Poul Anderson excels at accounts of combat on land, at sea or in space - maybe not so much in the air?
At the Battle of Vercellae (see image), Eodan quickly dispatches two antagonists:
"Two men slain for certain; it was not often you knew what a blow of yours had done." (p. 26)
Word War II combatants told me that they would be ordered to fire, e.g., into a wood and would not know whether they had hit anyone. One guy, marching with his platoon into some town in North Africa, looked up, saw a German, immediately fired and saw the man drop. Later, he went back and found the body. That was the only time that he knew he had killed anyone.
Another question I asked was, "Did you know anyone who was killed?" Of course. One young lad got married, went straight out to the war and was killed immediately. "And there was one officer who was such a bloody nuisance that we had to get rid of him ourselves!"
I lived in Sevenoaks in Kent and, one summer, worked in a nearby tile factory where I met a guy who had emigrated to Australia immediately after the war. Returning to England, he came to Sevenoaks because his best friend during the war had come from there. His friend's name was not on the town war memorial. However, hiring a car and visiting the outlying villages, he found the name on one of the village memorials.
1 comment:
Kaor, Paul!
One thing I remembered about Anderson's account of the battle of Vercellae in THE GOLDEN SLAVE, was his mention of Marius' military innovations. Such as his modifying of Roman javelins, with the points of spears attached to the shafts with soft iron. So that when the javelins struck enemy shields they would bend, rendering both the shields and javelins useless to the enemy.
Firing into woods and other covered areas was meant, of course, to suppress any attempts by enemy soldiers hidden there from firing themselves.
Ad astra! Sean
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