself away or vanish for days without explaining to anyone where he had been. In manic mode, he once phoned SO headquarters at 5 a.m. and insisted that a junior officer take dictation from him, a memo to Mountbatten. Much to the officer’s fury, Pyke was still dictating an hour later.

  His ideas for defeating the enemy, however, flew thick and fast. He dreamed up the “weasel”, an amphibious jeep that could move easily through mud. The unique selling proposition of the weasel was that Pyke wanted it built so that it could jump sideways to avoid dive-bombers.

  When he was asked to come up with a plan for the destruction of Rumania’s oil fields, he suggested sending in St Bernard dogs carrying brandy, so that the Rumanian guards would get drunk before the British attacked. He later improved on his plan by suggesting that women should carry the brandy instead of dogs; this, he explained, would more distracting for the guards.

  When neither idea found much favour with the military, he came up with a better idea. British spies could start a few small fires, then British commandos could simply drive about the oilfields dressed as Romanian firemen in replica fire engines. Instead of putting out fires, the “firemen” would stoke them up by spraying them with water mixed with fused incendiary bombs.

  His next project was a motorized sledge to aid travel in occupied Norway. It was controlled by a man walking behind holding reins, so that if the sledge fell into a crevasse, the driver did not – unless he forgot to let go. When the sledges were trialled, the drivers were so completely exposed to gunfire that most preferred to ride inside and take their chances with crevasses.