Warriors: Portraits from the Battlefield

From Bookmarks Magazine English historian and journalist Max Hastings knows something of courage from his many years covering wars for the BBC. He is also accustomed to literary success: his books have been consistent award winners in the UK (where he was knighted in 2002), and his previous book, Armageddon (**** Mar/Apr 2005), was an acclaimed study of the final year of World War II. In Warriors his stated aim is to "amuse as much as inform," and reviewers report that hex92s up to the task. Though Warriors shouldnx92t be judged against his more scholarly work, reviewers still find plenty of thematic resonance in his balanced portraits of these 15 men-of-arms. Copyright © 2004 Phillips & Nelson Media, Inc. From Booklist A highly popular British military historian ( Armageddon , 2004), Hastings selects memoirs and biographies about 15 combatants (one of them a woman) and distills accounts of their lives and trenchant observations about their personalities. He makes many striking contrasts between public renown and the private regard in which these figures were held; comrades, who were more realistic about the risk of war and anxious to survive it, tended to be wary of the recklessly courageous warrior. Possessed of the killer instinct vital in battle, most members of Hastings' gallery were also cautiously appreciated by higher command. Brains must supersede fearlessness for the intelligent conduct of war, an exigency of military organization Hastings works into all his portraits. These are uniformly fascinating and encompass a flamboyant aide-de-camp to Napoleon, a languidly egotistical officer of Victoria's household guard, the ascetic German captain of WWI's Emden , Britain's World War II "Dambuster" Guy Gibson, and America's own Audie Murphy. Filled with poignant psychological insight, Hastings' remarkable sketches will provoke greater-than-average demand from the military affairs readership. Gilbert Taylor Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved “Fantastically entertaining. . . . [Hastings] acts as a sort of Plutarch to the modern warrior. His ‘lives’ are splendidly done, full of compelling narrative and telling detail.” — The Wall Street Journal “Hastings is an expert literary craftsman who makes the most out of stories that, however often repeated, are never less than gripping.... a first-rate piece of entertainment.”— The Washington Post Book World “Clever, absorbing and vividly written. . . Max Hasting is very good on the matter of courage.”— The New York Review of Books “Hastings has written a marvelous book. Wry, perceptive and engaging, it lays bare the curious mix of character traits - good and bad - that a successful warrior requires.”— The Sunday Telegraph From the Trade Paperback edition. Max Hastings is the author of the critically acclaimed Armageddon , Bomber Command , Overlord , The Korean War , and 13 other titles. He has served as a foreign correspondent and as the editor of Britain’s Evening Standard and the Daily Telegraph and has received numerous British Press Awards, including Journalist of the Year in 1982, and Editor of the Year in 1988. He lives outside London. From The Washington Post Warriors seem to have fallen out of fashion. We prefer victims. Who, after all, has heard of Army Sgt. 1st Class Paul R. Smith, who won a posthumous Medal of Honor for repelling an Iraqi counterattack on Baghdad International Airport and killing some 50 enemy soldiers during the invasion of Iraq in 2003? Yet Pfc. Jessica Lynch remains a celebrity. Max Hastings wants to return attention to the warrior virtues, but without succumbing to the temptation to write hagiography. A retired British newspaperman who has fashioned a second career as a military historian focusing on World War II, Hastings calls Warriors "an old-fashioned book" because it focuses on "remarkable characters," not on weapons. He wrote it, he explains, because after reading his previous outing, Armageddon (2004), a well-received account of the fall of Germany in 1944-45, his wife urged him "to write something a trifle less relentlessly bleak." Warriors definitely lacks the bleakness of Armageddon. It also lacks its painstaking research, provocative argumentation and epic narration. It is, in every way, a slighter effort -- but a no less readable one, if accepted on its own modest terms as "an entertainment rather than an academic study." Warriors is broken up into 15 chapters, each one a portrait of a different soldier from the past 200 years. Hastings's selection is admittedly "whimsical" and heavily weighted toward Britons and Americans who left memoirs of their exploits. He begins with a couple of Napoleonic War heroes, one British (Harry Smith), the other French (Baron Marcellin de Marbot). Next come a well-known figure from the U.S. Civil War, Joshua Chamberlain (of Gettysburg fame), and two lesser-known figures (at least to American readers) from Britain's colonial wars: Lt. John Chard, who won a Victoria Cross for the defense of Rorke's Drift (1879) in the wars with South Africa's Zulus, and Col. Frederick Burnaby, a reckless explorer killed in the Sudan in 1885. Three chapters are given over to World War I, featuring the gentlemanly German Capt. Karl Friedrich Max von Müller, whose light cruiser terrorized Allied shipping in the Indian Ocean in 1914; the ruthless American fighter ace Eddie Rickenbacker; and a no-account British private named Frederic Manning, who served a few months on the Western Front in 1916 and is the least accomplished soldier featured here. Not surprisingly, given Hastings's interest in World War II, fully a third of the book is given over to veterans of that conflict. They are John Masters, a highly competent British officer who fought with the "Chindit" commandos (named after a mythical local monster) against Japanese troops in Burma; Guy Gibson, an unpleasant if dedicated British bomber pilot who led a famous 1943 raid on two dams in Germany's Ruhr region; Audie Murphy, "the most decorated American soldier" of the war (and "a psychological mess of epic proportions"); James "Slim Jim" Gavin, the ultra-aggressive commander of America's 82nd Airborne Division; and Nancy Wake, a fearless and fun-loving British secret agent in occupied France. The book is rounded out with two post-1945 chapters featuring John Paul Vann, the famous pacification expert in Vietnam, and Avigdor Kahalani, an Israeli tank commander on the Golan Heights in the 1973 Yom Kippur War. Of course, numerous military historians, from J.F.C. Fuller to John Keegan, have used a similar approach to make larger historical arguments. So did Lytton Strachey, who revolutionized the art of biography with his scathing Eminent Victorians. But Hastings is not interested here in overturning conventional interpretations. He limits himself to a few commonsensical, if hardly revelatory, generalizations, such as noting that good commanders need wisdom to go along with courage, that many heroes are not well liked by their comrades and that "some eager warriors are exhibitionists of an extreme kind, prepared to risk their lives to gain attention." The strength of Warriors does not lie in these throat-clearing observations but in its rip-roaring anecdotes. Hastings is an expert literary craftsman who makes the most out of stories that, however often repeated, are never less than gripping. Only a reader with a heart of stone could fail to be captivated by the tale of Baron Marbot jumping into an icy lake after the battle of Austerlitz to save a wounded enemy soldier, at considerable risk to his own life. Or by the unabashedly enthusiastic reaction of Maj. Smith to the news that his enemy, Napoleon, had escaped from Elba in 1815: "Smith, ever the career soldier, tossed his hat to the sky and cried out in exultation: 'I'll be a lieutenant-colonel yet, before the year's out!' " Most of the warriors depicted here shared Smith's zeal for war, as well as his skill in waging it. (He compiled an exemplary record serving under the Duke of Wellington.) But not all did. John Chard, an engineering officer, was deemed "hopelessly slow and slack" by his superiors. "Absolutely nothing of professional interest is known to have happened to Chard in the eighteen years of service which followed his hour of glory at Rorke's Drift," Hastings writes. Fred Burnaby, the Sudan hero, had plenty of interesting experiences, but they mostly involved hot-air ballooning and other larks unconnected to his day job in Queen Victoria's army. The only time he commanded troops in battle he made a critical mistake that led to his own death. As these examples suggest, Hastings does not turn his heroes into plaster saints. He depicts them as flawed human beings who often drank too much, philandered too wantonly and schemed too crassly for promotion. Whether there is a larger truth here about soldiers and soldiering remains for others to determine. Hastings, for his part, has succeeded in his ambition of crafting a first-rate piece of entertainment. Reviewed by Max Boot Copyright 2006, The Washington Post. All Rights Reserved. Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved. BONAPARTE’S BLESSED FOOL THE WARS OF NAPOLEON produced a flowering of memoirs, both English and French, of extraordinary quality. Each writer’s work reflects in full measure his national characteristics. None but a Frenchman, surely, could have written the following lines about his experience of conflict: “I may, I think, say without boasting that nature has allotted to me a fair share of courage; I will add that there was a time when I enjoyed being in danger, as my thirteen wounds and some distinguished services prove, I think, sufficiently.” Baron Marcellin de Marbot was the model for Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s fictional Brigadier Gerard: brave, swashbuckling, incapable of introspection, glorying without inhibition in the experience of campaigning from Portugal to Russia in the service of his emperor. Marbot was the most eager of warriors, who shared with many of his French contemporaries a belief that there could be no higher calling than to follow Bonaparte to glory. Few modern readers could fail to respect the courage of a soldier who so often faced the fire of the enemy, through an active service career spanning more than forty years. And no Anglo-Saxon could withhold laughter at the peacock vanity and chauvinism of the hussar’s account of the experience, rich in anecdotage and comedy, the latter often unintended. Jean-Baptiste-Antoine-Marcellin de Marbot was born in 1782 at Beaulieu in the Corrèze, son of a country gentleman of liberal inclinations who became a general in France’s revolutionary army. With his round face and snub nose, the child Marcellin was known to his family as “the kitten,” and for some years during the nation’s revolutionary disorders attended a local girls’ school. He was originally destined for a naval career, but a friend urged his father that life aboard a warship mouldering in some seaport under British blockade was no prospect for an ambitious youth. Instead, in 1799 a vacancy was procured for him in the hussars. The seventeen-year-old boy was delighted, and from the outset gloried in his new uniform. His father, however, was uneasy about his shyness, and for some time was prone to refer to his son in company as “Mademoiselle Marcellin”—rich pickings there for a modern psychologist. In those days when every hussar was expected to display a moustache as part of his service dress, the beardless teenager at first painted whiskers on his face. Marbot met Bonaparte for the first time when accompanying his father to take up a posting with the army in Italy. They were amazed to encounter the hero of the Pyramids at Lyons, on his way back to Paris from Egypt, having abandoned his army to seek a throne, a quest to which General Marbot, a committed republican, declined to give his assistance. In Italy, young Marcellin won his spurs. Despatched with a patrol to seize Austrian prisoners, the sergeant in command professed sudden illness. The boy seized the opportunity and assumed leadership of the troop: “When . . . I took command of the fifty men who had come under my orders in such unusual circumstances, a mere trooper as I was and seventeen years old, I resolved to show my comrades that if I had not yet much experience or military talent, I at least possessed pluck. So I resolutely put myself at their head and marched on in what we knew was the direction of the enemy.” Marbot’s patrol surprised an Austrian unit, took the necessary prisoners, and returned in triumph to the French lines where their self-appointed commander was rewarded with promotion to sergeant, followed soon afterwards by a commission. He survived the terrible siege of Genoa, where his father died in his arms following a wound received on the battlefield. Soon afterwards the young man was posted to the 25th Chasseurs. In 1801 he was appointed an aide-de-camp to that hoary old hero Marshal Augereau, with whom he travelled for the first time to the Iberian Peninsula. By 1805, already a veteran, Marbot was an eager young officer with Bonaparte’s Grand Army, ready for a summer of campaigning against the Austrians and Russians. “I had three excellent horses,” he enthused, adding bathetically, “and a servant of moderate quality.” The duties of aides-de-camp were among the most perilous in any army of the time. It was their business to convey their masters’ wishes and tidings not only across the battlefield, but from end to end of Europe, often in the teeth of the enemy. In the period that followed, writes Marbot, “constantly sent from north to south, and from south to north, wherever there was fighting going on, I did not pass one of these ten years without coming under fire, or without shedding my blood on the soil of some part of Europe.” It is striking to notice that, until the twentieth century, every enthusiastic warrior regarded it as a mark of virility to have been wounded in action, if possible frequently. A soldier who avoided shedding his own blood, far from being congratulated on luck and skill, was more likely to be suspected of shyness. Marbot began the 1805 campaigning season by carrying despatches from the emperor to Marshal Masséna in Italy, through the Alpine passes. Then he took his place beside Augereau for what became the Austerlitz campaign. “Never had France possessed an army so well-trained,” he exulted, “of such good material, so eager for fighting and fame . . . Bonaparte . . . accepted the war with joy, so certain was he of victory . . . He knew how the chivalrous spirit of Frenchmen has in all ages been influenced by the enthusiasm of military glory.” Seldom has there been an era of warfare in which officers and soldiers alike strove so ardently for distinction. If there were young blades in Bonaparte’s army who confined themselves to doing their duty, history knows nothing of them. In the world of France’s marshals and their subordinates, there was a relentless contest for each to outdo the others in braving peril with insouciance. Its spirit was supremely captured by the tale of Ney, after the battle of Lutzen, encountering the emperor. “My dear cousin! But you are covered in blood!” exclaimed Bonaparte in alarm. “It isn’t mine, Sire,” responded the marshal complacently, “except where that damned bullet passed through my leg!” Having survived the carnage at Austerlitz, Marbot found himself among a throng of French officers sitting their horses around Bonaparte on the day after the battle, gazing out on the broken ice of the Satschan Lake, strewn with debris and corpses. Amid it all, a hundred yards from the shore they beheld a Russian sergeant, shot through the thigh and clinging to an ice floe deeply stained with his blood. The wounded man, spying the glittering assembly, raised himself and cried out in Russian, “All men become brothers once battle is done.” He begged his life from the emperor of the French. The entreaty was translated. Bonaparte, in a characteristic impulse of imperial condescension, told his entourage to do whatever was necessary to save the Russian. A handful of men plunged into the icy water, seized floating baulks of timber, and sought to paddle themselves out to the floe. Within seconds they became clumsy prisoners of their frozen clothing. They abandoned efforts to save the enemy soldier, and struggled ashore to save themselves. Marbot, a spectator, declared that their error had been to brave the water fully clad. Bonaparte nodded assent. The would-be rescuers had shown more zeal than discretion, observed the emperor dryly. The hussar now felt obliged to put his own counsel into practice. Leaping from his horse, he tore off his clothes and sprang into the lake. He acknowledged the shock of the deadly cold, but “the emperor’s presence encouraged me, and I struck out towards the Russian sergeant. At the same time my example, and probably the praise given me by the emperor, determined a lieutenant of artillery . . . to imitate me.” As he struggled painfully amid the great daggers of ice, Marbot was dismayed to find his rival catching him up. Yet he was obliged to admit that alone, he could never have succeeded in his attempt. Together, and with immense labour, the two Frenchmen pushed the wounded Russian on his crumbling floe towards the shore, battering a path through the jumble of ice before them. At last they came close enough for onlookers to throw out lifelines. The two swimmers seized the ropes and passed them around the wounded man, enabling him to be dragged to safety. They themselves, at their last gasp, bleeding and torn, staggered ashore to receive their laurels. Bonaparte called his mameluke Roustan to bring them a glass of rum apiece. He gave gold to the wounded soldier, who proved to be Lithuanian. Once recovered, the man became a devoted follower of the emperor, a sergeant in his Polish lancers. Marbot’s companion in mercy, the lieutenant of artillery, was so weakened by his experience that after months in hospital, Marbot recorded pityingly that he had to be invalided out of the service. The hussar, of course, was back on duty next day. Marbot saw as much of Bonaparte as any man of his rank through the years that followed. In July 1806 he carried despatches to the French Embassy in Berlin, and returned to report to the emperor in Paris that he had seen Prussian officers defiantly sharpening sabres on the embassy steps. “The insolent braggarts shall soon learn that our weapons need no sharpening!” exclaimed Bonaparte. We may suspect that the emperor viewed Marbot just as his fictional self viewed Gerard in Conan Doyle’s tales—a wo... 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