June 16, 2013 – 1 Maccabees 4 – 4:25

These larger armies tend to flee as soon as they think the battle is lost.  I was just reading a book that had a line in it like that.  The advice in war was that as soon as an enemy turned to run, they would never turn again to fight.  It makes sense, but also defies what happens in many, many movie battles.  There is almost always the scene where the strategy is for the first men to flee and give the attacking army confidence and then a secret group joins the runners and everyone turns around and wins.  The one that comes to mind is the last battle in “Patriot”.  Although it works in movies, I don’t think that such a strategy would actually work in reality.  I think the advice from the book is more likely.  When someone turns to run, I think it is probably impossible for them to talk themselves into turning back around to fight.  If you have ever seen “Enemies at the Gates”, the open battle scene has the Russians running into battle and then turning to flee.  Instead of allowing then to actually return and to try and motivate them to fight, the Russians actually started shooting their own men that ran from battle.  I have no idea how realistic that is, but I think it is real that turning around once is probably all most soldiers do.