Fuzzy Wuzzy
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Fuzzy Wuzzy was the term used by British colonial soldiers for the nineteenth century Hadendoa warriors supporting the Sudanese Mahdi. Fuzzy Wuzzies are remembered today primarily for a popular English children's rhyme, and for a poem by Rudyard Kipling.
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[edit] Historical background
The Beja people were one of two broad multi-tribal groupings supporting the Mahdi, and were divided into three tribes. One of these, the Hadendoa, was nomadic along Sudan's Red Sea coast and provided a large number of cavalry and jihādiyya (referring to mounted infantry units). They carried breech-loaded rifles and many of them had acquired military experience in the Egyptian army.
The name "Fuzzy Wuzzy" may be purely English in origin, or it may incorporate some sort of Arabic pun (possibly based on ghazī, "warrior"). It alludes to their butter-matted hair which gave them a "frizzy" look.
[edit] The children's rhyme
- Fuzzy Wuzzy was a bear
- Fuzzy Wuzzy had no hair
- Fuzzy Wuzzy didn't care
- Fuzzy Wuzzy wasn't (very) fuzzy, was he?
Few today are aware of the nineteenth-century Sudanese origins of this familiar nursery rhyme. The first line, "...was a bear" translates roughly as "The Hadendoa warriors gave us (British) a great deal of trouble." The second line is a pun based on the word 'bear'; if the Fuzzies are bears, where is all their fur? The fourth line doesn't have any historical background but the end "fuzzy, was he?" makes the same sound as "Fuzzy Wuzzy."[citation needed]
[edit] The Kipling poem (1890)
The poem could refer to either or both historical battles between the British and Mahdist forces where the Infantry square failed. The first was at Tamai, on March 13, 1884. The second battle was the following January 17 at the wells at Abu Klea. Kipling's narrator, an infantry soldier, speaks in admiring, if patronizing, terms of the Fuzzy Wuzzies. Praising their bravery which, though insufficient to defeat the British, did at least enable them to boast of having broken "the square" - an achievement which few other British foes could claim.
[edit] Fuzzy Wuzzy Fallacy
The Fuzzy Wuzzy Fallacy is a name for a wargaming theory coined by Richard Hamblen in the September 1976 of the Avalon Hill General wargaming magazine, loosely based on historical records of battles between the British and the Sudanese Mahdi. The Fuzzy Wuzzy Fallacy states that a single soldier with 2× firepower or attack strength does not equal to two soldiers with 1× firepower or attack strength. Instead, the soldier with 2× firepower is actually worth 
of the 1× soldier, if either soldier can be killed in a single hit. In fact this is little more than a rehash of Lanchester's law.
As a result, tactics and strategy designed around this theory emphasize greater numbers and time, which the speed and mobility of the units in action can effect.
[edit] Trivia
- The Four Feathers, a novel remade into multiple movies, depicts battles with Hadendoa soldiers
- In the British sitcom Dad's Army, Lance-Corporal Jack Jones frequently tells anecdotes about his encounters with the Fuzzy Wuzzies. In approximately ten episodes, whilst brandishing his bayonet (which he calls 'the cold steel'), Lance-Corporal Jack Jones comments that "they do not like it up 'em".
[edit] See also
- Fuzzy wuzzy angels, Native Papuans with similar hair who assisted Australian soldiers during World War II
- Kalanchoe tomentosa var. fievetii, a tropical plant of the Kalanchoe genus, commonly known as 'Fuzzy Wuzzy'
- The term is often used by the character Lance-Corporal Jack Jones in Dad's Army.
[edit] External links
- Historical background to the Kipling poem
- Kipling.org line-by-line explanation of references
