The curse of the badly run meeting

In January 1944 the Office of Strategic Services, an American wartime intelligence agency, issued a short document. The “Simple Sabotage Field Manual” offered advice on how ordinary citizens in occupied Europe could disrupt the German war machine.To cause physical damage, the guide tells the “citizen-saboteur” to use everyday items like salt, nails, pebbles and candles as weapons. This bit of the guide is a window into historical derring-do: dried-up sponges that can expand to plug sewer systems, jammed locks on unguarded buildings, various references to emery dust.