The Face of Battle

De: John Keegan

Narrado por: Simon Vance

In this major and wholly original contribution to military history, John Keegan reverses the usual convention of writing about war in terms of generals and nations in conflict, which tends to leave the common soldier as cipher. Instead, he focuses on what a set battle is like for the man in the thick of it—his fears, his wounds and their treatment, the mechanics of being taken prisoner, the nature of leadership at the most junior level, the role of compulsion in getting men to stand their ground, the intrusions of cruelty and compassion, the din and blood.

Set battles, with their unities of time and place, may be a thing of the past, but this anatomy of what they were like for the men who fought them is an unforgettable mirror held up to human nature.

©1976 John Keegan (P)2001 Blackstone Audio, Inc.

Reseñas de la Crítica

“The most brilliant evocation of military experience in our time.” (C. P. Snow, British novelist and scientist)

Excellent study of battle.

All students of war, battle, fighting and especially the officer cadet should read/study this book. John Keegan brings to light some interesting thoughts that any man-of-arms should know and have learnt from. Many people see battle as a breakdown of human nature whilst others the heights of achievements but I believe John Keegan has put it into perspective that shows it as part of human nature and a by-product of the society we live in. Industrialisation, mechanisation have played their roll however so has culture like religion and honour. I do find his assumptions of the future of battle a little naive but his study backs-up his summary.
I loved this book as it was so much in tuned with my own study in this area however I do need to read not only his source material if possible, but continue to read my own pursuits. I will never complete this hobby reading but it is a passion. Fortunately or unfortunately, depending on your point of view with my studies, I have never been in combat and so this will hopefully always be an armchair study but this book is excellent in helping me move to a little more understanding of the face of battle.
I hope his other books are made into audio format.

If you're a fan of history, this is a must-read.

What did you love best about The Face of Battle?

John Keegan, in my opinion, is the world's foremost authority on both World Wars. If you haven't read his studies of those wars, it's time to get started....after you read The Face of Battle.

What other book might you compare The Face of Battle to and why?

I'm hard pressed to find a book to compare this one with. He studies three battles in detail. There is some "big picture strategy" in the book. And a lot of "oh my God, those poor bastards in the front line!"
The sympathy comes from the reader, however. Keegan applies his best historian's eye to analyze what it was like for the "working men" in battle.

What does Simon Vance bring to the story that you wouldn’t experience if you just read the book?

I thought his voice worked well alongside Keegan's scholarly writing. It's a fit.

Was there a moment in the book that particularly moved you?

The Battle of Agincourt. When I first read this about 20 years ago, I'd not considered what it must have been like to be in the front line of an edged weapon battle. Imagine: you're in the first line and are ordered to advance. There's no chance to hesitate, as there are several thousand men behind you pushing you at the enemy.
And, of course, the outcome of Agincourt was gratifying, even though the Brits didn't play by the rules. English longbows en masse, used like modern artillery.
A fully armored knight, once separated from his infantry, didn't stand a chance. British peasant soldiers would knock him off his horse, disarm him and lift the visor to see who they had. If you'd fetch a ransom, you'd be marched to the rear. If not, a dagger in the unarmored armpit would send you on your way.

Any additional comments?

If you read serious history and are a war buff, this is required reading.

Brilliant

One of the few heady and expertly written titles also expertly narrated. Pure communication.

The way the British look at war

I was pleasantly surprised how much I enjoyed this book. The descriptions of how soldiers die, and the hardships they faced was presented in a way that wasn't stomach turning but enlightening.

The description of Henry the 5th's victory of Agincourt showed how long range (archery) changed the face of battle. The tactics used, the way the archers rallied makes this portion of the 100 years war come to life.

Wellington's victory of Waterloo brought us into the artillery age. His description of one soldier's death from starvation two years after his injury was shocking. This man had his tongue and jaw blown off and it still took him years to die.

The WWI battle of The Somme showed how far the artillery age moved and how it was defeated by the introduction of the machine gun. Keegan made me feel the dust and shaking ground in his description of the artillery barrage that lasted 3 days!

If you are a history buff, or specifically war history buff you will be glad you bought this book.

A hodgepodge but interesting

Keegan's writing isn't the most exciting. It's more academic than pop culture but a wealth of unique info. Readers will learn much about the three battles but the sections before and after seem to brief for such major topcs. Still, it's great work.

Required reading for military history

Required reading for military history breathtaking scope across time and levels of description. from weapons soldiers units armies and the mind and face of what it is fight, live, die in war

Extremely detailed. Not for a casual listen.

John Keegan is the éminence gries of military history. His scholarship is unsurpassed. His authorship is head and shoulders above all but a few. I enjoyed the book and although generally familiar with the battles described, learned a great deal. The Face of Battle is in essence, a textbook for young officers at Sandhurst or West Point. It can get academic and perhaps a little tedious if you aren't seriously interested. I was, and liked it quite a lot.

Worthwhile for history buffs

As explained at length in his opening chapters, Keegan, a professor at Britain’s Sandhurst military academy (in 1976, when this book was published), felt that the understanding of war propagated by those who studied it was often overly academic and abstract, or too focused on the actions of “great men”. Left out was the experience of combat for the average soldier, which, although represented in novels, movies, memoirs, and paintings (with lots of artistic license), wasn’t really examined in a systematic way.

The opening expository, unfortunately, is a little dull, spending a lot more pages harping on the above themes more than I found necessary, but things pick up once Keegan actually gets to his main focus. At the core of this book are three important battles for the British: the 15th century Battle of Agincourt, the 19th century Battle of Waterloo, and the WWI Battle of the Somme. Through these clashes, examined in order, Keegan traces the evolution of warfare over the centuries.

This is definitely a work with the student in mind, drawing on quantifiable metrics like how many men stood in a line, how wide the lines were, how many shots (or arrows) were fired per minute and what their range was, and how often men employing different types of weapons actually engaged each other on the field (and what the outcome usually was). Keegan also paints a pretty good picture of the average fighting man in each era, covering his education, his motives, his cultural attitudes, his sense of ethics, and the distinctions between officers and regular soldiers. There are some pretty interesting lessons, such as the fact that running away often had a worse survival outcome than standing to face fire, that medieval infantry lines didn’t usually charge forward and crash into each other a la Braveheart (yes, a few teensy inaccuracies in that movie), that the strict drills of the musket era were necessary to keep men from shooting their own comrades, and that World War One helped break down class divisions in Britain, as officers came to empathize with their less refined men.

Keegan conveys the confusion and lack of big picture information that a man looking at a trench wall or the back of another soldier would have had, and their effect. And a good sense of the horror and carnage comes through in descriptions of the wounds inflicted by different kinds of weapons, or of the dicey chances of surviving a battlefield surrender. The final chapters, which consider the future of warfare, argue that modern weapons have made the prospect of full-scale battles so lethal to the ground soldier that no rational government is likely to engage in them. History since 1976 seems to have borne this out (so far), though briefly-stated minor points about insurgencies and about the risks of moral detachment from killing turned out to be more prophetic.

If you’re enough of a history buff that you don’t mind the dry, academic style or the datedness, this is a good read. I appreciated the British perspective as well -- when you’re a country that’s had a huge chunk of your youth wiped out in one battle (the Somme), it seems, you tend to view war through a different lens than certain countries whose citizens have been known to confuse it with Rambo movies.

A disturbing and penetrating view of battle

For any fan of military history, this book seems an essential read. It delivers key insights into human psychology as much as into the foibles of war.
The writing, however, is not quite as compelling as it might be. There's lots of good information, but somehow the imagery lags.
Furthermore, Simon Vance is a consummate narrator, but this is not his best work by far.
Still, as a history buff, I'm glad to have listened to it.

A little tedious

Keegan gives pretty graphic descriptions of three significant battles in Western Europe—Agincourt, Waterloo, & The Somme. But those three battles and his description/brief history of each make up maybe a half to two -thirds of the book. The rest is military/social history/theory and how those two intertwine to make up ‘The Face of Battle’. It wasn’t quite what I expected it to be but large segments were interesting and informative. Simon Vance’s performance was superb as usual.