Military Marvels Series

Author: Sun Xiaohua / et al.
Editor-in-Chief: Hu Yaohua
Publisher:
Publish Date: 1998-06-01
Features:
Fragment: The belt intelligence sent back by the Athenian spy is the world's earliest cryptographic intelligence. The specific method of use is that the two parties involved in communication first agree on the rules for decoding the cipher, then the sending party wraps the belt (or parchment, etc.) around a wooden rod of agreed-upon length and thickness to write messages. Upon receiving it, if the recipient does not wrap the belt around a rod of the same length and thickness, they will only see a jumble of irregular, unreadable letters. Later, this cryptographic communication method became widely used in ancient Greece. Modern cipher telegrams are said to have been inspired by it.
Observing the cat to determine the enemy's nest is a creature universally loved by people. It is easy to tame, gentle in temperament, lively and adorable. Especially its highly skilled mouse-catching abilities have made it a good friend of humans. However, in the history of war, there are records of enemies capturing the enemy's command post after being lured by a cat. That was an incident that occurred during the Second World War. A German army was fighting against a French army, and after many days of battle, due to the French army's strong fortifications and stubborn resistance, the Germans had repeatedly launched attacks but gained little advantage. Eventually, both sides reached a stalemate. To further investigate the French army's troop deployment and defensive works, the German commander ordered an aide to closely monitor the French army's. One day, the aide noticed a beautiful Persian cat lounging leisurely in the sun in a graveyard behind the French. After a while, the cat disappeared. Aside from that, no other abnormalities were observed. The next day, while observing the French, the aide spotted the same cat lounging in the same place at the same time. He began to feel alert. He continued to observe for four more days, and the results were the same, allowing him to identify the cat's activity pattern: the cat would always appear at around 8 or 9 a.m. each day to bask in the sun and would vanish after about an hour.