War Starts At Midnight!

REVIEW: Luc Capdevila and Danièle Voldman, War Dead: Western Societies and the Casualties of War

H-NET BOOK REVIEW
Published by: H-War (July, 2008)

Luc Capdevila and Danièle Voldman. War Dead: Western Societies and the Casualties of War. Translated by Richard Veasey. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2006. xix + 200 pp. Illustrations, notes, bibliography, index. $100.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-7486-2297-9; $30.00 (paper), ISBN 978-0-7486-2298-6.

Reviewed by: Mark R. Hatlie, History and Government Program, University of Maryland University College, Europe Division.

War and Memorial Culture

This study of the casualties of war offers a broad overview of the cultural meaning and impact of mass wartime death in the West over the past 150 years or more. "Did the brutality, the suddenness, the sheer numbers of those killed change the relationship with death in the West?" (p. xi). The period covered by the book is the same as that of other recent studies of modern war and memorial culture, extending from the French Revolution through the wars of the twentieth century, but emphasizing primarily the late nineteenth and early to mid twentieth centuries. These years were a period during which a tension arose between a greater political and social concern for the individual on the one hand and developments in military technology and practice which killed unprecedented numbers and, often, did so in such a way that the dead were also not only distant, but often physically obliterated, depriving the bereaved of bodies to mourn.

War Dead defines "Western societies" in a refreshingly broad manner, including not only western Europe and North America, but also South America, primarily the southern cone countries of Argentina, Chile, and Paraguay. Indeed, these last cases promise to open up recent studies on wartime death and dying to a new cultural context. However, most of the examples and analysis are taken from France during and following the world wars, especially World War I. The authors include scattered examples from the Franco-Prussian War and the colonial wars of the 1950s and 1960s, as well as from other countries such as Germany, Spain, and Britain and even one or two anecdotes from Soviet experience. South America gets, in the end, relatively little attention, however. Thus, this study remains rooted in western Europe and does not radically break with works such as those by George Mosse, Stephane Audoin-Rouzeau, Annette Becker, or Reinhart Koselleck and Michael Jeismann. The other examples, however, serve to show that some patterns and conclusions are indeed more broadly applicable ...

REVIEW: Anthony Clayton, The British Officer: Leading the Army from 1660 to the Present

H-NET BOOK REVIEW
Published by H-Albion@h-net.msu.edu (February 2008)

Anthony Clayton. _The British Officer: Leading the Army from 1660 to the Present_. Harlow: Pearson Longman, 2007. xiv + 335 pp. Illustrations, notes, appendices, index. £9.99 (paper), ISBN 978-1-4058-5901-1.

Reviewed for H-Albion by Keith Surridge, Independent Scholar

The British Army is now constantly in the news owing to its involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan. This has generated much interest in the troops themselves and recently the army has been the subject of several television documentaries. One that will air soon features a former soap opera actor embedded with a particular unit. The involvement of Princes William and Harry in the army, both of whom have successfully trained as junior officers, keeps its media profile high. Moreover, retired senior officers have been publishing their memoirs; the most recent, and perhaps outspoken, is that by General Sir Mike Jackson, _Soldier: the Autobiography_ (2007). His trenchant views on operations in Kosovo, and especially the 2003 invasion of Iraq, caused much comment in the press. Thus, a book that seeks to explore the British army officer from earliest times to the modern era is timely.

With recent events in mind, Anthony Clayton, a former lecturer at the Royal Military Academy, Sandhurst, in line with a lot of press opinion, points out that most politicians have no experience of army life. And, consequently, they have no understanding of the stresses and strains placed upon officers who have to meld individuals into fighting units and command them in combat situations. His book, therefore, seeks to give some idea of how officers have coped over the centuries with leading men in peace and war. Examining the role of the officer from the modern army's foundation in 1660 to the twenty-first century, Clayton discusses the social background of officers; their training and motivation; and how they have interacted with their men. Influencing all these is the peculiar nature of the British regiment, a "mutual obligation society" (p. 7), with its ancient traditions, that has no counterpart elsewhere ...

REVIEW: Larry M. Logue and Michael Barton, eds, The Civil War Veteran: A Historical Reader

H-NET BOOK REVIEW
Published by H-CivWar@h-net.msu.edu (October 2007)

Larry M. Logue and Michael Barton, eds._The Civil War Veteran: A Historical Reader_.  New York: New York University Press, 2007. ix + 457 pp. Notes, suggestions for further reading, index. $75.00 (cloth), ISBN 0-8147-5203-9; $26.00 (paper), ISBN 0-8147-5204-7.

Reviewed for H-CivWar by Carol Taylor, Northeast Texas History and Genealogy Center

The Difficult Road to Peace

When the guns fell silent at Appomattox and other sites of Confederate surrender to the Union Army, the Civil War was technically over.  The Confederates were paroled and headed home, penniless and hungry in their threadbare clothing.  The Union Army was hastily marched to Washington, D. C., to parade in the Grand Review.  But the vast majority of those men were broke, some not having been paid for more than one year.  The Union Army had a plan to muster out its soldiers; the Confederates did not even have a government, much less a plan to return surviving soldiers to peaceful civilian life.  It is at that point that Larry M. Logue and Michael Barton pick up the fate of the Civil War veterans.

The editors have collected a wide range of essays from various disciplines to allow the reader to understand the "rich variety of attitudes, circumstances, and behaviors that historians and other scholars have found among the Civil War veterans” (p. 2).  As Logue and Barton explain, "the
veterans shared a profoundly important event, but the rest of their lives followed courses determined by a host of circumstances" (p. 5).  It is the host of circumstances that _The Civil War Veteran_ explores.  The book is divided into five parts, each focusing on a particular stage in the readjustment to civilian life.  Many of the essays could be placed in more than one part, but the arrangement that Logue and Barton chose works well and creates a flow into the next stage of veterans' experiences ...