A Soldier's Book Bag

Today’s combat soldier wears armor and equipment that often exceeds half his own body weight, so he may be forgiven for packing magazines rather than books.

But suppose a warrior wanted to muster some paper courage? First on the list of books such soldiers carry must be the Bible. But keep your Kevlar on, because according to Discovery TV’s Mythbusters, a pocket Bible will not, in fact, stop a bullet.

Soldier (and classicist) Sergeant Major (ret.) Alan Farrell told me he carried the Iliad throughout his tour in Vietnam. He had doubted Homer’s grisly description of muelos spondulion coming from the neckbone of the decapitated Trojan Deukalion — who had just been slain by Achilles — until one night a rocket attack explosion tossed his way a human foot with — there it was — “burbling marrow” at the ankle bone.

“I still have the dog-eared old copy of the Iliados I carried all through the war,” he later wrote. “I keep it so I won’t forget how many times I’ve huddled in fear with that paperback in the trouser-pocket of my fatigues.”

For reference, a soldier might take along John Keegan’s classic The Face of Battle, tracing the real experience of combat at Agincourt, Waterloo, and the Somme. Keegan cautions that, although “courage” is a most desirable trait, “we should be careful about judging what the contemporary officer thought courageous and what not.” He recounts the near-universal resort, across centuries and cultures, to alcohol and religion (yes, both) to boost one’s courage before battle.

Armed conflict might seem straightforward, but it is full ambiguities, sometimes making courage hard to define. Keegan catalogs the “moral consolations” of battle, especially for young men: “the thrill of comradeship, the excitements of the chase, the exhilarations of surprise, deception and the ruse de guerre, the exaltations of success, the sheer fun of prankish irresponsibility.”

For pure inspiration, St. Joan is a model of courage both moral and physical. Mark Twain considered his Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc the best of all his books. Based on preserved trial transcripts from the fifteenth century, “it is the only story of a human life which comes to us under oath.”

Joan actually said, when pressed to recant her prior testimony, “I will not say otherwise than I have said already; and if I saw the fire before me I would say it again!” At that passage, the scribe noted in the margin, “Superba responsio,” and Twain plainly agreed.

In the same year Twain published his biography of the Maid (1895), Stephen Crane published The Red Badge of Courage. Although a fictional character, Henry Fleming is more “real” (i.e., flawed) than Joan. On the threshold of the twentieth century, Crane posed modern questions about courage: Does it exist only in the mind of the beholder? Depend on the situation? Have any intrinsic value? A blood-soaked bandage is no proof of valor, but what about true heroes who fall with no witnesses to tell the tale?

Many soldiers are fanatically dedicated to the novel Once an Eagle by Anton Myrer, who interrupted his studies at Harvard to serve as a Marine in World War II. The book, which came out during the Vietnam War, is an epic story that pits the good career officer (dutiful, honorable Sam Damon) against the bad careerist officer (perfidious, pusillanimous Courtney Massengale) in the U.S. Army from 1916 to 1962.

Combat soldiers today need not look for courage in books, but may see it all around them: the gallant corporal who led hundreds of convoys in Iraq, braving IED attack or ambush at every moment; the beloved sergeant who, mortally wounded, used his last iota of life to sweep a live grenade under his own body and save the lives of his men. Our warriors need no books to remember these stories, for they have already learned them by heart, par coeur, which is the root of courage.