Warriors: Extraordinary Tales from the Battlefield

Warriors: Extraordinary Tales from the Battlefield
Max Hastings

An exhilarating and uplifting account of the lives of sixteen ‘warriors’ from the last three centuries, hand-picked for their bravery or extraordinary military experience by the eminent military historian, author and ex-editor of the Daily Telegraph, Sir Max Hastings.Over the course of forty years of writing about war, Max Hastings has grown fascinated by outstanding deeds of derring-do on the battlefield (land, sea or air) – and by their practitioners. He takes as his examples sixteen people from different nationalities in modern history – including Napoleon’s ‘blessed fool’ Baron Marcellin de Marbot (the model for Conan Doyle’s Brigadier Gerard); Sir Harry Smith, whose Spanish wife Juana became his military companion on many a campaign in the early 19th-century; Lieutenant John Chard, an unassuming engineer who became the hero of Rorke’s Drift in the Zulu wars; and Squadron Leader Guy Gibson, the ‘dam buster’ whose heroism in the skies of World War II earned him the nation's admiration, but few friends.Every army, in order to prevail on the battlefield, needs a certain number of people capable of courage beyond the norm. In this book Max Hastings investigates what this norm might be – and how it has changed over the centuries. While celebrating feats of outstanding valour, he also throws a beady eye over the awarding of medals for gallantry – and why it is that so often the most successful warriors rarely make the grade as leaders of men.

Warriors

Max Hastings

Copyright (#ulink_c8cd2a87-5b3d-5eb3-b192-5309d2da3ab7)

William Collins

An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd.

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London SE1 9GF

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This edition published by Harper Perennial 2006

First published by HarperCollins Publishers 2005

Copyright © Max Hastings 2005

Max Hastings asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

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Source ISBN: 9780007198856

Ebook Edition © MAY 2010 ISBN: 9780007344109

Version: 2018-08-13

Praise (#ulink_98bc17b2-29f4-58d6-a031-948f0504190f)

From the reviews of Warriors:

‘Brimming with great anecdotes…Hastings’s wonderfully readable book is going to make a lot of armchair soldiers very, very, happy. A damn good war story is always worth repeating, and few tell them better than Hastings’

Daily Mail

‘Hastings combines his consummate skill as a writer with passages of descriptive brilliance to provide a book for the ordinary citizen. His warriors are a mixed bag of unlikely combat survivors, their deeds graphically portrayed and their character flaws vividly described. He captures the commitment of the fighting servicemen and women, loyally executing the policy of the government of the day, in language that is powerful yet eminently comprehensible. This is a book to entertain’

Sunday Times

‘A marvellous book. Wry, perceptive and engaging, it lays bare the curious mix of character traits – good and bad – that a successful warrior requires’

Sunday Telegraph

‘Hastings has distilled more than 40 years of study and personal observation into 15 illustrative portraits…This is an “entertaining rather than academic story”; the aim is to “amuse as much as to inform”. As ever, Hastings does both’

Guardian

‘Clear, decisive, forceful…Bristling with action and laconic dialogue, Warriors…will enthral’

Daily Telegraph

‘With this collection, Hastings is back on home territory, where he can bring his unique blend of skills as war reporter, and social as well as military historian to bear…This is one of the best and most diverting of his shorter pieces’

Evening Standard

‘All [of the stories] are corking…Opinions are stated firmly and with big bold swings of the pendulum. His virtues are clarity and decisiveness – greatly to be admired when it comes to making clear, for the lay reader, roughly what is going on in the fiendishly complex and bloody engagements he describes’

Spectator

‘Warriors is a timely reminder of how magnificently people can behave in war. I hope that not only will it become required reading in our military academies but that it will be found by our bedsides for many years to come’

The Field

Dedication (#ulink_8d03ad5c-2c24-52ab-8d8a-b5119f87f1f0)

For Professor Sir Michael Howard, CH, MC,

sometime warrior, evergreen teacher.

With affection and admiration, as always

Table of Contents

Title Page (#u4abbe109-f602-56bf-934c-42c58c0262e0)

Copyright (#u2df80c85-9415-544b-8cda-dc9c17537a08)

Praise (#uaa1f6e8e-c748-56e2-a377-35122bec7771)

Dedication (#u18f61b2f-cec6-56f9-9838-6d2809c8bde7)

Introduction (#ue493f579-2633-5aec-84e3-368b7ebd889f)

1 Bonaparte’s Blessed Fool (#uc2a784ea-3d5e-5705-a8b2-a6a543ea6303)