The story “Defense of Fool's Ford” is structurally a collection of six short stories-“dreams”, dedicated to options for solving a seemingly simple tactical task of defending a river ford by an English infantry platoon from the surrounding Boer partisans, and is so brilliantly illuminated in the text the paradigm “Charters are written in blood” and the importance of training junior officers to independently conduct combat operations, which has been periodically republished for almost a hundred years and, in fact, is mandatory for study in military educational institutions of English-speaking countries. Written by Swinton in 1904 and at the moment is already practically Immortal in certain circles, the story “The Defense of Duffer's Drift” gave rise to quite numerous works by his followers, none of which, like Swinton himself, were officially translated in Russia. Taken from the website: fakel-history.ru/durackij- brod/