Lieutenant Backsight Forethought (BF) and his command of fifty men are given the task to defend Duffer's Drift, a natural ford to a river.

[6] While some of the advice has become rather dated—notably, BF eventually decides to imprison all nearby locals, shoot any livestock that could be of aid to the enemy, and impress both Boer and black alike into building fortifications for his men, an "approach to the human terrain that would spell disaster" in modern times—the book is still considered relevant and interesting.

Editions were printed for the US Infantry magazine in 1972, and for the Combat Studies Institute of the United States Army Command and General Staff College in 1974; both were reprinted in later years,[8] with a brief preface that encouraged readers to think through the challenge for themselves.

[8] Lieutenant Backsight Forethought, a newly-qualified officer in the British Army, is put in command of a platoon of soldiers to defend Duffer's Drift, a key crossing-place on the Silliassvogel River.

Fortifications are not prepared and the sentries announce their locations, allowing the Boers to easily sneak up and defeat the sleepy British soldiers without resistance.

While able to slow the Boers down some, poor placement of trenches, lack of supplies, obvious fortifications that the enemy can easily detect and plan around, and other problems hamper the British resistance.

It is important for its "lessons-learned" examination of the new weapons introduced in the Great War (most notably tanks, machine guns and aeroplanes) and how these innovations required learning new combined arms tactics.

[10] Defense of Hill 781, written by James R. McDonough in 1988, deals with a somewhat larger combat element than Duffer's Drift, and having a slightly different reason for the "dreams".

The publication of The Defence of Duffer's Drift by Captain (later Major-General Sir) Ernest Swinton, KBE, CB, DSO, in 1905, was extremely well received and became required reading for many subsequent generations of young officers.

[12] The Defense of Battle Position Duffer is a publication created by the Asymmetric Warfare Group and Johns Hopkins University in 2016 that covers how commanders may integrate the cyber domain with tactical operations at the brigade combat team level.