ABSTRACT
This chapter presents two military case studies, both of them involving retreats undertaken under extremely hazardous circumstances. The first one occurred during the Peninsula War at the Battle of Fuentes de Onoro in Spain near the Portuguese border. This was a three-day battle between a British-Portuguese army and the French Army of Portugal in early May 1811. The second retreat happened during the Korean War in the winter of 1950 when a very large number of Chinese soldiers crossed the Manchurian border into North Korea at the Chosin Reservoir and entered the war against the United Nations forces. The basic rules of war in those days were fairly simple; as in the children’s game of stone, scissors and paper, outcomes depended on who was matched against whom. Cavalry beat infantry when the latter were disorganised or in column; infantry beat cavalry when the former were assembled into squares.
