WOOD. ALL WOOD. AND HAPHAZARDLY BUILT.
“Some of his earlier messengers to Syphax had reported that the Carthaginians’ winter huts were built almost entirely of wood, and those of the Numidians of interwoven reeds and matting,
disposed without order or proper intervals, and that a number even lay outside the ramparts of the camps.
The news suggested to Scipio the idea of setting fire to the enemy’s camp and striking a surprise blow in the confusion.
“Therefore in his later embassies Scipio sent certain expert scouts and picked centurions dressed as officers’ servants. While the conferences were in progress, these rambled through the camps, both that of Syphax and Hasdrubal, noting their approaches and entrances and studying the general plan of the camps, the distance between them, the times and methods of stationing guards and outposts. With each embassy, too, a different lot of observers were sent, so that as large a number as possible should familiarize themselves with the lie of the enemy camps.
As a result of their reports Scipio ascertained that Syphax’s camps was the more inflammable and the easier to attack.
”
-- B.H. Liddel-Hart,
Scipio Africanus
***
THE HARDEST THING TO DO
“When I teach ice climbing I tell students, "the hardest thing to do is one thing at a time."
“But ears are deaf and the brain bombarded so with a palsy-like, start-stop stutter the student scatters attention everywhere at once. He removes an ice tool then decides it would be better to move a foot but simultaneously figures he should look ahead to see where to move and suddenly one of the remaining two points of contact blows and the rope does its part. Hanging on it the student wonders what happened. As if he/she hadn't been present. Which is, practically speaking, the case: so overwhelmed by sensory input and the demand for decision/action a temporary autism results.
“The hardest thing to do is one thing at a time. Whether in the moment or across the entirety of life.”
-- Mark Twight, “
Make a Damned Choice
”
***
INFLAMMABILITY
The Second Punic War had broken out between Rome and Carthage – and Hannibal Barca led his famous crossing of the Alps to invade Italy by surprise and begin savaging the Romans.
The Romans barely survived the repeated ambushes and brilliant strategy and tactics of Hannibal; in 216, the greatest disaster in Roman history until that time happened when Hannibal lured the Romans into a trap at Cannae and killed over 50,000 Romans – an unimaginably large number in the pre-modern era.
Somehow, though, the Roman Republic neither collapsed nor surrendered, eventually turning to a strategy of fighting delaying actions against Hannibal, attacking loose troops who had drifted from the main body of Carthaginians, and avoiding direct battle with Hannibal himself.
But Carthage was in North Africa, and their main base in Europe was in modern-day Spain.
Spain was a death-trap for the Romans, a rugged country that was much better understood and navigated by the Carthaginians and their allies. In 211 BC, Publius Scipio’s father and uncle were killed by Hannibal’s brother in Spain.
The younger Scipio was the only one who volunteered for the command in Spain; though technically below the legal age to lead troops at age 25, it was given to him. He proceeded to become a brilliant commander who moved extremely slowly at times while probing for weaknesses, then exploded like a flash of lightning once he found them.
After wrecking havoc in Spain, even while Hannibal was still running free in Italy, Scipio took the fight to Carthage’s homeland in Northern Africa.
Scipio’s most famous battle was the final battle of the war, the Battle of Zama, where Hannibal returned from Italy to defend Carthage, and where Scipio needed to figure out how to neutralize 80 deadly war elephants.
Zama was a masterpiece to be sure, but for my money, the night fire attacks at the Battle of Utica in 203 BC are far even more impressive. The amount of details that needed to be gotten correct to have them work was immense, but once those details were noticed, it did an insane amount of damage to the Carthaginian forces with almost no risk to the Romans. It was perhaps the most perfect battle, and for my part, I think it’s quite possibly the decisive moment that lead to the Romans winning the war.
Liddel-Hart –
“About the first watch the troops were formed up in march order and moved off on their seven mile march, and about midnight arrived in the vicinity of the hostile camps, which were just over a mile apart. Thereupon Scipio divided his force, placing all the Numidians and half his legionaries under Laelius and Masinissa with orders to attack Syphax’s camp.
The two commanders he first took aside and urged on them the need for caution, emphasizing that “the more the darkness in night attacks hinders and impedes the sight, the more must one supply the place of actual vision by skill and care.”
He further instructed them that he would wait to launch his attack on Hasdrubal’s camp until Laelius had set fire to the other camp, and with this purpose his own men at a slow pace.
[…]
“As had been foreseen, once the leading Romans had set the fire alight, it spread rapidly along the first row of huts, and
in a brief while the whole camp was aflame, because of the closeness of the huts and the lack of proper intervals between rows.
“
Fully imagining that it was an accidental conflagration, Syphax’s men rushed out of their huts unarmed, and in a disorderly flight.
Many perished in their huts while half asleep, many were trampled to death in the frenzied rush for the exits, while those who escaped the flames were cut down unawares by the Numidians posted at the gates of the camp.
“Meanwhile in the Carthaginian camp the soldiers, aroused by the sentries’ reports of the fire in the other camp, and seeing how vast was the volume of flame, rushed out of their own camp to assist in extinguishing the fire, they also imagining it an accident and Scipio seven miles distant. This was as Scipio had hoped and anticipated, and he at once fell on the rabble, giving orders not to let a man escape to give warning to the troops still in camp.
Instantly he followed up this by launching his attack on the gates of the camp, which were unguarded as a result of the confusion.
“[…] soon the whole camp was aflame, the same scenes of confusion and destruction being here repeated, and those who escaped through the gates meeting their fate at the hands of Roman parties posted for the purpose. …
“
According to Livy, forty thousand men were either slain or destroyed by the flames, and about five thousand were captured, including many Carthaginian nobles. As a spectacle of disaster it surpasses any in history.”
***
DANGER FLAGS #5: NEGLECT
In our lives, almost certainly the stakes will never be as high as they were for either Rome or Carthage – whichever of those two great powers had lost the Second Punic War would almost certainly have been annihilated. Such were the brutal customs of the day.
Scipio followed up the night attacks with another series of rapid victories, defeated Hannibal the next year, and the peace terms imposed on Carthage crippled it as a society. In the Third Punic War 50 years later, Carthage was completely destroyed as a civilization.
I believe the night fire attacks on Syphax and Hasdrubal are what won the war for Rome – after all, Scipio was consistently outnumbered in Africa. At the decisive Battle of Zama the next year, Scipio had 5000 less soldiers than Hannibal. Had Hasdrubal and Syphax been able to preserve their forces and give any semblance of a fight – even if eventually defeated – it’s likely Scipio does not have the manpower to conquer Carthage.
And here is the damning thing: the night fire attack should not been possible
. It was only made possible by laxness and neglect
on the part of the Carthaginians and their allies.
Scipio was already known by that time as one of the most cunning Roman commanders, known for surprise attacks, and yet the Carthaginians neglected some basic well-known elements of military discipline that would have made those devastating attacks impossible.
The stakes will almost certainly never be as high in your life as they were for the Romans and Carthaginians in North Africa, but the general pattern of neglect
leading to ruin
is certainly common in any day and age. That is what we dive into in this chapter.
***
THE NATURE OF NEGLECT AND TRAINING
Before we talk about Neglect as a Danger Flag
, we should recognize something –
No action can be said to be neglectful if a person doesn’t and couldn’t know the correct way of doing it.
A physician cannot be blamed for failing to wash his hands 500 years ago, before the germ theory of disease was known.
This does not pardon a neglect in learning
the correct way of doing things, of course – a person who overconfidently gets into a discipline without investigating what is required for success has flaws as well, and we will address that an upcoming chapter of Danger Flags.
Nevertheless, deciphering the correct way of doing things and training and drilling those things into yourself and anyone serving under your leadership are essential first and foremost.
Fire was always a problem in the ancient world, including among military camps with all the haphazard cooking, cleaning, weapons and armor repair, warmth and entertainment at campfires, and so on.
Likewise, Syphax’s camp had another major blunder – many soldiers had put up their nighttime tents outside of the walls and fortification of the camp, thus making them more vulnerable to assault, and making things more confused and disorganized if the whole army needed to rally to attack.
Now here is an interesting question, and we’ll never know the answer: did Syphax know that this was foolish and was he being neglectful?
Certainly, Hasdrubal knew – the Carthaginians had a well-developed military tradition, and knew the basics of fortifications, defenses, and fire breaks.
Syphax was from the Berber Masaaesyli tribe of Numidia, who are described in all the ancient sources as nomadic. They were fierce cavalry fighters, but – like most mounted societies – it’s very likely they did not assail cities very often. Perhaps they would have built lesser fortifications in the normal course of war amongst themselves, and taken to flight rapidly on horseback if an enemy attacked.
I think this is very possible – and if so, the neglect for the ill-built camps falls entirely on Hasdrubal Gisco, the Carthaginian commander.
***
BAD TRAINING, LACK OF TRAINING, BAD HABITS
Much of what seems to be neglect
in an individual, then, is simply bad training – or a lack of training altogether. In those cases, one’s base patterns of actions and habits will emerge.
In these cases, a person is not being neglectful if doing something wrong – and training might correct it. In this case, it would not be a danger flag (though you would want to note that training is required).
But there’s no doubt, to me, that Hasdrubal would have known better. Why didn’t he ensure that all the forces on the campaign against Scipio have good fortifications?
***
PSYCHOLOGICAL REACTANCE
We come to our first reason for neglect – while “bad training” leads to behavior that looks a lot like neglect, it is not neglect itself per se.
Reactance, though, reactance is a nasty sort of thing.
Wikipedia: Reactance (psychology)
–
“Reactance is a motivational reactance to offers, persons, rules, or regulations that threaten or eliminate specific behavioral freedoms.”
Reactance is a little-known but critically important concept. In response to any perceived loss of freedom, people tend to want to assert themselves – even if it goes against what’s actually good for them –
“An example of such behavior can be observed when an individual engages in a prohibited activity in order to deliberately taunt the authority who prohibits it, regardless of the utility or disutility that the activity confers.”
In other words, in response to being told you can’t
do something, or that you must
do something, you’ll tend to feel reactance. It feels bad, and you might want to express yourself – if possible, by breaking the rule or mandate; if not, often by acting out in some other way to express that you’re still free.
Not everyone feels reactance and some people feel it more strongly than others – this is our first predictor of neglect
, and the first danger flag to look out for.
Any time you hear someone complaining about needing to do something trivial, this should be a minor warning sign that they feel the need to assert themselves. Getting the job done quietly and without fuss takes less energy and is healthier for whoever is doing it, as we discussed last chapter, in Danger Flags #4: Hatred
. And that’s true for even the most minor
of cases – major hostility to authority or rules without any clear reason for hating the rules is a very bad sign.
The Carthaginian Army, for what it’s worth, was a patchwork army from many different cultures. They were known for being ferocious in battle, but for less military discipline than the Romans – Hannibal and other Carthaginian commanders often had to execute people disobeying orders in particularly brutal ways to ensure constant discipline.
Relatedly, Syphax was very proud and had been courted by both the Romans and Carthaginians as an ally. It’s very possible that Hasdrubal knew that Syphax was fortifying incorrectly and sloppily, but didn’t want to “rock the boat” and generate stress and hostility among an ally… the end result, of course, would be 40,000 of their combined troops killed in the surprise attack.
***
DISTRACTIBILITY
Whereas you might be excused for not knowing how to fortify a military camp, not being distractible
is a core human life skills; anyone who allows themself to remain distractible in high-stakes situations has made serious errors.
This is a huge source of neglect – as Mark Twight said about ice climbing, "the hardest thing to do is one thing at a time."
We can identify here there more potential predictors of Danger Flags related to Distractibility – whimsy, love of novelty, and escapism.
Whimsy and novelty-seeking mean doing things differently at different times, for no good reason. This is not the deliberate experimentation of the scientist, or the constant re-examining of any sort of leader. And whereas looking for novelty in the arts or in throwing a party is fine, it’s absolutely not-fine in domains that are high-stakes and have best practices associated with them.
“Ah, let’s forget about fortifying the camp tonight.”
“Ah, let’s try climbing without safety gear.”
Escapism is a mix of novelty-seeking and giving in to reactance – all of these elements will lead to the person with these patterns doing things incorrectly, often with disastrous consequences.
***
DANGER-FLAGGING NEGLECT
Neglect is when a person doesn’t do something they know they ought to do. People who feel reactance strongly, are easily distractible, are whimsical, novelty-seeking, or escapist are more likely to neglect something crucial.
Any time you see those attributes in someone, you should note it. It’s a danger flag, which predicts future neglectful behavior.
But before you blame the person’s character, you must check if their training has gone through – which is, incidentally, also what you should do if you see any neglectful behavior in yourself.
***
SITUATION-SPECIFIC TRAINING, AND GENERAL ORDERS FOR SENTRIES
The role of a sentry is to notice anything out of the ordinary and report it immediately… errors in this role have been particularly deadly and destructive in military history.
It’s also surprisingly hard to get at all the edge cases of being a sentry – the natural tendency, if a sentry sees a fire near them, is to fight the fire… which can lead to them abandoning their post. Thus, often enemies will set fires as a diversion.
I’ve called “
General Orders for Sentries
” perhaps the finest operations document of all time – it addresses all the core duties of an American armed forces sentry, gives them precisely in memorizable format, and has a longer expanded explanation of each principle. The General Orders are:
"1. To take charge of this post and all government property in view.
2. To walk my post in a military manner, keeping always on the alert and observing everything that takes place within sight or hearing.
3. To report all violations of orders I am instructed to enforce.
4. To repeat all calls from posts more distant from the guardhouse (or the Quarterdeck) than my own.
5. To quit my post only when properly relieved.
6. To receive, obey, and pass on to the sentry who relieves me, all orders from the Commanding Officer, Command Duty Officer, Officer of the Day, Officer of the Deck, and all Officers and Petty Officers of the watch only.
7. To talk to no one except in the line of duty.
8. To give the alarm in case of fire or disorder.
9. To call the Corporal of the Guard or Officer of the Deck in any case not covered by instructions.
10. To salute all officers and all colors and standards not cased.
11. To be especially watchful at night and during the time for challenging, to challenge all persons on or near my post, and to allow no one to pass without proper authority."
The expanded version of Order #8 is particularly insightful –
"While this is rather straightforward and obvious, keep in mind that a fire or disorder of some kind might be a deliberate distraction to keep you from observing some other disorderly or subversive activity. If you are certain that a fire is not meant to be a distraction, you should fight the fire if you have the means to do so. Remember, however, that your first responsibility is to report whatever is amiss."
This order would have prevented the destruction of Hasdrubal’s and Syphax’s forces if followed. It’s particularly impressive because it respects human nature.
If you say “don’t fight the fire, at all, ever” – the order will be sometimes disobeyed. By repeatedly stating that fighting the fire might
be acceptable, but is far less important
than the sentry duties, this hews close to human nature.
***
SITUATION SPECIFIC TRAINING AT LARGE
You can’t ever blame someone or hold them at fault for not doing something they didn’t know they should do.
I’d go a step further and say that if someone hasn’t been adequately trained, you can’t really expect
them to perform well at all.
Sentries in the American armed forces are drilled constantly and spot-quizzed on the various General Orders for Sentries, over and over again. They’re punished if they get the answers wrong repeatedly. If they break the rules of being a sentry, it’s very serious and can end any advancement in their military career. It’s taken very seriously and trained accordingly.
Thus, before you danger-flag someone who is getting things wrong, you should look into their training. Plenty of people can perform well with training, but cannot if they don’t know what to do. If you’re leading, it’s on you to ensure everyone knows what to do and has been trained accordingly.
***
GENERALIZED TRAINING FOR BEING STEADFAST AND RELIABLE
Neglect is a danger flag. If someone doesn’t know what to do, it’s not neglect – it’s bad training. What if they do know what to do and aren’t doing it?
A big problem. Avoid that person.
What if that person is you?
Ah, that would be concerning.
But if you’re prone to being neglectful, that’s not the end of the world. You can train generalized anti-neglect
easily enough.
People are more prone to reactance and distractibility if their bodies and minds are unhealthy. Generalized athletic training, a better diet, regularly getting exhausted through physical exercise, and sleeping well at night all go a long ways to training you to do the right thing.
On top of that, you can sharpen your mind and concentration through endurance training, mindfulness meditation, or any activity where you need to push through discomfort. If there’s currently things you know you ought to be doing that you’re neglecting regularly, it makes immense sense to sharpen your mind and endurance.
The ability to use technology to your advantage (and not to your disadvantage) can also be trained. There’s many apps like SelfControl and Freedom to limit specific websites or internet access in general. You can learn to use calendar apps as well as to-do and project planning apps over time. For addictive websites, there’s often browser plugins to make them less addictive – I use Distraction-Free Youtube (which turns off Comments and Related Videos) and Facebook Newsfeed Eradicator (which clears out the most addictive elements of Facebook). You might need to spend a few weeks studying, testing, installing, and practicing with technology to get it working with you.
And then, finally, and perhaps the hardest of all, is learning to slow down and do what needs to be done.
Neglect is a serious thing – perhaps the most serious of danger flags. If you’re regularly neglectful, it’s frankly impossible to work with the best people and regularly produce top results. A few small pieces of neglectful behavior can sometimes lead to those conditions that led to 40,000 Carthaginians and their allies to die in flames and be cut down like dogs without even getting a chance to fight back.
Well-trained sentries, slightly better camp construction, and slightly more diligent training from the commanders would have entirely prevented that horror from befalling their forces. Yes, neglect is an extreme thing.
So once you train your mind and body, and your awareness, and get technology working for you, the final piece of the puzzle is working constantly to focus in on what really matters
and doing that first and well, before anything else.
Admittedly, this can be hard, but what other choice is there?
As Twight says,
“The hardest thing to do is one thing at a time. Whether in the moment or across the entirety of life.”