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As they struggled through the snowbound passes, the British were attacked by Ghilzai warriors. The evacuees were harassed down the 30 miles (48 km) of treacherous gorges and passes lying along the Kabul River between Kabul and Gandamak, and massacred at the Gandamak pass before reaching the besieged garrison at Jalalabad. The force had been reduced to fewer than forty men by a retreat from Kabul that had become, towards the end, a running battle through two feet of snow. The ground was frozen, the men had no shelter and had little food for weeks. Only a dozen of the men had working muskets, the officers their pistols and a few unbroken swords. The only Briton known to have escaped was Dr. William Brydon, though a few others were captured.
Giiven the difficulty of sorting through a near-infinite number of wars, battles, skirmishes, and incursions, and determine precisely which ones did or did not involve forces using free arms, I think a hint or two might be useful to direct ourselves to the event you have in mind. I presume there would need to be a minimum of 19 deaths to qualify for your 95% figure.
Hints? Sure. There were more than 1300 killed on the losing side, fewer than 60 survivors. There is every reason to believe that the losing side should not only have won the battle, they should have won it with relative ease. The losing side in this battle won all of the engagements for the rest of the war and they won the war.
This battle was lost due to a blunder, one of following regulations to the letter despite the inappropriateness of the circumstances.
Zulu wars. You last line was a tipoff, I remembered your reference to that incident years ago in another forum. I looked it up at the time, and I think the incident you referred to might have been a fictionalized element in the movie, but that would not invalidate this present appraisal of the outcome.
January 22, 1879, Islandlwana, Natal. Armed only with the warrior's traditional shield and short stabbing spear, 20,000 Zulu's fell upon a 1,370 man detachment of the invading British army. The British were formed and waiting for them and had sufficient firepower to defend themselves, even against that large of a number. They were foiled by the firing lines running out of ammunition and being overrun by the Zulus. They ran out of ammunition because the British quartermaster insisted that all regulations be followed, that the men had to line up and wait their turns, regardless of particular emegencies, and every bullet issued had to be accounted for in the quartermaster's ledger. This was not some fictional incident invented for the film "Zulu Dawn", it did happen that way.
There were 55 survivors on the British side. The Zulu losses are estimated at about 1000 warriors.
I think that you wrote your question incorrectly and that you did not mean "either president or vice president the longest" but instead meant "president and vice president the longest." Worded the way that you have it, FDR is the correct answer, he was president longer than anyone else was president or vice president. Worded the way you probably meant it, the answer would be Nixon who was vice president for eight years and president for 5.5 years.
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