Product Description

This ambitious, wide-ranging, exhaustively researched book is a compelling attempt to grasp the very nature of war. It takes us through the soldier's experience in its entirety - from the humiliation of basic training and the intense comradeship of army life, to the terror, isolation and exhaustion of battle. What does it feel like to be in the firing line? How does killing change a man? And what do the extreme conditions of war reveal about a man's basic instincts, his courage or his fear, his urge for self-preservation or self-sacrifice? Covering several centuries of warfare, and including the personal recollections of veterans from two World Wars, from Korea, Vietnam, the Falklands and the Arab-Israeli conflicts, Richard Holmes gives us a powerful picture of what motivates the soldier and enables him to maintain the struggle in conditions of extreme degradation and danger.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #128926 in Books
• Published on: 2004-09-02
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 448 pages

About the Author
Richard Holmes is the author of numerous books including The Firing Line, Soldiers and Riding The Retreat, published both in the UK and in North America. He is the author and presenter of the BBC War Walks series and their accompanying books. His latest television series for the BBC and the History Channel is The Western Front, also accompanied by a bestselling book. Richard Holmes is Professor of Military and Security Studies Cranfield University and the Royal College of Military Science, Schrivenham and Britain's senior serving reserve officer.

Customer Reviews

A compelling and compassionate book
An excellently well thought out and impeccibly researched book from Prof Holmes. He deals with the effects of war on the individual from what motivates prople to fight and forms the cclose bonds of soldiers,as well as dealing with their feelings on and after battle.It is a very revealing book and one that certainly stands up to re-reading and is as relevant (if not more so if considering Prof Holmes conclusions and updated intorduction) in late 2005 as it was when written in 1983. Excellent

Acts of war
Definitely up to the standard expectewd from Richard Holmes.
The subject matter is clearly covered without glorifying war.
This difficult and sensitive subject is covered well

A 'War Walk' through familiar ground?
You may well have seen Richard Holmes presenting a history programme on TV, and his urbane, measured, somewhat earnest style is on display here again in an attempt to capture "the soldier's experience" from training to battle and on into what sustains morale or causes it to collapse. The book is arranged around ten chapters covering these different themes (among others) and the style is general introduction, followed by more specific points backed up by quotes or examples from memoirs or survey questionnaires. But is it any good?

At its best it is very interesting, notably when it is uncovering things not reported in official histories or in most memoirs. The statistics on desertion or how many men admitted to losing control of their bladders or bowels in acute stress was new to me but too much was familiar. Yet despite being generally very easy reading I also found it unsatisfying.

Why? In part, while Holmes communicates clearly, the message isn't always memorable. Each chapter is probably written around 7-8 themes or issues if I think hard about it but these are clearly drawn out (e.g. by giving each a section heading). Holmes doesn't volunteer any hypotheses to be tested or advance a different line of argument, nor does any section reach any striking conclusions.

This makes for an undemanding read but this narrative style, the tendency to take an example and draw a generalisation from it, starts to come unstuck as the examples begin to contradict each other. I have just read that some Belgians left Wellington's army at Waterloo because they had recently served with the French, yet only 50 or so pages before I was being told the Vichy French in Syria fought especially hard against the Free French in 1941 because they were professional soldiers determined to come out with their heads held high. Don't these examples directly contradict each other? What about an Irish soldier overheard to say, "I'll stand as long as the officer stands", when in the previous chapter we were being told about loyalty to a small group of maybe 3-4 close comrades (irrespective of whether they were officers or not)? What about the example from March 1918 where an entire British battalion, the 2nd/5th Worcesters, surrendered when the Germans advanced? This may well illustrate Holmes point about an implicit contract to `do your bit' and no more, without needless sacrifice, but in the previous chapter he was praising the motivational power of the regimental system - what happened to it in this case? In June 1944 the Germans surrendered in Cherbourg when the Americans produced a single tank so that German honour was satisfied but in the previous chapter Holmes was citing example's of the professionalism of the German army putting up resistance even when the odds were hopeless. The problem is that Holmes is stringing together things to say on a theme, lobbing in a reference or to, then moving on and it feels superficial. (If you think I'm scouring the book to find these, all of the ones I have cited are in three pages (322 and 324)).

A related criticism is the lack of links to the original sources. The chapter on Precarious Valour is 43 pages long and, conservatively, there is one quote or example per page, yet only nine texts are cited. We're told the British infantry were annoyed when the French cavalry walked their horses round the squares at Waterloo - Holmes writes "'Where are our cavalry?' they shouted. `Why don't they come and pitch into these French fellows.'" (page 322, punctuation as in the original despite the second sentence being either a question or an exclamation). I've read quite a lot about Waterloo and I've never seen that quote before, in fact, just the opposite: the Allied infantry actually preferred the French cavalry to be close to their squares because then the French artillery stopped firing at them. But where does that leave Holmes' anonymous quote? The underlying concern here is that Holmes has evidently read widely and has arranged a sequence of examples he can take us through, a `War Walk' of the psyche, if you will. But what has he left out, what would contradict something he has said? As I've mentioned above, there are some contradictory examples of behaviour in the book that Holmes doesn't acknowledge and may not have noticed. Are we just to conclude human behaviour is complicated and making generalisations is difficult?

I'm genuinely frustrated with this book, because I wanted to like it (that's why I paid money for it!) If you genuinely want a book that offers intelligent analysis of warfare in a readable way, I would recommend John Keegan's "Face of Battle".