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Bezig met laden... The last full measure : how soldiers die in battle (editie 2012)door Michael Stephenson
Informatie over het werkThe Last Full Measure: How Soldiers Die in Battle door Michael Stephenson
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Meld je aan bij LibraryThing om erachter te komen of je dit boek goed zult vinden. Op dit moment geen Discussie gesprekken over dit boek. The appendix is especially useful, a very brief history of military medicine. He gives special mention to Richard Holmes, Paul Fussell, Sir John Keegan, Victor Davis Hanson, and Paddy Griffith. Also mentions the memoirs of Graves, Sassoon, Blunden, Coppard, Coppard etc. The bibliography is definitely worth inspection. geen besprekingen | voeg een bespreking toe
Considers how soldiers through the ages have met their deaths in times of war, covering such subjects as weapons and battlefield strategies while offering insight into cultural differences and the nature of military combat. Geen bibliotheekbeschrijvingen gevonden. |
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The historical sweep of Stephenson’s narrative is vast, covering warfare from the Bronze Age (the siege of Troy) up to our wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Most of the book, however, is devoted to the American Civil War and the two World Wars.
The old adage that generals begin any war by using the tactics of the last war has been true more often than not. The result is that combat soldiers tend to suffer most from the failure of their leaders to adapt to battle technology that developed between wars.
Stephenson uses statistics to illustrate general trends, but avoids being dull. For example, he shows that although army tacticians and training from the American Revolution to World War I emphasized bayonet fighting, medical records show that very few casualties were caused by sharp-edged weapons. The vast majority of casualties in the Revolution and the Civil War were caused by muskets. As tactics changed and soldiers learned to use cover (such as trenches and fox holes) more effectively, the role of artillery became dominant.
His final chapter is devoted to the improvements in battlefield medical care. Ancient warriors had virtually no access to medical care, and nearly everyone with a significant wound died from it. Roman armies were organized to care for the injured and even though they had no theory of germs and infection, they actually had some sense of the need to clean wounds. Armies in the Middle Ages seem to have forgotten lessons learned by the Romans, and seldom were able to provide care on the battlefield. Up until the American Civil War, armies were nearly always woefully under-prepared for inevitable carnage. Medical care improved substantially over the course of the war, at least in the North. (One of the medical breakthroughs included the use of chloroform as anesthesia.) However, a lack of understanding of the causes of sepsis still left wounded soldiers in a sorry state even when they were delivered to a field hospital. The modern American army has made enormous progress in medical treatment. By the time of the Vietnam War, the average time between injury and field hospital treatment was reduced to 2 hours, and the array of treatment available was vastly better than even 30 years earlier.
Evaluation: Stephenson’s writing is crisp and effective. He tempers the intensity of his accounts with poignant quotes from letters or other writings of battle participants. A mild criticism I have of the book is that it gives rather short shrift to American’s two wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Otherwise, however, this is a fine addition to the literature of combat in the tradition of John Keegan.
(JAB) ( )