John Keegan, The Face Of War

John Keegan, The Face of War

As Keegan notes how battle is considered - from the movement of platoons to grand imperial strategy - the true question behind this book appears: what happens to the soldier in war?

I recommend the first chapter to anyone who is either planning to, or already pursuing, a career in history, because Keegan swiftly and surely examines the different methods, techniques and materials of military history, details which would normally fill a specialised text. This is one of the most accessible looks at how history, and specifically military history, is written (if only someone had suggested I read it as a student), but it won't enrapture everyone, probably not even a majority of readers. Fortunately, you can skip much of the chapter without undermining the later ones.

Three examinations follow, of Agincourt, Waterloo and the Somme. In each Keegan begins by analysing the traditional outlines of events and considering from which sources these have been derived. Keegan then moves through the main phase of each battle, attempting to make sense of the major events, before considering the combatants: how did the soldiers feel before the battle, what actually happened when the troops engaged, and what insight does this provide us?

In looking for human motives while applying logic, deductive battlefield knowledge and, above all, common sense, Keegan produces some fascinating new assessments. For instance, instead of the victorious longbow myth that still pervades British teachings on Agincourt, The Face of Battle provides a more involving, subtle and multi-faceted account. The longbow may have caused great damage, but the fact that a large hand-to-hand melee took place shows it wasn't dominant, and the archer's social class was just as important. The discussion of Waterloo is much less revealing - possibly because it's one of, if not the, most discussed battles ever, but his exploration of the troops who stayed to fight after six hours of constant bombardment is good. Keegan's chapter on the Somme shares some of the same problems, but benefits from a comparison with certain aspects of Waterloo.

Given that the battles are so well known, Keegan's work on each in this limited volume was never going to be truly groundbreaking, but that isn't really the point. Instead, the models, methods and approaches presented in The Face of Battle represent the start of the debate, the author's attempts to examine and introduce a new - or at least revitalised - way of treating combat. As such, Keegan maintains a deliberately inconclusive stance, simply probing many of the possibilities. Some readers may find this unsatisfactory, especially if they want to know the full breadth of answers, but they will need more modern texts for that (assuming we really do know the 'answers'.)

Keegan may present little in the way of contextual information on each battle - the reader is left to slot each one into its relevant