Men of War: The American Soldier in Combat at Bunker Hill, Gettysburg, and Iwo Jima

by Alexander Rose

In the grand tradition of John Keegan’s enduring classic The Face of Battle comes a searing, unforgettable chronicle of war through the eyes of the American soldiers who fought in three of our most iconic Bunker Hill, Gettysburg, and Iwo Jima.

This is not a book about how great generals won their battles, nor is it a study in grand strategy. Men of War is instead a riveting, visceral, and astonishingly original look at ordinary soldiers under fire.

Drawing on an immense range of firsthand sources from the battlefield, Alexander Rose begins by re-creating the lost and alien world of eighteenth-century warfare at Bunker Hill, the bloodiest clash of the War of Independence—and reveals why the American militiamen were so lethally effective against the oncoming waves of British troops. Then, focusing on Gettysburg, Rose describes a typical Civil War infantry action, vividly explaining what Union and Confederate soldiers experienced before, during, and after combat. Finally, he shows how in 1945 the Marine Corps hurled itself with the greatest possible violence at the island of Iwo Jima, where nearly a third of all Marines killed in World War II would die. As Rose demonstrates, the most important factor in any battle is the human At Bunker Hill, Gettysburg, and Iwo Jima, the American soldier, as much as any general, proved decisive.

To an unprecedented degree, Men of War brings home the reality of combat and, just as important, its aftermath in the form of the psychological and medical effects on veterans. As such, the book makes a critical contribution to military history by narrowing the colossal gulf between the popular understanding of wars and the experiences of the soldiers who fight them.

Praise for Men of War

“A tour de force . . . strikingly vivid, well-observed, and compulsively readable.” — The Daily Beast

“Military history at its best . . . This is indeed war up-close, as those who fought it lived it—and survived it if they could. Men of War is deeply researched, beautifully written.” — The Wall Street Journal

“A brilliant, riveting, unique book . . . Men of War will be a classic.” —General David H. Petraeus, U.S. Army (Retired)

“The fact is that Men of War moves and educates, with the reader finding something interesting and intriguing on virtually every page.” — National Review

“This is a book that has broad value to a wide audience. Whether the reader aims to learn what actually happens in battle, draw on the military lessons within, or wrestle with what actually defines combat, Men of War is a valuable addition to our understanding of this all-too-human experience.” — The New Criterion

“A highly recommended addition to the literature of military history . . . [Rose] writes vividly and memorably, with a good eye for the telling detail or anecdote.” — Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

“Using the firsthand accounts of brave soldiers who fought for freedom, Rose sheds new light on viewpoints we haven’t heard as widely before. It’s a welcome perspective in an era where most people have no military experience to speak of.” — The Washington Times

“Rose poignantly captures the terror and confusion of hand-to-hand combat during the battle.” — The Dallas Morning News

“If you want to know the meaning of war at the sharp end, this is the book to read.” —James McPherson, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The War That Forged a Nation

Genres: History, Military Fiction, Military History, Nonfiction, Civil War, War, American Revolution

496 pages, Paperback

First published February 24, 2015

About the author

A little about myself. I was born in the United States, grew up in Australia, educated (to the best of my modest abilities) in Britain, and have now circumnavigated back to the U.S. I served as a writer and producer on the AMC show, "Turn: Washington's Spies," which was adapted from my book, "Washington's Spies."

You can find me on Facebook, Twitter, or BlueSky (or just go to my website). If you're interested in historical espionage, please do subscribe (free) to my Substack newsletter, "Spionage," at https://alexanderrose.substack.com/

Reviews

[Matt]

“Oh God of battles! Steel my soldiers’ hearts. Possess them not with fear. Take from them now the sense of reckoning…”
- William Shakespeare, Henry V, Act 4, Scene 1

“[T]he rattle of musketry and the roar of cannon came rushing over my lacerated brain like traces of fire. In vain did I attempt to calm my feelings…I doubted the reality of all around me, and strove to shake it off as a horrible dream…I was mad with terror and anguish…By and by the storm of battle passed away. The distant mutterings of the cannons soon ceased to fall upon my ear. Then again all was dark…I felt as if eternity had begun its reign…”
- Sam Emerson, 3rd Arkansas, wounded at the battle of Gettysburg, 1863

Alexander Rose’s Men of War is not an original book in terms of either concept or structure. It is, in fact, derivative of one of the most famous military histories of all time. That volume, John Keegan’s The Face of Battle, attempted to relate the experiential aspect of war, as viewed from common soldiers. To do so, he selected three different battles from three different eras – Agincourt, Waterloo, and the Somme – and discussed them at ground level. Eschewing the typical point of view of lords and generals, Keegan focused instead on the bowman and rifleman.

Men of War does the exact same thing, except with American soldiers and battles rather than British. It is also worth noting – though this is heresy – that he executes his mission far better than Keegan. Yeah, that’s right, I’m saying it: Men of War is better than The Face of Battle. (While we’re on the topic of apostasies, don’t get me started on Stephen Ambrose. Better yet, buy me a drink, and let’s get started).

Rose’s purpose in writing Men of War is very specific. He is not interested in background or context; he is not interested in strategy; he does not care about the decisions made by various generals; he is not dealing in biographies or personalities. There are some tactics here, but only to the extent that it relates to the soldierly experience of battle. Thus, in the Gettysburg chapter, you will not find any discussion about Lee’s decision to send Pickett across that fatal field. In the Iwo Jima chapter, Rose does explain how Marines strategized to destroy pillboxes, but the emphasis is on how the Marines were forced to adapt to a fluid environment.

It is worth noting that Rose sticks to the plan. He tells you up front what he's going to do, and he does not digress from that. At no point does he give into the temptation to add a little bit of strategic insight here, or dive into a council of war over there. This is a distillation of combat to the written word.

The three battles Rose chooses to highlight are instructive of this purpose. Bunker Hill, Gettysburg, and Iwo Jima are three of the most celebrated fights in United States history. Bunker Hill was the bloodiest encounter of the American Revolution. Likewise, Gettysburg was the costliest battle in the American Civil War, as well as being a pivotal, if not decisive moment. Finally, Iwo Jima was the only Pacific battle in which overall Marine casualties outweighed that of the Japanese; it also featured one of the iconic moments in U.S. history, when the Marines raised the flag on Suribachi.

You might ask yourself – and not entirely without reason – do we really need to read anything more about Bunker Hill, Gettysburg, and Iwo Jima? Well, the ubiquity of these battles is sort of the point. Men of War isn’t about the battles themselves, but about what it was like to be in them. Accordingly, these choices make perfect sense. Everyone has at least a notion about what happened there. Moreover, there are a lot of primary sources to be mined. You will not be surprised to learn that this is not my first time reading about any of these three battles; however, Rose’s take on each felt incredibly fresh and vital.

(Side note: I don't think background knowledge is necessary to appreciate Men of War. Rose organizes his material in such a way that the movements of troops and the decisions of commanders is never necessary to understand what's going on).

Men of War is broken into three parts, each part devoted to one battle. Rose begins each section with the barest summary of what happened - and I do mean bare. The intro amounts to a bird's eye view of the battlefield, except that the bird is riding in a commercial airliner traveling at 500 m.p.h. at 30,000 feet. Following the intro, he breaks the battle down into its component parts. The topics he covers are wide-ranging and almost always fascinating. Rose discusses every aspect. Weather and terrain. Uniforms and equipment. The ballistics of muskets, rifles, and artillery. The performance of the medical corps. The burial of the dead. In the Bunker Hill chapter, Rose talks about the length of time it takes to fire a musket, and what that meant to both the redcoats charging uphill, and the colonists waiting for them. During the Iwo Jima chapter, there is an essay on the flamethrower, delineating both its utility and horrifying effectiveness.

For the most part, the chapters stand alone. Rose does not try to forge any tenuous links between soldiers fighting in different eras. To the contrary, he presents battle as a many-faced god, experienced differently by every individual. Rose does make some comparisons, of course, but wisely avoids facile analogies. One topic that does arise in each chapter is the psychological after effects suffered by combatants. All these battles occurred before the diagnosis of PTSD, and it’s interesting to see how survivors carried on in their lives after having seen such terrible and unforgettable things.

And there are terrible and unforgettable things aplenty, here. Typically, I don’t feel like a TV-MA warning is necessary when recommending history books. This is an exception. Men of War is extremely graphic.

Sometimes, the details are clinical in nature, as in this discussion of the impact of 18th century firepower on mortal men:

The moment when the British reached a range of around 100 yards would help decide the engagement. Among professional military men, that was judged the optimal distance to balance accuracy against hitting power. At that range, a standard musket firing a nearly one-ounce ball would leave a bloody cavity in a man’s flesh measuring 9.5 cubic inches…From there, the extent of trauma rose sharply. At 75 yards, a typical round created an entry wound nearly two inches in diameter, then tunneled through the flesh and juiced tissue to leave an exit wound more than three inches wide. A range of between 25 and 60 yards seems to have been the ideal killing distance, as musket balls had not yet lost most of their kinetic energy, and neither had they sheared too far off their intended vectors, thus allowing the defending musketman to count on hitting what he was aiming at.

At other points, the portrayal of combat is simply hellish, as in the accounts of the artillery on Iwo:

One surgeon [on Iwo Jima] analyzed the composition of the shrapnel he was rapidly learning about: “The smaller fragments buzzed by like swarms of angry bees. The medium-sized pieces sounded like a flock of purple grackles moving from one clump of trees to another. Some of the largest chunks were the size of dinner plates and make a soft sighing sound as they passed by. They were also clearly visible as they floated close by overhead. These large fragments could readily cut a man in half if he were to get in their way.” They could certainly decapitate you. When Patrick Caruso jumped into a shell crater he found a headless Marine sitting there with “a cigarette still burning between two of his fingers and a rifle in his other hand.” Another Marine recalled that he had just given a man a cracker when he was killed. The fragment “cut the top of his head off right above the eyes, all the way to the back of his neck, and the piece was hanging from his collar like a bucket lid.”

Men of War is a repository of hell’s minutiae. Even though it was well-paced, soundly written, and filled with exceptional first-person accounts, I couldn’t read it all the way through. There were times when I had to take a break and watch some baseball, because the intensity is so high.

I suppose that begs the question: Why do I need to read this? In The Face of Battle, Keegan spent a fair amount of time wrestling with this issue, and on historiography in general. In a short concluding chapter, Rose gives us some possibilities as well. The answer, I think, is pretty short and simple. War is an extension of policy. In a democracy, policy is an extension of the people. Most of us will never be in combat, so we can’t have any idea of what it’s like. But if we are, at some level, responsible for the choice of war as tool of policy, then we can’t be glib about it. It’s not enough to recall bromides. Sherman was being Sherman when he pithily informed a State Fair audience that “war is all hell.” Men of War goes out of its way to explain the truth of that assertion.

[happy]

Author Alexander Rose states in the prefix to this book that it his attempt to create an American version of John Keegan’s classic “The Face of Battle”, which he venerates almost like the Bible. It a great extent he succeeds. Obviously due to the fact that the US has existed less than 235 yrs the experiences of the men are not quite as varied as all the battles looked at are in the gunpowder era. The three battles are iconic in U.S military history – Bunker Hill, Gettysburg and Iwo Jima.

As with Keegan’s masterpiece, the authors stated goal is to give the reader some understanding of what it like to be an infantryman in combat. I feel that he comes close to succeeding. As Mr. Rose looks at each battle, he gives the reader just enough of the high level strategy for the reader to understand to goals of each side. He then looks at the experiences of the men with the bayonets. This includes their training, their weapons - both personal and crew served, what they ate, how far they had to march, their motivations etc. Finally he looks at the effect battle had on them as people.

In discussing Bunker Hill, the author gives a good account on how militia can stand up to regulars. As he discusses this, Mr. Rose goes into detail about the lack of training the British Regulars had. He looks at the evolving British infantry tactics, the British were in the process of going from a three deep line to a two deep line, and how the cursory training some of the Regiments that fought a Bunker Hill had in the new tactics affected their assaults. He also looks at the fact that for many in those Regiments Bunker Hill was there first time under fire. He compares this with the American Militia who had many veterans of both the French Wars fought 10 to 20 yrs earlier and in fighting Native Americans in their ranks.

In looking at Gettysburg, the author goes into detail on the increasing psychological cost of war. In comparing Gettysburg with Bunker Hill, Mr. Rose notes the increasing psychological casualties. These casualties run the up and down the ranks, from Regimental commanders down to the lowliest privates. The author tells of one regimental commander at Antietam who completely broke down and disappeared after the battle. He was found weeks later naked in a farmer’s field completely insane. He also looks at the types of physical wounds and the care the wounded received. He states it was best available at the time and because of the nature of the ammunition and the wounds it caused, even today the accepted treatment for many of the wounds would be amputation.

In discussing casualties at Gettysburg one point the author makes is how perceptions of casualties has changed. In today’s world, the minimization of casualties is a must for the commander. At the time of the Civil War, units and the men who commanded and filled the ranks prided themselves on how many casualties they could take and still carry on.

I personally felt the best chapter was the one on Iwo Jima. In this chapter, Mr. Rose looks at how the combat experience had changed for those men from what there great grandfathers had experience at Gettysburg. He also looks at the adaptability of the American Fighting Man. For example he cites the changes in the TO&E of a Marine Division from the first battle at Guadalcanal to what that division took to battle at Iwo. At Guadalcanal there were no flame throwers organic to the division, by the time of Iwo Jima there was an average of more than one per infantry company. The same goes for squad automatic weapons (the BAR). At Guadalcanal there were 2 per squad, at Iwo it had increased to 3. The author also looks at the lack of prisoners taken and reasons the Marines didn’t attempt to take many. He does not blame racial motives or the desire to revenge Pearl Harbor, but hard won experience. A Japanese attempting to surrender was much more likely to be attempting a last chance to kill you than actually giving up. Again as with his chapter on Gettysburg, the author does a good job on describing what combat does to the minds of those engaged in it.

One word of warning, Mr. Rose very graphic in describing what gunpowder and later modern weapons do to the human body. It can be stomach turning at times.

While not quite up to Professor Keegan’s masterpiece, this is still an excellent look at what the Poor Bloody Infantry goes through in fighting our battles. If good reads allowed partial stars - 4.25

[J.S.]

From a purely intellectual standpoint, I think it would be fascinating to see something like a massive earthquake, a raging tornado, or a nuclear bomb explosion. I've seen some pretty amazing jets at airshows and it would be cool to see them in real action - dropping bombs or shooting down enemy fighters - basically doing what they were made to do. The unfortunate reality, however, is the very real danger in such situations and the probability of death and destruction.

Likewise, I enjoy reading military histories, notwithstanding the fact that they're all about death and destruction. But most focus more on the actions of generals and movements of armies; while they might give you some taste of the unpleasantness of war, they're still more often than not, rather sanitized. But that's where this excellent book is different; not only does it tell you about the battles - Bunker Hill (American Revolution), Gettysburg (American Civil War), and Iwo Jima (WWII) - but it gives you a feeling for what real war was like. The focus for each battle is methodic but slightly different: "... for Bunker Hill, we [can] deduce a militiaman's experience of combat depending on his location (redoubt, beach, rail fence) and for Gettysburg we [can] do the same by deconstructing the era's formal templates (artillery bombardment, attack, defense), [and] for Iwo Jima [we] mostly examine combat method -- that is, how Marines first confronted obstacles and then surmounted them by watching, doing, adapting, and learning." (from pg 217 of the advance copy)

It's true, there's plenty of blood and guts in the writing, but it's told with a professional detachment that satisfies my weird curiosity but still leaves room for a healthy appreciation for the personal sacrifices. Yes, I squirmed while reading about the effects of cannonballs and bullets on the human body or the frightening descriptions of grenades and flame throwers in battle, but it's not all gore. It's interesting to read how the battles progressed from a soldier's perspective and how each differed, as well as why modern-day combat would be different still. It's also loaded with many of the individual observations from people involved in the fighting, the kind of quotes that don't always make it into the regular histories. One interesting note is how progressively "work-like" war had become by WWII, and how few reports of PTSD-like cases there were at Bunker Hill. Another was the psychological effects of things like bombardments and bayonettes.

It might not be the ideal book for someone with a weak stomach, but I found it so engrossing and well-written that it never really bothered me (and I read most of it while eating lunch). It's scholarly-like in its thoroughness and approach, but not difficult to read by any measure. I know a man who fought at Iwo Jima and he's criticized most books on the battle, but I suspect he might be more approving of this one. It certainly gave me a greater appreciation for his experience.

[Steven Peterson]

This is an American take on John Keegan's classic "The Face of Battle." Keegan's work is a wonderful book--looking at the human face of such battles as Agincourt. The detail is striking; the human side of the battles covered is powerful. This book does not have quite the same punch as Keegan's but it stands well on its own.

The three American battles considered cover two centuries--from Bunker (actually Breed's) Hill to Gettysburg to Iwo Jima. One interesting take on this is that Bunker Hill featured a difference in soldier's response to battle. The book does a fine job in, first, describing the detail of each of the battles. He also speaks of what the soldiers went through in each battle.

The book also considers the perspective of the "other" side--British troops at Bunker Hill, Confederates at Gettysburg, and Japanese troops at Iwo Jima. What the book does is provide the "human side" of battle, with plenty of descriptive material.

All in all, a fine work. . . .

[Mike (HistoryBuff)]

Great read, told from the perspective of the common solider. It goes into great detail about what it is like being in battle. You learn a lot about the history of Bunker Hill, Gettysburg and Iwo Jima. Highly recommended.

[Jordan]

The Face of Battle is a seminal work in the field of military history. Its author, the late Sir John Keegan, was an instructor at the British military academy at Sandhurst who, because of childhood illness, had never seen combat or even served in the military. Finding himself surrounded by veterans of World War II and teaching a rising generation of officers who would presumably see combat, Keegan wrote his book--a search in the muck of Agincourt, the fields of Waterloo, and the cratered no-man’s-land of the Somme for the “face of battle”--as an inquiry into what combat is like for the men doing the fighting and the dying. Men of War is Alexander Rose’s excellent attempt to do the same for American military history.

Like Keegan, Rose eschews the kind of military history traditionally identified with the field--the top-down focus on generals, the emphasis on their orders and leadership, the endless troop dispositions, and the post facto parsing of good or bad choices by commanders. Instead, he seeks to describe what it was like to be a soldier at Bunker Hill, Gettysburg, and Iwo Jima, battles he selected not for their decisiveness (a concept he rightly questions), but for their ordinariness as battles of their time.

Each section begins with an outline of the general course of the battle. Bound up in this is a description of the terrain (following Keegan’s suggestion to get out of the library and walk the fields one writes about). What follows is a breakdown of different parts of the battle from beginning to end and what they were like for the men caught in the fire. The chapter on Bunker Hill, for instance, describes the midnight arrival of colonial militias and their labor to dig entrenchments on the heights facing Boston. Later sections look at the landing of British troops and their chaotic attempts to breach the colonial fortifications. Rose makes the terror and exhaustion of both sides palpable. Other parts of the book--on the heat and stench of the days at Gettysburg, on the horror of Iwo Jima at night--just as capably put the reader in the position of a soldier at those battles.

Critical to the discussion of each battle is the reality of battle itself, what it all comes down to in modern warfare--killing. Rose gives grim, detailed attention to the wounds inflicted on the participants in all three battles and the variety of ways in which soldiers were carried off. Bayonets, he points out, were usually more psychological and more often used for digging or spitting food over campfires. Bullets, however, did their work whether they struck their targets or not; Rose cites a number of soldiers in his account of Gettysburg who were terrified by the mere sound of musketry. Artillery plays perhaps the most terrifying role in all three battles, inflicting terrible wounds, dismembering, disemboweling, and decapitating men in all three battles, and, by 1945, capable of making men simply disappear. Rose also gives time to the aftermath, to the wounded and dying--their suffering eased or worsened depending on the medical science of the time--and to both the physical and psychological scars participants would bear--if they survived.

One of the book’s great strengths is that, by juxtaposing these three battles, widely separated in time, Rose highlights the change that occurred between them. These changes affect everything about the battle. Bunker Hill lasted a few hours (perhaps? Rose notes the effect of battle on one’s sense of the passage of time) on a single afternoon; Gettysburg was fought dawn to dusk over three days; Iwo Jima was a 24-hour horror show lasting over a month. Some of these differences are material; Bunker Hill was essentially civil war on the ragged edge of a preindustrial power while Iwo Jima was fought by a fully modernized, continent-sized industrial power capable of massive feats of logistics and supply. Rose notes that just one Marine division on Iwo Jima received 100 million cigarettes. Other, deeper changes were cultural; the Puritan-descended militiamen at Bunker Hill seem never to have known PTSD, while the men at Gettysburg, newly inward-focused by the Romantics, dwelt at length on the horrors of what they saw, ultimately sending some of them to the asylum. And men at all three battles had vastly different ideas about why they were fighting. Rose is often at his best in these passages.

I could nitpick. The chapter on Gettysburg is not quite as focused as the other two, and, given an excellent section on the effects of musket balls in the chapter on Bunker Hill, I would like to have seen a corresponding section on the awful innovation of the Minié ball at Gettysburg. Elsewhere, while rightly complicating the idea of the Civil War as a modern “total” war, Rose writes that

American military writers [after World War II] likened the recent bombing of campaigns against Germany and Japan to Sherman’s March to the Sea. Total War, in other words, was a singularly twentieth-century form of warfare that considered the enemy population, industry, and infrastructure as legitimate and as important a military target as combatants in the field--a concept and means of warfare quite alien to those living in the nineteenth century, when generals thought almost exclusively in terms of defeating the enemy in a decisive battle. (112)

Quite alien, perhaps, but not totally, as this description of modern warfare almost perfectly describes Sherman’s “indirect” strategy both during and after the aforementioned March to the Sea: to crush the armies, industry, and spirit of Southern resistance by visiting terror on civilians. But again, these are nitpicks--the book overall is excellent.

One of the strongest parts of the book, in fact, the part that convinced me to buy it while flipping through it a few weeks ago, is the conclusion. In approaching how to make sense of what he’s just presented, in all its terror, exhilaration, and disgust, Rose writes “that there are far too many books about war that sentimentalize, glamorize, or euphemize what happens during combat” (355). Like Keegan--and like myself--I might add,

I shall admit that over the course of my research I’ve become somewhat more cautious when it comes to listening to drums beaten by amateurs rousing nations to war with one another. . . . [Military historians] are more aware than most that embarking on war is like entering a dark room [where] even the simplest thing becomes very hard, and no matter what transpires or how incandescent the cause, men will be murdered, often mistakenly or accidentally, and sometimes pointlessly. . . . That does not mean that war is always unnecessary or never justified, but one must pick one’s battles (so to speak) and be realistic as to balancing often incommensurate ends and means, knowns and unknowns. (356)

And as for what it’s like, the subject of the investigation? Rose is willing to admit that the face of battle, the experience of combat, approached indirectly as he has had to do, still eludes him: “I still do not know for certain whether, at the supreme moment of crisis in combat, I would stand and fight . . . or flee. No one does--not until that dread moment arrives. Perhaps it’s better that way” (363). I’ll echo that sentiment. Fortunately, books like Keegan’s--books like Rose’s--get us a little closer to knowing, if only by describing what it was like for others before us.

I came to the book curious and enthusiastic. Keegan’s Face of Battle is one of my favorite books, and the model for my own graduate school work on Anglo-Saxon combat. I’m happy to say that Rose does not disappoint. Men of War is a vivid, often moving look at what combat was like for three different generations of Americans and a much-needed call for greater historical imagination for everyone.

Highly recommended.

[Robert Phelps]

Incredible book! An in-depth trisection of American war supplemented with first hand accounts and contrasted to each other in a very intriguing and captivating manner of narration. Listened to on Audible

[Jim Gallen]

In “Men of War” author Alexander Roe undertakes to produce an American version of John Keegan’s “The Face of Battle”. This book examines the experience of the combat soldier at three iconic battles: Bunker Hill, Gettysburg and Iwo Jima.

Readers will be surprised by some facts, such as that Americans were better armed and experienced than the British at Bunker Hill, the mid-nineteenth century criteria for amputation, that officers had higher casualty rates at Gettysburg and that flamethrowers kill more by oxygen deprivation than heat.

Rose has produced a masterful work relates the experiences of the soldiers without becoming bogged down in minutia. In each section he outlines the battle, the contending forces, the nature of attack and the defense and the distinctive actions: the rail fence at Bunker Hill, the Charge at Gettysburg and the cave-by-cave defense on Iwo Jima. For each battle he explores the strengths and weaknesses of the armies and evolution of strategy as the officers came to understand each other’s battle plans and adapted their own actions in the field. Appropriate attention is paid to supply and medical care.

The author employs the skill of weaving the words of the veterans into the story of the battle experience while not unraveling the battle into disconnected personal reminiscences. By the end I had a greater appreciation of the sights and smells, the carnage and hardships, the inspirations and “get the job done” attitude, and the mental shocks and emotional disconnects with which and by which our defenders contended and coped. I understand his endorsement of John Keegan’s observation that professional military historians tend to be more pacific, if not pacifist, than the population at large because they keenly understand the cost, price and tolls of war.

I think the greatest value of a book like this is that it helps put the reader in the place of the warriors of each era. I have often thought of what my great-grand-father went through. He was at Vicksburg, not Gettysburg, but much of his experience must have been like that depicted in this book. He told stories to his grandchildren. Now I can imagine what they must have been. Maybe his memories played a role in his leaving the family home, but we will never know. He now seems more real and I am more grateful for what he endured. Maybe you will find your someone among the experiences related here. If you do it will image of him. A book that can do that is not to be missed.

[Urey Patrick]

John Keegan wrote a military history classic for the ages - "The Face of Battle" - that explained and illuminated three battles (Agincourt 1415, Waterloo 1815 and the Somme 1916) from the ground-level perspective and experiences of the troops fighting them. It is a magnificent piece of work. Rose attempts the same feat here, choosing three American battles - Bunker Hill 1775, Gettysburg 1863 and Iwo Jima 1945. Rose makes no claim of matching Keegan, merely emulating the form. And that is good, because this book does not rise to the level of "The Face of Battle."

The author takes the reader off on sidetracks and perambulations - some of them interesting, some of them relevant to the battles, some of them distractions. He also has an unfortunate tendency to assign his feelings and interpretations to the historical soldiers, individually and collectively. That results in regular flights of subjective speculation of things not remotely known or recognizable in the times. It detracts hugely from the narrative - at least to my eye and ear. For example (and only one of many such) in writing of the almost obsessive resistance and ultimate suicides of Japanese soldiers in their caves on Iwo Jima, "Men had fought for light and scraps of food as they succumbed to insanity and incoherence, overcome by the fear of the coming flamethrowers and the prospect of being buried alive. Now that the nightmare had been rendered real by the Marine Corps, dying by grenade was their last, blessed choice, a ray of rationality beaming through the murk of madness that had tormented them as the powerlessly awaited processing."

That sensationalist and overwrought emotional characterization of events, motivations and consequences is rampant throughout the book- applied equally to both sides of the battles described. I found it a huge distraction. Rose also gets overly diagrammatic in his writing of weapons, tactics and the assorted arcana of troops at war and the eras in which they fought. He frequently gets details slightly wrong regarding those facts.

All that said, it is a nice book - interesting as often as it is off-putting.

[Erin]

In Men of War, Rose examines the combat experience of American soldiers in the battles of Bunker Hill, Gettysburg, and Iwo Jima, a concept he bases on the seminal work of John Keegan regarding British soldiers (The Face of Battle, on Agincout, Waterloo, and the Somme).

Reading Men of War brought to mind James McPherson's For Cause and for Comrades, though of course far less finite in scope. In fact, it's nearly exhaustive in scope. This man has done his homework. He chooses three iconic American battles, but somehow brings forth the universal experience of a human in combat across time, while at the same time contending that combat experience is confined in its own time. He ultimately concludes that we cannot judge men of another time by our own post-romantic age conceptions of warfare, actually achieving something of that hard-won objectivity standard. A powerful and important work- but very readable and accessible. This is perhaps not surprising for the man who brought you Washington's Spies: The Story of America's First Spy Ring (adapted drama on AMC).

[Ramona Honan]

"Among old soldiers there exists the discombobulating sessation that war was simultaneously exhilarating and horrifying, terrifying and boring, cruel and kind, tragic and farcical. The Great Red God demands much of its adherents."

Men of War is a fantastic book about the soldiers who go to war and how they adapt and how they are made different from it.

Mr. Rose covers three battles from three different American Wars - Bunker Hill, Gettysburg and Iwo Jima. Battle tactics differ from each war, but the soldiers are the same. They obey, they fight, they fight and they adapt - and they die, which Mr. Rose goes into great detail at each battle. But the soldiers persevere and life goes on.

I am so please that Net Galley and Random House allowed me to review this book.

[Richard Jackson]

I have always liked to read military history. I guess it comes from my father being in the service and traveling from base to base as a child. That being said I have always been more prone to read military histories that emphasize the experiences of the ordinary soldier as opposed those that tell "this division was here and that division was there on this date". That being said, Mr Rose's book was extremely interesting as it definitely "got into the weeds". Base on Keegans famous The Face of Battle which Keegan wrote focusing on the British soldier over time, Rose writes of the American soldier and his daily experiences before during and after Bunker Hill, Gettysburg and Iwo Jima.

[Trisha]

Rose is a self described admirer of Keegan, the outstanding author of military history, and especially his "Face of War." He wanted to follow Keegan's example in that book and to describe the combat experience of soldiers in war. As he points out, we all know what the Generals and officers thought and did, but there has been little gathered about the fighting soldiers experience. He wanted unvarnished accounts. He focuses on three battles; Bunker Hill, Gettysburg, and Iwo Jima. His sources were diverse, from letters, officers reports, personal histories, etc. It is a valuable book.

[Larry]

Inspired by John Keegan's treatment of the experience of soldiers (not generals) at Agincourt, Waterloo, and the Somme in "The Face of Battle," Rose examines the soldier's experience at Bunker Hill, Gettysburg, and Iwo Jima. "Men of War," like "The Face of Battle" before it, is a remarkable book. (Read the section on Gettysburg in conjunction with Allen Guelzo's "Gettysburg: The Final Battle," for Guelzo had some very interesting analyses that overlap Rose's book's central section.)

[Justin D.]

I remember learning about these battles in high school. They were brief but memorable lessons. This book pulls from multiple different personal accounts about these wars / battles and helps the reader see from the perspectives of the men that were there writing about these battles as they were happening. on top of that, it flowed real nicely for me and was an easy read!

[Timothy Perkins]

Excellent study of how it was done, who did it, what they went through, the weapons they used, the psychological context and what it was like on the ground. Will be looking for more books to read from Alexander Rose, starting with the book he wrote about Washington's Spies.

[Jim]

Very interesting look at war using three battles fought by Americans.

[Terry Misfeldt]

Alexander Rose conveys an interesting perspective on American soldiers through three key battles in our nation's history.

[Uran Bowen]

very detailed, graphic in places. Well researched and interpreted in the time periods represented by the three battles.

[Sophie May]

3.5

[patrick Lorelli]

An excellent book that looks at the truth in the trench or storm the beach young man that has made America from the beginning Bunker Hill to Gettysburg, and then Iwo Jima. All of them looking at it from the soldiers perspective, not the General. The one that I was really impressed with was Bunker Hill or Breeds Hill. The way the author was able to capture both sides of the action was impressive. He was also able to point out the problems that the American Militiamen had but were also able to inflict some terrible wounds to the British and how and why that was. That battle and his description of the action, fighting amongst the volunteers, lack of ammo, all of which led to their withdraw. But it also showed that with the proper leader they were a force to be reckoned with. The other two battles were just as impressive but I have read many books on both of those accounts. Not taking away from those men sacrifices. Remember Iwo Jima took nearly a month to take and nearly a third of all of the Marine Corps Casualties of WWII came from that one Island so that in itself is amazing. That there were men who were 18, 19 20 years old and had already survived Tarawa, and Peleliu, and even Guadalcanal, but would not come home from Iwo Jima. A great book to honor all of the soldiers. I got this book from Netgalley.com I gave it 5 stars. Follow us at www.1rad-readerreviews.com

[Texjim]

This is a very realistic account of the experience of US soldiers in three key American army battles. The battles, Bunker Hill, Gettysburg, and Iwo Jima are fleshed out from the personal accounts and diaries of the troops on the ground. There is sufficient narration to understand the overall progress of each conflict but the major emphasis deals with stark realism and random terror confronting the individual soldier. Some of the graphic images are not for the faint of heart. The author does a good job of conveying the overriding sense of uncertainty and dis-ease for those on the battlefield. There is a certain incredulity associated with the blunt cannon fodder tactics employed in the revolutionary and civil war battles. The soldiers in those two battles, however benefited from their relatively short duration, one and three days respectively. In contrast, Iwo Jima went on for more than four weeks. The physical and physiological toll of that constant terror day and night was unprecedented. Despite the intense bombardment prior to landing, thousands of GIs died on the beach on day one from stubborn well fortified enemy defenses. Early on, the enemy successfully mounted nightly surprise attacks and ambushed troops from the rear from camouflaged "trash cans" buried in the ground before the marine tactics were adapted. Potential souvenirs and dead bodies were routinely bobby-trapped with grenades. Inexperienced replacements at the front lines were often killed as quickly as they arrived. The healthy fit soldiers wily enough to survive the month long gauntlet were reduced to jaded shells by the time victory was in hand.

The book is well written and obviously thoroughly researched. It provides a realistic sometimes brutal view of the battlefield experience and will appeal to any true history enthusiast. Though this is not an anti-war book, the author pulls not any punches and there is no sense of glorification. Overall, I found it an engaging eye-opener and would recommend it highly.

[Cynthia]

Alexander Rose goes through three key battles in American history, Bunker Hill, Gettysburg, and Iwo Jima, explaining the specific characteristics of each one. It’s an impressive effort. He does a good job with the details about Bunker Hill and Gettysburg it becomes belabored however with Iwo Jima his writing is inspired. I read the first 50 pages or so of the earlier battles and became bored so I moved on to the next battle. I couldn’t stop reading when I hit the World War II section, the details are fascinating, the pacing is good. He explains how, at least by 1944 and 1945, the men felt they were there to do a job like any other job with the reward of going home in one piece or mostly one piece as their reward. Prior to this time the military had a lot of career military men and hyper patriotic types reacting to the outrage of Pearl Harbor. Neither is better or worse…just a different outlook and motivation

In all three war zones the men were innovative and learned to change tactics depending on their enemy’s actions and the terrain they fought on but at Iwo they were inspired probably because they were so often cut off from command and had to independently improvise. Also, the mortality rate was s quick and high that they had to continually incorporate new soldiers which also led to changes in tactics. Unlike the earlier battles there was a racial component to the war with Japan and Rose addresses that. I forced myself to go back and finish the Bunker Hill and Gettysburg sections but they didn’t sing for me. I’d give those sections three stars and the one on Iwo five stars. That section alone is well worth the price of the book.

Thank you to the publisher for providing an ARC.

[Debbie]

"Men of War" details what battle was like for soldiers at Bunker Hill, Gettysburg, and Iwo Jima. The book came across as extensively researched, and the author quoted from many diaries and letters written by those who actually lived through these battles. He gave an overview of the battle then went into detail about what weapons the soldiers had, what damage those weapons did, what the battle experience was at various locations or in various situations (like for the defending infantry and for the attacking infantry), what the experience of the wounded was like (including the medical care of the time), and how they coped after the battle. Though I understand why the author included this level of detail, I could have lived with a "the mortar pulverized the body" description rather than the graphic, detailed blood-and-guts version we got. This was not a book I could read before going to sleep.

I felt that the author gave a balanced view of the battles and tried to present the attitudes they had toward the experience of battle at each time period rather than imposing our modern views on them. I freely grant that I haven't read every battle book out there, but this is the first time I've read a good, reasonable explanation for why the British acted as they did at Bunker Hill.

Overall, I found this book very worth the time of reading it. And it's dense, so it took some time. I'd recommend this informative book to anyone interested in what the experience of battle was like in these battles.

I received this review copy from the publisher through Amazon Vine.

[Tom]

This book looks at 3 key battles in American history in 3 successive centuries: Bunker Hill, Gettysburg and Iwo Jima. Unlike other military books on such topics, it focuses on the experiences of the common soldier rather than the Generals. There is a brief outline of each battle to orient the reader, then, using diaries and other correspondence describes what the frontline soldier saw and experienced.

The sheer brutality of war comes across clearly. The author attempts to understand what motivates young men to join up, but, more particularly, what keeps them in the field of combat in the face of certain, very violent death.

This book will be of interest to anyone with an interest in military history.

[Liz C.]

I really enjoyed this book! I originally was only interested in the section on Bunker Hill but found myself racing through the rest of the book. I thought it presented a very different sort of perspective on the experience of battle and wasn't wrapped in dry language- it was very readable. I recommend this book.

[Krzysztof Mathews]

An entirely substantial book that definitely adds a crucial sense of the human dimension in military history.

One of the strong aspects of this book is that the author makes sure to NOT conflate a soldier from one era with those of another, recognizing that the technology and culture of each war lends its own character to the conflict and to its effect on those who fought in it.

[Alec Gray]

Like the author, I think John Keegan's "The Face of Battle" is a classic book of war. The author has taken the concept of delving into three battles and cataloging all the myriad experiences of individual soldiers. A thorough and solid job, well worth a read.

[Len Roberto]

A well done "sequel" to Keegan's wonderful FACE OF BATTLE. I would have liked a little bit more on the differences in weaponry and how it changed tactics, etc. Overall, it is a great companion book to Keegan's.

[Dave]

Exceptional book with incredible detail on what the American soldier experienced at Bunker Hill, Gettysburg and Iwo Jima. Thoroughly researched and thoughtfully written. A must-read for any military history buff.