The number that should stop anyone cold is zero: no survivors, no witnesses left standing, no second chances. At the Little Bighorn, nearly 300 soldiers vanished in minutes. At the Somme, entire regiments lost nine out of every ten men before breakfast. At Thermopylae, not one defender walked away.
These were not chaotic accidents. They were decisions, calculated, deliberate, and often avoidable. We are taught that defeated units were victims of overwhelming odds, but the truth is far more unsettling. In case after case, commanders were aware of the risks and pressed forward anyway.
If history is written by the survivors, what happens when there are none? And what warnings were erased with them? The citizens of the United States received a grim shock during the nation’s centennial celebrations. In early July 1876, newspapers across the country carried reports that nearly 300 troopers of the Seventh Cavalry had been fully overcome the week before by warriors from the Lakota, Cheyenne, and Arapaho tribes in a remote region of the frontier in what is now Montana.
Leading the ill-fated column was the flamboyant and self-confident General George Armstrong Custer. His assignment was to locate Sioux bands and compel them onto government reservations. On June 25th, Custer’s force advanced against a Native American encampment along the banks of the Little Bighorn River. Although the warriors outnumbered the cavalry by more than three to one, Custer ordered an attack regardless.
As expected, the assault failed to disperse the Sioux. Instead, native fighters surged toward the American column, driving Custer’s men back toward the high ground overlooking the village. The imbalance went beyond numbers. The Seventh Cavalry was also outmatched in firepower.
Many of the native warriors carried modern rapid-fire Spencer, Winchester, and Henry repeating rifles, while the cavalry relied on inferior single-shot Springfield carbines. Within minutes, Custer’s entire command was eliminated, overwhelmed one by one. One eyewitness later remarked that the men were destroyed in the time it takes a hungry man to eat a meal. Custer himself was struck down amid a storm of gunfire, suffering wounds to the head and chest.
His body, along with those of his men, was desecrated on the battlefield. The destruction of Custer’s Seventh Cavalry stands as only one example in history of military units that were entirely defeated in a single engagement or that suffered losses exceeding ninety percent. Other such cases include the defenders of the Alamo and the three Roman legions lost in the Teutoburg Forest. History remembers Custer’s defeat as a lesson in arrogance and poor judgment.
By contrast, memory has treated King Leonidas the First of the Greek city-state of Lacedaemon, better known as Sparta, far more generously. In 480 BCE, the legendary ruler led 300 Spartan hoplites into what was essentially a desperate delaying action against the Persian Empire at Thermopylae. These Spartans formed part of a broader coalition of between 4,000 and 7,000 soldiers from various Greek city-states united to resist foreign invasion. The Persian Emperor Xerxes I commanded a force estimated at anywhere from 100,000 to 250,000 troops and anticipated a swift victory.
As his overwhelming numbers pressed the Greeks, Leonidas and his men, joined by roughly 1,000 additional troops, positioned themselves in a narrow mountain pass near the famous hot springs. Their objective was to hold long enough for the main Greek army to retreat to safety. They resisted for three days. Ultimately, every defender was eliminated, but not before they inflicted losses of some 20,000 Persians.
The determination of the Spartans, combined with the Persian naval defeat at Salamis, is said to have persuaded Xerxes to abandon the invasion and return home. Fighting to the last man is rarely associated with mercenary forces. Yet the Swiss Guards, renowned soldiers for hire who have protected the papacy for centuries, did exactly that in 1527 when Holy Roman Emperor Charles V dispatched an army of 20,000 troops to depose Pope Clement VII. The Swiss Guards stood against a vastly superior force outside the Vatican.
They maintained their defensive positions long enough to allow the Pope to escape. Of the fewer than 200 guardsmen involved, everyone was either wounded or killed. The American Civil War, infamous for its scale of bloodshed, saw numerous units reduced to near extinction. One such example was the 27th Virginia Regiment, part of the legendary Stonewall Brigade, named after its commander, General Thomas J.
“Stonewall” Jackson. The regiment entered the war with eight companies totaling about 800 men. It lost 141 soldiers at First Bull Run and later suffered losses of roughly 30% at Gettysburg. By the conclusion of the Battle of Spotsylvania in 1864, the remnants of the unit, by then known as the Bloody 27th due to its severe casualty rates, were virtually destroyed.
The 11th Mississippi Regiment met a similar end. Known as the University Grays in recognition of the state college from which many of its members were drawn, the regiment earned a grim distinction as the Confederate unit that advanced the farthest toward Union lines during Pickett’s charge. In doing so, it sustained 100% casualties, a singular and tragic distinction. Several British Army regiments also suffered total or near-total destruction while serving in the far reaches of the empire.
One notable case occurred in 1842 when the 44th Regiment of Foot from East Essex was nearly wiped out during its final stand at Gandamak in Afghanistan. After covering the retreat of the main army, the battered, frozen, and exhausted remnants of the 44th were surrounded by Afghan tribesmen. Offered a final opportunity to surrender, the British reportedly replied firmly, “Absolutely not. ” Only two English soldiers survived the ensuing engagement.
Remarkably, this was not the first time the regiment had faced near defeat. Earlier, during the Battle of Prestonpans in 1745, Scottish Jacobite forces outflanked 2,300 British troops of the 44th Regiment. In roughly ten minutes of fierce combat, more than 500 were killed and three times that number captured. Only about 170 soldiers, roughly 7% of the regiment, escaped.
The 66th Regiment of Foot, known as the Berkshire Regiment, fared no better during the Battle of Maiwand in 1880, part of the Second Afghan War. After losing all but 11 men to an opposing force numbering in the thousands, the remaining soldiers continued fighting, reportedly astonishing their adversaries with their determination. None survived. The behavior of those last 11 was the wonder of all who saw it.
An Afghan eyewitness is said to have remarked, “Equally grim was the fate of six companies of the 24th Regiment of Foot left to defend an unfortified camp near Isandlwana, South Africa during Britain’s war with the Zulu nation. ” On January 22nd, 1879, more than 20,000 Zulu warriors overwhelmed the 500-man detachment. No one survived. France too has its own legacy of last-ditch resistance.
In 1863, during Napoleon III’s campaign in Mexico, a column of French Foreign Legion troops on route to relieve Vera Cruz encountered a numerically superior enemy force. The legionnaires withdrew to a nearby estate and repelled wave after wave of Mexican attackers, suffering heavy losses, including the death of their commander. When their ammunition was exhausted, the remaining half-dozen soldiers fixed bayonets and continued the fight. Reduced to just three men, they ultimately negotiated a truce and withdrew with their flag, weapons, and wounded intact.
The Foreign Legion still commemorates the engagement every April 30th, Cameron Day, named for the hacienda where the battle took place. The Battle of the Somme, which began on July 1st, 1916, is often cited as the quintessential example of the industrial-scale devastation of the First World War. On the opening day alone, more than 57,000 British soldiers became casualties, including 19,000 killed. Unsurprisingly, several units in the initial assault suffered losses exceeding 90%.
Among them was the Royal Newfoundland Regiment. Within the first ten minutes of advancing, 650 of the regiment’s 750 men were struck down. Fewer than 70 crossed no man’s land without injury. Today, the battle is regarded as a defining, if tragic, moment in the history of Newfoundland, Canada.
The only unit to experience even higher losses at the Somme was the 10th Battalion of the West Yorkshire Regiment, which sustained more than 90% casualties during its attack near Fricourt. A comparable sacrifice occurred the previous year at Gallipoli involving the Ottoman Empire’s 57th Infantry Regiment. As the first Turkish unit to confront the ANZAC landings, its commander reportedly ordered the men to hold their positions at all costs until reinforcements could arrive. Every soldier in the regiment was either killed, wounded, or captured.
Their sacrifice remains commemorated in Turkey to this day. Such catastrophic losses did not end with trench warfare. During the Second World War, several formations also suffered near-total destruction. One example was the Wehrmacht’s elite Großdeutschland Infantry Division.
After distinguishing itself during Germany’s 1940 campaign in France, the regiment was expanded into a Panzer Grenadier Division and deployed to the Eastern Front. Years of intense fighting gradually reduced its strength from approximately 15,000 men to fewer than 4,000 by April 1945. Despite being badly depleted and exhausted, the survivors were ordered back into combat against Soviet forces at Pillau in what is now Poland during the war’s final days. By the end of the battle, the division had been effectively eliminated as a fighting force.
A similar fate befell the US Army’s 5307th Composite Unit, Provisional, better known as Merrill’s Marauders or Unit Galahad. Composed of 3,000 volunteers, the long-range special operations force served in the Burma Theater between 1943 and 1944. Frequently outnumbered, the unit, named after its commander, General Frank D. Merrill, fought in nearly 40 engagements deep in the jungles of Southeast Asia.
By the time of its final battle, which led to the capture of the city of Myitkyina, fewer than 200 men remained. Shortly thereafter, the unit was withdrawn from combat. At the end of this journey, we are forced to confront a contradiction at the heart of how we remember war. We praise those who stood their ground, yet recoil from the question of whether they ever should have been there at all.
The closer a unit comes to destruction, the more reverent the story becomes. The core tragedy shared by these regiments, from ancient Greece to modern warfare, is not only that they were destroyed, but that their destruction resolved debate. No survivors meant no testimonies, no alternate accounts, no living reminders that the outcome may have been avoidable. What remains is a polished narrative stripped of uncertainty, preserved as honor.
If history is written by the survivors, then total annihilation hands the final word to those who gave the orders. Are these stories remembered because they teach us about sacrifice, or because they spare us from asking whether obedience itself was the greatest mistake?