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Wars, occupations, and invasions don’t “just happen.” Hannibal did not cross the Alps by accident, Paul Kinizsi did not go on a trip when he defeated Ali Beg’s army at Bread Field, and Napoleon did not wonder what his army was. What I was looking for in Borogyino Accidental occupations are existing phenomena, life has produced many such absurd situations in history and recently as well.
The stronghold of the bastion
There was a time when Canada posed the greatest threat to the United States. In the Anglo-American War of 1812, for example, British troops left Canada and eventually looted and burned the White House in Washington two years later.
After the Washington fiasco, President James Madison decided to fortify the Lake Champlain area, which was the number one invasion route for the English. A fort was planned on the shores of the lake, which will prevent further robberies.
They designed 10 meter high walls for the fort and wanted to equip it with 125 guns. Construction began in 1816, after the end of the war, and work progressed well for two years. However, it was then that surveyors realized that planned American fort against Canada is accidentally built in Canada – in the territory of the same country against which they wanted to defend themselves. The dividing line was a mile away.
The Americans immediately stopped construction. The fort received the nickname El Error and the locals began to scatter the stones. This was the case until 1842, when in a British-American treaty the border was relocated so that the fort was not in Canada. At this point, the project was relaunched and the Fortress of Fortune became Fort Montgomery. Today the building is in private hands.
The aggressor who usually rushes towards his neighbor is Switzerland
Liechtenstein, 160 square kilometers, lies between Austria and Switzerland in the Rhine Valley. In the mini-state, letters were sent by Swiss Post to addresses in Lichtenstein for a long time, and there is no army, so Switzerland is is responsible for their protection. Liechtenstein is a sovereign state, but so small that even those who do not want to attack and occupy it.
At the forefront of this is its main defender, the Swiss army. At a Swiss artillery practice in 1968 They were accidentally fired across the border and a shell crashed into Liechtenstein’s only ski resort, Malbun. That the Swiss really need to improve the effectiveness of the artillery indicates that that shot destroyed some of the chairs on the terrace of a restaurant. He was not injured.
In 1976, 75 Swiss soldiers misinterpreted the map and accidentally entered the village of Iradug in Liechtenstein. The locals offered the attackers a drink.
In 1985, during a Swiss winter military exercise, anti-aircraft missiles slammed into Liechtenstein and set fire to a forest. The incident sparked weeks of diplomatic controversy because the forest was in a nature reserve. Switzerland finally paid compensation.
In 1992, the Swiss army installed an observatory in Triesenberg. The attention of the Swiss officers leading the action was avoided by the fact that the municipality is not in Switzerland. The Bern government apologized to Lichtenstein and the observatory was demolished.
The last Swiss invasion took place in 2002, when 171 Swiss soldiers were lost in a night training exercise. and 2 kilometers in Liechtenstein. When they realized the error, the unit quickly turned around. No one in Lichtenstein noticed the incident. The following day, they learned from the Swiss Foreign Ministry that they had been the victims of aggression again. The missing Swiss squad commander explained the incident as “it was very dark.”
Great Britain attacks Spain
The English seized Gibraltar in 1704, the British crown colony of the Rock since 1830. In World War II, Hitler did his best to involve Spain in the fight on the side of the Axis powers, but Franco remained neutral and even overlooked the presence of the English in the Iberian Peninsula.
Gibraltarians decided in a 1967 referendum to remain citizens of the United Kingdom. British governments, however, are careful not to provoke the Spanish because Madrid is still contesting the area’s affiliation today. Thus, in the military exercises in Gibraltar, care is taken little by little not to make a mistake on the Swiss model.
But good intentions seem to be few when it comes to soldiers. In 2002, on the morning of a weekend in February The inhabitants of the Spanish town of La Línea have noticed that there are 30 British marines lying on the sand off their coast, with machine guns and minesweepers. and near the coast there is a British landing motor cruiser. The Marines stormed the coast at dawn, during a military exercise against the British Army. The soldiers expected the “defenders” who had the area to shoot them with the blinds before the “attackers” showed that the Marines would always win, occupy the coast and end up taking photos or drinking beer in the camp canteen.
Instead of the defenders’ fire, stunned Spanish fishermen awaited the soldiers. Soon two sleepy Spanish policemen arrived and told the commander that they were not in Gibraltar. “Such a mistake is quite strange,” a local police spokesman later commented on the incident.
Disappointed, the English left the arena, got on the motorcycle and set sail to find the real Gibraltar. According to the public at La Línea, this could not have been difficult because a 425 meter high rock could easily be recognized.
The British Defense Ministry called the case shameful, but the perpetrators were not reprimanded because, as an anonymous British diplomat put it, “everyone learned from the case.”
Occupation in the heart of Europe: the Polish army in the Czech Republic
In May 2020, during the first wave of the coronavirus epidemic, the Polish government also involved the army to deal with the situation. Also on the Polish-Czech border in Silesia, the soldiers assisted the border guards, but were somewhat behind in the task.
It so happened that the Czech engineer Ivo Dokoupil, who had just wanted to inspect the renovation of a small chapel near the town of Pelhřimovy, was very surprised. ran into a Polish barricade, on the Czech side. “A soldier from a foreign country, with a machine gun to his chest, instructed in my own country in a foreign language what he could and could not do. It was a surreal experience, “said Dokoupil.
The Polish occupation was documented by a photographer in a local newspaper. Members of the invasion force learned from the Czech police that they had occupied the Czech Republic when they quickly dismantled the barricade and withdrew to their own country. The incident was not considered “hostile intent” in Prague.
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