I Read Books: The Face Of Battle
The Face Of Battle
John Keegan explained his purposes in writing this book in the first section, in which he talks about the theory and practice of military history. Battle is an important part of that, but he finds the study of it to have been inadequate. He goes on to describe three battles, Agincourt, Waterloo and the Somme. In each he tries to explain what happened, and perhaps more importantly and specific to this book, what it was like for the people there.
The details range from the interesting to the brutal, the banal to the extraordinary. Both Waterloo and the Somme benefited from two men wanting to document the battles – one wanting to make a model of Waterloo – and so contacting survivors systematically.
Keegan comes to some conclusions about battle and also about the armoured breakthrough, the distinctive and often decisive manoeuvre of WW2. For a battle to take place, an attacker has to meet a defender that will stand their ground, and the pressure has to be so great that one or the other breaks – morally. (Occasionally there are engagements where defenders all become casualties, though these tend to have the nature of a siege). In this way they know they have been beaten.
So the insurgencies and guerrilla wars of the late 20th and 21st centuries do not have battle and are not decisive. Keegan suggests that battle may have abolished itself (for lengthy reasons) and he might not be wrong.
Read This: Keegan’s masterly analysis of what actually goes
on in a battle
Don’t Read This: If, as he suggests, battle has been
abolished, why read about such unpleasant things?
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