Customer Reviews

The Face of Battle (Library Edition)

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Someone had to write this book - interesting that it was John Keegan.

War may be about great leadership, and Keegan has a book like that, or it may be about feints and flanking maneuvers, and Keegan has handfuls like that, but at some point someone has to pull all the statue-builders and map-gazers off their seats and remind them that war, throughout history, has always come down to an actual living, breathing human being facing a charging sword inches away or a raking machine gun, heard but never seen.

What is going on when a man stands to face a charging horseman or goes over the top from a muddy trench to a likely death? Would a horse, no matter how trained, charge directly into a mass of armed men? Would they flinch? Would the horse turn? Could they really be routed in ways so colorfully portrayed in paintings of war when it seems simply impossible to fit so many horses or men into so small a space, to leap through the mass of other flesh? What did it really mean to be struck a sword's blow or a by musket's ball? What became of a man wounded in no man's land, or captive, or a slaughterer of captives. Keegan's questions range from the deepest questions of humans facing death to the pragmatic problems of daily needs and mud and dirt and flesh. This book is apparently unique among military histories in raising and contemplating them.

Keegan offers an oddly heightened awareness of these questions by noting right at the beginning that he has not, in fact, ever been a soldier. He has been called upon to teach and to mentor them as one of the most esteemed military historians of our era but he has not stood in those boots. But much more so than any foot soldier or general he has studied "battle" enough to understand that the confusion that underlies these encounters can only be distilled from a distant perspective. Although he honors and acknowledges the first-hand accounts of participants, by simply noting the level of confusion, the restrictions and overload on sensory input, and the inevitable role of the survivor's ego, he reminds us that much more is happening than personal viewpoint or formalist analysis could describe.

Keegan chooses to look at three battles from history: Agincourt, Waterloo and The Somme. All three are what historians apparently term "set battles" but each called upon its participants to face death, or glory, or simply the esteem of their neighbor, in different ways. While he maintains his focus on the individual soldier, Keegan does a fine job of making each of these three historically momentous battles come to life in full scale.

Written in a style that is relaxed but incisive, "The Face of Battle" is a fascinating work.

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.

One of the most wonderful aspects of John Keegan's impeccable writing style is that it is always used in service to the telling the story at hand, in this case a quite unique and fascinating look at the literal face of battle itself, that is, at the nature of the experience of combat from the soldier's perspective. Of course, since most of his other tomes he argues masterfully about the integrating elements of warfare regarding specific campaigns and battles in a specific conflict such as World War Two or the First World War (see my reviews), here he focuses brilliantly on the nature of organized violence itself, and how it is perceived and witnessed by the men who are so engaged. In a very real sense, he has reversed the usual logic about conducting war from the overall perspective and strategies of the generals and admirals overseeing the engagement of forces to focus instead on the horrific and mind-boggling perspective of the soldier on the ground, the "cipher" so often taken for granted and ignored in historical treatments. For this reason alone any serious student of military history should enthusiastically devour this book.

Yet, of course, as we devotees of Keegan's works have come to expect and admire, there is much more of value in this thin but provocative volume. Keegan memorably details and describes the horror, pain, and confusion of the battlefield, and redefines the nature of our understanding of what it means to be a soldier, from the nature of a soldier's fears to the physical and emotional assault on his person, covering everything from wounds to trauma to shell shock. He accurately and articulately describes the operation of everything from field hospitals to makeshift prisoner of war camps, and the atrocious realities involved in experiencing either. Similarly, he briefly explores the nature of leading men into combat, and the qualities of personality that make one a leader under such traumatic circumstances, how it is that some men can make his fellows stand their ground when everything around them screams for them to flee.

Combat is surely one of the most extreme of human experiences, and as Keegan so deftly demonstrates, it is also one of the least understood. I have always told people I thought the most honest and accurate description of combat were depicted in the last few battle scenes in the movie "Platoon", where an ungodly amalgam of terror, confusion, and unpredictable staccato punctuations of sudden violence and death were interruptions to the horror of a night spent sitting frozen by fear in a foxhole, waiting and almost hoping for any kind of movement to end the suffocating suspense and yet at the same moment praying for nothing to happen at all. Now I can add this book to the suggestion list, for whether Keegan is describing the terror of the archer attack at Agincourt, the ball and musket charges at point blank range at Waterloo, or the hailstorm of rapid-fire machine guns used to such horrific effect against the trench charges in the First World War, Keegan has captured the insanity, bravery, and futility of the experience of war better than anyone else to date. I highly recommend this book to any student of war or military history.

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.

Keegan has provided a nearly "eyewitness" account of battle that is as gripping and gut-wrenching as it is informative and mind-opening. I was especially struck, by the account of the Battle of Agincourt. The chaos and confusion of battle, and its disasterous effects, though related in a cold, journalistic style, were nevertheless terrifying. This is my second Keegan book, following "A Histoy of Warfare", and I recommend him to any who wish to have a finer insight into the nature of battle itself and the people who fight in them.

Nevermind his often bizarre conclusions, such as his predictions of a future without war, as I believe this is his way of maintaining his academic stature. Military history has a questionable reputation within academic circles, its historians stygmatized as quacks with sand-tables, and there are times where I feel Keegan is pre-occupied trying to prove himself otherwise. While some may find his style long-winded and difficult to follow, this should not be too big a problem if you can read without moving your lips.

"The Face of Battle" is a unique combination of military history and social history that is relevant to everyone. As enjoyable as military history is, most of it tends to be a combination of adventure story and propaganda. John Keegan accomplishes something different in this respect by illuminating the day to day experiences of common soliders in several historic battles. For example, Keegan's chapter on the Battle of Agincourt describes such details as the weight of the British soldiers' armor, their response to the cold weather, the discomfort they felt relieving themselves while dressed, and the fear they must have experienced at the thought of doing battle with numerically superior French cavalry.

Keegan does much to expose the reality of combat and the life of a common soldier throughout history in an objective and apolitical fashion. If you are a pascifist or a social historian, then by all means read this book to enhance your understanding of war's unpleasant realities. If you are a fan of military history, then read this book to gain a finer, more detailed understanding of war.

I must disagree with a couple of previous reviewers -- of course, this is entirely subjective, but I did not find the book difficult to read, or at all tedious. In fact, I found the prose style both rich and wonderfully clear. It was the best non-fiction writing I'd come across in years.

Beside the pleasure I took in the writing style, it was a great relief to find battle descriptions of such clarity. I speak as someone with no previous background in military history at all, and I was a bit wary that I wouldn't be able to follow what Keegan was writing about. That was not the case, and let me tell you, it was like a cool drink of water after crossing a parched desert.

My previous attempts to read about battles, in other books, had simply left me puzzled. Take Elizabeth Longford's description of one of Wellington's India campaigns, for instance. After reading several pages of densely written sentences three times, I could only conclude that it had something to do with a river.

I'd always assumed my lack of understanding was my own fault, till I picked up this book. Keegan is beautifully, wonderfully CLEAR about everything -- so clear that I actually found myself disagreeing with one of his conclusions about Agincourt. I couldn't have done that if he hadn't laid out everything so logically.

I'm partway through "The History of Warfare" right now, but I think this will remain my favorite of his books.

This is perhaps the most important book about war the I have ever read, because it tells the story of the men who had to kill and be killed at the focus of battle. Keegan writes about what, to me at least, seems a logical and obvious subject--how the men on three famous battlefields conducted the business of war. The soldiers at Agincout, Waterloo, and Verdun, fought at battlefields that will still be discussed a millenium from now. And the ways that they fought, killed, and died will be discussed using "The Face of Battle" as a major reference source. No book I've read since describes in such a cool yet humane manner the way that men kill and are killed on the battlefield.

Keegan's great gift in this book is to show how the soldiers who endured these battles went about their bloody business, without resorting to propaganda or jingoistic "War is Hell" slogans. These men killed because they had to kill to survive, because the officers they loved and respected pointed at the enemy and ordered them into the breach. They killed because they had no choice, because not killing meant death. They died because that is what men do on battlefields.

Keegan does a masterful job of showing the full picture of the battlefield without resorting to overt emotional pleas or obvious patriotic displays. What this book shows is that battle is far worse, and has always been far worse, than the average citizen expects. That Keegan has so overwhelmingly succeeded in showing what the horror of battle was, is, and always will be is a testament to his powers as a historian and his understanding of war as a central event in human affairs.

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.

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.