BOOK OF THE DAY: Ian Sansomreviews Charge! The Interesting Bits of Military Historyby Justin Pollard; John Murray 270pp, £12.99
IF THE title is the opening salvo, then the subtitle is a tactical withdrawal, and the introduction a disarming: within just a few short pages Justin Pollard sets the terms for his engagement with the subject of war. "This book," he announces, "is a ramble through the foggier parts of history's battlefields," warning the reader of the not unpleasant meanderings to come. A serious book about injustice, injury, wretchedness and pointless death this most emphatically is not: a vaguely humorous account of military "imbecilities and irrational foul-ups" suitable for the Christmas gift market it most certainly is. Not so much Charge!, in fact, as Huzzah!
Pollard arranges his subject matter by topic. The chapter "Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea", for example, is about the navy. "Up, Up and Away" is about the airforce. "Officers and Gentlemen" is about officers and gentlemen. And ''Dogs of War" is about ... etc. Within each chapter Pollard simply poses a series of questions, such as "How did Captain Strange wreck his cockipit?", or "What happened to the horses after Waterloo?" And then he answers the questions.
Some readers will undoubtedly be well equipped to answer the questions without Pollard's rather wry and often charming assistance. "How did a telegram help defeat Germany?' Would that be the Zimmerman telegram? Indeed it would. "What side was Agent Zigzag on?" Does that have something to do with the recently much-written-about double-crossings of Eddie Chapman? Correct again. "What use is an exploding dog?" Vague memories from reading at school about the Soviet's use of dogs strapped with explosives during the second World War? Correct again. About a quarter of the book is just such rehash and revision guide.
The rest, however, is far from textbook and reads like a vast messy chart of the endless unconquered territory of one's ignorance. I was stumped by "What was the War of the Crabs?" and "How did 'Fighting' Joe Hooker get his name?" Not to know the answer to such questions is to admit to unfortunate historical blindspots. Answers to other questions require a boggle-eyed obsession with trivia.
The question "How was Sgt Clifton saved by a turnip?", for example, requires knowledge not just of the Battle of Ramnagar during the second Sikh War in 1848, but also of the properties of the turnip, of battledress, weaponry and a fondness for arcane anecdote (Sgt Clifton, it is said, was protected from a potentially fatal blow to the head by the turnip he'd hidden under his cap). Other questions can seem pointless, silly - or sillier. "How did a soldier gain his life but lose his wife?" The answer concerns an account of a nameless soldier during the English Civil War who wrote to his wife announcing his imminent death, but who was then granted a reprieve, but too late, because his wife had already remarried.
And some of the numerous posings are, doubtless, grossly oversimple. Did the war between Bolivia and Paraguay over the Gran Chaco in the early 1930s really begin because of a stamp? And could anyone but a teenage sophist ever really argue that the first World War began because of a wrong turning? (Archduke Franz Ferdinand's driver was reversing when Gavrilo Princip fired the shots.)
Ireland features only once in the book, in answer to the question "What was the fastest retreat in history?" (The Castlebar races.) Given that Charge! is a chronicle of murder, malice and stupidity, it's a lack of achievement to be proud of.
Ian Sansom is the author of the Mobile Library series of detective novels'