The Penguin book of war - John Keegan

"The Fog of War Hides the Scene of Battle" and also muffles its sounds. Occasionally, however, the authentic voice of a combatant breaks through to recount what happens within the murk. Some of these voices come to us from the long-distant past, for war has been the most compelling of subjects since the earliest days of writing. Others are hot off the press. In either case, the account rendered always conveys the same elements: danger, fear, pain, courage and cowardice.;Emotion and circumstances are altered, however, by time and geography. Modern warfare, conducted with precision weapons at long range, separates the combatants and hides them from each other. The illusion of the empty battlefield is one to which all contemporary warriors testify. An earlier breed saw each other face to face and fought with edged weapons. Modern battle can endure for weeks, even months. The conflict of earlier times was usually over within a few hours of daylight, leaving the exhausted victors to occupy a bloodstained ground and the defeated to fly, if they could, for their lives.;This anthology collects such testimony from ancient and recent times, from the world of Greek antiquity to that of the late 20th century, from the Peloponnesian War to the Gulf War. The military practice of primitive peoples is as important to an understanding of warfare as is the strategy of the Blitzkrieg of 1939-41. The Aztec code of religious self-sacrifice is as significant as that of the chivalry of medieval knights. The "calvary revolution" of the first millennium BC transformed the dynamics of conquest as spectacularly as did the technology of the tank in the mid 20th century. John Keegan's collection of warrior testimony from the beginning of recorded time to our own age epitomizes the history of war.