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Rachel Woodward
K. Neil Jenkings
g
Brin ok in g
War to B o
Writing and Producing
the Military Memoir
Bringing War to Book
Rachel Woodward • K. Neil Jenkings
Bringing War
to Book
Writing and Producing the Military
Memoir
Rachel Woodward K. Neil Jenkings
Newcastle University Newcastle University
Newcastle, UK Newcastle, UK
ISBN 978-1-137-57009-3 ISBN 978-1-137-57010-9 (eBook)

https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-57010-9
Library of Congress Control Number: 2018934707
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2018

The author(s) has/have asserted their right(s) to be identified as the author(s) of this work in accordance
with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether
the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of
illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and trans-
mission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or
dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed.
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication
does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant
protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.
The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book
are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or
the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any
errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional
claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Cover credit: Designed by Akihiro Nakayama. Photograph by Byron Kirk / Alamy Stock Photo
Printed on acid-free paper
This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Macmillan Publishers Ltd.
part of Springer Nature.
The registered company address is: The Campus, 4 Crinan Street, London, N1 9XW, United Kingdom
Acknowledgements
The research underpinning this book was funded by the Economic and
Social Research Council through the research grant The Social Production
of the Contemporary British Military Memoir, Rachel Woodward and
K. Neil Jenkings, grant reference RES-062-23-1493. Additional support
was provided by small grants from the School of Geography, Politics &
Sociology Research Committee, Newcastle University, UK.
Our thanks to colleagues in the Military War & Security research
group, Newcastle University and also those in the Power Space Politics
cluster, School of Geography, Politics & Sociology, for conversations over
many years about military issues and representation. We would also like
to thank Daniel Bos for his assistance with scanning book covers and
constructing our military memoirs database.
We would especially like to thank our interviewees who so generously
gave us their time and shared their ideas and experiences with us.
This book has benefitted immensely and immeasurably from conversa-
tions over the years with Victoria Basham, Daniel Bos, Patrick Bury,
Claire Duncanson, Paul Higate, John Hockey, Anthony King, Esmeralda
Kleinreesink, Nina Laurie, Ross McGarry, Matthew Rech, Alison
Williams and Trish Winter.
Rachel would like to thank her students at Newcastle University who,
over the years, have shared their thoughts about military memoirs. She
v
vi Acknowledgements
would also like to thank Joe, Ruth and Patrick Painter for their patient
tolerance of her reading habits.
Neil would like to thank Katherine Ann Nicholson and acknowledge
the support of family, friends and colleagues, both living and departed,
who collaborate and inspire in life as well as work.
Contents
1 What Is a Military Memoir? 1
2 What Do Military Memoirs Do? 43
3 Why Are Military Memoirs Written? 65
4 Who Are Military Memoirs Written For? 91
5 What Is Included and Excluded? 123
6 What Materials and Resources Are Used? 153
7 Who Is Involved in Writing and Production? 189
8 Why Do Military Memoirs Look Like They Do? 219
9 Conclusion: Bringing War to Book 253
Index 269
vii
Authors’ Note
Inevitably in a book about books, there are a large number of books to be

referenced. Within each chapter, full bibliographic referencing is given
for each published military memoir at first citation using a consistent
referencing system for academic and non-academic texts. Thereafter, cita-
tions are referenced in the Notes using the conventions of op. cit. and
ibid.
When naming authors in the text, we use just their given and family
names, and do not use military or other titles, or include post-nominal
indications of awards and honours. We do this for the sake of brevity and
consistency, and no disrespect to any author is intended by the omission
of their full title or honours.
All quotations used in this book, when drawn from published works,
are referenced as such. All other quotations in the text are taken from
author interviews (see Chap. 1). Wherever it is significant that a specific
named author has made a particular point, that author is referenced in
the text by name. In other cases, either to protect confidentiality or to
preserve anonymity on particular points, or where the point made is a
generic one and not necessarily related to a specific published memoir,
the author is not named. Edits to quotations taken from the interview
transcripts are indicated for the sake of clarity by [square brackets].
ix
x Authors’ Note
Specific conflicts are named by common UK convention (e.g. the

1982 Falklands War, the 1990–91 Persian Gulf War) rather than by the
operational codename used by UK armed forces (e.g. Operation
Corporate, Operation Granby) or by conventions used in other national
contexts.
1
What Is a Military Memoir?
Military memoirs are as much a by-product of armed conflict as the

veterans who write them, and as with veterans their status in society can
be controversial, their meanings a cultural battleground. Military mem-
oirs are first-person narratives about the experiences of participation with
armed forces, written as non-fiction and published as books for public
consumption. Military memoirs have always been a key constituent of
the literature of war. From the earliest written accounts of the classical
world such as Julius Caesar’s The Conquest of Gaul and classics of the
canon of war-writing such as T.E. Lawrence’s Seven Pillars of Wisdom, to
contemporary best-sellers such as Anthony Swofford’s Jarhead, they con-
stitute an enduringly popular genre.1 Yet military memoirs are enigmatic
artefacts of war. They present themselves to the world as first-person nar-
ratives, but also invite questions about authorship and provenance
because of the distance we tend to imagine between popular ideas of
‘soldier’ and ‘writer’ (notwithstanding the literary reputations of some
First World War memoirists).2 Military memoirs are promoted as experi-
ential accounts of war, but provoke questions about the truth and verac-
ity of the experiences the author relates and the distinctions which can be
drawn between fiction and non-fiction, fabrication and fact.3 They are
authoritative accounts of war by military personnel, the actual p ractitioners
© The Author(s) 2018 1

R. Woodward, K. N. Jenkings, Bringing War to Book,
https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-57010-9_1
2 R. Woodward and K. N. Jenkings
of war, but also prompt arguments about their authors’ perspectives on

war. That these are more than just academic issues is evident in their cul-
tural influences. As John A. Wood noted with reference to Vietnam War
memoirs, because of their enduring prevalence and popularity, these vet-
erans’ accounts undoubtedly influenced America’s collective memory of
the Vietnam conflict for decades.4 Whilst this is true of other cultural
products and other media forms, ‘war narratives by “those who were
there” have long held a special authority for people, Americans included.’5
This leads to questioning of the ways in which the positioning of military
memoirs in the market and in literary analyses might privilege the voices,
stories and experiences of war by trained military operatives over those of
others, such as politicians, journalists and particularly the civilian casual-
ties of armed conflict. Published military memoirs, until the widespread
use of the internet and World Wide Web, necessarily appeared as com-
mercial products, as war experiences in the material form of a published
book for sale, and so bring with them questions about the ethics and
morality of selling stories of war experience as entertainment for a mass
market. With the development of digital communications technologies,
this question of the mass consumption of military experience for enter-
tainment purposes persists, with reference to additional media formats.
As entertainment and as the focus of commercial investment and promo-
tion, whether intended as such or not by their authors, military memoirs
have an inherent potential for the celebration of state-sanctioned armed
violence and militarism, even whilst they decry war and its consequences.
Thus, for all that some readers engage with them as authoritative sources
of knowledge and understanding about war directly from those who have
participated in it, memoirs are for others largely propagandist nonsense,
unworthy of critical attention and dismissed as a form of cultural milita-
risation, or still others as solely subjective accounts of little value in com-
parison with supposedly objective state sources and official histories by
suitably qualified military historians. In short, although as Wood con-
cludes, ‘by “telling it like it was” and encouraging other generations of
ex-soldiers to do the same, veteran memoirists have nevertheless enhanced
our understanding of the true nature of war,’ there is still little consensus
about the value of the contemporary military memoir.6
What Is a Military Memoir? 3
It is this lack of consensus about a diverse genre which makes the mili-
tary memoir so fascinating as an object of study. In Bringing War to Book,
we are interested in the ways in which military memoirs report factual
and experiential information about military participation, and in this
book, we want to take them seriously, on their own terms, as they do so.
We are also interested in the ways in which the facts and experiences they
report are mediated in the telling, a process of communication which is
subject to interventions by a range of influences—not least those of the
author. In short, we are interested in the military memoir as the outcome
of social production and as a social artefact, and it is this which consti-
tutes the focus of Bringing War to Book.
What is a military memoir, though? The lack of consensus about this
diverse genre is hinted at in the existing literature on war-writing. Alex
Vernon talks of ‘no genre’s land’, noting the various genres at play within
personal war narratives, including not just memoir and autobiography,
but also poetry and various online media, and he also makes the point
about the significant presence of oral and visual formats in descriptions
of war.7 Samuel Hynes’ focus is more specific, seeing military memoirs
(he uses the term war narratives) as a sub-genre of autobiographies of
combat soldiers writing about a specific (war-time) period.8 Alternatively,
Kate McLoughlin takes ‘war writing’ to be that which is not identifiable
solely with ‘that written by a combatant, produced contemporaneously
or related to events on the battlefield’.9 In the broader perspective of the
twenty-first century, the terminology of armed conflict is increasingly
adopted to account for other forms of armed violence in addition to con-
ventional warfare.10 What becomes clear when defining a military mem-
oir is the extent to which the underlying context and purposes of analysis
shape the definition. Engaging directly with historians’ traditional disre-
gard for the memoir, Philip Dwyer in ‘making sense of the muddle’ opens
his edited collection on the literature of war by defining a war memoir as
a story told from an entirely different perspective to that of the historian
or the senior military autobiographer, as at its most basic ‘that of the
common soldier or civilian who has little or no control over the events
that they are caught up in’.11 McLoughlin and others, writing from a lit-
erary studies perspective, have a focus on the text of the memoir in rela-
tion to other textual materials. The disciplinary context of Bringing War
to Book is neither historical nor literary studies, but rather is social scien-
tific. We came to be interested in military memoirs as a source of socio-
logical data for understanding military experience in the round, and from
that we came to be interested in how that data source—the published
first-person narratives of individuals engaged in military activities—
comes into being. So our interest in accounts of military personnel in
armed conflict—how war is brought to book, one could say—focuses on
the nature and content of factual accounts. For example, our interest is in
personal accounts such as Chantelle Taylor’s in Bad Company of her
involvement with wounded personnel from both sides of the Afghanistan
conflict, and what this tells us in turn about how stories such as hers enter
the public domain, rather than the fictional experiences of literary cre-
ations such as Tolstoy’s Russian army officer Prince Andrei and his distri-
bution of gold to his soldiers rather than attending to their wounds,
whatever the undoubted literary, philosophical and aesthetic qualities of
Tolstoy’s fiction and what this tells us about war and peace.12
In this chapter, we define the sole form of text with which Bringing
War to Book is concerned, the contemporary military memoir. We start
by introducing the genre, and its twin goals of telling stories rooted in
factual information about military participation, and presenting narra-
tives which prioritise the individual, lived experience of that participation
in texts which claim authenticity on the basis of the witnessing of events
recounted. We continue this introduction by discussing the diversity of
the genre and exploring the range of types of military memoir that our
immersion in the genre has revealed. We then outline three ideas which
frame the social production of the military memoir and which thread
through this book. These are the extent and limits of communicative pos-
sibility in these books, the role of paratext in these text-based accounts,
and the way what we term ‘military literacy’ functions to help explain the
journey so many individuals make, from military operative to published
author. We conclude with an overview of the subsequent chapters, each
framed by a specific question about military memoirs. In answering these
questions, we show how accounts of war and military life in preparation
for it are both figuratively and literally brought to book.
ilitary Memoirs and the Facts

M
and Experiences of War
Military memoirs are in some ways a straightforward genre. The genre
comprises books which give their readers two things: first, factual informa-
tion about military activities, and second, experientially derived reflection
written on the basis of first-hand participation within military forces,
which in turn is the basis of claims to authenticity. In bookshops, material
and digital, they are usually shelved or displayed to potential readers as,
and alongside, military history, despite the disregard historians have some-
times shown towards them on the grounds of subjectivity. Although mili-
tary memoirs are autobiographical, they are not usually categorised
alongside autobiographies and other forms of life-writing for sales pur-
poses.13 They are experientially based accounts, but in our view, they
should be understood as distinct from other experientially based writing
about war by those either caught up in conflict as civilian non-combatants,
or closely observing conflict as journalists or governmental and non-
governmental observers and functionaries. Civilian and journalist accounts
are an important and illuminating part of the corpus of war-writing, but
we do not include them here because we are interested in the specifics of
the military experience. Military memoirs are about the lived experiences
of military personnel, and it is these books which are our focus.
It follows that because they are about lived experiences, military mem-
oirs may not necessarily be about direct participation in armed combat
but can also be about life in an armed force as a state-sanctioned military
operative. Armed conflict of course is the direct focus of the majority of
military memoirs, and for many, the experience of combat is central to
the narrative trajectory, even when the focus of the text is on recovery and
the return to civilian life. But military memoirs taken collectively illus-
trate that the lived experiences of military personnel encompass a range of
activities before, around and beyond the execution of armed violence;
indeed many military personnel never enter a direct combat zone, or may
be involved in events that do not tend to be classified as ‘war’ (as shown,
e.g. in Roméo Dallaire’s Shake Hands with the Devil, about his operational
command of UN forces caught up in the 1994 Rwandan genocide).14
Military memoirs can hence be about much more than direct combat. It
is also certainly the case that many of these first-person accounts may deal
hastily with the author’s background to establish an idea of his or her life
prior to the events around which the narrative focuses; examples include
Robert Graves’ Goodbye to All That or David Hart Dyke’s Four Weeks in
May, which both provide a modest sufficiency of information about the
author’s backstory to explain their arrival in the theatre of war (respec-
tively, the First World War and the Falklands War).15 But equally, albeit in
smaller numbers, the genre includes memoirs of military training (such as
Trevor Edwards’ Average: A Training Diary), of selection (like Adam
Ballinger’s The Quiet Soldier) and of the day-to-day activities that fill a
military operative’s time when not on operations (such as Tony Groom’s
Diver).16 Military memoirs are therefore not just about direct combat and
the experiences of combat personnel.
As we have noted, military memoirs are, first and foremost, non-fiction
books. Military memoirs report factual information, and although this
facticity may be disputed in terms of its accuracy or validity (and we
return to this theme a number of times in this book), a defining feature
of the genre is the basing of the narrative on observed events or facts,
subsequently reported. The factual information they provide is about
military activities in particular times and places—what happened, when,
where, with whom, using which strategies, tactics and weapons. The ori-
gins of the genre, in Noah Yuval Harari’s view, lie with the accounts writ-
ten by medieval European knights, produced for the purposes of listing
their achievements and experiences, in contemporary language a form of
CV developed for the attention of a prospective employer.17 Philip Dwyer
sees the emergence of military autobiographical writing as a distinctive
form coinciding with the rise of the centralising state, written by elites in
the service of their respective monarchies.18 The military memoir’s subse-
quent democratisation beyond the accounts of the political and military
elite is a feature from the mid-eighteenth century onwards. That this
democratic textual form emerged as and when it did was a reflection of
cultural, political and philosophical developments and shifts, including
sensibilities around the self and sentiment.19 Neil Ramsey notes the rise
of the military memoir in the Romantic period, deriving from the
Napoleonic wars, with private soldiers’ memoirs representing one of the
earliest traditions of ‘labouring-class literature’, and the start of a strand

of anti-war-writing that continued throughout the nineteenth century.20
As Ramsey also argues, the memoirs of this period (a well-known exam-
ple is Recollections of Rifleman Harris but others are more obscure) estab-
lished an ideological framework of stoical heroism around military
participation, enabling the enlisted man to become a legitimate recipient
of public sympathy.21 In the early nineteenth century, we also see social
imaginings of time, proximity and distance being shaped by the experi-
ence of national engagement in armed conflict, and in turn shaping affec-
tual responses to war.22 The sensibilities of Romanticism, with its
valorisation of ideas about interiority, reflection and the self, were in turn
influential for the shift that Harari identifies in the military memoir,
which from the mid-nineteenth century becomes revelatory, about the
self and about what war does to that self.23
The idea of the military memoir as a revelatory text has been explored
fully and rigorously, not least by Paul Fussell, whose work on the develop-
ment of public narratives about the meaning of the First World War was
informed directly by a number of military memoirs.24 These have been
interpreted by some as ‘anti-war’ texts, a possible reaction against the
ideas of stoic heroism promoted by the memoirs of the previous cen-
tury.25 Although a variety of personal papers (letters, diaries) of many
ordinary soldiers participating in the First World War have since been
published, in the post-First World War period, the military memoirs that
emerged were primarily written by those with the education and resources
to commit pen to paper and to push the resulting manuscript towards
publication. As Trudi Tate notes of British First World War authors, ‘the
writing they produced is concerned to share something of that experi-
ence, to explain it to others, to memorialize it.’26 This literary inheritance
has in turn prompted the observation that the Second World War pro-
duced less distinctively literary accounts than the First, which had been
so influential in shaping presumptions of what war-writing (and possibly
even experience of participation in armed conflict) should be like.27,28
Military memoirs published in the immediate aftermath of the Second
World War, in the later 1940s and early 1950s, are characterised by a tone
of stoic resilience (the term ‘stiff upper lip’ is often used).29 Accounts
published in the later decades of the twentieth century about this war
(and indeed the First World War) collectively set out not just the range of
experiences of participation in this global conflagration but also the
correctives that participants have sought to make to other histories (often
state-sanctioned) which also emerged in this period.30
The Vietnam War was also highly influential in the evolution of the
genre; distinctive characteristics of memoirs emerging from this war
include their quantity (reflecting mass participation of enlisted men), and
a heightened sensibility about the validity of reporting war’s traumatic
effects (reflecting cultural endorsement of the idea of war damage, in turn
a factor in the formal identification of post-traumatic stress disorder
(PTSD) as a diagnosis five years after the end of the war).31 The Vietnam
War memoirs also frequently use a format in which the author’s war expe-
rience is contextualised with reference to life before the war, and the life
lived after.32 This structural device is used to testify to the transformative
nature of war; Karl Marlantes in What It is Like to Go to War uses this
device to reflect back on a period of over 30 years of living with the
Vietnam War’s aftermath.33 As David Kieran observes, there is a com-
monality across much of the writing that emanated from that conflict in
terms of tropes of remembrance, memorialisation and critique of US for-
eign policy.34 He goes on to observe the ruptures evident between US
personnel writing about Vietnam, and those writing their accounts of
their Iraq and Afghanistan experience, which fall short of critique and are
more celebratory of the military operative.35 Language can also change in
terms of the discursive shifts and tropes used, with Lilie Chouliaraki, for
example, observing the emergence of what she terms ‘meta-irony’ in
contemporary US military blogs, in comparison with the existential irony
of First World War writing and the historical irony of the Second.36
In Bringing War to Book, though, we are concerned less with the inheri-
tance of the genre into the present (although we discuss this through the
perspective of authors) but with the writing and production of the con-
temporary military memoir as a genre in the present. Our period of focus
stretches from 1980 to our time of writing (ending in 2017; later in this
chapter, we explain the rationale for this starting point). We chose delib-
erately to focus on memoirs published about participation with British
armed forces, both to limit the field and because, we would argue, the
irreducible connection between an armed force and its nation state brings
with it organisational, cultural and experiential specificities that tie a mil-

itary memoir very closely to its national origins (and we return to this
point in our concluding chapter). This genre has two principal features in
the present time, which may or may not be shared with and shaped by
memoirs emanating from other times and places.
At their most basic, but not necessarily simplistically, there is an
instructional quality to military memoirs in that in telling how it was for
them in factual terms, authors impart to their readers practical informa-
tion about how and why particular acts, forms of preparation, modes of
deployment and tactics were used by them and others, and by implica-
tion, could be used by us were we in their situation. So we can read books
like Jake Scott’s Blood Clot and be informed about the practices and tech-
niques of long-range infantry patrolling and reconnaissance in the deserts
of Afghanistan, or Jack Williams’ The Rigger to learn about the establish-
ment of telecommunications systems for military purposes in Northern
Ireland.37 David Morgan’s Hostile Skies or James Newton’s Armed Action
give, respectively, insights into what it is like to pilot a Sea Harrier or
Lynx helicopter.38 Readers can learn about bomb disposal techniques
from Bernie Bruen’s Keep Your Head Down, his narrative about bomb
disposal in the Falklands, Chris Hunter’s Eight Lives Down, about unex-
ploded ordnance disposal in Iraq, or Anthony Charlwood’s Tread Lightly
into Danger, about a career in bomb disposal.39 The memoirs of more
senior officers can relate the demands of command, as does General Sir
Peter de la Billière in Storm Command about his experiences in the
1990–91 Persian Gulf War, or the politics of command, as does Colonel
Tim Collins in Rules of Engagement, his account of the Iraq invasion in
2003 and his response to subsequent allegations about his leadership.40
Personnel from the ranks can relate the demands made of those under
command, as Sarah Ford’s One Up and Steven McLaughlin’s Squaddie
describe.41 The claims military memoirs make to ‘truth’, to factual accu-
racy, are often contested—famously so in the case of, for example, Andy
McNab’s Bravo Two Zero, a best-selling account of Special Forces activi-
ties in the 1990–91 Persian Gulf War, subsequently challenged as to its
veracity in contesting memoir accounts.42 Later in this book, we look at
what authors include and exclude in military memoirs and explore how
they respond to challenges about their accuracy. A defining feature of the
military memoir is the assertion by the author of having been there and
the assertion of the authority of authentic experience as a means of claim-
ing the validity and accuracy of the factual information a memoir
contains.
The other principal feature is that contemporary military memoirs are
experientially based reflections on the activities, events, background and
context they describe: how the author came to enlist; his or her transition
from civilian to soldier, sailor or aircrew; how it felt, physically and emo-
tionally, to engage in a specific military operation; and how armed
conflict’s affectual and embodied legacies continued to shape that partici-
pant’s life in the aftermath. Doug Beattie’s Taskforce Helmand
(Afghanistan), Harry Benson’s Scram (Falklands War) and Monty B’s A
Sniper’s Conflict (Iraq and Afghanistan) all have this essentially personal,
experiential quality.43 At their best, military memoirs transform descrip-
tions of the personal experience of war into explanations of the meaning
of war. They are, as Harari defines them, revelatory texts, revealing what
war is and what war does.44 Patrick Bury makes exactly this point in his
prologue to Callsign Hades, his account of junior officer command in
Afghanistan in 2008, when he says that
this is simply a story of war and men. About what men do in war and what
war does to men.45
It is this embodied, experiential engagement—what Harari terms ‘flesh

witnessing’—which provides the military memoir with so much of its
specificity.46
These twin features of military memoirs—as providers of factual infor-
mation, and as experiential accounts—provide the genre with the unity of
intent through which it is constituted. Although these are always present
in the contemporary British military memoir, the dynamics of the genre
over time reflect the ebb and flow of conventions and sensibilities in life-
writing more generally. We have already remarked on this as evident in
studies of memoirs across the eighteenth, nineteenth and much of the
twentieth century. The contemporary military memoirs with which we are
concerned in Bringing War to Book sit within a time of expansion for life-
writing starting in the final two decades of the twentieth century, and are
part of what some have termed a more general memory boom (which has
not been solely about war, but in which war figures strongly).47 The steady
expansion of the social, political and cultural significance of recognising,
understanding and valorising ordinary lives is, too, a feature of the expan-
sion of life-writing into the twenty-first century (again, war features here
with the democratisation of writing about war experience beyond those
with status, profile or resources).48 Market expansion, combined with
higher literacy rates and the ready availability of life-writing texts in differ-
ent formats, is also a feature, and military memoirs are significant with
their growth in e-reader format, frequently produced without the inter-
ventions of a publishing house and readily available online at low cost.49
The Diversity of the Genre

We define a military memoir as a published, non-fictional, experiential
account of direct participation in military activities. But this is a diverse
genre and its diversity constitutes more than the sum total of many indi-
vidual books telling different stories from different perspectives. That in
itself may pique the interest of readers, but there is more to the genre’s
diversity than that. The genre’s diversity merits tracking as a means of
determining the limits to the genre, its parameters and the location of the
(inevitably blurred) line determining what the genre includes and
excludes. This is a useful exercise because it demonstrates the richness of
the field of study, but also because it gives an insight into continuities and
ruptures in the genre in the contemporary and recent historical period,
our focus in this book.
Within the genre, it is possible to identify a number of different mod-
els or archetypes which serve almost as templates for the telling of specific
and new experiences. These are established narrative strategies, some of
which have very long roots in the literature of war (including roots that
reach back to ancient and classical narrative forms). We hesitate, though,
to pronounce a precise typology within the genre to which individual
books can definitively be allocated. Although this has been attempted—
see Esmeralda Kleinreesink’s categorisation by plot of military memoirs
by UK, US, Canadian, Dutch and German authors writing about
articipation in the Afghanistan conflict50—an exercise like this shifts the

p
focus to categorisation rather than the social production of these indi-
vidual books by individual authors, our intention here. Indeed, part of
the allure of the genre is the ways in which books and their authors, even
when they or we can allocate them to a sub-category, provide evidence to
then confound and collapse attempts at neat categorisation. That said, an
indicative typology of British military memoirs is useful because it illus-
trates for those unfamiliar with the genre, or with partial or second-hand
knowledge, something of the genre’s diversity. We should emphasise
from the outset that these categories are not mutually exclusive.
The form of narrative almost stereotypically recognised as a military
memoir in the contemporary period, even by those not intimately
acquainted with the genre, is the action-adventure narrative. These
accounts, what one commentator had termed ‘“herographies” and blood-
and- guts accounts of derring-do’ feature prominently.51 Well-known
examples include Chris Ryan’s The One That Got Away and Cameron
Spence’s Sabre Squadron, both about Special Forces operations in the
Persian Gulf War in 1991, and both in many ways archetypal for action-
adventure memoirs.52 We can also include here books such as Ed Macy’s
Apache and Paul Grahame’s Firestrike 7/9, both about Afghanistan
deployments in, respectively, attack aviation and fire support roles in the
first decade of the twenty-first century.53 These books tend predominantly
to be published by larger commercial publishing houses, and accordingly
bear the signs of the investment made in them such as the involvement of
co-writers, copy-editors, designers and marketeers. These interventions
are often necessary to produce a sufficiently dynamic narrative. The term
‘TiC-lit’ (Troops in Contact literature) has entered common usage more
recently to describe these accounts.54 Accounts reporting actions and
adventures with UK Special Forces figure prominently; examples include
Mike Curtis’ Close Quarter Battle, Don Camsell’s Black Water and Gaz
Hunter’s The Shooting Gallery.55
The specificity of a military experience is key to the production and
publication of a military memoir. A substantial number of military mem-
oirs do not rest on the excitements of action and adventure but rather on
laying out the story of a personal life of participation. This may include
the dangers and dramas of direct combat, and good examples include
Rupert Wieloch’s Belfast to Benghazi: Untold Challenges of War or Ian

Atkinson’s 32 Year Man & Buoy: A Memoir of a Royal Navy Career.56 That
specificity may be about non-combat roles, as shown by Barry Alexander’s
On Afghanistan’s Plains, telling of the experience of a nursing officer on
deployment, or Robert Neill and Ron Foster’s SOS: The Story Behind the
Army Expedition to Borneo’s ‘Death Valley’.57 The specificity may be a reli-
gious revelation and reconciliation between the demands of a military
profession and a spiritual faith; examples include Nigel Mumford’s Hand
to Hand: A Marine’s Journey from Combat to Healing, Frank Collins’
Baptism of Fire and Paul Sibley’s A Monk in the SAS.58 It may be about the
military training and life experience that precedes a militarised experi-
ence beyond employment with the armed forces, seen in Will Scully’s
Once a Pilgrim, Peter McAlesse’s No Mean Soldier, Bill Shaw’s Kill Switch
or Big Phil Campion’s Born Fearless.59 Or the specificity may be about the
contrasts between the military experience and an entirely different post-
military career, seen in Katrina Hodge’s Combat to Catwalk: The Amazing
Story of the Girl Who Went from Army Hero to Miss England, or Phil Stant’s
Ooh Ah Stantona: The Autobiography of the SAS Hero who Became a
Football Legend.60
Accounts of campaign leadership, written by more senior officers, are
also a recognisable type, and again the investment of publishers ensures
both quality and visibility. Examples here include Richard Woodman
and (naval) Captain Dan Conley’s Cold War Command (about submarine
command during the Cold War), Major General Patrick Cordingley’s In
the Eye of the Storm (about his command of 7th Armoured Brigade in the
Persian Gulf War in 1990–91) or Brigadier Ben Barry’s A Cold War
(about his command of the Second Battalion the Light Infantry in Bosnia
in 1995–96).61 There are also the career autobiographies of senior mili-
tary personnel written on retirement following a long career of service
with the British armed forces. Examples include General Sir Mike
Jackson’s Soldier, Major General Chip Chapman’s Notes from a Small
Military and General David Richards’ Taking Command.62 There is also a
category of accounts written by lower-ranking officers, who by virtue of
their responsibilities and position in the rank hierarchy combine accounts
of leadership responsibilities (and the overview that this brings) with
practical field-based experience on the ground. Richard Streatfeild’s
Honourable Warriors and Nick Evans’ Code Black (about command as

respectively Major and (Army) Captain in Afghanistan), Hugh
McManners’ Falklands Commando (his account as a Royal Artillery
Captain in the 1982 Falklands War), Nick Vaux’s March to the South
Atlantic (about his command of 42 Commando, Royal Marines in the
Falklands War) and Ewan Southby-Tailyour’s Reasons in Writing (about
his deployment as a Major to the Falkland Islands, before and during the
war) are all examples.63 Similarly, Pablo Mason’s Pablo’s War and Pablo’s
Travels describe a Royal Air Force (RAF) squadron leader’s 1991 Persian
Gulf War experiences and subsequent career.64
Further down the rank hierarchy are authors whose military memoirs
constitute the reflections of the (usually but not always enlisted) soldier,
sailor or aircrew. These books are characterised by their focus on the oper-
ational enactment of military commands passed down from above. Many
of these books convey a strong sense of their being the view of a lowly
individual, perhaps a forgotten voice, possibly providing a worm’s-eye
perspective on armed conflict and military participation from the ground
up—books such as Kim Hughes’ Painting the Sand, Trevor Coult’s First
into Sangin or Brian Clacy’s Harry was a Crap Hat are all examples.65 They
are stories by those without any particular power, control or authority
over larger state political objectives or the military operations by which
those objectives are met. Mick Flynn’s Bullet Magnet, D.J. Thorp’s The
Silent Listener, Craig Harrison’s The Longest Kill and John Geddes
Spearhead Assault are all examples of books which describe the lived expe-
rience of the military operative as a smaller cog working in a bigger
machine, and the practicalities of military labour.66 This is the stock-in-
trade of the military memoir.67 The practicalities of a military life also
include books about living as a gay man in the British Army, with Nick
Elwood’s All the Queen’s Men (published in 1999) and James Wharton’s
Out in the Army (published in 2013) reflecting very different experiences
and institutional attitudes.68 There are also occasional tales of transgres-
sion from the military norm, exemplified by Ken Lukowiak’s Marijuana
Time (‘Join the Army, see the world, meet interesting people and smoke
all their dope’).69
Narratives about the training process occupy a smaller niche within
the genre, and are distinctive for their focus on the process by which an
individual becomes a trained military operative. Heloïse Goodley’s An

Officer and a Gentlewoman (about her experiences of British Army officer
training at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst) and Mark Time’s
Going Commando (about preparation for selection and subsequent train-
ing as a Royal Marines Commando) all focus almost exclusively on this.70
Other memoirs may include an account of training, but as a prelude to
the body of the narrative about active operations.
Vindication narratives constitute another type within the genre.
Although these could be classified as reflections of the enlisted soldier or
a more junior commander, at the core of these is an argument against an
accusation or conviction for perceived wrong-doing in a military role.
Tam Henderson’s Warrior is one example: the author sets out his perspec-
tive on events leading to the mis-firing of a chain gun fixed to a Warrior
tracked armoured vehicle, an event which resulted in the serious injury of
another British soldier.71 Joe Glenton’s Soldier Box (subtitled ‘why I won’t
return to the war on terror’) contextualises his life as a soldier with his
desertion from the British Army and subsequent court martial.72 Tim
Spicer’s An Unorthodox Soldier provides his account of his involvement
with and development of the private military and security industry.73
Trauma and recovery narratives are yet another type. In these, the
focus of the narrative is on the experience of events which are mentally
and physically traumatising, and in a number of these, much of the focus
of the narrative is less on the event(s) themselves and more on the author’s
journey of recovery, rehabilitation and reconciliation. It is worth pointing
out that many military memoirs in the categories that we have sketched
out above include an element (usually towards the end) which relates the
author’s efforts to reconcile their experiences during and after military
participation with their subsequent life course. But for some, the trauma
and recovery are central. Examples of this type include Simon Weston’s
Walking Tall, Going Back and Moving On (all prefigured around a core
event, his sustaining catastrophic burns following the bombing of the
ship Sir Galahad in the Falklands War).74 Barry Donnan’s Fighting Back
explores his military training, his service in the 1990–91 Persian Gulf
War and subsequently in Northern Ireland, and his experience of PTSD
as an effect of his military experiences.75 Jake Wood’s Among You is an
account of the Iraq and Afghanistan tours of a Reservist in the British
Army, and the specific issues that his experience of PTSD raised because
of his Reservist status.76 Andy Reid’s Standing Tall recounts his recovery
as a triple amputee following injuries sustained in Afghanistan.77 David
Wiseman’s Helmand to the Himalayas tells of his rehabilitation through a
Mount Everest expedition following injuries received in Afghanistan.78
There are a small number of books in our military memoirs collection
which we include as such, but which lie outside the indicative typology
set out above. These include books such as Pen Farthing’s One Dog at a
Time: Saving the Strays of Afghanistan.79 This book is framed through the
narrative, marketed by its publisher and sold by booksellers as a dog book,
a book about dogs (so part of what we might recognise as the genre of
true animal stories). Its author clearly saw it in these terms (‘Marley and
Me with guns’), and was motivated to write it by the need to raise money
for an animal welfare charity.80 Although recognising these counter-
arguments, we include it for consideration here because the narrative is
also about military activities undertaken by the author whilst serving as a
Royal Marine in Afghanistan, and our conversation with the author
about the conjunction of narrative arc, intentionality, genre and writing
process revealed insights that sometimes only a perspicuous example
can.81 In a similar way, Will Barrow’s Buster: The Dog Who Saved a
Thousand Lives is as much about the military experience of an RAF sniffer
dog as his handler, and like Farthing’s book is written (as with other mili-
tary dog books) as an animal story rather than a military account.82
Another type, again small in number, are books explicitly written as
comedy. The archetypes in terms of the contemporary British military
memoir are Eddy Nugent’s Picking Up the Brass and The Map of Africa.83
These are ostensibly fiction, written by a collaborative team of Ian Deacon
and Charlie Bell as the first-person account of young Eddy as a member
of the British Army of the 1980s.84 Their defining feature is that they
were written as comedy. Because they are fictional, these books are not
strictly speaking military memoirs. We include them here, though,
because again as perspicuous examples they tell us much about the writ-
ing process, and the distinctions between fiction and non-fiction writing
about military participation. More specifically and as we go on to show
in subsequent chapters, by comparing and contrasting Eddy Nugent with
more easily recognisable military memoirists, we are able to tease out
some facets of the production of these books that would otherwise not be
revealed by just a focus on the more sober-minded standard military
memoir. In many ways, Eddy Nugent has written a couple of anti-
memoirs. But they are also part of a small but significant market for
comedic military writing, and other examples include Richard T. Sharpe’s
Whores, Wars and Waste, Rob Novak’s Drop and Give Me Twenty!, Gordon
Muirhead’s Three Decades of Duty (The Comedy), Lofty Wiseman’s Who
Dares Grins and Edward Cartner’s I Have Control!.85
Beyond the genre as we define it lie other forms of war-writing. Our
defining criterion for selection as a military memoir and thus subject to
our consideration in Bringing War to Book is that it must be about direct,
personal participation with the British armed forces. This means that we
do not discuss wives’, parents’ and families’ accounts, although a number
of these exist, and they can be illuminating about the enrolment of the
wider family into military participation.86 We exclude those written on
the basis of close observation of military participation by journalists, war
artists, government officials, representatives of non-governmental agen-
cies and others, although these of course have a role as part of the wider
corpus of writing about particular armed conflicts and military issues.87
We exclude those written by military personnel about other military per-
sonnel in specific conflicts, and books about specific military equipment
but which do not present themselves as first-hand lived experiential
accounts.88 We also exclude memoirs written by individuals working as
private and military security contractors (whilst noting that many of
these individuals account in their memoirs for their initial training with
the British armed forces).89 We also do not discuss accounts which are
clearly written or marketed as fiction.90
Although the genre of the contemporary military memoir is a broad
one, with many sub-types, there are also some absences. There are very few
written by women; across our collection of over 250 books, all but nine
are written by a male author.91 This in part reflects the smaller number of
women overall participating in the British armed forces, and we would
also argue that this reflects the roles that the majority of women in the
armed forces have undertaken and thus publisher perceptions about the
wider appeal of the stories they have to tell.92 That said, in addition to
those highlighted above (by Chantelle Taylor, Sarah Ford, Heloïse Goodley
and Katrina Hodge), we have Lorna McCann’s How Not to Be a Soldier,

Charlotte Madison’s Dressed to Kill, Jackie George’s She Who Dared,
Hannah Campbell’s Never Broken and Azi Ahmed’s Worlds Apart.93 There
are also few written by authors self-identifying as Gurkha soldiers (Johnny
Gurkha’s A Gurkha’s Story and Kailash Limbu’s Gurkha are our two exam-
ples).94 There are only three books which we can positively identify as
written by British soldiers of Commonwealth origin (Jake Olafson’s
Wearing the Green Beret, Johnson Beharry’s Barefoot Soldier and Charly
Ngouh’s How I Won My War).95 We have three written by British soldiers
identifying as being from a British black, Asian or minority ethnic back-
ground (Azi Ahmed’s Worlds Apart, Adnan Sarwar’s British Muslim Soldier
and Trevor Edwards’ Average: A Training Diary).96 The existence of racism
and racist bullying and abuse in the past and present within the British
armed forces is a documented fact, yet with these exceptions, the corpus
of British military memoirs is almost silent on this.
We should also note that for all the diversity across the genre in terms
of narrative type and approach across a range of armed conflicts and other
military operations in which British armed forces have been engaged in
the post-war period, coverage by conflict is very uneven even if taking into
account the duration of military involvement in various theatres. There
are relatively few military memoirs dealing with British regular armed
forces activities in Northern Ireland although these forces were engaged in
active operations there for over four decades; A.F.N. Clarke’s Contact and
Steve Smith’s 3-2-1 Bomb Gone are singular in this regard as accounts
written by regular Army personnel.97 A larger number of memoirs dealing
with military operations in the province are all about direct or associated
attachment with Special Forces.98 The Falklands War, lasting three months,
in contrast has generated a significant body of writing, and in the indica-
tive typology set out above, most categories feature Falklands books.
The diversity of the genre perhaps explains, at least in part, the genre’s
popularity and longevity. There is evolution across the genre with new
approaches to new wars, reflecting changing cultural norms and reference
points, shifting sensibilities about what can and cannot be described, and
how. The evolution over time periods of decades (and indeed centuries)
is one of the enduringly fascinating things about the genre, as we and
others have often noted.99 And yet for all the innovation in the genre,
there is also continuity. The Afghanistan War, more correctly, International

Security Assistance Force (ISAF) troop deployments to Afghanistan from
2001, is a case in point about diversity in the genre.100 Patrick Hennessey’s
The Junior Officers’ Reading Club, about his deployment to Afghanistan,
sold well and received critical acclaim because it provided a fluidly writ-
ten interpretation of the experiences and purposes of UK armed forces
deployments to a new war about which the broader public endured con-
flicting and often confusing official explanations.101 It has elements of both
action-adventure and revelation. But it also sold well because it targeted a
readership unused to reading about war but attracted by Hennessey’s mas-
tery of a style of contemporary writing characterised by sardonic observa-
tion, enthusiastic engagement with the present moment and emotional
exposure. Hennessey’s military memoir, then, offered something fresh to
an established genre. But equally, the Afghanistan War consolidated more
established models within the genre of the military memoir, with its sub-
categories or archetypes. Narratives of action and adventure are to be
found, of course, and these accounts are also frequently tempered by reflec-
tion; examples include Ed Macy’s Apache and Hellfire, Mick Flynn’s Bullet
Magnet, Ade Orchard’s Joint Force Harrier, Mark Hammond’s Immediate
Response, Alex Duncan’s Sweating the Metal and Trevor Coult’s First Into
Sangin. We have narratives of junior officer command, such as Graham
Lee’s Fighting Season and Patrick Bury’s Callsign Hades, very different books
reflecting two very different experiences of deployment.102 The Afghanistan
memoirs published by those participating with UK armed forces include
also stories of physical trauma and rehabilitation such as Mark Ormrod’s
Man Down and Martyn and Michelle Crompton’s Home From War,103 and
accounts of coming to terms with the full reality of war and its effect on
the soul and psyche (Jake Olafson’s Wearing the Green Beret and Jake
Wood’s Among You both do this in very different ways).104 There are books
accounting for the demands of more senior command roles, such as Russell
Lewis’ Company Commander and Stuart Tootal’s Danger Close.105 The
Afghanistan memoirs include pleas for vindication from perceived
allegations of wrong-
doing (Leo Docherty’s Desert of Death),106 and
straightforward chronological narratives of a military career which
include overall responsibility for Afghanistan (Richard Dannatt’s Leading
from the Front).107 We see across the Afghanistan memoirs established
ideas—the attention to literary aesthetics lauded in the classic war litera-

ture of military engagements from the early twentieth century—but also
the foregrounding of a more contemporary focus on authenticity and
claims to veracity, coupled with, as Chouliaraki observes, the use of meta-
irony and a discourse of compassionate humanitarianism.108
Investigating the Writing and Production

of the Military Memoir
The issue at the heart of Bringing War to Book is the writing and produc-
tion of the contemporary military memoir. Where do they come from?
How do they come into being as material objects, in the form that they
do, from the experiences and observations of personnel engaged in mili-
tary activities? It is this issue—about the journey from lived experience to
published text which animates this book.
Our interest in the sociology of the military memoir’s writing and pro-
duction developed many years before we considered writing this book.
One of us, writing about the politics of military land use and other mili-
tary geographical topics but with no personal military background, had
started to read military memoirs as a means of developing some kind of
knowledge and understanding about military forces in general and the
UK armed forces in particular, slowly becoming interested (fascinated,
even) by the work done by the genre and its authors. The other had read
a few classics within the genre, had studiously avoided reading others,
had a background in the UK armed forces and active service operations,
and had an ongoing interest in literature, both fiction and non-fiction,
and text-based communications practices. Working on a project on mili-
tary identities which involved photo-elicitation interviews with serving
and former military personnel, we discovered during the course of one
particular interview that our respondent was a published military mem-
oirist, and as an aside to the interview, he shared the story of how his
book had come about. We duly read his book, and started to consider the
feasibility of doing a substantial and focused piece of research explicitly
on the social production of the military memoir.109 We deliberately set
Another random document with
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city, membership in which now, I was informed, amounted to
10,000. The chief organizer was a shrewd mestizo, a former
close companion of Aguinaldo, by whom he had been commissioned
to perform this work. He was a friend and associate of some of
our officers; was engaged in organizing the clubs only, as he
stated, to give the poorer classes amusement and education;
held public entertainments in athletics to which our officers
were invited, and in which our soldiers were asked to
participate. Gradually arms were being secretly introduced and
bolos were being manufactured and distributed. The arms were
kept concealed in buildings, and many of them were
subsequently captured. The Chinamen were carrying on a
lucrative business in bolo making, but the provost-marshal had
cruelly seized considerable of their stock. These clubs had
received military organization and were commanded by cunning
Filipino officers regularly appointed by the Malolos
government. The chief organizer departed after organization
had been perfected and thereafter became a confidential
adviser in Malolos affairs. This organization was the subject
of grave apprehension, as it was composed of the worst social
element of the city, and was kept under police supervision as
closely as possible. … The streets of the city were thronged
with unarmed insurgent officers and enlisted men from the
numerically increasing insurgent line on the outskirts, proud
of their uniforms and exhibiting matchless conceit, amusing to
our men, who were apparently unconcerned observers, but who
were quick to take in the rapidly changing conditions. …
"Greater precautionary measures were directed and taken in the

way of redistributing organizations throughout the city, in
advancing and strengthening (though still far within our own
mutually conceded military lines) our posts of observation,
and for the quick response of the men if summoned for
defensive action. Otherwise no change in the conduct,
condition, or temper of the troops was observable. So quietly
were these precautions effected that Filipino citizens,
noticing the apparent indifference of our men, warned me
repeatedly of the danger to be apprehended from a sudden
simultaneous attack of the insurgents within and without the
city, and were quietly informed that we did not anticipate any
great difficulty. Another very noticeable proof of
premeditated intent on the part of the insurgents was
perceived in the excitement manifested by the natives and
their removal in large numbers from the city. All avenues of
exit were filled with vehicles transporting families and
household effects to surrounding villages. The railway
properties were taxed to their utmost capacity in carrying the
fleeing inhabitants to the north within the protection of the
established insurgent military lines. Aguinaldo, by written
communications and messages, invited his old-time friends to
send their families to Malolos, where their safety was
assured, but Hongkong was considered a more secure retreat and
was taken advantage of. A carefully prepared estimate showed
that 40,000 of the inhabitants of the city departed within the
period of fifteen days."
Report of General Otis, August 31, 1899

(Message and Documents: Abridgment, 1899-1900,
volume 2, pages 1075-88).
The counter-proclamation of Aguinaldo, referred to above by

General Otis, was issued on the 5th of January, 1899, from
Malolos, addressed to My brothers, the Filipinos, all the
honorable consuls, and other foreigners." It said:
"Major General E. S. Otis's proclamation published yesterday

in the Manila papers obliges me to circulate the present one,
in order that all who read and understand it may know of my
most solemn protest against said proclamation, for I am moved
by my duty and my conscience before God, by my political
obligations with my beloved country, by my official and
private relations to the North American nations.
{378}
In the above mentioned proclamation, General Otis calls
himself 'Military Governor in the Philippines,' and I protest
once and a thousand times, with all the energy in my soul,
against such an authority. I solemnly proclaim that I have
never had, either at Singapore or here in the Philippines, any
verbal or written contract for the recognition of American
sovereignty over this cherished soil. … Our countrymen and
foreigners are witnesses that the land and naval forces of the
United States existing here have recognized by act the
belligerency of the Philippines, not only respecting but also
doing public honor to the Filipino banner, which triumphantly
traversed our seas in view of foreign nations represented here
by their respective consuls.
"As in his proclamation General Otis alludes to some

instructions issued by His Excellency the President of the
United States relating to the administration of affairs in the
Philippines, I solemnly protest in the name of God, root and
source of all justice and all right, who has visibly acceded
me the power to direct my dear brethren in the difficult task
of our regeneration, against this intrusion of the United
States Government in the administration of these islands. In
the same manner I protest against such an unexpected act which
treats of American sovereignty in these islands in the face of
all antecedents that I have in my possession referring to my
relations with the American authorities, which are unequivocal
testimony that the United States did not take me out of Hong
Kong to make war against Spain for their own benefit, but for
the benefit of our liberty and independence, to which end said
authorities verbally promised me their active support and
efficacious co-operation. So that you all may understand it,
my beloved brothers, it is the principle of liberty and
absolute independence that has been our noble ambition for the
purpose of obtaining the desired object, with a force given by
the conviction, now very widespread, not to retrace the path
of glory that we have passed over."-
United States, 56th Congress, 1st Session,

Senate Document 208, page 103.
PHILIPPINE ISLANDS: A. D. 1899 (January).

Appointment of the First Commission to the Philippines
and the President's instructions to it.
On the 20th of January, 1899, the President of the United

States addressed the following communication to the Secretary
of State: "My communication to the Secretary of War, dated
December 21, 1898, declares the necessity of extending the
actual occupation and administration of the city, harbor, and
bay of Manila to the whole of the territory which by the
treaty of Paris, signed on December 10, 1898, passed from the
sovereignty of Spain to the sovereignty of the United States,
and the consequent establishment of military government
throughout the entire group of the Philippine Islands. While
the treaty has not yet been ratified, it is believed that it
will be by the time of the arrival at Manila of the
commissioners named below. In order to facilitate the most
humane, pacific, and effective extension of authority
throughout these islands, and to secure, with the least
possible delay, the benefits of a wise and generous protection
of life and property to the inhabitants, I have named Jacob G.
Schurman, Rear-Admiral George Dewey, Major General Elwell S.
Otis, Charles Denby, and Dean C. Worcester to constitute a
commission to aid in the accomplishment of these results. In
the performance of this duty, the commissioners are enjoined
to meet at the earliest possible day in the city of Manila and
to announce, by a public proclamation, their presence and the
mission intrusted to them, carefully setting forth that, while
the military government already proclaimed is to be maintained
and continued so long as necessity may require, efforts will
be made to alleviate the burden of taxation, to establish
industrial and commercial prosperity, and to provide for the
safety of persons and of property by such means as may be
found conducive to these ends.
"The commissioners will endeavor, without interference with
the military authorities of the United States now in control
of the Philippines, to ascertain what amelioration in the
condition of the inhabitants and what improvements in public
order may be practicable, and for this purpose they will study
attentively the existing social and political state of the
various populations, particularly as regards the forms of
local government, the administration of justice, the
collection of customs and other taxes, the means of
transportation, and the need of public improvements. They will
report through the Department of State, according to the forms
customary or hereafter prescribed for transmitting and preserving
such communications, the results of their observations and
reflections, and will recommend such executive action as may
from time to time seem to them wise and useful. The
commissioners are hereby authorized to confer authoritatively
with any persons resident in the islands from whom they may
believe themselves able to derive information or suggestions
valuable for the purposes of their commission, or whom they
may choose to employ as agents, as may be necessary for this
purpose.
"The temporary government of the islands is intrusted to the

military authorities, as already provided for by my
instructions to the Secretary of War of December 21, 1898, and
will continue until Congress shall determine otherwise. The
commission may render valuable services by examining with
special care the legislative needs of the various groups of
inhabitants, and by reporting, with recommendations, the
measures which should be instituted for the maintenance of
order, peace, and public welfare, either as temporary steps to
be taken immediately for the perfection of present
administration, or as suggestions for future legislation. In
so far as immediate personal changes in the civil
administration may seem to be advisable, the commissioners are
empowered to recommend suitable persons for appointment to
these offices from among the inhabitants of the islands who
have previously acknowledged their allegiance to this
Government.
"It is my desire that in all their relations with the

inhabitants of the islands the commissioners exercise due
respect for all the ideals, customs, and institutions of the
tribes which compose the population, emphasizing upon all
occasions the just and beneficent intentions of the Government
of the United States. It is also my wish and expectation that the
commissioners may be received in a manner due to the honored
and authorized representatives of the American Republic, duly
commissioned on account of their knowledge, skill, and
integrity as bearers of the good will, the protection, and the
richest blessings of a liberating rather than a conquering
nation.
WILLIAM McKINLEY."
Report of the Philippine Commission, January 31, 1900,

volume 1, exhibit 2 (page 185).
{379}
PHILIPPINE ISLANDS: A. D. 1899 (January-February).

Causes of and responsibility for the outbreak of hostilities
between the Americans and the Filipinos.
"The Philippine Information Society," organized for the

purpose of "placing within reach of the American people the
most reliable and authoritative evidence attainable in regard
to the people of the Philippine Islands and our relations to
them," has published in Number VII of the First Series of its
pamphlets a carefully made collection of information, from
official and other sources, relative to the circumstances in
which hostilities between the American and Filipino forces
came about. On this as on other subjects which the society has
investigated it seems to have pursued its inquiries with no
aim but to learn and set forth the truth. Its conclusions,
resting on the evidence which it submits, are stated in an
introduction to the pamphlet as follows:
"It will presumably he admitted that the important question

with regard to the Outbreak of Hostilities, February 4, 1899,
is not, who fired the first shot, but who was responsible for
the conditions that made it evident to every observer weeks
before the clash came that a single shot might bring on war. …
The situation may be briefly explained as follows: We believed
that the Philippine Archipelago was and ought to be ours, and
we were moving to take possession as rapidly as possible. The
Filipinos, or at least Aguinaldo's government and followers,
believed that the country was theirs and they resented every
effort on our part to occupy it. We considered it ours through
cession from Spain and right of conquest. They claimed that
Spain no longer held possession of the country and therefore
had no right to cede it to us; moreover, that by right of
conquest we were entitled only to temporary occupation of
Manila. We wished to extend our sovereignty throughout the
Archipelago with all possible dispatch. They desired
independence, or at least a protectorate which, while securing
them from foreign aggression, should leave them control of
their internal affairs. While a discussion of the justice of
either position does not come within the limits of the present
inquiry, it is important to remember that from the first a
minority in this country urged that the Filipinos were
entitled to a promise of ultimate independence, and that a
resolution of Congress, similar to that passed in the case of
Cuba, would avert all occasion for war. This course having
been rejected by our country, the question arises, did the
assertion of United States sovereignty render war inevitable? …
"No doubt most Americans believe that left to themselves the

Filipinos would soon have lapsed into anarchy, while a few
maintain that with temporary assistance in international
affairs they would have developed a government better suited
to their peculiar needs than we can ever give them. Still
others who are familiar with the Filipinos and kindred races
believe that their aspiration for an independent national
existence was not deep rooted, that had we adopted an
affectionate, admiring tone to their leaders, had we
recognized their government and approved of it, we could soon
have made their government our government, could have been as
sovereign as we pleased, and had the people with us. Whatever
view one may hold, it must be admitted that if we were to
establish our sovereignty by peaceful methods it was essential
to win the confidence and affection of the Filipinos. … There
is every indication that the Filipinos were prepared, at
first, to treat us as friends and liberators. General Anderson
tells the following interesting story: The prevailing
sentiment of the Filipinos towards us can be shown by one
incident. About the middle of July the insurgent leaders in
Cavite invited a number of our army and navy officers to a
banquet. There was some post-prandial speech-making, the
substance of the Filipino talk being that they wished to be
annexed but not conquered. One of our officers in reply
assured them that we had not come to make them slaves, but to
make them free men. A singular scene followed. All the
Filipinos rose to their feet, and Buencomeno, taking his
wine-glass in his hand, said: We wish to be baptized in that
sentiment. Then he and the rest poured the wine from their
glasses over their heads. After the very first, however, the
cultivation of intimate relations with the Filipino leaders
seems to have been considered unimportant or inadvisable.
General Merritt states that he never saw Aguinaldo. Social
intercourse between our officers and the Filipinos was
discouraged by General Otis. In fact after the surrender of
Manila General Whittier seems to have been the only one of our
superior officers who ever had a personal interview with
Aguinaldo.
"Certainly after the proclamation of January 4, [see above: A.

D. 1898-1899 (JANUARY-FEBRUARY)] war could only have been
avoided by a decisive action of Congress promising ultimate
independence to the Filipinos. That proclamation of January 4
raised the issue and provoked the counter proclamation of
January 5, which so stirred the people against us—a
proclamation in which Aguinaldo once and a thousand times and
with all the energy of his soul protested against American
sovereignty, and which closed with the words, 'upon their
heads be all the blood which may be shed.' …
"Aguinaldo's proclamation was followed by a series of

conferences of which General Otis reports 'It was one
continued plea for some concession that would satisfy tho
people.' On January 16th he cabled to Washington, 'Aspiration
Filipino people is independence with restrictions resulting
from conditions which its government agree with American when
latter agree to officially recognize the former.' Finally on
January 25th he sent word to the insurgent commissioners that
'To this dispatch no reply has been received.' From this time
General Otis states, the insurgents hurried forward
preparations for war. Contemporaneous with these events in the
Philippines the Treaty of Peace was pending in the United
States Senate where it had been assigned for a vote on
February 6th.
"With regard to the actual outbreak of' hostilities, there is

a sharp difference of opinion. The United States press
dispatches announcing the outbreak, and the contemporaneous
newspaper statements by the Filipinos … are of interest as
evidence that from the very first each side claimed the other
to be the aggressor.
{380}
As to which of these opposing claims is borne out by the
facts, the editors would say that after careful study of all
the accessible evidence they find that according to the most
authoritative statements the outbreak occurred as the result
of a trespass by four armed Filipinos on territory admitted by
the Filipino in command to be within the jurisdiction of the
United States. The number of Filipinos has been variously
estimated. The editors follow the report of General MacArthur
in command of the division in which the firing began, which
agrees with the report of Second-Lieutenant Wheedon of the
First Nebraska U. S. Volunteer Infantry, stationed at Santa
Mesa. The action of the Filipino trespassers seems to have
been an instance of bad discipline in the insurgent army.
Certainly it was not ordered on that date by the insurgent
leaders, although there are some indications that the leaders
had planned to attack in a few days. The claim that our forces
instigated the attack for the purpose of securing the votes
necessary to ratify the treaty is absolutely unsupported by
any evidence which has come to the attention of the editors."
Philippine Information Society,

Publications, First Series, VII., Introduction.
PHILIPPINE ISLANDS: A. D. 1899 (January-November).

Attack on American forces by the Tagalos.
Continued hostilities.
Progress of American conquest.
"No definite date had been set for the attack [by the hostile
Tagalos], but a signal by means of rockets had been agreed
upon, and it was universally understood that it would come
upon the occurrence of the first act on the part of the
American forces which would afford a pretext; and in the lack
of such act, in the near future at all events. Persistent
attempts were made to provoke our soldiers to fire. The
insurgents were insolent to our guards and made persistent and
continuous efforts to push them back and advance the insurgent
lines farther into the city of Manila. … With great tact and
patience the commanding general had held his forces in check,
and he now made a final effort to preserve the peace by
appointing a commission to meet a similar body appointed by
Aguinaldo and to 'confer with regard to the situation of
affairs and to arrive at a mutual understanding of the intent,
purposes, aims, and desires of the Filipino people and of the
people of the United States.' Six sessions were held, the last
occurring on January 29, six days before the outbreak of
hostilities. No substantial results were obtained, the
Filipino commissioners being either unable or unwilling to
give any definite statements of the 'intent, purposes, and
aims of their people.' At the close of the last session they
were given full assurances that no hostile act would be
inaugurated by the United States troops. The critical moment
had now arrived. Aguinaldo secretly ordered the Filipinos who
were friendly to him to seek refuge outside the city. The
Nebraska regiment at that time was in camp on the east line at
Santa Mesa, and was guarding its front. For days before the
memorable 4th of February, 1899, the outposts in front of the
regiment had been openly menaced and assaulted by insurgent
soldiers; they were attempting to push our outposts back and
advance their line. They made light of our sentinels and
persistently ignored their orders. On the evening of the 4th
of February, an insurgent officer came to the front with a
detail of men and attempted to pass the guard on the San Juan
Bridge, our guard being stationed at the west end of the
bridge. The Nebraska sentinel drove them back without firing,
but a few minutes before 9 o'clock that evening a large body
of insurgent troops made an advance on the South Dakota
outposts, which fell back rather than fire. About the same
time the insurgents came in force to the east end of the San
Juan Bridge, in front of the Nebraska regiment. For several
nights prior thereto a lieutenant in the insurgent army had
been coming regularly to our outpost No. 2, of the Nebraska
regiment, and attempting to force the outpost back and
insisting on posting his guard within the Nebraska lines; and
at this time and in the darkness he again appeared with a
detail of about six men and approached Private Grayson, of
Company D, First Nebraska Volunteers, the sentinel on duty at
outpost No. 2. He, after halting them three times without
effect, fired, killing the lieutenant, whose men returned the
fire and then retreated. Immediately rockets were sent up by
the Filipinos, and they commenced firing all along the line, …
and continued to fire until about midnight; and about 4
o'clock on the morning of February 5 the insurgents again
opened fire all around the city and kept it up until the
Americans charged them and drove them with great slaughter out
of their trenches."
Philippine Commission, Preliminary Report

(Exhibit 1.—Report, January 31, 1900,
"They [the insurgents] were promptly repulsed in a series of

active engagements which extended through the night of the
4th, and the 5th, 6th, and 10th days of February. Our lines
were extended and established at a considerable distance from
the city in every direction. On the 22d of February a
concerted rising of the Tagalogs in the city of Manila, of
whom there are about 200,000, was attempted, under
instructions to massacre all the Americans and Europeans in
the city. This attempt was promptly suppressed and the city
was placed under strict control. The troops composing the
Eighth Army Corps under General Otis's command at that time
were of regulars 171 officers and 5,201 enlisted men and of
volunteers 667 officers and 14,831 enlisted men, making an
aggregate of 838 officers and 20,032 enlisted men. All of the
volunteers and 1,650 of the regulars were, or were about to
become entitled to their discharge, and their right was
perfected by the exchange of ratifications of the treaty on
the 11th of April. …
"The months of the most intense heat, followed by the very

severe rainy season of that climate, were immediately
approaching, and for any effective occupation of the country
it was necessary to await both the close of the rainy season
and the supply of new troops to take the place of those about
to be discharged. Practically all the volunteers who were then
in the Philippines consented to forego the just expectation of
an immediate return to their homes, and to remain in the field
until their places could be supplied by new troops. They
voluntarily subjected themselves to the dangers and casualties
of numerous engagements, and to the very great hardships of
the climate. They exhibited fortitude and courage, and are
entitled to high commendation for their patriotic spirit and
soldierly conduct. …
{381}
"No attempt was … made to occupy the country, except in the

vicinity of Manila, and at such points as were important for
the protection of our lines. Such movements as passed beyond
this territory were designed primarily to break up threatening
concentrations of insurgent troops, and to prevent undue
annoyance to the positions which we occupied. On the 11th of
February the city of Iloilo, on the island of Panay, the
second port of the Philippines in importance, was occupied.
After the capture of Iloilo the navy took possession of the
city of Cebu, on the island of Cebu, and on the 26th of
February a battalion of the 23d Infantry was dispatched to
that port for the protection of the inhabitants and property.
On the 1st of March a military district comprising the islands
of Panay, Negros, and Cebu, and such other Visayan islands as
might be thereafter designated, to be known as the 'Visayan
Military District,' was established and placed under the
supervision of Brigadier General Marcus P. Miller, commanding
1st Separate Brigade, Eighth Army Corps, with headquarters at
Iloilo. The 3d Battalion of the 1st California Volunteer
Infantry was thereupon ordered to the island of Negros, under
the command of Colonel (now Brigadier General) James F. Smith,
and took possession of the city of Bacolod, on that island,
without resistance. On the 5th of May Brigadier General James
F. Smith assumed temporary command of the Visayan military
district, and on the 25th of May Brigadier General R. P.
Hughes, United States Volunteers, was assigned to the command
of the district. On the 19th of May the Spanish garrison at
Jolo, in the Sulu Archipelago, was replaced by American
troops. By the 31st of August the number of troops stationed
at Jolo and the Visayan Islands, including a small guard at
the Cavite Arsenal, amounted to 4,145. …
"All of the forces who were entitled to be discharged as above

mentioned have now [November. 29, 1899] been returned to this
country and mustered out. The new troops designed to take the
place of those returning to this country, and to constitute an
effective army for the occupation of the Philippines, have
been transported to Manila. … The troops now in the
Philippines comprise 905 officers and 30,578 men of the
regular force, and 594 officers and 15,388 men of the
volunteer force, making an aggregate of 1,499 officers and
45,966 men, and when the troops on the way have arrived the
total force constituting the Eighth Army Corps will be 2,051
officers and 63,483 men.
"By the 10th of October the process of changing armies and the
approach of the dry season had reached a point where an
advance toward the general occupation of the country was
justified. At that time the American lines extended from the
Bay of Manila to Laguna de Bay, and included considerable
parts of the provinces of Cavite, Laguna, and Morong to the
south and east of Manila, substantially all of the province of
Manila and the southern parts of Bulacan and Pampanga,
dividing the insurgent forces into two widely separated parts.
To the south and east of our lines in Cavite and Morong were
numerous bands occasionally concentrating for attack on our
lines, and as frequently dispersed and driven back toward the
mountains. On the 8th or October, the insurgents in this
region having again gathered and attacked our lines of
communication, General Schwan with a column of 1,726 men
commenced a movement from Bacoor, in the province of Cavite,
driving the enemy through Old Cavite, Noveleta, Santa Cruz,
San Francisco de Malabon, Saban, and Perez das Marinas,
punishing them severely, scattering them and destroying them
as organized forces, and returning on the 13th to Bacoor. On
the north of our lines stretched the great plain of central
Luzon extending north from Manila about 120 miles. This plain
comprises parts of the provinces of Manila, Pampanga, Bulacan,
Tarlac, Nueva, Ecija, and Pangasinan. It is, roughly speaking,
bounded on the south by the Bay of Manila: on the east and
west by high mountain ranges separating it from the seacoasts,
and on the north by mountains and the Gulf of Lingayen.
Through the northeast and central portion flows the Rio Grande
from the northern mountains southwesterly to the Bay of Manila,
and near the western edge runs the only railroad on the island
of Luzon, in a general southeasterly direction from Dagupan,
on the Bay of Lingayen, to Manila. In this territory Aguinaldo
exercised a military dictatorship, and with a so-called
cabinet imitated the forms of civil government, having his
headquarters at Tarlac, which he called his capital, and which
is situated near the center of the western boundary of the
plain.
"The operations commenced in October involved the movement of

three separate forces:
(1) A column proceeding up the Rio Grande and along the

northeastern borders of the plain and bending around to the
westward across the northern boundary toward the Gulf of
Lingayen, garrisoning the towns and occupying the mountain
passes which gave exit into the northeastern division of the
island.
(2) An expedition proceeding by transports to the Gulf of

Lingayen, there to land at the northwestern corner of the
plain and occupy the great coast road which from that point
runs between the mountains and the sea to the northern
extremity of the island, and to proceed eastward to a junction
with the first column.
(3) A third column proceeding directly up the railroad to the

capture of Tarlac, and thence still up the road to Dagupan,
driving the insurgent forces before it toward the line held by
the first two columns.
These movements were executed with energy, rapidity, and

success, notwithstanding the exceedingly unfavorable weather
and deluges of rain, which rendered the progress of troops and
transportation of subsistence most difficult. On the 12th of
October a strong column under General Lawton, with General
Young commanding the advance, commenced the northerly movement
up the Rio Grande from Arayat, driving the insurgents before
it to the northward and westward. On the 18th the advance
reached Cabiao. On the 19th San Isidro was captured, and a
garrison established; on the 27th Cabanatuan was occupied, and
a permanent station established there. On the 1st of November
Aliaga and Talavera were occupied. In the meantime
detachments, chiefly of Young's cavalry, were operating to the
west of the general line of advance, striking insurgent
parties wherever they were found and driving them toward the
line of the railroad. By the 13th of November the advance had
turned to the westward, and our troops had captured San Jose,
Lupao, Humingan, San Quintin, Tayug, and San Nicolas. By the
18th of November the advance had occupied Asingan and Rosales,
and was moving on Pozorrubio, a strongly intrenched post about 12
miles east of San Fabian. General Lawton's forces now held a
line of posts extending up the eastern side of the plain and
curving around and across the northern end to within a few
miles of the Gulf of Lingayen.
{382}
"On the 6th of November a force of 2,500, under command of

General Wheaton, sailed from Manila for the Gulf of Lingayen,
convoyed by ships of the Navy, and on the 7th the expedition
was successfully landed at San Fabian with effective
assistance from a naval convoy against spirited opposition. On
the 12th the 33d Volunteers, of Wheaton's command, under
Colonel Hare, proceeded southeastward to San Jacinto, attacked
and routed 1,200 intrenched insurgents, with the loss of the
gallant Major John A. Logan and 6 enlisted men killed, and one
officer and 11 men wounded. The enemy left 81 dead in the
trenches and suffered a total loss estimated at 300. In the
meantime, on the 5th of November, a column under General
McArthur advanced up the railroad from Angeles to Magalang,
clearing the country between Angeles and Arayat, encountering
and routing bodies of the enemy at different points, and
capturing Magalang. On the 11th it took Bamban, Capas, and
Concepcion, and on the 12th of November entered Tarlac, from
which the enemy fled on its approach. Meantime, parties,
mainly of the 36th Volunteers, under Colonel J. F. Bell,
cleared the country to the right of the line of advance as far
east as the points reached by General Lawton's flanking
parties. On the 17th of November McArthur's column had
occupied Gerona and Panique, to the north of Tarlac, On the
19th, Wheaton's troops, and on the 20th, McArthur's troops,
entered Dagupan.
"On the 24th of November General Otis was able to telegraph to

the Department as follows: 'Claim to government by insurgents
can be made no longer under any fiction. Its treasurer,
secretary of the interior, and president of congress in our
hands; its president and remaining cabinet officers in hiding,
evidently in different central Luzon provinces; its generals
and troops in small bands scattered through these provinces,
acting as banditti, or dispersed, playing the rôle of
"Amigos," with arms concealed.' Since that time our troops
have been actively pursuing the flying and scattered bands of
insurgents, further dispersing them, making many prisoners,
and releasing many Spanish prisoners who had been in the
insurgents' hands. On the 23d General Young's column had
reached Namacpacan, 30 miles north of San Fernando, in the
province of Union, and passed north into the mountains; and on
the 24th Vigan, the principal port of the northwest coast, was
occupied by a body of marines landed from the battle ship
Oregon. Wherever the permanent occupation of our troops has
extended in the Philippine Islands civil law has been
immediately put in force. The courts have been organized and
the most learned and competent native lawyers have been
appointed to preside over them. A system of education has been
introduced and numerous schools have been established."
Annual Report of the Secretary of War, 1899

(Message and Documents: Abridgment, 1899-1900,
General Young, whose movement is referred to above, reported

to General Otis from Pozorrubio, on the 17th of November:
"Aguinaldo is now a fugitive and an outlaw, seeking security
in escape to the mountains or by sea. My cavalry have ridden
down his forces wherever found, utterly routing them in every
instance, killing some, capturing and liberating many
prisoners, and destroying many arms, ammunition, and other war
impediments." On the 30th, Major March was sent by General
Young, as he expresses it, "on Aguinaldo's trail," and
encountered the forces of the Filipino General Pilar in the
Tila Pass. The following is Major March's report of the fight
which then occurred, and in which the Filipino commander fell:
"The trail winds up the Tila Mountains in a sharp zigzag. The
enemy had constructed a stone barricade across the trail at a
point where it commanded the turns of the zigzag for a
considerable distance. The barricade was loopholed for
infantry fire and afforded head cover for the insurgents. On
passing on beyond Lingey the advance was checked by a heavy
fire from this barricade, which killed and wounded several
men, without having its position revealed. I brought up the
remainder of the command at double time, losing two men
wounded during the run up. On arriving at the point, I located
the insurgents' position with my glasses—their fire being
entirely Mauser and smokeless powder—by the presence of the
insurgent officer who showed himself freely and directed the
fire. On pushing forward, the number of my men who were hit
increased so rapidly that it was evident that the position
could not be taken by a front attack, when the trail only
allowed the men to pass one at a time. On the left of the
barricade was a gorge several hundred feet deep. On its right,
as we faced it, was a precipitous mountain which rose 1,500 feet
above the trail. Across the gorge and to the left front of the
barricade was a hill, which, while it did not permit of flank
fire into the barricade, commanded the trail in its rear, and
this point I occupied with ten sharpshooters in command of
Sergeant-Major McDougall. He lost one man wounded in getting
to the top, and when there rendered most effective assistance.
I then ordered Lieutenant Tompkins to take his company (H) and
proceeding back on the trail to ascend the slope of the
mountain under cover of a slight ridge which struck the face
of the mountain about 150 feet from the summit. From there he
had a straight-up climb to the top, where the men pulled
themselves up by twigs and by hand. The ascent took two hours,
during which the enemy kept up an incessant and accurate fire,
which they varied by rolling down stones on our heads. When
Tompkins' men appeared upon the crest of the hills over their
heads, he had the command of the two other trenches which were
constructed in rear of the barricade, I have described, around
a sharp turn in the trail, and which were also held by the
insurgents. He opened fire upon them and I charged the first
barricade at the same time, and rushed the enemy over the
hill. We found eight dead bodies on the trail, and the bushes
which grew at the edge of the gorge were broken and
blood-stained where dead or wounded men fell through. Among
the dead bodies was that of Gregorio del Pilar, the general
commanding insurgent forces. I have in my possession his
shoulder straps; French field glasses, which gave the range of
objects; official and private papers, and a mass of means of
identification. He was also recognized personally by Mr.
McCutcheon and Mr. Keene, two newspaper correspondents who had
met him before.
{383}
The insurgents' report of their loss in this fight is 52,
given to me after I reached Cervantes. My loss was 2 killed
and 9 wounded. I reached the summit at 4.30 P. M. and camped
there for the night. … At Cervantes I learned that the force
at Tila Pass was a picked force from Aguinaldo's body guard,
and that it was wiped out of existence. Aguinaldo with his
wife and two other women and a handful of men were living in a
convent at Cervantes, perfectly secure in his belief that Tila
Pass was an impregnable position. It was the insurgents'
Thermopylæ."
Report of Lieutenant-General Commanding the Army, 1900,

part 4, page 331.
Mr. McCutcheon, one of the newspaper correspondents referred

to by Major March, gave to the "Chicago Record" a graphic
account of the fight in Tila Pass, and wrote feelingly of the
death to the young Filipino General Pilar:
"General Gregorio del Pilar," wrote Mr. McCutcheon, "was the

last man to fall. He was striving to escape up the trail and
had already received a wound in the shoulder. A native was
holding his horse for him and just as he was preparing to
mount a Krag-Jorgensen bullet caught him in the neck, and
passing through came out just below his mouth. The men of
Company E, rushing up the trail, caught the native, who was
endeavoring to secure the papers which the general had in his
pockets, and a moment later captured the horse. At that time
no one knew who the dead man was, but from his uniform and
insignia they judged that he was an officer of high rank. The
souvenir fiend was at once at work and the body was stripped
of everything of value from the diamond ring to the boots. …
Many letters were found, most of them from his sweetheart,
Dolores Jose, who lived in Dagupan. A handkerchief bearing her
name was also found in his pocket. One letter was found from
the president of Lingay and gave the exact number of soldiers
in March's command. Pilar's diary, which ran from November 19
on to the day of his death, was of remarkable interest, for it

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Printed on acid-free paper

1 What Is a Military Memoir? 1

2 What Do Military Memoirs Do? 43

3 Why Are Military Memoirs Written? 65

4 Who Are Military Memoirs Written For? 91

5 What Is Included and Excluded? 123

6 What Materials and Resources Are Used? 153

7 Who Is Involved in Writing and Production? 189

8 Why Do Military Memoirs Look Like They Do? 219

9 Conclusion: Bringing War to Book 253

Inevitably in a book about books, there are a large number of books to be

Specific conflicts are named by common UK convention (e.g. the

Military memoirs are as much a by-product of armed conflict as the

© The Author(s) 2018 1

of war, but also prompt arguments about their authors’ perspectives on

 ilitary Memoirs and the Facts

earliest traditions of ‘labouring-class literature’, and the start of a strand

with it organisational, cultural and experiential specificities that tie a mil-

It is this embodied, experiential engagement—what Harari terms ‘flesh

The Diversity of the Genre

­ articipation in the Afghanistan conflict50—an exercise like this shifts the

Rupert Wieloch’s Belfast to Benghazi: Untold Challenges of War or Ian

Honourable Warriors and Nick Evans’ Code Black (about command as

individual becomes a trained military operative. Heloïse Goodley’s An

and Katrina Hodge), we have Lorna McCann’s How Not to Be a Soldier,

there is also continuity. The Afghanistan War, more correctly, International

ideas—the attention to literary aesthetics lauded in the classic war litera-

Investigating the Writing and Production

"Greater precautionary measures were directed and taken in the

Report of General Otis, August 31, 1899

The counter-proclamation of Aguinaldo, referred to above by

"Major General E. S. Otis's proclamation published yesterday

"As in his proclamation General Otis alludes to some

United States, 56th Congress, 1st Session,

PHILIPPINE ISLANDS: A. D. 1899 (January).

On the 20th of January, 1899, the President of the United

"The temporary government of the islands is intrusted to the

"It is my desire that in all their relations with the

Report of the Philippine Commission, January 31, 1900,

PHILIPPINE ISLANDS: A. D. 1899 (January-February).

"The Philippine Information Society," organized for the

"It will presumably he admitted that the important question

"No doubt most Americans believe that left to themselves the

"Certainly after the proclamation of January 4, [see above: A.

"Aguinaldo's proclamation was followed by a series of

"With regard to the actual outbreak of' hostilities, there is

Philippine Information Society,

PHILIPPINE ISLANDS: A. D. 1899 (January-November).

Philippine Commission, Preliminary Report

"They [the insurgents] were promptly repulsed in a series of

"The months of the most intense heat, followed by the very

1 What Is a Military Memoir? 1

2 What Do Military Memoirs Do? 43

3 Why Are Military Memoirs Written? 65

4 Who Are Military Memoirs Written For? 91

5 What Is Included and Excluded? 123

6 What Materials and Resources Are Used? 153

7 Who Is Involved in Writing and Production? 189

8 Why Do Military Memoirs Look Like They Do? 219

9 Conclusion: Bringing War to Book 253

ilitary Memoirs and the Facts

The Diversity of the Genre

articipation in the Afghanistan conflict50—an exercise like this shifts the

Investigating the Writing and Production