The Last Full Measure: How Soldiers Die in Battle - Michael Stephenson
The Last Full Measure: How Soldiers Die in Battle - Michael Stephenson
Non-Fiction
Pages: 480
How soldiers approach not just the prospect of battle itself but the possibility (or inevitability) of their own death is something both unique and timeless. Each soldier faces death in his own individual way, and yet so much of battle and battlefield deaths are a result of a whole convergence of factors, only a few which may have anything to do with the man himself. The nature of the combat, the time and the place, the cultural impulses behind the conflict, the identity of the enemy, the weaponry, the proximity - so many different aspects all combine in the body of the soldier and all of these dictate how and when a man may meet his death.
In this book Michael Stephenson explores battlefield death from the very earliest era of 'heroic combat' - man-to-man, Achilles and Hector, the Greek phalanax, Alexander the Great - all the way up to the modern era of Fallujah and Basra, via knights on horseback, cavalry charges, the first invention of gunpowder and the musket, the killing fields of the First World War, the nihilism of Vietnam. Alongside he explores how men have mentally processed warfare, what beliefs or codes of honour or glory have impelled them into the field and how these came to have an impact on the way soldiers fought and the way they faced their own deaths - what Wilfred Owen called 'the old lie'. Dulce et decorum est.
No man can fight for nothing and no-one, Stephenson argues; and as warfare has become increasingly industrialised and mechanised, increasingly remote from the up-close-and-personal style of combat, soldiers have had to develop new ideas of what they fight for, most often their buddies, their comrades, the unit. By the same token, the very idea of death in battle has become increasingly unacceptable - warfare has become so divorced from its roots, so reliant on weaponry and technology, that it has become ever harder to accept that causalities can and will still occur.
This book really strips away any of the heroism or glow that may come to surround the concept of the fighting man. Stephenson draws heavily on soldiers' real accounts, and he doesn't stint with the graphic accounts blood and the shit and the viscera that comes with battlefield death. Soldiers may go into battle with visions of glory and honour in the ends, but there is rarely much of that left at the end. And yet this book is full of honour, and pity too, and real understanding and empathy - it's a riveting read, and really highlights both how much and how little has changed over the centuries.
Non-Fiction
Pages: 480
How soldiers approach not just the prospect of battle itself but the possibility (or inevitability) of their own death is something both unique and timeless. Each soldier faces death in his own individual way, and yet so much of battle and battlefield deaths are a result of a whole convergence of factors, only a few which may have anything to do with the man himself. The nature of the combat, the time and the place, the cultural impulses behind the conflict, the identity of the enemy, the weaponry, the proximity - so many different aspects all combine in the body of the soldier and all of these dictate how and when a man may meet his death.
In this book Michael Stephenson explores battlefield death from the very earliest era of 'heroic combat' - man-to-man, Achilles and Hector, the Greek phalanax, Alexander the Great - all the way up to the modern era of Fallujah and Basra, via knights on horseback, cavalry charges, the first invention of gunpowder and the musket, the killing fields of the First World War, the nihilism of Vietnam. Alongside he explores how men have mentally processed warfare, what beliefs or codes of honour or glory have impelled them into the field and how these came to have an impact on the way soldiers fought and the way they faced their own deaths - what Wilfred Owen called 'the old lie'. Dulce et decorum est.
No man can fight for nothing and no-one, Stephenson argues; and as warfare has become increasingly industrialised and mechanised, increasingly remote from the up-close-and-personal style of combat, soldiers have had to develop new ideas of what they fight for, most often their buddies, their comrades, the unit. By the same token, the very idea of death in battle has become increasingly unacceptable - warfare has become so divorced from its roots, so reliant on weaponry and technology, that it has become ever harder to accept that causalities can and will still occur.
This book really strips away any of the heroism or glow that may come to surround the concept of the fighting man. Stephenson draws heavily on soldiers' real accounts, and he doesn't stint with the graphic accounts blood and the shit and the viscera that comes with battlefield death. Soldiers may go into battle with visions of glory and honour in the ends, but there is rarely much of that left at the end. And yet this book is full of honour, and pity too, and real understanding and empathy - it's a riveting read, and really highlights both how much and how little has changed over the centuries.