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

THE FACE OF BATTLE John Keegan, the author of â€Å"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, â€Å"I have never been in a battle. And I grow increasingly convinced that I have very little idea of what a battle can be like.† Keegan scorns historians for pointing the finger of failure after an evolution occurs and not examining the soldier’s 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 threat of single-missile and multiple-missile weapons control their fears, fix their wounds, and face their death. In his words he is seeking â€Å"to catch a glimpse of the face of battle.†   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  The first chapter of his book titled â€Å"Old, Unhappy, Far-off Things† gives Keegan’s recognition to the fact that historians do not focus 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 writer’s view of how the facts unfolded and not from the soldier’s perspective. ..