Book Review of The Face of Battle by John Keegan Essay -- essays resea

THE FACE OF BATTLEJohn Keegan, the author of The Face of Battle is allowing the reader to view different perspective of history, from the eyes of the soldier. Although by his own account, Keegan acknowledges, I have never been in a strife. And I grow increasingly convinced that I have very little base of what a battle can be like. Keegan scorns historians for pointing the finger of failure after an evolution occurs and not examining the soldiers point of view while the battle is transpiring. Keegan chooses the three well documented campaigns of Agincourt in 1415, Waterloo in 1815, and Somme in 1916 to answer the question of his thesis To find out how men who are faced with the menace of single-missile and multiple-missile weapons control their fears, fix their wounds, and face their death. In his words he is seeking to catch a glimpse of the face of battle. The first chapter of his book titled Old, Unhappy, far Things gives Keegans recognition to the fact that historians do not f ocus enough on actual soldiers. To explain this further, what Keegan is saying is that a historian puts things in a pack of sequential dates and times but to the soldier, these things happen very rapidly and many times without planning. Keegan continues on to make note that when a historian puts together the pain-staking task of compilation of facts, the information is put down on paper as the writers view of how the facts unfolded and not from the soldiers perspective....