Sir Max Hastings - Warriors - Extraordinary Tales from the Battlefield

William Collins

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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

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

For Professor Sir Michael Howard, CH, MC,

sometime warrior, evergreen teacher.

With affection and admiration, as always

Title Page Warriors Max Hastings

Copyright

Praise

Dedication

Introduction

1 Bonaparte’s Blessed Fool

2 Harry and Juana

3 Professor of Arms

4 The Lazy Engineer

5 Colonel Fred

6 Gentleman-of-War

7 Most Private Soldier

8 The Killer

9 An Indian Odyssey

10 The Dam Buster

11 Hollywood Hero

12 Slim Jim

13 The White Mouse

14 Freedom’s Young Apostle

Epic on the Golan

Keep Reading

Afterword

Sources and References

Index

About the Author

By the Same Author

About the Publisher

THIS IS AN old-fashioned book, or at least a book about old-fashioned conflicts, because it concerns people rather than ‘platforms’, that unlovable contemporary synonym for tanks, ships, planes. It addresses the experience of some remarkable characters who made their marks upon the wars of the past two centuries. Like the rest of us, they were variously good, bad, ugly, charming and disagreeable. This study will be of no interest to such modern warlords as US defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld, because it addresses aspects of conflict they do not comprehend, creatures of flesh and blood rather than systems of steel and electronics.

In civil life, people with a penchant for fighting are deemed at best an embarrassment, at worst a menace. Warriors are unfashionable people in democratic societies during periods of peace, as Kipling frequently remarked. Nelson liked to quote the seventeenth-century poet and pamphleteer Thomas Jordan’s epigram:

Our God and sailor we adore,

In time of danger, not before;