Includes prose (some excepted from larger works) and poetry chronicling the evolution of western warfare. Part I. Melian dialogue / Thucydides --
Final sea battle / Thycydides --
Battle of Cunaxa and death of Cyrus / Xenophon --
Plundering expedition / Xenophon --
First British expedition / Julius Caesar --
Horrors of the siege / Josephus --
Arab-Syrian gentleman / Usamah Ibn-Munqidh --
Battle of Crécy, 26 August 1346 / Jean Froissart --
French knight's account of Agincourt / Jehan de Wavrin --
Fall of Constantinople / Andrew Wheatcroft --
Such botching, disorder and chaos / Diego Hurtado de Mendoze --
Siege of Malta / Francesco Balbi di Correggio --
Aztecs / Inga Clendinnen --
Farewell to arms / George Peele --
Attack by Iroquois warriors / Father Paul Ragueneau --
Braddock at the Monongahela / William Dunbar --
Battle of Blenheim / Robert Southey --
Revolution remembered / Anna Myers --
Drum / John Scott of Amwell --
Revolution remembered / Jacob Zimmerman --
Davy Crockett / David Crockett --
Captivity among the Indians / John D. Hunter --
Hohenlinden / Thomas Campbell --
Part II: Fugitive and recruit 1804-6 / Sergeant William Lawrence --
Badajoz March-April 1812 / Sergeant William Lawrence --
Battle of Vitorio / A gentleman volunteer --
Captain Roeder / Helen Roeder --
Russia 1812 / Victor Hugo --
Letters of Private Wheeler / Private Wheeler --
Wellington's Waterloo despatch / Duke of Wellington --
Soldier's view of empire / James Bodell --
Clifford in the Crimea / Henry Clifford --
Letters from camp / Colin Frederick Campbell --
Relief of Lucknow / W. H. Fitchett --
Fremantle diary / Lieutenant-Colonel Fremantle --
War is kind / Stephen Crane --
General Custer / Elizabeth B. Custer --
Tommy / Rudyard Kipling --
Four eyewitness accounts / Isandhlwana and Rorke's drift, 1879 --
Part III: How the news of war came to a village on the Chinese frontier / Stephen Graham --
In time of "The breaking of Nations" / Thomas Hardy --
Infantry attacks / Erwin Rommel --
Gallipoli memories / Compton Mackenzie --
Twelve days / Sidney Rogerson --
In Flanders Fields / John McCrae --
Soldier's diary of the Great War / John Glubb --
Prelude to victory / Brigadier-General E. S. Spears --
Irish airman foresees his death / W. B. Yeats --
Goodbye to all that / Robert Graves --
Wounded (1) / Ernest Hemingway --
Hero / Siegfried Sassoon --
Riding to war / Gerald Uloth --
General / Siegfried Sassoon --
Red Cavalry / Isaac Babel --
Anthem for doomed youth / Wilfred Owen --
Bugles and a tiger / John Masters --
Bounden duty / Alexander Stahlberg --
One young soldier / Tim Bishop --
Wounded (2) / George Orwell --
Previous engagements / Bruce Shand --
B B C broadcast, London, 19 May 1940 / Winston Churchill --
Codebreakers / Stuart Milner-Barry --
Flying start / Hugh Dundas --
Loopy / George Kennard --
Good war / Studs Terkel --
David Stirling / Obituary --
Aristocrats / Keith Douglas --
Bounden duty (2) / Alexander Stahlberg --
On the other side of the hill / Geyr von Schweppenburg --
Normandy diary / Marie-Louise Osmont --
Battle and breakout in Normandy / Ernie Pyle --
Albanian assignment / David Smiley --
Beacons in the night / Franklin Lindsay --
Bounden duty (3) / Alexander Stahlberg --
Quartered safe out here / George MacDonald Fraser --
Railway man / Eric Lomax --
Bombing Nagasaki / William Laurence --
Red thunder, tropic lightning / C. W. Bowman --
Fall of Saigon / James Fenton --
Bravo two zero / Andy McNab.