Hammer and anvil
Supreme Allied Commander Dwight Eisenhower affirmed Montgomery's overall strategy in a message of 10 July, urging stronger efforts:

I am familiar with your plan for generally holding firmly with your left, attracting thereto all of the enemy armour, while your right pushes down the Peninsula and threatens the rear and flank of the forces facing the Second British Army.. It appears to me that we must use all possible energy in a determined effort to prevent a stalemate or facing the necessity of fighting a major defensive battle with the slight depth we now have in the bridgehead... please be assured that I will produce everything that is humanly possible to assist you in any plan that promises to get us the elbow room we need. The air and everything else will be available."
Montgomery's overall "hammer and anvil" conception of the battle eventually resulted in success, but it took two months of bitter fighting in and around the city of Caen.

Post World War II: 

Communist Insurgency in South Korea: In early 1950, prior to the North Korean People's Army's southward advance across the 38th parallel, the North frequently launched small offensives at the border and inserted thousands of guerillas infiltrators into the South as far as Jeju Island in hopes of achieving the overthrow of President Syngman Rhee and the imposition of a communist government. After a number of Republic of Korea Army (ROKA) counterinsurgency successes, the North Koreans waged a final attempt at inciting revolution by sending two battalion-sized units of guerillas under the commands of Kim Sang-ho and Ki Moo-hyon. The first unit was, over the course of several engagements with the ROKA 6th Division, destroyed with only one survivor. The second was also annihilated by a two-battalion hammer-and-anvil maneuver by units of the ROKA 6th Division. The KPA guerillas lost 584 (480 killed, 104 captured) and the ROKA troops reported 69 killed and 184 wounded. It would prove to be the last major effort of the communist north to annex the south until the invasion on 25 June 1950.

Soviet sweep operations in Afghanistan: 

See also: Encirclement


== References ==