Think military history and dry tomes in the cobwebbed halls of academia --books with less life than the soldiers who died to fill them. But the reasons behind our boredom with the study of battles - a subject that usually arouses such interest - too often pertains to the ill-suited voices describing them. Instead of assuming an eagle eye view of the field of combat, we receive our information from the narrowed eyes of sole participants, from common journals of footsoldiers or, more often, from detailed studies of generalship (Then Alexander sent his light infantry to a ridge on the west flank).

While informative, the yawn factor tends to be proportionate with the advanced degrees of the author behind the text. Plus, the promise for action that brought us to such a book in the first place is left hopelessly unfulfilled as the author plods through a sea of abstraction: the clank of swords against plate armor can't be heard for the din of rhetoric flying hither and thither. Not so with John Keegan, a staid historian and scientific soul if ever there was one, but a guy who might have been a thriller writer in a former life. So vivid and alive is the combat described in The Face of Battle you may at times feel yourself witness to a grisly scene from the fabled Norse Paradise, where warriors already dead leapt up to rejoin the fight.

Real-time strategy gamers and, more and more, strat-sims seem to call upon our powers to lead soldiers under fire, however chaotic the results of that effort. (During a little M1 Tank Platoon II the other night I found myself suddenly in a valley of slumbering T-72s. Issuing a quick "Form Line" command my tanks bonked into each other repeatedly in hilarious startlement.) Therein lies an essential truth of sorts about warfare: that nothing is predictable in a theatre where the potential for chaos is omnipresent. But what circumstances and what minor actions alter the course of such big historical moments and turn a brave army into a shuddering wimp?

Keegan brings his careful eye to a trio of distinct battles: knights, Napoleon, and the No-man's-land of the Somme are the critical players in this book. The medieval battle of Agincourt is the first to which Keegan gives his attention.

In 1415, twenty-seven year old Henry V led this army of about 10,000 (80% archers, 20% men-at-arms) into France and promptly laid siege to a nearby castle for a base of operations. But lots of unexpected resistance was encountered and effectively reduced his army by a third of its former size. After a year he basically decided to pull back and beat a hasty retreat for England but the massive French army was way ahead of him. They were closing down on his forces, bristling for a fight.

Here's where the book gets cool and Braveheart-like. Basically Henry's army was hugely outmanned (estimates at the size of the French army numbers around twice that of the English.) Keegan speculates that the forces initially stood about 1,000 yards apart. (He does a good job of conjecturing, too. "These measurements suppose - as seems reasonable, field boundaries remaining remarkably stable over centuries - that the outlines of the woods have not much changed.")

Also neatly hypothesized is the condition of the English army: rain and cold weather made waiting for the battle difficult, worsened by the fact that "archers are said to have been subsisting on nuts and berries on the last marches." Keegan is always particularly acute in describing the morale and status of these men as they would have been in real-world conditions - such as ration-supply and weather - effectively removing the blindfold of history. We're not often close enough to these details, in historical texts, to see that "rain-soaked ploughland" would have made this deployment lengthy and miserable.

What follows is some wicked detailed description of the way Henry's army engaged this superior force. The English closed another 700 yards toward the enemy line, to "within extreme bowshot," until each army was roughly 300 yards apart. These archers "who had each been carrying a stout double-pointed wooden stake since the tenth day of the march, had now to hammer these into the ground, at an angle calculated to catch a warhorse in the chest."

The first action of the attack was to have the archers open fire "to provoke the French into attacking." To convey this task in modern terms, Keegan uses a fascinating analogy that might just as easily apply to an MLRS driver. "…It was essential that their arrows should 'group' as closely as possible on the target. To translate their purpose into modern artillery language, they had to achieve a very narrow 100° zone (i.e. that belt into which all missiles fell) and a Time on Target effect (i.e. all their missiles had to arrive on target simultaneously)." He even describes the demoralizing effect these arrows might have had on the armored knights: "the sound of their impact must have been extraordinarily cacophonous, a weird clanking and banging on the bowed heads and backs of the French men-at-arms."

After four volleys the French were suitably provoked and horsemen charged the English line, but because "the English [were] emboldened by the physical security the hedgehog of stakes lent their formation . . . the horses found themselves on top of the stakes too late to refuse the obstacle." An absolutely hair-raising melee ensued that Keegan describes in detail I haven't even begun to convey. He breaks the fighting down in clear 'stages': "Archers vs. Infantry," and "Cavalry vs. Infantry" for instance, all with the same precision and depth as the 'charge' described above.

To reinvoke three famous historical battles Keegan begins the book, in characteristic English fashion, by stating the thrust of his project and separating our expectations. "War," he writes, "is the institutional military historian's irritant. It forces him, whose urge is to generalize and dissect, to qualify and particularize and above all to combine analysis with narrative - the most difficult of all the historian's arts." (In short, he's pointing out why you found yourself asleep drooling on your desk in first period U.S. History.)

What's dissatisfying is the common historian's tendency to dramatize battles out of sentiment and too much imagination. We end up with thick romance instead of a clear picture of what took place during the span of an actual battle.

Troubling also, in many texts, are the battle narratives rooted in the knowledge of some historical outcome but which prove inept at giving us a sense of the specific variables: the weapons, the weather, the morale of the soldiers at hand. Men "struggle forward," formations "disintegrate," massacres "take shape." From such rhetoric we're unable to glean the core knowledge of how soldiers in specific roles moved, felt, or were likely to have behaved. What circumstances surrounded the campaign they were waging? What movements between the engaged forces - under orders or not - tipped the tide in one army's favor?

To answer these questions suitably Keegan draws on as much proven, modern information as he can. "Where effect of weapons, for example, are concerned we can test our suppositions against the known defensive qualities of armor plate, [the] penetrative power of arrows."

The author brings customary clinical accuracy to a story of Napoleon's army at Waterloo. In the hands of someone less skilled this battle would be mesmerizing but confusing as hell. Keegan, however, really puts you inside the head of an infantryman who might have stood on that slaughter-yard.

First of all there was the noise of bullets and cannon balls whizzing past: "The sonic constant was the 'roar', 'rumble', 'crash', 'thunder', 'boom' of gunfire . . . . though the nearby explosion of shells and the firing of musket volleys were sonically different from each other, and both different from the more distant charge of artillery, the differences tended to be drowned by the sheer volume."

Neat also is the way Keegan observes the psychology of soldiers. He describes, for instance, the crowdlike behavior of the French who were locked in the center of columns and couldn't see effectively beyond the troops at the head of each square. "The men in the middle and the rear could see nothing of the battle but the debris of earlier attacks which had failed - discarded weapons and the bodies of the dead . . . From the front came back to them sudden crashes of musketry . . . and, most important, most urgent, tremors of movement, edging them rearward…" The reserve's blindness, in his estimation, caused a great deal of sudden panicky retreat that sealed the French army's fate on that day.

Then you get an appropriate taste of the fighting itself which, when the field wasn't clouded with smoke and grapeshot, would have involved hand-to-hand duels of bayonet and sword. He also provides some weird psychological details of reaction to the gruesome results of this fighting: "Ensign Charles Frasier, 'a fine gentleman in speech and manner', could raise a laugh when a French cannon-ball, [beheaded] the unhappy bugler of the 51st ."

One ends up with the impression that Waterloo was a less spectacular than literature would have us believe. "Besides being hungry and travel-worn the combatants at Waterloo were also rain-sodden … and those who failed to get near a fire at the beginning presumably stayed damp until midday." The normally bright regimental colors of uniform - rich blues and reds, white breeches - were clammy and begrimed.

Reading "The Face of Battle," you're sure to learn a few things to put to good use in your RTS or strat-oriented sims. About a group of French Cavalry who tried to flee the charge of English riders Keegan writes, "'the 1st Life Guards made great slaughter amongst the flying Cuirassiers who had choked the hollow way' - a ready-made demonstration of Ardent du Picq's view that the most dangerous course in war is to retreat when in close contact with the enemy . . . [since it] appears to stimulate an almost uncontrollable urge to kill among those presented with a view of the enemy's back."

Admittedly the consequences are less dire, but I've found it's better not to issue a 'retreat' order in M1 Tank Platoon II when you find yourself outflanked and at close-range with the enemy. Better to face them head on and let them take their shots at your massive frontal armor while you fight for your life (tell them Ardent du Picq sent ya). Otherwise you'll end up like those poor flying Cuirassiers.

I haven't even touched on Keegan's chapter about the nasty WWI fighting at the Somme, but there are lots of Command & Conquerish things to be learned. (For instance, never 'reinforce an error', as I so many times used to do in that game, ordering men into the fray to meet certain doom while my brother slapped his forehead and cried out at my idiocy. I can still hear their miniature screams.) At any rate, you get a great sense of the weapons and tactics brought to bear during the fighting in that age.

Instead of being a big fat tome appropriate for winter isolation, "The Face of Battle" is a slender text (300 pages) that you can carry with you to the park and enjoy without too much sweaty concentration. With all the great and terrifying combat between its covers it's about as much fun as you can have this side of M1TPII.