John Keegan free essay sample

John Keegan the author of The Face of The Battle is a Senior Lecturer in War Studies at the Royal Military Academy, Sandhurst (the British equivalent of West Point).In the reading he uses a different style of writing which the reader becomes more a part of the book than just reading about what is happening in the book. Throughout the book he finds many ways to incorporate great details about events that happened during the three battles explored in the reading. This is what makes the reader feel more a part of the book rather than reading about the book.In the very beginning of the book he admits that he has never been in battle, nor near a battle. In those two statements is a key to this book. The Face of Battle is an effort to get a better understanding of what it is like to be in battle not just to narrate the events, but to come closer to what the soldiers really felt. We will write a custom essay sample on John Keegan or any similar topic specifically for you Do Not WasteYour Time HIRE WRITER Only 13.90 / page This is a description of three battles: Agincourt, Waterloo, and the Somme.Ultimately in the book Keegan has made it in my mind difficult to follow along with his writings because he has never been in battle and experienced it for himself. Such a drastic topic such as war I believe would be easiest to believe or understand more if it is told by someone who was there and had to go through the events themselves. If the author had gone through these events and known what it was like both mentally and physically it would have been a little easier to believe and comprehend. This is the main problem that has occurred to me while reading the selection.In The Face of The Battle John Keegan analyses and compares the experience of combat in three major encounters of the last 600 years: Agincourt (1415), Waterloo (1815) and the Somme (1916). He examines how the mechanics and logistics of conflict affected the psychology of the individual soldier. Looking not just at the critical moments during combat, but also during the time before battle, and its aftermath once the battle was over.Characterizing the campaigns and planning which led up to each battle, Keegan provides background for each war. He then details from the very midst of the carnage. Keegan does, in fact, focus on a more immediate view of battle, as seen from the eyes of a common infantryman. He uses both primary and secondary sources to reconstruct a certain picture of each battle in his book. But both primary and secondary sources have problems in my opinion. As John Mundy, author of Europe in the High Middle Ages 1150-1300, in a review of The Face of Battle notes, †¦soldiers present at an engagement usually exaggerate the numbers facing them (679). You must also question his secondary historical sources. For instance, his rendition of Waterloo takes most of its information from the writing of Captain William Siborne, a British topographer who is credited with changing how the world perceived the Duke of Wellington after the Battle of Waterloo. After Siborne alleged that the Prussians had far more impact on Napoleons eventual defeat than previously believed, the Duke of Wellington lost much of his previous favor. If Keegan had wanted to make his work more believable, he should have avoided controversial sources and tried to focus more on the ideas his writings attempt to convey, circumventing any possible impact to his own efforts. However, his choice of historical material should not be used to discredit his conclusions.Keegan finds, through his study of the three chosen battles, that the main idea of warfare over the years remains unchanged. It still today is despite advances in technology and tactics, an overwhelmingly man-to-man affair between individuals in a contest of violence. Although technology has changed the character of battle, the principles of courage, fear, and leadership still dominate in war. What battles have in common, he states, is human: the behavior of men struggling to reconcile their instinct for self-preservation, their sense of honor, and the achievement of some aim over which other men are ready to kill them, (303).Despite its many consistencies, Keegan notes several trends in the character of battle. In the uncertain examination of war, he remarks that, One statement can be safely made†¦battles have been getting longer, (308). At Agincourt, the English forces took down an obviously superior French force in a matter of just a couple hours. The Battle of Waterloo Napoleon was defeated in a matter of only a couple of days, while the battle of the Somme lasted several months. Employing a creative analogy of the sport mountaineer, Keegan remarks on the exposure, technical difficulty, accident rate, and objectives dangers faced by modern soldiers as opposed to soldiers in the past.Along with the increased duration of the average battle over the years, Waterloo and the Somme, the penalty of human life has increased drastically with fatal casualty rates of 27 and 43 percent respectively, show on a small scale how technology has increased the killing power of armies in the modern day and expanded the killing zone of the typical battle. The expansion of the killing zone, due in part to artillery, mines, and chemical agents, means that, today, troops cannot just veer off into the neighboring wood, or take refuge in equally convenient woods, (315). Partially out of duty, and partially out of necessity, they cannot just remove themselves from the killing zone. Identifying trends like these, especially as they relate to the changing face of mountaineering,Keegans findings may conflict, though rightly so, with the accusation that, as technology increases the firepower of soldiers, battles are subsequently conducted through less close-range combat. Deeper examination of Waterloo, the Somme, and naturally Agincourt reveal, however, that infantry still do, even in todays warfare, engage in close-range combat. Bayonets, in the Napoleonic era, caused a large portion of the casualties in each conflict. In WWII, even as tanks began to become a large part of war armies still fought and won battles with their infantry. Despite the technological advances of warfare, close combat still dominates the battlefield.The historical critic, therefore, finds fault not so much in what Keegan included in his text, but in what he left out. However, the authors purpose was not to detail every part of each battle, but rather to expose battle for what it really was to the average soldier. In choosing the three battles he did that being battles with very little in common, Keegan exposed how similar battles can be when seen through the eyes of the soldiers. The fight for life and victory, we find, is the same in the fifteenth as in the nineteenth century.The Face of Battle was very well written but in my opinion, was just very hard to believe some of the things which Keegan was saying because he wasnt there himself and was just trying to gather stories from various different sources including his prim ary and secondary sources which I believe both had some flaws in the way they were used to support his writing. Writing from the point of view of the infantry men was very smart to me. This was the closest the author was going to get without being there himself to making the reader feel like they were right in the action themselves and not just reading about all of these events happening. This was the only way you could make me truly picture what it was like.