Tolkienite Military Fiction

[Apollonian]

Originally Posted by Þorkell

Sorry, what?

I assume George Washington, 7 Years War.

[jason taylor]

Originally Posted by Apollonian

I assume George Washington, 7 Years War.

Good job...

[johndallman]

Originally Posted by jason taylor

Because the first thing he did after WWI was head for Oxford, not the Northwest Frontier. ...

Not everyone who gets trained as an officer wants to do it for the rest of their life.

Originally Posted by jason taylor

And by the way West Point can be two to four years.

West Point, and the other US military academies, bestow degrees. The British system doesn't: it's an intensive course in being an officer and supporting subjects. Most modern-day entrants to Sandhurst already have a university degree.

[jason taylor]

Originally Posted by johndallman

Not everyone who gets trained as an officer wants to do it for the rest of their life.

No but an officer who is a time-server is not schooled like a Kriegsakadimie graduate which is what you seem to be implying. Nor does LOTR begin to imply anything of the kind (it's LOTR not Belisarius Series, it hints at technicalities not reveling in them). Nor is that the only place one can speculate him learning operations sufficient to his purpose. And most important that is far from the only place one can learn it. A good library has more than enough information. I have a hardback Jomini I haven't read in ages. I wasn't assigned it at West Point where I never went. I am pretty sure I just went to Powell's and picked it up. Likewise to get Creasy and Oman which Tolkien probably did read, he would not have had to go to Sandhurst. It would have been available to any young man of good family and likely he read them even before going to Sandhurst. That's what nerds do when they have those manly urges and need to kill something.

[jason taylor]

In any case that argument is tangential. What a Tolkienite military fiction would look like is in fact something like Belisarius. Not the vulgarity of course-Tolkien would not have put that in; even orcs don't swear like that. But it would have the technicalities. Belisarius does a rather silly job in making a cosmic struggle, but that is just to provide a reason for killing people.

Or a better model is Unfinished Tales. That has some fairly well done battle scenes (though it was a long time before I figured out that Isildur's men used steel crossbows not steel longbows which is a lot different even for Numenoreans).

[ericthered]

I'll be honest, The Two Towers and the Return of the King come very close to military fiction to me just as they are. They probably kick-started my interest in such things.

I'll point out that the Two Towers actually got holly-wood to portray half-realistic siege tactics in a blockbuster movie, and have the plot serve them, rather than the fate of the battle just serving the plot. What else has come close to that?

[jason taylor]

Originally Posted by ericthered

I'll be honest, The Two Towers and the Return of the King come very close to military fiction to me just as they are. They probably kick-started my interest in such things.

I'll point out that the Two Towers actually got holly-wood to portray half-realistic siege tactics in a blockbuster movie, and have the plot serve them, rather than the fate of the battle just serving the plot. What else has come close to that?

Ivanhoe. Actually it was a long time since I watched the movie but it wasn't to bad.

Actually the book does better than the movie as usual in that one. The Siege of Front-de-Boeufs castle was an inside job like most sieges. And the only time Scot heard a musket was when someone was hungry for duck.

El Cid

Come to think of it "Monty Python and the Holy Grail".

[ericthered]

Originally Posted by jason taylor

Ivanhoe. Actually it was a long time since I watched the movie but it wasn't to bad.

Never seen it. Forgot it existed. I'll have to watch it some time. Is this the 50's version or the 80's?

El Cid

I'd forgotten about that one. Possibly because no one has ever heard about it. Those were different times (back when it was made). fair.

Come to think of it "Monty Python and the Holy Grail".

Ok, but in all the backwards ways. And it's not tied into the plot.

[Þorkell]

Originally Posted by jason taylor

Good job...

So George Washington, who only left the area of what'd become the US once managed to start a global war which by all accounts I can find seems to have started with a dispute between Austria and Prussia?

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by Þorkell

So George Washington, who only left the area of what'd become the US once managed to start a global war which by all accounts I can find seems to have started with a dispute between Austria and Prussia?

He seems to have been in charge of the first battle of the seven years war, though (a) given his orders, it was probably neither his fault nor an accident, and (b) given that this was in 1754, he wasn't an American infantry officer, he was a British infantry officer.