The Oxford Book of Military Anecdotes

by SirMaxHastings (Editor)

• Used

  Paperback
  1987

  $3.25

  Packed with tales of the heroic, comic, eccentric, and tragic, this superb collection fully captures the flavour of barrack life and enlists the reader on campaigns as distant in time as Caesar's Gallic wars and the siege of Port Stanley during the Falklands conflict. This book is intended for collectors of anthologies, books on military history; buyers of gifts.

• Used

  Hardcover
  1985

  $3.25

  If anecdotes are marginal notes on the pages of history, these will delight any reader who has ever been moved or entertained by the condition of the soldier. Few fields of human endeavor have inspired so many memorable anecdotes as warfare, from the Bible and Livy through Gibbon and Froissart, to the imperial wars of the nineteenth century and the world conflicts of the twentieth. This collection of is principally concerned with American and British conflicts, with, as the author says, occasional forays among the ranks of foreign armies --notably the Greeks, the Romans, and Napoleon's veterans. Hastings has sought stories that illustrate the military condition through the ages, both on the battlefield and in barracks: comic, eccentric, heroic, tragic. Here are Caesar at the Rubicon and the revolt of the Praetorian Guard; Alexander's horse and Prince Rupert's dog; the legendary Mother Ross enlisting in search of her lost husband in 1693; Evelyn Waugh as the least plausible of commandos; General George S. Patton's good luck charm Charlie, a lump of lava rock carved into a Hawaiian warrior; and much more. Some of the stories will be familiar to students of military history while others are less well known, but all provide fascinating sidelights to history. Great war stories by Max Hastings, a leading military historian and war correspondent About the Author: Max Hastings is a well-known author specializing in military history. His most recent books include Bomber Command, Battle for the Falklands, and Overlord.