Perhaps you may be one of those noble people who care to
read only about the good and the great and the marvellous lives of saints. If so I congratulate you. You are a rare and a highly moral person. Go to the mirror at twilight and look for your halo. Surely you can almost see it.
Not me. Human folly I find much more fascinating and more closely related to my own fallacious life. After dinner, occasionally, with a high blood sugar and a medium blood alcohol, I can stand the lives of saints, though my
saints may not be yours, and very improbably the saints of +Rufus Barbados.
In the last week or two, from thePublic Library, I have been much enjoying A History of Warfare by John Keegan. Really and truly I
am not a particularly warlike type myself, being merely swept up into World War II by the date of my birth and being a doctor-in-training at the time. But I remember with amazement that one of the happiest times of my life was when
I was in London in the Blitz, a medical student in daytime and an Air Raid Warden three nights a week. The happiness didn't arise from the bombing but from the deep understanding that all of us in London at that time were a closely
united community, united against Hitler and determined to endure. It was great.
Keegan's book takes us through Stone Age Culture to modern times, warfare being an activity common to all those ages. In fact, a history of warfare
is almost a history of culture, if we leave out literature and art and architecture and theology and music and even cricket. It's good, don't you think, that Lara, our temperamental gladiator, is renowned for making runs rather
than, as was his remote ancestor, renowned for taking lives.
But taking lives is what warfare is all about. Really primitive warfare even now goes on among the few Stone Age cultures we can still see around our little planet,
notably the Yanamamo Indians of the Amazon rain forest and the Maring, one of the 300-odd tribes of Papua New Guinea. In those modern Stone Iron Age tribes, warfare is most commonly a matter of duels between two angry
men who may then be joined by their friends for a good shouting brawl. But, to begin with, it is a way of showing how tough you are.
Among the Yanomama there is a code of ferocity. Boys are taught to be fierce and to be savage
to women, whose male owners,(who are often in a rage) may beat them, burn them or even shoot them with an arrow. If she has a fierce brother he may protect her, and if not she may run away, back to her own village, and possibly,
like Helen of Troy, provoke a war.
In a battle of blows the challenger comes to the centre of the village, sticks out his chest and thumps it, meanwhile shouting insults to his enemy. If the enemy responds the challenger is
struck on the chest by the enemy fist, making no defense but counting the blows. After three or four he will take his own turn to reply, and so it will go in a formal way until one or both get too sore, when they will turn to blows
on the flank, when one fighter may get winded and lose. After that there is hugging and vows of friendship.
If the offense is more serious, for instance adultery, the plaintiff comes to the square with a ten-foot pole one end
sharpened to a point, calling for the adulterer. He then leans on his pole and waits for a blow on the head with a similar pole. Then he has his turn. Blood soon flows and this excites the spectators who will probably take sides
and bash each other until the headman restores order by threatening the participants with his bow and arrow.
Such events may get one village to work itself up into a general rage and attacking another when serious wounds and
death may follow.
The Maring do it differently, the men of two villages going to a battleground, (accompanied by the women as spectators) carrying their bows and arrows and spears and shields, After the usual insults, but
from a safe distance, they throw spears and shoot arrows, but the distance is far enough for the missiles to be dodged or received on shields. The women pick up fallen arrows for their fellows. At dusk they go home to tea. Next day
the battle begins again unless it is raining. Rarely does anybody actually get killed.
Keegan contrasts this with the battle styles of the Greeks and the Persians, in which the foot-soldiers formed a phalanx, a group usually
eight soldiers deep, armed with a round shield on the left arm, a sword at the left hip, and in the right hand a long spear with a sharp iron head. Their armour would be a helmet with a great crest to make them seem taller, a
bronze breast-plate down to the belly, and below the knees bronze greaves, like cricket pads, to protect the shins, weighing in all some seventy pounds.
Before battle they would have a very good breakfast including a generous
ration of wine, and then, for reasons we no longer believe in, they would sacrifice to their gods a sheep or two or three.
The opposing army would be doing much the same 150 yards away, and after the sacrifice, when the
battle-whistles or battle-horns blew they would shout their battle-cries and lumber at a run towards each other, the spears sticking out like a great set of fingers. At the terrible moment of truth when the phalanges
met each man would chose his target and aim for neck or groin or possibly arm-pit, the only unprotected regions. As they met, some would fall, injured or tripped and most likely the ranks behind would run over them, beginning a
scene of bloody confusion when enemies would shove at each other with their long spears or at closer quarters hack away with their swords. In twenty minutes or so it would be over, with men running away, terrified and
exhausted, pursued by horsemen with swords, and trying to shed their body armour so as to run faster.
It was observed by classical Greek authors that the phalanges would veer to the right as they ran, every man trying to
get the maximum protection from his neighbour's shield, so sometimes the phalanges met the wrong way round, left hand to left hand, shield to shield.
But it was considered a matter of honour to bury your dead, so after a battle
there would a temporary truce for burial parties to do their job.
The Roman legions fought in much the same way, but with even more discipline, winning their Empire from Newcastle to Jerusalem, from the Black Sea to the Atlantic.
Later came the Mongols, horsemen from the great grassy plains of Europe and Asia. who had developed the compound bow, short enough to be used, and accurately used, on horseback, killing from a safe distance and even enjoying
it, as many of us have enjoyed a good game of polo.
That's when war might have been fun.
