THE WARRIOR MAGICIAN

Sun Tzu, the great Chinese philosopher, wrote “all warfare is based on deception.” 

Deception in the government has lately become the watchword of our troubled country, seemingly at war with itself. The lead news story on the day we're posting concerns the greatly accelerated stream of falsehoods emanating from the White House, by actual count.

The magic fraternity, of course, has a special interest in - and insight into - deception. Our most elegant magic journal, Gibicière, is running a story in the current issue with new research on the legendary Robert-Houdin’s bullet-catching on behalf of the French government which - allegedly - stopped a war in Algeria.

We too have been researching this rich vein of magic history and have come to the conclusion that there has been NO successful war or battle in which deception was NOT the decisive factor. 

One great, yet unsung, magician-hero of warfare is the British Major Lionel Hugh Branson. Houdini admired him, and - though primarily an amateur - he was considered the finest magician in the entire British Army. 

Branson's name does not appear in any of the standard histories of magic, but it figures prominently in the CIA’s library of effective trickery. Dr. Barton Whaley, magician and intelligence officer, tells it in his wonderful classic Turnabout & Deception. Here’s an extract:

[In 1902, Branson] was a 22-year-old lieutenant posted to the 9th Bombay Infantry on the Indian border adjoining Afghanistan’s southern Waziristan.

There he was the only officer commanding 100 sepoys quartered in a tiny line-of-communications mud fort. A rogue band of local rebels raiding a road convoy at night had succeeded in stealing three camels. Branson formed a small party of 20 riflemen and set out to recover the King's livestock.

They’d just turned the corner of a dry river gully when two rifle shots came from the steep side above them. Normally the troops would have rushed [toward] that side — to gain better cover before returning fire. But Branson ordered only five men to that steep side where they were to then begin rapid fire.... He and the remaining 15 moved back onto the [opposite side, a] gentle slope, took up prone firing positions facing AWAY from the steep side — and waited. As soon as the smaller group of soldiers on the steep side opened rapid fire, the main party of Mahsud warriors rose up behind them at the top of the gentle side expecting to fire into the backs of their enemy across the gully. Instead they saw only the small decoy party when surprised by the massed volleys from below. The Mahsuds were routed, the camels recovered, and Branson got all his small force back safely to their fort.

How had Lt. Branson managed to anticipate this unusual scenario? He explained, “About six weeks previously I had gone out to recover the remnants of a party of signallers who in similar circumstances had been nearly wiped out, and found that most of them had been shot in the back! I thought the matter out, and so on this occasion I gave the orders” stated above. He summed up, “Two can play tricks, and the conjurer should generally win!”

Young Branson’s escapade nicely illustrates a “prepared mind” drawing the correct conclusion from unusual facts (the dead having been shot in the back where they stood together and not while scattering in flight) and then applying his magician’s oblique thinking to devise a counter-ambush.

 -- From Turnabout and Deception: Crafting the Double-Cross and the Theory of Outs. Naval Institute Press, 2016.

Scene from the British campaign in Waziristan

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