The Face of Battle: A Study of Agincourt, Waterloo, and the Somme

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 circ

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

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.

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.