I used to read military history when I was a kid, and I was particularly impressed with the british army. Here's one of their encounters I wish someone would make a movie about - the battle of Omdurman in 1898. (Won't happen because hollywood appeasers wouldn't want to portray IFs getting their asses kicked.) This took place in Sudan, with the brits under Kitchener up against some variety of islamofascist grand poobah. 8000 brits and 17,000 indigenous allies, against 50,000 rags. IFs lost, and one british outfit, the 21st lancers, won 3 VCs. As far as I can tell, the brits are still man-for-man the best army in the world.

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Check out Wellington's campaigns in Spain and Portugal. Always outnumbered against a series of experienced French Marshalls he always found a way to win. I know the French army ain't much today but Napoleon's army was the best in Europe, perhaps the world. Yet Wellington always beat them. Wellington has to be the greatest Commander of his age.

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"Civilizations die from suicide, not murder." Arnold Toynbee

Check the battle of Majuba (South Africa) for British ineptness (fighting in the brown veld with red jackets, bright idea), and in the great South Afriucan war, look at battles like MAgersfontein. The Brits where not always that good. Actually the whole war was a disastor for the British, with them only winning after they started putting women and children in consentration camps and having them die in their thousands.

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“The subject no longer has to be mentioned by name. Someone is sick. Someone else is feeling better now. A friend has just gone back into the hospital. Another has died. The unspoken name, of course, is AIDS.”
“From the point of view of the pharmaceutical industry, the AIDS problem has already been solved. After all, we already have a drug which can be sold at the incredible price of $8, 000 an annual dose, and which has the added virtue of not diminishing the market by actually curing anyone.”

Well there is always the british army totally wiped out by the Zulu. But I prefer to remember the remarkable stand at Roarks Drift.

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"Civilizations die from suicide, not murder." Arnold Toynbee

Good ol' Brits...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fi_p7R5WXMg

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"Duty is the most sublime word in our language. You cannot do more. You should never wish to do less." - Robert E. Lee

More to do with Kitchener and railways cutting the country into controllable sections.

......Cool....video.....Uhhh...Occupants!!!

The railways where highly ineffective, and kept being blown up by the Boer guerilla forces. The boers surrenderd because the British under Kitchener burned all the farms, thus cuttin of their supplies, and send all the women and children to real bad camps. The boers could no longer stand by watching this take place, and had no option than to negotioate a surrender

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“The subject no longer has to be mentioned by name. Someone is sick. Someone else is feeling better now. A friend has just gone back into the hospital. Another has died. The unspoken name, of course, is AIDS.”
“From the point of view of the pharmaceutical industry, the AIDS problem has already been solved. After all, we already have a drug which can be sold at the incredible price of $8, 000 an annual dose, and which has the added virtue of not diminishing the market by actually curing anyone.”

Matter of opinion. The railways were the means of transporting the troops around to quarter the Boers pushing them until a lack of resources forced the surrender.

The British army whatever it's downfalls is one (*)(*)(*)(*) good fighting force. I would argue that even though the British were defeated by the Americans and Boers, this was largely down to the fact that Britain was fighting an insurgency against locals who knew the land (much like America in Vietnam and Iraq). However may I remind you people that the British military single handedly took over 1/4 of the globes surface and population. Has any other military ever done that? I'm American yet I still admire the British for that and especially their military, plus the Brits were the only ones to stand up to Hitler and win, long before us Yanks went kicking and screaming into the war.

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