The Face of Battle

Rating:
Summary: A Great Primer for all History Students
Review: A must read. Clearly illustrates lasting themes of history, about those who make it, yet are usually absent in our books.

Rating:
Summary: What It's Like to Battle -- Unique, But Overwritten
Review: John Keegen is an expert military analyst with an original and insightful mind. In the "Face of Battle," both traits are on display.

Keegan looks at three battles where England bled -- Agincourt, Waterloo and The Somme -- to discover what it is like to do battle in the age of edged weapons, musketry and industrial warfare.

His battle synopses are excellent. Keegan does a masterful job of explaining in a very few pages why the combatants were there, the battle plan and the actual fighting. He then goes on to analyze different components of the battle (archer against man at arms, artillery versus infantry, machine gun versus infantry), to discern what it was like to fight and how the battle was waged based on the types of weaponry engaged. Always, Keegan is driving to answer the question "What wills men to battle?"

I'd have to say that he does an admirable job of answering that question as well as giving a pretty good ground level look at what it was like to fight in the three different ages of arms he inspects.

Still, I have to say that I respected this book rather than liked it. The framework and analysis are original and Keegan is very sharp and well reasoned, as well as a fairly good writer. However, the book is professorial in it's presentation. Often, Keegan will digress during his analysis, meandering like a seminar lecturer through different currents of thought that pop into his head or flow from the questions of his rapt students. While this can work in the classroom, on the printed page it tends to interfere with the task at hand.

I also found the first seventy odd pages....well, odd. Keegan spends the first quarter of the book expounding on the topic of historiagraphy. His treatise on the writing of history was useful, but very much overblown for the book. Instead of seventy pages, he could have easily made his point (his point being that writer's of history can not possibly sum up all that happens in battle and that critical examination of many celebrated battle narratives reveals them to be over simplified and lacking in significant detail) in a ten or twenty page preface. I found it curious that this "publish or perish" style academic deconstruction of the science of battle narrative was stuck on the beginning of this book. It belongs in an academic journal.

So what I found was an original and at times fascinating examination of what it has been like to battle through the ages...marred by digression and professional cant. I felt Keegan couldn't quite decide if he was a popular writer or an academic star in this tome. Still, I greatly respect Keegan's analysis and ability to tell the story of battle. It is so strong, that it overcomes the criticisms I've levied in the paragraphs above. This is my first read of his, but the book was written in the 1960's and I believe was his first effort at writing for those of us who don't wear tweed on a daily basis. I intend to check out later Keegan works - presumably he's become more comfortable with being accessible as a writer (judging by the praise for his other works).

Rating:
Summary: Keegan's review
Review: This book provide an interesting perspective of Agincourt, Waterloo, and the Somme. Once you get through the dry introduction, Keegan relates some intriguing ideas. If you do not mind a lack of archival evidence balanced by probing questions and revealing answers this book works well.

Rating:
Summary: Don't miss this book
Review: I first read Keegan's Face of Battle when it was published more than a decade ago. His descriptions of the life of the man on the front lines was both shocking and compelling. Covering the battles of Agincourt, Waterloo and the Somme (they all took place within a short distance of each other), he describes the similarities and differences of war thru the ages. I've anxiously awaited each of his following books and have never been disappointed. In Price of Admiralty, he does for naval warfare what he did for the infantry in Face of Battle. Mask of Command studies great commanders throughout history (including Grant and Hitler with Wellington and Alexander begs to be debated and studied).

Rating:
Summary: Fantastic
Review: *The Face of Battle* will appeal to all kinds of readers for its beautiful, simple prose style and its deft, sensitive treatment of its subject: the actual experience of combat for the men who are in it. In addition, the book is a superb introduction to military history, and not just because of its expert analyses of three famous battles. Its first chapter warrants special emphasis, for in it, the author lays out his purpose, overviews the history of military history as a discipline and--most important--explains the issues caught up in military history and the problems of technique that can cause distortions of fact in "the battle descriptions of even the best-trained modern historians." *The Face of Battle* thus arms readers with the knowledge of what to look for in other works in order to evaluate them critically. Its own descriptions of Agincourt, Waterloo and the Somme are the author's attempts to surmount such problems of technique in battle narrative while he also describes the experiences of the real men who fight, suffer and die as they stare into "the face of battle."

Rating:
Summary: See It, Feel It, and Experience It.
Review: You have to like it when someone admits right up front that they have not personally experienced a topic, but that they have studied it and will relate what they have found from that research so that the reader can share and experience it. That's the way Mr. Keegan begins his writing about battle/combat.

It's hard to imagine that one who has not been in battle can actually describe what battle/combat is like. But let me tell you, John Keegan can do it and do it well. He manages to get the reader to feel the terror that soldiers must experience. Somehow the fear prior to battle is perfectly described, and the boredom also. Best of all, the mindset of the individual combatant, foot, horse or artillery, comes right to you as if fired from a weapon. I was truly amazed at how Mr. Keegan related these feelings, sometimes jumping off the page. From English stoic to German determined, he honestly captures what combat, life threatening combat, must be like. Quite an acheivement.

Mr. Keegan's application of battle physics is very nicely done. His entire discussion of Cavalry Vs Infantry at Waterloo is very impressive. Horses won't do this, men won't do that, and forget about the Romantic art work, they don't know about combat.

Lastly, Mr. Keegan's logic about combat situations is outstanding. The often forgotten issues (injured, dead, broken and battered equipment) gets added into the situation, and the reality flows forth. The section about Argincourt illustrates this perfectly.

If you are a military student, this book needs to be a priority on your reading list, no matter what period you study. Once you understand the mind of the line soldier, then the "battle" becomes more vivid and real. Thank you John Keegan, another excellent read.

Rating:
Summary: The Master of Military History
Review: John Keegan started somewhat of a revolution when he wrote the Face of Battle. Keegan took three great battles - Agincourt, Waterloo and the Somme - from three distinct eras and concentrated on the "fog of war". In other words, we don't get the feeling of great generals commanding heroically the pieces of a chess game, but rather are with the pawns as they are bounced cruelly about from life to death, from defeat to victory, often without discernment of where they are or how to seize an advantage. Keegan doesn't shrink from the carnage, nor does he dwell on it - he deals with it as the price or perhaps the definition of war. Subsequent Keegan works, although excellent all, have a hard time living up to this one; perhaps this is because he could only surprise us once with his knowledge of the military and his ability to alter perspectives. After that, we all expected it.

Rating:
Summary: Eye-opening and disturbing
Review: Keegan has written an excellent book of the realities of battle. He points out some things militaries prefer to keep quiet, such as the fact there are a lot of psychiatric casualties in war (which has gone by such names as 'shell shock,' 'combat fatigue' and currently, 'post-traumatic stress disorder), that most men become worthless after about three months in combat, and that traditionally massive anmounts of drugs have been used to quell terror before a battle. He points out, as noted in other reviews, that warfare used to be personal, with one line of soldiers facing another and essentially fighting hand-to-hand. Modern technology has changed all that, and with it came the wholesale slaughter of civilians (in WWII it was safer in some areas of Europe to be a soldier than a civilian). As strange as it looks to modern eyes to see a movie like _The Patriot,_ in which lines of soldiers faced each other and fired away, at least only combatants were killed, unlike today, when he have such atrocities as Nagasaki, Hiroshima and Dresden, in which hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians were vaporized and incinerated. This doesn't seem to be an improvement over the 'civilized' warfare of the past. Nor did combat surgeons in the past have to deal much with wounds caused by embedded teeth and shards of bone, blown out of dismembered soldiers by artillery--a fact that Paul Fussell, for example, discusses in his books (the only movie I've ever seen that showed teeth flying out of a soldier's head was _Starship Troopers_). There are some rare photographs in this book, such as one from WWI that shows Russian troops charging German machine guns, trying to overwhelm them by sheer numbers. This is a must-read for anyone interested in past and present warfare.

Rating:
Summary: Excellent for the expert and, most of all, for the begginer
Review: This has been rated one of the best titles on warfare. I think specially because the battle's crude descriptions on it, one of a kind not available elsewher. And this is true.

However I want to stress that this book is superb not only because the descriptions, but for the introductory and the final chapters too. If you are interested on one of warfare branches like me, so you must read it.

In few words. The first chapter explain about warfare historiography in general, and the autor's particular approache. Excellent, I started to look for my warfare books with more sharp eyes after that. One must think that to many of them are not serious history, in Keegans point of view, wich is, as far as I am concerned, correct. Keegan's descriptions have people, who are full humans: with fears and fisiological necessities; complex situations in the battlefield and diferent participant's accounts and so on. It is not as others books where the battles sims to be smoothly organized, and, one may guess, unreal.

The last chapter deals with the moving battlefields of the future, make note that the book was written in 1974. Keegan does a strong statement: that because the progress of the meanings to kill and inflict pain in human beings the future battlefield may be to dangerous, to complex, for soldiers, on foot or on a armored juggernaut, that met an even barelly equally foe.

After the Malvinas, Afganisthan, Yugoslavia (and its former states) and, specially, the Gulf, one may say that the author is correct. The modern conflicts are stongly one sided, in the air and ground or both, like the Gulf War (has it been really a War?). Even Malvinas, where poorly equiped and trained conscripts fought against high professional british soldiers.

Ok, too much for now. Buy the book, read it and most probally, if like me you aren't a historian, you should be much more carefull about othes military "history" books.

Rating:
Summary: Arguably the best military history ever written.
Review: The special genius of Keegan is his ability to evoke the human side of war. This comes from his understanding of the martial factors involved, an empathy for the participants, and a fine prose style that allows him to really reach the reader.

In "The Face of Battle", Keegan employs these formidable talents to describe the battles of Agincourt (October 25, 1415), Waterloo (June 18, 1815), and the Somme (July 1, 1916) in three chapters. Before these is a chapter on battle in military history, and after them a conclusion regarding the future of battle.

The first chapter is devoted to the history of battle in history. Keegan describes and cites examples of what he calls "the battle piece", a form which he traces back to Julius Caesar, an example of whose writing he cites as containing the key flaws of its type:

"Here it all is-DISJUNCTIVE MOVEMENT: 1. the Legion is hard pressed, some of the soldiers are slinking away; 2. Caesar arrives and has the standards advanced; 3. the enemy's attack loses its impetus; UNIFORMITY OF BEHAVIOUR: the enemy are all attacking, the legionaries are either resisting feebly or drifting off until Caesar's arrival makes them all fight with fervor; SIMPLIFIED CHARACTERIZATION: only two people are mentioned by name, of whom only one is accorded an important role - the author; SIMPLIFIED MOTIVATION: the led have lost the will to fight until the leader restores it to them by some simple orders and words of encouragement."

The above paragraph is the key to appreciating what Keegan is doing in his battle descriptions in "The Face of Battle". The flaws are the result of points of view, the choice of either a "ten-thousand foot view" of masses of men maneuvering around the ground, or a "leader's view" in which all events are the result of the leader's actions. Keegan therefore attempts to correct the flaws by writing history that is a composite of multiple points of view.

For each battle Keegan begins with descriptions of the historical background, the battlefield, and the general course of the battle. These, however, are only the set-up; the core is the battle from the perspectives of the participants. To this end, Keegan identifies categories of combat - generally based on the combinations between different arms - infantry vs. cavalry, infantry vs. artillery, etc. and then seeks to understand the ranges of the experience of each. Finally, Keegan considers the prisoners and the wounded (perspectives tending to vanish as statistics in the "battle piece"), and always the general question of motivation.

Keegan's first battle is Agincourt. In it, English knights and archers defeated an army of French knights. Any historian is at a disadvantage in dealing with older subjects like Agincourt - primary source material (eye-witness and participant description) is scarce, and what there is is of uncertain reliability. These are formidable handicaps, but Keegan does an outstanding job of assembling what we know of the participants' material circumstances and social backgrounds to create a credible picture of what it must have been like. The point of view presented are those of the archers, the English and French knights on foot, the French mounted knights, as well as the prisoners, their captors, and the wounded.

Keegan's next battle is Waterloo. The historian's task here is different than at Agincourt. For Agincourt, there is a poverty of primary source material, but for Waterloo, there is an abundance. Here, Keegan is generally able to let the participants speak for themselves, and is able to focus more on attempting to explain why they had the experiences they had, and less on trying to imagine those experiences. The points of view are the combinations of the three arms - infantry, cavalry, and artillery, as well as the wounded and prisoners.

Keegan's final battle is the Somme. The categories of experience had been multiplied by technological change between Agincourt and Waterloo, but the effect of technology by the Somme had been reduction: the two primary experiences were both infantry-as-target, either as a target of artillery or as a target of machine guns. The horror of First World War combat has often been evoked, so Keegan's role as historian is less to introduce it to the reader than it is to integrate it with an understanding of why it was so, and how this experience made up the battle as a whole.

All of Keegan's battle narratives attempt to understand motivation - to answer the question "Why did anyone fight and risk death?" To do this, he draws on social, political, and economic considerations, as well as the more immediate circumstances of the battlefield itself. Although answering this is one of the key goals that Keegan sets for himself, I didn't feel that in this he was fully successful. It is a difficult problem, but I think he tends to underestimate the role of duty. I think he is perhaps too influenced by a desire to attempt to justify all actions in one form or another of self-interest, and in this he underestimates a key part of human nature - the desire of a man to do what he thinks is right.

The last chapter of Keegan's book concerns the future of battle. In it, Keegan is far to influenced by his understandable hopes that something as awful as battle will go away and indulges in bad analysis to support those wishes.

The flawed last chapter aside, "The Face of Battle" is one of the finest military histories ever written. It is one of the very few military history books I have read (and I have read many) that really changed my sense of not only what battle is, but what history is and can be. I have re-read it often, and when I was in school, used it as a model for the history papers that I wrote. If you read only one book of military history, read this one.