Summary of John Keegan's The Face of Battle

By IRB Media

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book.

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#1 I have never been in a battle, and I am becoming more and more convinced that I have little idea of what a battle can be like. Very few Europeans of my generation have learned at first hand that knowledge which was common among their fathers and grandfathers.

#2 The first group of people I excluded from my generalization was made up of those who were not old enough to have had combat experience of the Second World War. The second group was made up of soldiers who had not seen active service. While the object of their war was to avoid a decision at any given time or place, the Mau Mau in Kenya fought a war of raiding and subversion because they implicitly understood their inability to risk anything else.

#3 I have spent many years teaching officer cadets at Sandhurst, and I have always been aware of the inherent falsity of my position. I have never passed judgment on the behavior of soldiers under circumstances I have not experienced myself.

#4 The central question for the officer cadet is How would I behave in a battle. The discussion with your soldiers, whether it’s group therapy or not, will always include these emotions and sensations.

• Language: English
• Publisher: IRB Media
• Release date: Apr 1, 2022
• ISBN: 9781669380818

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Insights on John Keegan's The Face of Battle

Contents

Insights from Chapter 1

Insights from Chapter 2

Insights from Chapter 3

Insights from Chapter 4

Insights from Chapter 5

Insights from Chapter 1

#1

I have never been in a battle, and I am becoming more and more convinced that I have little idea of what a battle can be like. Very few Europeans of my generation have learned at first hand that knowledge which was common among their fathers and grandfathers.

#2

The first group of people I excluded from my generalization was made up of those who were not old enough to have had combat experience of the Second World War. The second group was made up of soldiers who had not seen active service. While the object of their war was to avoid a decision at any given time or place, the Mau Mau in Kenya fought a war of raiding and subversion because they implicitly understood their inability to risk anything else.

#3

I have spent many years teaching officer cadets at Sandhurst, and I have always been aware of the inherent falsity of my position. I have never passed judgment on the behavior of soldiers under circumstances I have not experienced myself.

#4

The central question for the officer cadet is How would I behave in a battle. The discussion with your soldiers, whether it’s group therapy or not, will always include these emotions and sensations.

#5

The atmosphere and surroundings of Sandhurst are not conducive to a realistic treatment of war. The students there are taught from the beginning to adopt the British officer’s custom of resuming their civilian identity as soon as they go off duty.

#6

The aim of officer-training is to reduce the conduct of war to a set of rules and a system of procedures, and to make orderly and rational what is essentially chaotic and instinctive. This is done by teaching the students how to describe events and situations in terms of a universally comprehensible vocabulary, and how to arrange what they have to say in a highly formalized sequence.

#7

Officer-training makes use of simulation techniques to a greater extent than any other profession. By teaching the young officer to organize his intake of sensations, to reduce the events of combat to a few and easily recognizable elements, and to categorize them under manageable headings, we are helping him to avert the onset of fear.

#8

The history of war can be used to prepare the young officer for the unknown. But it must be noted that the typical survey-course text of Military History from Hannibal to Hitler teaches that all battles fall into one of seven or eight types: battles of encounter, battles of attrition, battles of envelopment, battles of breakthrough, and so on.

#9

The student-officer, and it is he we are discussing, is simultaneously undergoing two processes of education. The first, highly vocational, aims to close his mind to unorthodox or difficult ideas and exclude from his field of vision everything that is irrelevant to his professional function.

#10

The student-officer undergoes a process of education that asks him to adopt different viewpoints when studying war. While not all regular officers find it difficult to think and talk about war from an unprofessional point of view, many do.

#11

The man-of-violence who is also the man of self-knowledge, self-control, compassion, and Weltanschauung is a common theme in Romantic literature. He exists in real life as well, and as often in the army as elsewhere.

#12

There is a barrier that stands in the way of a intellectual transition from the superficial and easy to the difficult and profound in the study of war: the military mind’s two-dimensional view of combat, which it is able to set aside when dealing with liberal-arts students.