The Oxford Book of Military Anecdotes (Oxford Books of Prose)
Books / Paperback
Books › History › Military › General
ISBN: 0192803840 / Publisher: Oxford University Press, December 2002
Max Hastings has assembled a collection of anecdotes which illuminate the condition of the soldier through the ages, in barracks and on the battlefield. The selection embraces both the tragic and the comic, finding room for eccentrics as well as heroes, rankers and generals. Extending from biblical times to conflicts of today, it presents an absorbing record of the glories and tribulations of military life.
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If anecdotes are marginal notes on the pages of history, these will delight any reader who has ever been moved or entertained by the condition of the soldier. Few fields of human endeavor have inspired so many memorable anecdotes as warfare, from the Bible and Livy through Gibbon andFroissart, to the imperial wars of the nineteenth century and the world conflicts of the twentieth. This collection is principally concerned with American and British conflicts, with, as the author says, "occasional forays among the ranks of foreign armies"--notably the Greeks, the Romans, and Napoleon's veterans. Hastings has sought stories that illustrate the military condition through theages, both on the battlefield and in barracks: comic, eccentric, heroic, tragic. Here are Caesar at the Rubicon and the revolt of the Praetorian Guard; Alexander's horse and Prince Rupert's dog; the legendary Mother Ross enlisting in search of her lost husband in 1693; Evelyn Waugh as the leastplausible of commandos; General Douglas MacArthur's good luck charm "Charlie," a lump of lava rock carved into a Hawaiian warrior; and much more. Some of the stories will be familiar to students of military history while others are less well known, but all provide fascinating sidelights to history.
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