Thiu's description of the tactics used against Varus, which I can no doubt accept as factual, bears a remarkable resemblance to the tactics employed by the communist forces of Ho Chi Minh against the French during the time the latter were attempting a re-assertion of their colonial hegemony in Viet Nam after the War. Obviously there were differences, not the least being that the Vietnamese were supplied with modern weaponry by the communist bloc, while the French had WWII stuff, and whatever we could spare them from surplus. However, the use of terrain, hit and run tactics to draw off strength, and cunningly prepared ambushes all have an eerie similarity. The tale of French failure was well laid out in a book entitled "Street Without Joy" by a French war correspondent who died during the fighting, and whose name, sadly, I cannot recall.