Bodies For Battle

Physical training in the US Army has a surprisingly short history. Bodies for Battle by Garrett Gatzemeyer is the first in-depth analysis of the US Army’s particular set of practices and values, known as its physical culture, that emerged in the late nineteenth century in response to tactical challenges and widespread anxieties over diminishing masculinity. The US Army’s physical culture assumed a unity of mind and body; learning a physical act was not just physical but also mental and social. Physical training and exercise could therefore develop the whole individual, even societies. Bodies for Battle is a study of how the US Army developed modern, scientific training methods in response to concerns about entering a competitive imperial world where embodied nations battled for survival in a Social Darwinist framework. This book connects social and cultural worries about American masculinity and manliness with military developments (strategic, tactical, technological) in the early twentieth century, and it links trends in the United States and the US Army with larger trans-Atlantic trends. Bodies for Battle presents new perspectives on US civil-military relations, army officers’ unease with citizen armies, and the implications of compulsory military service. Gatzemeyer offers a deeply informed historical understanding of physical training practices in the US Army, the reasons why soldiers exercise the way they do, and the influence of physical culture’s evolution on present-day reform efforts. Between the 1880s and the 1950s, the Army’s set of practices and values matured through interactions between combat experience, developments in the field of physical education, institutional outsiders, application beyond the military, and popular culture. A persistent tension between discipline and group averages on one hand and maximizing the individual warrior’s abilities on the other manifested early and continues to this day. Bodies for Battle also builds on earlier studies on sport in the US military by highlighting historical divergences between athletics and disciplinary and combat readiness impulses. Additionally, Bodies for Battle analyzes applications of the Army’s physical culture to wider society in an effort to “prehabilitate” citizens for service.

Christian Bagge, an Iraq War veteran, lost both his legs in a roadside bomb attack on his Humvee in 2006. Months after the accident, outfitted with sleek new prosthetic legs, he jogged alongside President Bush for a photo op at the White House. The photograph served many functions, one of them being to revive faith in an American martial ideal—that war could be fought without permanent casualties, and that innovative technology could easily repair war’s damage. When Bagge was awarded his Purple Heart, however, military officials asked him to wear pants to the ceremony, saying that photos of the event should be “soft on the eyes.” Defiant, Bagge wore shorts. America has grappled with the questions posed by injured veterans since its founding, and with particular force since the early twentieth century: What are the nation’s obligations to those who fight in its name? And when does war’s legacy of disability outweigh the nation’s interests at home and abroad? In Paying with Their Bodies, John M. Kinder traces the complicated, intertwined histories of war and disability in modern America. Focusing in particular on the decades surrounding World War I, he argues that disabled veterans have long been at the center of two competing visions of American war: one that highlights the relative safety of US military intervention overseas; the other indelibly associating American war with injury, mutilation, and suffering. Kinder brings disabled veterans to the center of the American war story and shows that when we do so, the history of American war over the last century begins to look very different. War can no longer be seen as a discrete experience, easily left behind; rather, its human legacies are felt for decades. The first book to examine the history of American warfare through the lens of its troubled legacy of injury and disability, Paying with Their Bodies will force us to think anew about war and its painful costs.

From Christina Lamb, the coauthor of the bestselling I Am Malala and an award-winning journalist—an essential, groundbreaking examination of how women experience war. In Our Bodies, Their Battlefields, longtime intrepid war correspondent Christina Lamb makes us witness to the lives of women in wartime. An award-winning war correspondent for twenty-five years (she’s never had a female editor) Lamb reports two wars—the “bang-bang” war and the story of how the people behind the lines live and survive. At the same time, since men usually act as the fighters, women are rarely interviewed about their experience of wartime, other than as grieving widows and mothers, though their experience is markedly different from that of the men involved in battle. Lamb chronicles extraordinary tragedy and challenges in the lives of women in wartime. And none is more devastating than the increase of the use of rape as a weapon of war. Visiting warzones including the Congo, Rwanda, Nigeria, Bosnia, and Iraq, and spending time with the Rohingya fleeing Myanmar, she records the harrowing stories of survivors, from Yazidi girls kept as sex slaves by ISIS fighters and the beekeeper risking his life to rescue them; to the thousands of schoolgirls abducted across northern Nigeria by Boko Haram, to the Congolese gynecologist who stitches up more rape victims than anyone on earth. Told as a journey, and structured by country, Our Bodies, Their Battlefields gives these women voice. We have made significant progress in international women’s rights, but across the world women are victimized by wartime atrocities that are rarely recorded, much less punished. The first ever prosecution for war rape was in 1997 and there have been remarkably few convictions since, as if rape doesn’t matter in the reckoning of war, only killing. Some courageous women in countries around the world are taking things in their own hands, hunting down the war criminals themselves, trying to trap them through Facebook. In this profoundly important book, Christina Lamb shines a light on some of the darkest parts of the human experience—so that we might find a new way forward. Our Bodies, Their Battlefields is as inspiring and empowering is as it is urgent, a clarion call for necessary change.

Guys Aren't the Only Ones Fighting a Battle for Purity The world you live in promotes sex as the answer to just about everything. The pressure to go along with the crowd is greater than ever before, and it's easy to compromise in little ways that are a lot more harmful than they seem. You and your friends may become caught up in destructive relationships or sexual activities without even knowing how you got there. You just want to be normal–to fit in, to be liked, to look attractive to the opposite sex. But are you paying too high a price? This counterpart to the award-winning Every Young Man's Battle can help you: · learn how the sexual battle begins in your heart and mind · understand your hunger for attention from guys · recognize and avoid the potential pitfalls awaiting young women on the journey toward adulthood and possibly marriage · find out how the media, novels, fashion, internet chat rooms, and body and beauty obsessions influence your sexual choices–and what you can do about it · guard your mind, heart, and body against sexual and emotional compromise · develop a deeper, more satisfying level of intimacy with God Whether you have so far protected yourself emotionally and sexually, feel that you've been robbed of your purity, or have given in to temptation in some way, this book can help you achieve or reclaim sexual integrity. It can also guide you through the temptations and pressures of young adulthood while demonstrating how you can live your life to the fullest–without regrets. Includes a comprehensive workbook for individual or group study.

Fearless, youthful, athletic - the soldier embodies masculine ideals and, since World War II when the nation came of age as a world superpower, has represented the manhood of the United States. This title examines the creation of this national symbol, from military recruitment posters, to Hollywood war films, to the iconic flag-raisers at Iwo Jima.

Introduction: 'A Different Existence' -- A Fine Body of Men: Recruitment and Enlisting for War 1914 - -- Forging Bodies: Training and Creating Soldierss -- Lives on the Line: Active Service -- Bodies Under Fire: The Frontline -- Soldiers No More: Death, Debilitation, and Demobilisation -- Conclusion: Bodies of War.

What bodily experiences did fighters make through their lifetime and especially in violent conflicts? How were the bodies of fighters trained, nourished, and prepared for combat? How did they respond to wounds, torture and the ubiquitous risk of death? The articles present examples of body techniques of fighters and their perception throughout the Middle Ages. The geographical scope ranges from the Anglo-Scottish borderlands over Central Europe up to the Mediterranean World. This larger framework enables the reader to trace the similarities and differences of the cultural practice of "Killing and Being Killed" in various contexts. Contributions by Iain MacInnes, Alastair J. Macdonald, Bogdan-Petru Maleon, and others.