What real heroes are made of, both good and bad

WARRIORS: PORTRAITS FROM THE BATTLIEFIELD

By Max Hastings

Knopf, $27.50, 384 pages

REVIEWED BY MURIEL DOBBIN

This is a book about heroism that the author kicks off with a caution that it is unlikely to be of interest to “modern warlords” like Donald Rumsfeld, secretary of defense, or Robert McNamara, one of his predecessors.

The book, Max Hastings emphasizes, is about “aspects of conflict they do not comprehend, creatures of flesh and blood rather than systems of steel and electronics.” It is a reminder that heroes are human.

Tartly, Mr. Hastings recalls that an American admiral in the 1960s expressed doubt that McNamara and his crew “have any morale settings on their computers.”

Yet in writing about warriors over the past 200 years, Mr. Hastings makes clear his awareness of their flaws as well as their valor, emphasizing that without war, they were indeed fish out of water.

He recalls English poet Rudyard Kipling’s lines, “It’s Tommy this an’ Tommy that, an’ “Tommy, fall be’ind,” But it’s “please to walk in front, sir, when there’s trouble in the wind.”

Mr. Hastings offers a poignant example of the plight of a hero in peacetime: World War II British Sergeant-Major Stan Hollis who charged German positions alone on D-Day and in subsequent combat. His commanding officer later reported wryly that it was easier for Hollis to get theVictoria Cross, Britain’s highest military honor, than to “get a decent job afterward.”

Hollis wound up running a pub.Yetthe same officer also noted that Hollis was the only man he met who “felt winning the war was his personal responsibility.”

The reaction of others tended to be a hope that somebody else would risk their lives in battle. And Mr. Hastings makes the point that admiration for physical courage on the battlefield has diminished over the past three decades as the “great game” of war increasingly has been questioned as stemming from “dubious nationalistic purposes.”

He relates the response of the late President John F. Kennedy when asked by a small boy how he became a war hero. “It was involuntary. They sank my boat,” was Kennedy’s self-deprecating reply.

Those of whom Mr. Hastings writes were indeed of that strange breed who walked in front when there was “trouble in the wind.” Like the French Baron Marcellin de Marbot who sought to follow Napoleon Bonaparte to military glory, bounding from battle to battle in an astounding career of high risk that he apparently relished.

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