Opinion Man of war

Keegan’s body of work ranged across centuries and continents and,as a whole,traced the evolution of warfare and its destructive technology while acknowledging its constants: the terrors of combat and the psychological toll that soldiers have endured.

Keegan was particularly concerned with the cultural roots of war,asking,“Why do men fight?” In his classic 1993 study A History of Warfare,he argued that military conflict was a cultural ritual from which the modern notion of total war,like in World War I,had been an aberration. His topics included King Henry V of England,Napoleon and the military machine of Hitler,but he also grappled with warfare in the nuclear age,concluding in The Face of Battle that total war was now almost unthinkable. “The suspicion grows that battle has already abolished itself,” he wrote.

In The Iraq War,published in 2004,he followed the technological revolution in warfare with the introduction of computer-guided “smart” weapons. He also rendered a political judgement,concluding — with the war still new and yet to be transformed by sectarian conflict and the surge of American troops — that the invasion of Iraq to overthrow Saddam Hussein was justified.

Probably none of his books was more admired than the The Face of Battle,which was published in 1976. The Cambridge historian J.H. Plumb called it “so creative,so original” and a “brilliant achievement.” A huge publishing success,it launched Keegan’s career as a popular historian.

His tale was sombre and compelling about what happens in the heat of battle,including the execution of prisoners. He was not above a personal note. Describing the horrors at the Somme,where his father was gassed,he appears to grow melancholy,pausing to reflect on how the war’s shadow lingered even 70 years later. He speaks of “the military historian,on whom,as he recounts the extinction of this brave effort or that,falls an awful lethargy,his typewriter keys tapping leadenly on the paper to drive the lines of print,like the waves of a Kitchener battalion failing to take its objective,more and more slowly toward the foot of the page.”

He could be opinionated. Reviewing Keegan’s book The American Civil War in 2009,Dwight Garner wrote in The New York Times: “He writes about Southern women as if he is commenting on the Westminster dog show: ‘Southern women are a distinctive breed even today,admired for their femininity and outward-going personality.’”

Some critics found Keegan to be overly Anglo-centric. He asserted,for example,that the Normandy invasion “ranked as the greatest military disaster Hitler had yet suffered in the

field,” surpassing that of his defeat by the Soviets at Stalingrad in 1942 and the collapse of the Eastern Front. Few German historians would have agreed.

In a 1994 interview with Brian Lamb on C-Span,Keegan acknowledged that the Duke of Wellington and Dwight D. Eisenhower were among his favourite military figures. “If Wellington epitomises the sort of English gentleman,Eisenhower epitomises the natural American gentleman,” Keegan said,“a deeply good man.” Asked about Vietnam,he said: “I will never oppose the Vietnam War. Americans were right to do it. I think they fought it in the wrong way. I don’t think it’s a war like fighting Hitler,but I think it was a right war,a correct war.” Was he a pacifist? Lamb asked.

“Ninety-five per cent.”