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Title: The Face of Battle by John Keegan ISBN: 0-14-004897-9 Publisher: Viking Press Pub. Date: July, 1995 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.71 (56 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: Realities of War vs. Romantic Rhetoric
Comment: I too found this book is somewhat hard to read (thus the missing 5th star) probably due to the natural language barrier between us Americans and our British cousins.
That said - I really found this book informative and a positive addition to my military book collection. The Face of Battle gives an unbiased view of warfare, separating romantic notions with the bloody facts. A prime example of Keegan's abilities is his critique of General Sir William Naoier's famous "heroic" account, of the 23rd Royal Welch Fusiliers advance against the French in the battle of Albuera in 1811. While the advance of the Fusiliers is an inspirational work in it's own way (ideal for fortifying unit pride or recruiting), it is not fact based nor is it real history. Missing as Keegan points out - are the broken bodies, moments wavering & acts of cowardliness on the part of the Fusiliers.
I'll admit this book is not for everybody as it points out the savageness & realities of warfare. So at no point will you get warm & fussy feelings as you read this book. But for to those of you who want a well-balanced library - I'd highly recommend this book.
Rating: 5
Summary: Fascinating history
Comment: I knew very little about military history before reading this book, but after this I felt I understood at least some basic principles. Keegan discusses three famous battles in history and why they were significant: the Battle of Agincourt, the Battle of the Somme, the archetypal "trench warfare" battle of World War I, and the Battle of Waterloo.
Keegan shows how the battle of the Somme really boiled down to the British artillery versus the German machine gunners hiding in their underground bunkers. The large artillery with their 2000-pound shells could blow craters 30 feet deep, but even this wasn't deep enough to "dig out" the deepest German machine gunners. Hence, when the British artillery bombardment stopped and the infantry made their charge, there were enough German machine gunners left in the their bunkers to come back up to the surface and still decimate many of the British infantry companies.
An interesting figure Keegan quotes is that artillery accounts for 90% of the casualties in a ground battle.
In the case of Waterloo, Keegan shows how the supposedly fearsome cavalry charges could effectively be nullified by men with single-shot flintlocks only if they stood their ground, remained in formation and coordinated their fire, and didn't panic and allow themselves to be dispersed by the cavalry charge. If they did this and fired from close enough range to be accurate, the cavalry charges could be broken up, disintegrated, and defeated.
The battle of Agincourt pitted men with medieval weapons against each other one on one. No weapons of mass destruction here, but he says in the middle of the worst fighting areas the bodies could still be piled six or seven high. He also offers some interesting insights into the psychology of the medieval knight, and states that plundering the bodies was one of the main economic motivations for such a pitched one-on-one battle, something I hadn't heard before.
Overall, a very readable book on the subject with many interesting insights into military strategy and psychology.
Rating: 5
Summary: Excellent
Comment: John Keegan has written many books about the conduct and outcome of wars. In this, he focuses on the question: what is it like to be in a battle? Why do studies show that even at the height of a battle, typically no more than one in four soldiers ever fire their gun? And why, on the other hand, do so few soldiers run away?
To answer the questions, he studies three different battles, representing three different types of combat: the hand-to-hand combat of Agincourt, the single-shot guns of Waterloo, and the mechanised destruction of the Somme. He talks about the kind of men who found themselves in each battle and the kind of experiences they had. You learn about the overwhelming noise of Waterloo, about how the raw recruits of Kitchener's army made it necessary to rely on artillery barrages to win the Somme, about the technical miscalculations that made this strategy go desperately wrong.
It's striking and moving, and unlike any other book about battle -- Victor Davis Hanson's recent "Carnage and Culture" does almost as good a job of capturing the experience of battle, but without the same level of compassion. Recommended.
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Title: The Mask of Command by John Keegan ISBN: 0140114068 Publisher: Penguin USA (Paper) Pub. Date: January, 1989 List Price(USD): $16.00 |
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Title: A History of Warfare by John Keegan ISBN: 0679730826 Publisher: Vintage Pub. Date: 01 November, 1994 List Price(USD): $16.00 |
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Title: The Second World War by John Keegan ISBN: 014011341X Publisher: Penguin USA (Paper) Pub. Date: September, 1990 List Price(USD): $20.95 |
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Title: Intelligence in War: Knowledge of the Enemy from Napoleon to Al-Qaeda by JOHN KEEGAN ISBN: 0375400532 Publisher: Knopf Pub. Date: 21 October, 2003 List Price(USD): $30.00 |
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Title: The First World War by John Keegan ISBN: 0375700455 Publisher: Vintage Pub. Date: 16 May, 2000 List Price(USD): $16.00 |
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