"Military Historians - Are the ones who have Served better?" Topic

On a recent very interesting Naps thread about atrocities in the Napoleonic wars, I started going off at a tangent, and even by my poor standards I was derailing the thread too far, hence I thought I'd start a fresh one if anyone else is interested:

Hi Flecktarn,
Good to have you back. I hope you do find time to publish some of your research, I am increasingly of the opinion that good military history tends to be written by those who have served themselves. Perhaps because they instinctively understand the challenges of operational decision making.
Seriously, draw up a list of all the historians you trust, and then note down which have served, it will come as a revelation:
Young, Lawson, Weller, Elting, Rothenburg, Digby Smith, Edwards, Lipscombe, Chappell, Gill, Burnham…
So far as I am aware, neither Duffy nor Griffith served, but of course were on the staff at RMA Sandhurst for some time!

Essentially my point is that I have noticed that, in thinking on those authors in my collection that I instinctively trust, they all have miliary experience of one sort or another. Now my old sparring partner Gazzola I think, as usual perhaps, has missed my point, probably because I haven't made it very well:

And how will serving in the forces, just as an office clerk or a cook, for example, possibly make them better authors. It is not a definite. It could depend more on their interest militarily and their skills at research, possibly skills they've improved on when they became academics and civilians.

I think this statement alone betrays a lack of knowledge about military operations that is revealing in one who freely critques commanders of the past. Military Clerks will man radios in command centres when the guns begin to speak, and in the Royal Navy, at least, cooks double up as Nuclear, Biological and Chemical warfare specialists – there are few uniformed roles that don't give some insight into operations, now or then…

So I am not suggesting that merely by donning uniform and taking a active part in operations they somehow gained, by some sort of spiritual osmosis, an inner knowledge of military history, or communed with the Greats, or whatever. My point is far more prosaic, and concerns the revisionist, empirical school of historians. You know the ones -'Wellington was presented with despatch X at Y mins past X o'Clock, so why didn't he immeadiately give orders to move Q Corps to P so that they could have outflanked V Corps and so won the war that afternoon'

My opinion simply is this – those historians who have served know, no matter how humble the capacity, the effect that real live operations have on the decision making process – the grave responsibility that comes with making decisions that are more that logical abstracts, but that involve flesh and blood.

The nagging fear that your bold, trouble free advance is merely an advance into a trap, or conversely knowing that your hard pressed units are only a few steps away from buckling, while the enemy seems to have an inexhaustable supply of fresh formations.

Its all very well for the academic historian to provide sources demonstrating that those enemy units were actually ghost formations…In writing a history of the Falklands War, will a historian excorate the Argentinian Commander of Port Stanley for surrendering when the British Forces were each down to their last magazine of 20 rounds?

Actually being there, smelling it, or even just hearing the mortar detonations as background to the radio sitreps, does give you an insight into why Commanders sometimes need to double check, to see for themselves, to await just one more patrol report…

And so historians who have seen the elephant tend to be more forgiving, and so, when they do criticise, their criticism has more force…

Thoughts gentlemen?

It's a pretty broad argument to make. You'd have to do some serious thinking about why some sorts of service would have more relevance than others, when writing about Topic X.

For example: my granddad served in the Ottoman army in WW1, but I doubt he'd be better-able to write about the Battle of Midway, than, say, Jon Parshall and Tony Tully, neither of whom were ever in the military, but who wrote what is considered the most exhaustive and definitive account of that battle.

Would somebody who served as a helicopter pilot in the 1980s be better able to write about Caesar's wars than, say, Miriam Gordon, who teaches the subject in a university?

There is such a big gulf between our world and the early 19th century. Technologically, socially, economically, linguistically, morally… I'm not sure there's a lot of 21st-century experience that could really get you inside the heads of people in the early 1800s.

I'll readily concede that there might be certain modern experiences that would give one insight into the kinds of life-and-death decisions that you're talking about.

But then there are the requirements that have nothing to do with the relevance of personal experiences. For example: how well do you read the archaic language and script? How much time can you devote to things like walking the battlefields, reading all the correspondence and reports, finding the family archives where Gen. Schlumpf's descendants keep his personal papers, etc.

No number of years in any military will prepare you for trying to figure out stuff like this:

I know / have known, several of the authors you mention above, and I know that they would agree that good research and good writing are skills that just about any diligent and intelligent person can learn, and that the mastery of those skills is the most important thing.

My point… concerns the revisionist, empirical school of historians. You know the ones -'Wellington was presented with despatch X at Y mins past X o'Clock, so why didn't he immeadiately give orders to move Q Corps to P so that they could have outflanked V Corps and so won the war that afternoon'

Well, that's not "empirical," nor is it a "school," and I have no idea if there's any relationship between people who write that way, and whether or not they've been in a military. But Okay: if you object to an historian using his imagination in that way, then surely it's just as objectionable for him to use his imagination based upon 21st-century military experiences, to extrapolate what an early 19th-century commander was thinking, feeling, or experiencing.

The "Empirical School" is actually the opposite of what you're describing: the writing of history entirely from primary sources, without any attempt to extrapolate that which is not backed-up by documentation. But let's not get started about historiographic Schools.

Good research and good communication skills are the key and neither of those is the strict realm of any military.

Not in the slightest, though serving can give a writer excellent perspective and bring a lot to the table.

I also think your cause and effect are not accurate. I think the thing that drove some men into the armed forces also drives them to want to write about military history. Their military experience is not the key but rather the interest in military activity is.

Keegan suggested in his History of Warfare that just rubbing shoulders with serving soldiers on a daily basis made you a better military historian … but then he rubbed shoulders with serving soldiers on a daily basis and the book was riddled with errors. Hmmm …

Getting it like it is is good. Being objectively detached is good, too. So I think you have to judge the book by what's between the covers.

Phil

I just wasted 15 minutes trying to track down what a Greek historian said about soldiers writing history and historians being soldiers. I only vaguely remember what the quote was, but it quite impressed me at the time.
Maybe it was something else entirely, like plumbers being musicians and musicians being plumbers…

Yes. And no.

I don't see how serving in a 21st century army makes you more qualified to understand a napoleonic battle. Or Napoleonic infantry tactics. I could probably write a better account of Waterloo or Salamanca or Hastings than 80% of the army.

How ever what they do know, if they are combat veterans, is what it's like having bullets and bombs dropping on them, to risk death. So of course they have some frame of reference that I don't. If I'm writing a war story they could certainly write more realistic battle scenes.

I could not presume to tell a soldier what modern combat is like. I am as well placed as him (or her) to tell them about what happens in a Napoleonic battle. They will have a way of relating to that I don't.

This does not mean they understand history better than me. And writing is a skill set all of its self.

As others have said, knowing a subject and being able to write or teach it well are two entirely different things.

More to the point, the books we choose to read are just that, the books we CHOOSE to read.

You look at your shelves and notice that the "best" books on military history, in your opinion, were written by veterans. Therefore, you conclude that veterans write the best military histories.

However, the books on your shelves are not a random sampling, they're a selected sampling. It is equally likely, probably more likely, that you are drawn, consciously or subconsciously, to military histories written by veterans. It would therefore stand to reason that the "best" military histories on your shelves were written by veterans.

A better way to determine the correlation betweem military service and the excellence of military histories would be to list every military history ever written and have them ranked by a very large group of experts, including published historians, military experts, professors of history, talented amateurs, and so on. Then look at the top 100 or so and see which were written by veterans.

There are still problems with that approach, but it is still better than looking at any one individual's shelf of favorite books.

Of course, another possibility, as PJ Parent said, is that those with a knack for military history are also driven to enlist.

Using that logic only Diplomats, Police, Firemen, baseball, Football (insert your profession of choice) folks who have actually participated in said profession have the experience to discuss them with any real authority?

I believe the vast majority of folks would disagree with your line of thinking. Sure these folks have an insight on some things outsiders may not. But that doesn't mean they have the only 'informed' point of view. It just doesn't hold up under scrutiny.

Thanks,

John

OP: In general, no, I don't agree with your train of thought. The guy who wrote "Harpoon" back in the day, wasn't he a naval surface warfare officer? Something like that makes a lot of sense, but what if he wrote a set of rules for the F&IW? Why would they be better than a set I wrote? After all, I was in the army. My dad is a retired naval officer who saw ground combat in Vietnam; he can talk to you about supply and logistical issues (top secret crypto)till your eyes fall out of your head, but unless you are writing a set of rules about supply and logistical issues while he was in the navy (such as the mad scramble of the US to get supplies to Israel during the Yom Kippur War), he is not going to write a better set of rules than anyone else. He can write and illustrate a technical manual for you but he can't tell you if a rule allowing 1797 Austrian hussars to fire from the saddle is accurate or not.

Thanks guys for some interesting and valuable points. I won't attempt to rebut them as they are all, taken on their terms, eminently defensible. And yes, I am more likely to buy a book if its by a veteran, so my sample is inherently skewed!

But please do give me the credit of not suggesting that military service somehow equips one to be better at deciphering hieroglypics!

Perhaps I can reset and narrow the question:

Does having personal experience of modern/current operational decision making, in terms of fateful outcomes, make one more sympathetic to the pressures of operational decision making in a previous era?

(Presumably all would agree that there are additional pressures involved in decision making during operations, rather than, say, sitting in a quiet and dusty archive?)

to quote Dr. McCoy
"You mean I have to DIE to discuss you insights on death?"

Or more directly, No, being an X does not make you a better chronicler or observer of X. It gives you the advantage of intimate subject knodlwedge but also tends to limit your horizons of the subject to what you experienced. the best historians manage to avoid that pitfal (those with direct knowledge and those without)

So if you were choosing a book about the experience of Death, you wouldn't be more likely to choose the one by somebody who had actually died (and somehow been resurrected) over the one who had only read manuscripts about it – assuming our resurrectee had also done his primary and secondary reseach, of course…

I know which one I would think more authorative…

Must be just me, but then I am finding myself increasingly out of step with the society I'm in. If the Australian media is to be believed, society holds the state politician for welfare services directly responsible for the bldugeoning to death of a small child by its step father…In my day someone would have had a word with the parent who actually wielded the bat…Progress I suppose!

Like those above – not necessarily. I have an MA in history, completed all my PhD coursework, but moved and had to drop the program (for a job, that is). I have 12 years in the National Guard. That alone wouldn't have given me the experience to be a better historian. I have had an intense interest in military history for as long as I can remember. As a result, I have read extensively on the military history that interests me. I have spent time talking to vets. In the Guard I have served with vets. Those are the things that would ultimately make me a better historian. Studying the subject. Your average vet can't tell you much about what's going on outside their own foxhole, unless they read and ask questions about what happened outside their direct experience.

Interesting – during your time in the Guard, did you never get assessed on your leadership of Section or Platoon attacks, or see your commander being so assessed? And if so, did your experiences of the decisions made not give you an insight into the decisions of the historical commanders you studied? The way that you have to clear your mind, cleave to your battle drills, try to exclude all irrelevant external stimuli, check what factors are relevant, and which are not, all under such different personal circumstances to a dispassionate observer?

I think that it depends a lot on the writer – someone who served in a leadership role would have certain insights, but this needs to be wedded to careful research, an open mind and excellent writing skills; this combination of skills would be – uncommon; for example, I think this would be a tough skill set for many European armies in the 18th and even 19th century. When you do get the right stuff, though, it can be magic – von Clausewitz springs to mind, while Grant's memoirs are among the best history I have ever read. For that matter, of all the translations of Sun Tzu I have read the best (IMHO) is by Samuel Griffith, which while it might not be quite as accurate as Ames translation, provides a perspective from the point of view of a man who commanded a USMC Raider battalion. One of my other favourite authors – Eugene Sledge – served as an enlisted Marine – but became a university professor after the war, which is when he wrote "With the Old Breed"

It depends on the individual and the approach they take. If the historian approaches his subject without being pre prejudiced or out to accomplish a mission then it does not matter if they have had militay service or not.

IMO John Keegan and Max Hastings are two of the finest historians and neither were in the military although Hastings went a a war reporter

Frederick I think I agree, but lets add your caveats:

Writer A is known for his careful research, an open mind and excellent writing skills;

Writer B is known for his careful research, an open mind and excellent writing skills; and spent 20 years in the military rising to the rank of Brigadier General, including several multinational commands;

Would B's additional experience likely make him a better author about, say, the Napoleonic Campaign in Germany of 1813 (which, for non Napoleonic buffs, saw command decisions being influenced by multinational coaltion command)?

(And yes, I am thinking of Brigadier JP Riley and his work on the 1813 campaign, which, whilst a real incisive tour de force, does demonstate a sympathy for the challenges of collective coaltion decision making somewhat lacking in other more revisionist works which seek publicity on the grounds of proving our heroes have feet of clay…)

Ralph, you state that military historians who have served:

. . . have seen the elephant . . . tend to be more forgiving . . . their criticism has more force . . . more sympathetic to the pressures of operational decision-making . . .

While those who haven't served:

. . . betray a lack of knowledge about military operations . . . freely critique commanders of the past . . . the revisionist, empirical school of historians . . . somewhat lacking in other more revisionist works which seek publicity on the grounds of proving our heroes have feet of clay . . .

Are you saying that those who have served have earned the right to criticize military commanders and their decisions, while those who have not served, have not? Because that's the way it sounds.

Correct me if I'm wrong.

All kinda' metal-"ish" and torn flesh and blood… LOTSA dark-red/purple-ish blood! Any street cop, nurse, inner city kid or poultry/pork or beef raiser/farmer can help you describe the carnage…

Takes a *good* writer/researcher to TRY to make sense of it.

In this "life" we're ALL soldiers.

(Just my two coppers.)

Eh. Does this mean that someone who served as a company clerk can only write histories of company clerks? Surely no one suggests that a modern ear drill sergeant has some insight into the command decisions made by Julius Casesar!

Are you saying that those who have served have earned the right to criticize military commanders and their decisions, while those who have not served, have not? Because that's the way it sounds.

Correct me if I'm wrong.

You're wrong, or at least, thats not what I'm trying to suggest.

What I'm trying to suggest, is:

Those with personal experience of operational decision making, given the same degree of research, writing, academic skills are better able to understand operational decisions made in the past.

Surely no one suggests that a modern ear drill sergeant has some insight into the command decisions made by Julius Casesar!

Yes – I am!

But first, let me correct some assumptions in your statement. A 'modern era drill sergeant' was not born as such, nor would his experience be confined to the drill square. He would have had experience as a squad and platoon leader, possibly in combat.

And that would give him an insight into leading men in combat not shared by those who haven't.

Now if our Drill sergeant retires, goes to Uni and acquires equal academic skills to a non combat experienced academic, in my view his interpertation of why Caesar did this in battle, as opposed to that, will, at the very least, be informed by his direct experience of battle.

Fear, excitement, responsibility for subordinates… none of these things have changed in their essential application to the human decision making process.

Therefore I would tend to choose our ex Drill sgts' tome over Joe Pencilneck's volume every time given the same degree of research, writing, academic skills.

"Now if our Drill sergeant retires, goes to Uni and acquires equal academic skills to a non combat experienced academic, in my view his interpertation of why Caesar did this in battle, as opposed to that, will, at the very least, be informed by his direct experience of battle."

Except that his experience of battle would be absolutely nothing like Caesar's. In fact, his experience of planet earth and humanity would be nothing like Caesar's.

That would be like me learning to fly a Cessna, and thus claiming some sort of insight on what it's like to captain a nuclear submarine. Yes, machines that transport people are involved in both cases, but that's about it.

"I would tend to choose our ex Drill sgts' tome over Joe Pencilneck's volume every time given the same degree of research, writing, academic skills."

There is no such "given."

No two authors have the same degree of research, writing, or academic skills. And no two authors will tackle the same research questions or write the same books. That's why there are always going to be more books about Topic X; there is always something new to say about it, because there is always a new approach, new questions to ask, new sources to examine, or perhaps old sources to examine in new ways.

You can express a preference for a certain type of writing style, but that's just your preference. It's by no means any sort of objective measure of the quality of the author's work.

If the author mis-translates something, or gets basic facts wrong, or fails to answer his own research questions, then those are flaws that can be confirmed objectively.

But perspective ? That's not a flaw; that's a matter of taste and style.

In the end, it really doesn't matter what someone's personal history or experience is when evaluating the quality of their written history. A military man may write crap while the ivory-towered scholar a incisive account. The military and combat experience of a historian may help, or it may blind them to the actual historical accounts.

It's all in the writing, the quality of the product. A written history isn't judged by the author. The author is judged by the history he or she writes.

Liddel Hart, both a military man and military historian wrote:

Any man's personal experience, however long and however highly placed, can cover no more than a fragment of any one war. It suffers still worse limitations in comparison with the general experience of warfare in its different conditions and times, so that personal experience of one type of war may be more misleading than helpful in preparing for another. But in history we have bottled experience, from all the best growths, only waiting to be uncorked.

Military eye-witnesses are not to be trusted more than non-military eye-witnesses. Both exhibit prejudices at the same rate, just different ones.

I still remember a discussion at a conference with several infantry officers, who insisted that the emotional experience of combat in Desert Storm were identical to those experienced by soldiers at Salamanca. Different weapons, tactics, training and support, terrain, culture and motivation, but they were convinced the experiences were the same and as I was the one without combat experience, I couldn't reasonably or even legitimatly suggest otherwise.

Hart corresponded with Michael Howard, another veteran and military historian. At one point Hart drew attention to the differences in the accounts from different conflicts:

I much admire the courageious frankness with which you [Howard] wrote about your experiences and impressions-- a frankness more characteristic of the fighting soldiers' accounts of World War I than most of those which have been written about World War II.

When you look at the writer instead of his work to decide who creates better history instead of what creates better history, you have lost any real focus in evaluating the quality of the written history.

The Liddell Hart quotes are from Jeremy Black's Rethinking Military History pp. 47-48

rat-catchers/"exterminators"… deer hunters and beaver trappers just as astute as butchers/morticians/phlebotomists?

Does it "help' that they have a "degree" in MH? Or maybe combat "experience"?

Does a "General/Admiral" *know*/remember the grunts view?

Well, based on the general feedback here I'd say that the premise as originally posted or when further refined has been pretty much rejected by the folks here (for what that's worth). I'm not surprised. I have seen similar thoughts expressed here before and pretty much the same result was arrived at.

Thanks,

John

I've been in the military and I'm not historian, I'll leave it at that.

Haha, maybe if we had more historians in the military we'd stop getting involved in poorly planned/thought out wars??

Maybe THAT'S what we need!

Interested in the implicit assumption that 'Operational Decision Making' is entirely the ambit of the military. I would suggest any role where decisions have serious consequences, you may be operating with incomplete information, there are unknown external factors, resource constraints and you are relying on leadership and judgement at a variety of levels both above and below you, under strict time constraints woulld be an 'operational decision making' environment. Fishing boat skippers might be an example, emergency repair crews in the oil industry, and even the much maligned bureacrats in many areas would have similar demands.

Sparker,

I am not sure that those who have served make better military historians but those who have served in a command capacity should bring an understanding of the complexity and nebel that so often surrounds military operations, particularly in the days before real-time communications, along with the pressures of making command decisions with imperfect information when soldiers' lives are at stake as well as the success of the mission. This is often not understood by those who have not served in a command capacity.

Your example of Wellington and the despatch is a good one as, when that debate appeared, there seemed to be an assumption by some involved in it that Wellington had 100% accurate information about where the French were, what they were doing and what their intentions were. Anyone who has served in a command capacity would not make that assumption.

Many factors lead to an individual becoming a good military historian; command experience is possibly sometimes one of them.

Interesting subject!

Jurgen

My opinion simply is this – those historians who have served know, no matter how humble the capacity, the effect that real live operations have on the decision making process – the grave responsibility that comes with making decisions that are more that logical abstracts, but that involve flesh and blood.

I would agree with that proposition so far as it goes. However the nature of prior service inevitably makes some historians more able to comment and critique with authority than others whose experience and perspective were necessarily more limited. Taking the North African campaign as an example, I find Carver a far more credible analyst on strategic and operational issues (as one who was there at the time and ultimately reached the top of the British Army) than Barnett (who apparently served as a sergeant in the Intelligence Corps from 1945-48, but no doubt 'did his bit').

"Now if our Drill sergeant retires, goes to Uni and acquires equal academic skills to a non combat experienced academic, in my view his interpertation of why Caesar did this in battle, as opposed to that, will, at the very least, be informed by his direct experience of battle."

I would make the provocative statement that the history the Drill sergeant writes may even be worse than the one by the classicist without army experience. Why? Because the Drill sergeant is prone to make anachronistic conclusions. Command and control issues (or, for that matter, a lot of other issues) change over time; they were not the same at Caesar's time, at Napoleon's time and at Schwarzkopf's time. I think a good historian is trained to point out how different people thought and acted in former times, instead of projecting his own experiences onto the reading of the sources.

Cheers,
Shandy

No.

I am an Army officer with 30 years experience in Operations and Command, I am also a trained Military Historian (have worked as a History Detachment Commander).

In general I agree with the OP, however there are many other relevant points that have been made. When I read a history that is critical of a certain set of command decisions and the critical staff processes that make those decisions work, I do see their backround. Sometimes that gives an indication of their particular axe to grind. Yes I do care the level of reseach but I also care to know what prejudices they carry into the project, and what experiences they have had to be able to compare what they are writing about.

To be honest I was sure that as a Company Commader I could make as good or better decisions than my Battalion Commander. I thought that before I had been an Operations Officer S3 and Executive Officer, those jobs taught me skills that I would need as when I was Battalion Commander. Having done that job set me up to be a successful Division G3 (Plans, Training and Operations) officer. So proper training, education and experience often allow you to see a bigger picture with greater depth than some one who has not.

No. On the other hand, I've found that books on maritime history can often be very poor even when written by people with nautical experience. There is a tendency for ex RN people, for example, when writing about the MN to assume that the MN is similar to the RN, when it is fundamentally different. Fiction written by RN people about the MN is universally bad, as is much written by other non-MN people. Look at the "literature" on the Titanic, for example, for God's sake! Sorry, I was getting carried away…..

Except that his experience of battle would be absolutely nothing like Caesar's. In fact, his experience of planet earth and humanity would be nothing like Caesar's.

That would be like me learning to fly a Cessna, and thus claiming some sort of insight on what it's like to captain a nuclear submarine. Yes, machines that transport people are involved in both cases, but that's about it.

Did Caesar's commanders not break out in a muck sweat when they were put on the spot to make a decision as the ground thundered under the approaching hordes? Did the Legionaires not nervously go through the same superstitious mannerisms of adjusting helmet and equipment in the dread waiting time before battle, in a manner that would be recognized by any Afghan vet?

So fear, stress, pride and jealousy of one's reptutation, these physiological human reactions and emotions have changed so much since Caesar's time to the extent that a light aircraft and a submarine differ?

Umm….No! Don't think so!

COL Scott ret,

Greetings from another Colonel.

I have to say that I agree with everything that you wrote; my own experiences at different levels of command have been very much the same as yours. The level of command at which someone has operated is important to their perception of command decision making and influences their understanding of the decisions made by others in particular situations.

For that reason, I also agree with Some Chicken about Carver and Barnett; however, I would recommend anyone interested in the North African campaign to also read the German works on the subject.

cpt shandy also makes the same good point.

Jurgen

I am not sure that those who have served make better military historians but those who have served in a command capacity should bring an understanding of the complexity and nebel that so often surrounds military operations, particularly in the days before real-time communications, along with the pressures of making command decisions with imperfect information when soldiers' lives are at stake as well as the success of the mission. This is often not understood by those who have not served in a command capacity.

Thanks Flecktarn, that is exactly what I was trying to say…

However it seems to be a sterile debate as only those who have such experience get what I'm driving at in the first place!

Anyway at least the exercise has changed an irrational prejudice into a logical argument, in my mind at least…

Sparker,

Fear, stress, pride and jealousy of one's reptutation may not have altered over time, although one might argue that different cultures have developed different fears and different attitudes towards death, which might alter the fears felt by soldiers.

However, the environment in which soldiers fight and in which officers make decisions has altered; as a crude example, our attitude towards our own and civilian casualties is now utterly different from what it was in Roman times and that might influence a less perceptive historian regardless of his having served or not.

Thanks for starting this topic; it is a very good one.

Jurgen

Jurgen,

thanks, that's what I wanted to say without being able to express it so clearly. I think it's important for a historian to check his frame of reference, including his own experiences, when approaching a subject. Sometimes it may be the same, and his lifetime experience may help to understand historical actors, but sometimes it may hinder him. This is not an issue specific to military history, but applies to all areas of historical research.

Cheers,
Shandy

So fear, stress, pride and jealousy of one's reptutation, these physiological human reactions and emotions have changed so much since Caesar's time to the extent that a light aircraft and a submarine differ?

Umm….No! Don't think so!

The emotions may not have changed, but the why, where, when and how they are expressed have, in some cases dramatically.

Sitting in a tank in the desert looking through night sights at enemy tanks closing may have the driver sweating bullets as he maneuvers, but it isn't anything like the experience standing elbow to elbow in under the Spanish sun watching cannon balls fly your way, having to concentrate on nothing but doing what those around you are doing.

Both will be experiencing what would be called fear, stress, pride and any number of similar emotions, but the experiences are not the same at all.

And again, while being a battlion commander in Iraq may well have similar, general emotional and operational similarities to a battalion commander in a Napoleonic battle, to equate the two would be a real error.

Having command and combat experience can be invaluable in writing about war. Yet, it still comes down to how, where and why one man applies his experience to understanding another man's or groups' experiences, decisions and challenges. Command and combat experience can be invaluable in that task, or it can blind one to those vital differences, making assumptions that are just as wrong as those made by any combat/command ignorant writer.

If the writer applies his command/combat experience to well-conceived arguments and analysis, just as any historian must, then those experiences can serve the writer and benefit the reader, producing quality history, maybe even uniquely insightful history.

Or the combat veteran can use his history to write jingoistic tributes to his tribe, as commanders and combat veterans have been known to do in the past.

Again, quality depends on the final product, what the writer has done with all his experience and research, analysis and scholarship, regardless of the individual's personal experience.

John OFM

I think you might be thinking of this quote:

"The society that separates its scholars from its warriors will have its thinking done by cowards and its fighting done by fools." --Thucydides

McLaddie, that's very well put. Military History may well be well written by ex military people, but it often isn't. On the other hand, Military History may be well written by non-military people, but it often isn't.

'That would be like me learning to fly a Cessna, and thus claiming some sort of insight on what it's like to captain a nuclear submarine. Yes, machines that transport people are involved in both cases, but that's about it.'

That 'analogy' makes absolutely no sense. There is no comparison between the civilian pilot of a Cessna aircraft and the captain of a naval vessel.

That naval officer commands a crew of naval personnel and commands a warship.

This attempt at whatever you're trying to demonstrate is merely nonsense and is illogical.

B

Exactly. That was his point. They both have a vague link in experience, but that doesn't give them any extra insight into each others realms.

Like being a 20th century army reservist gives you no extra incite to being a cavalry division commander in 1813. Not any that a builder couldn't also glean from being well read. Despite the vague link of both wearing uniforms in different periods and situations.

I think one only has to read a selection of Generals memoirs to realise that high command and historical objectivity do not necessarily go hand in hand, nor does even very great expertise in the operational art necessarily translate into great historical insight.

One thing to consider is that for historians of a certain generation they were ALL in the army/navy/airforce as they didn't have any choice. The world is a different place now, and I am not convinced that universal conscription would improve the quality of historical dialogue.

I do agree that decision making under conditions of uncertainty and stress, particularly those involving large human organisations might be better understood by those who have done it, but that isn't quite the same thing as being a good historian.

Two things that just occurred to me

Saving Private Ryan and Titanic.
Both were lauded for their realism and veterans and survivors were warned not to view them incase it brought back memories.

Those that did agreed they were the closest they'd seen. Very accurate.

All made by "civvies" most of which had never served. So clearly they were able to glean fairly accurate ideas, thoughts and visions of what was happening and going on, close enough to gain approval from those with first hand knowledge.

Many military men never see combat… some never even leave their country. One of my grandads was an anti aircraft gunner in WW2. Based almost entirely in England until the last 6 months of the war. He reads a lot about WW2 and WW1 but as far as I know, his military experience gives him no extra knowledge on being in a redcoat than me or anyone else.

Sometimes I suspect this is just a .. Crutch by military men to retain some kind of eliteness or shared bond .. This guy served in a military unit like me, he "knows"..

It's true regarding the specific and localised set of experiences they have. Unless my life takes a dramatic turn for the worse, ill never know what it feels like to be shot at, or mortared or stabbed with a bayonet, or to have many people dead set on doing this to me.. Apart from walking through Aston a few time…

Well Kiley served and he wrote some books.

Does anyone think sports reportage is best done by ex-jocks?

There are good historians, others are bad historians and those who fake it for political/personal reasons. Some ex-military personal have the ability to write, others do not. What is important is a scholar's ability to conduct analysis.