Re: TTT EE is a fantastic improvement

"the softrat" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote

> Unless you have had special military training, which Tolkien did (see
> WW I), and considering the military descriptions which pervade the
> writings he studied, I bet that he studied military tactics and
> strategy a lot more then either you or I.

I think you overestimate the emphasis given to strategy or even to unit
tactics in the training (such as it was) of novice junior officers in
Kitchener's mass volunteer army of 1916. Junior officers were expected
to look sharp, put on a brave show and inspire the lads by example, pass
along the orders from their superiors who actually knew something about
tactics, and turn to their (hopefully) experienced NCOs and let them
worry about how such things would actually be executed. "Small unit
tactics" for these woefully untrained units often consisted of moving
out in a big line and singing or kicking a football to keep up the pace
of the advance - and this sad state of affairs was one reason the Somme
turned out the way it did.

One can assume he learned something of tactics through bitter experience
(the rest of the army did, or else they couldn't have won the war), but
in any case I don't think much about battlefield tactics in an age of
trenches, machine guns, and artillery would apply in one of horses and
swords. I do think that Tolkien's battle scenes flow wonderfully but
they are often fantastic and improbable, and IMO are based entirely on a
study of epic literature - almost always composed or translated by bards
or monks who never saw a battle themselves - rather than on any sound
understanding of the principles of preindustrial warfare. The "military
descriptions" in sources ranging from the Iliad to the Battle of Maldon
are fine character studies and may even shed light on the military
technology of the day but they are close to worthless as descriptions of
battlefield tactics - see the works of Hans Delbruck for a professional
(he was a General Staff officer as well as a professional military
historian) deconstruction of ancient sources on military matters.

One thing I think Tolkien definitely does show "true to life" is his
adherence to Napoleon's dictum that in war, the moral is to the physical
as three to one.

-- 
Bruce Tucker
[EMAIL PROTECTED]