Book celebrates lives of 15 warriors

By NORMAN N. BROWN
ASSOCIATED PRESS
"Warriors: Portraits From the Battlefield" by Max Hastings (Knopf, 354 pages, $27.50)
British journalist Max Hastings has covered wars in the Middle East, Indochina, India, Pakistan, Angola and Rhodesia.
His book "Warriors: Portraits From the Battlefield" is about the personal qualities of fighting men -- 15 individuals who fought in wars during the 19th and 20th centuries -- rather than their weapons, campaigns or deeds.
Hastings points out in his introduction that as warfare has evolved throughout the centuries, the clash of man against man has become less personal.
Fighting then and now
Initially, hand-to-hand combat determined the victor. Arrows put the infliction of wounds and death at a distance, as did bullets and cannon balls later. Airplanes became instruments of carnage, but were so far removed from their targets that military aviators lost the sense that they were killing other men, and saw themselves as downing only the other's aircraft.
Today, warriors can push buttons to send missiles long distances, where they can kill thousands of people. But their motivations and frames of mind necessarily differ from those of soldiers on the battlefield. Today's fighters are more sensitive to physical hardship and less inclined to accept it and to risks death or injury.
Having set the scene for "Warriors," Hastings examines the fighters themselves.
Profiled
Baron Marcellin de Marbot, a longtime officer under Napoleon. He had an unquenchable desire for glory, advancement, and the approval of Napoleon. Marbot was frequently wounded, and proud of it. His memoirs were written with flair and conceit, and portray his life as a series of wondrous adventures.
A contemporary of Marbot's was Harry Smith, who joined the British army in 1805. Smith's regiment was in Spain when a woman approached the officers imploring them to protect her teenage sister, Juana, from a band of soldiers on a looting and raping spree. Smith married Juana with the consent of his superior, Lord Wellington, who also gave her away at the wedding. Later, Smith fought under Wellington at Waterloo and served in India and South Africa. He and Juana were married almost 50 years.
Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain, a professor at Bowdoin College in Maine, who never intended to be a soldier. He was a lieutenant colonel early in the Civil War and fought at Antietam and at Fredericksburg. In correspondence with his wife, he expressed surprise that he had a talent for command and an understanding of battle tactics and circumstances. He became a general and was severely wounded more than once. Chamberlain was at Appomattox when Gen. Robert E. Lee surrendered. After the war, Chamberlain became governor of Maine.
Other stories
In other stories in this fascinating and well-written book, Hastings introduces readers to British Lt. James Chard, a lazy and otherwise undistinguished engineer officer who became a hero in the war against the Zulus in 1879; British army Capt. Fred Burnaby, an eccentric adventurer, writer, publicity hound and bon vivant in 1860s London, who was killed in battle in Khartoum; and American, German and Israeli figures who should not be forgotten by history.
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