They Are Soldiers

Rating:
Summary: A book to tie you over till a good one comes along.
Review:
This book is a disappointment. Hastily written and poorly edited, it should never have reached publication in its present form. The story never becomes sufficiently believable for the reader to immerse himself in it. Whenever there might be a chance of this happening some horribly tangled sentence or ludicrous malapropism pops up. It is as if the text has been carelessly dictated, transcribed by a person unfamiliar with the words and never proofread. For instance, "eek out a living" "screw the pouch" and "gapping mauls" (instead of gaping maws) should certainly have been caught before publication.

The book is largely an account of the difficulties of an poorly prepared reserve unit being called for active duty in the Middle East. While a worthy subject, I think most Harold Coyle readers are looking for more action. The small portion of the plot that could be described as an action story is unbelievable to the point of silliness.


Rating:
Summary: More real than you think.
Review: Harold Coyle has written a book that has timely coverage of a National Guard units activation for the "War on Terror." The book was a bit slow, hardly a page turner, but contained a great amount of detail in comparing and contrasting the U.S. Army and the Army National Guard. The book fictionalizes a very real Guard unit in a very real Virginia town. Bedlow, Virginia is a very thinly veiled reference to Bedford, Virginia. Matter of fact, he accidently slips the name Bedford in on pages 111 and 114. Bedford is (or was) home to Company A, 116th Infantry, 29th Infantry Division, made famous by its horrific number of casualities (98%) during the Normandy invasion in WWII. The National D-Day Memorial is located there. Coyle captured the essence of a very unique small Virginia town and its generations of citizen soldiers. The book describes the transformation of "Weekend Warriors" into front line Peacekeepers in the turbulent Middle East. He does a credible job of getting into the heads of regular Army officers, Guard officers, Guard NCOs, and...terrorists. The sad truth is, National Guard units are being mobilized and sent into hostile parts of the world today, so the tale Coyle weaves isn't that farfetched. The story is a bit dry, but I'd recommend it to any Army Guardsman and those debating joining, as well as those who are interested in modern Peacekeeping in a hostile land.

Rating:
Summary: Disappointing Coyle
Review: I've been a keen and admiring reader of HC for several years.His ability to create powerful military tales is outstanding.
'They are Soldiers'is a real disappointment. HC's understanding of the complex dynamics of the Mid East is surprisingly poor and he creates comic book characters (a senior Mossad agent who uses phrases like "he won't be playing the violin again" after interrogating a palestinian suspected of biochem warfare - come on Harold, do your research; Shin Bet do the interrogations and Israel has returned so many palestinian prisoners each year without any suggestion of torture since 1985. And a Hamas/PLA biochem warfare lab under a Crusader castle in Israel? Get real!


Rating:
Summary: Great short story
Review: So glad to see a Harold Coyle book out. He is the best of the best at telling a story and this story is terrific. The problem is that it would make a great short story for a magazine not a hardcover book. There is one small scale battle in the entire book that takes a few pages to tell; the rest covers the tedious details.
It's a great story but not at the hardcover price.
C'mon Harold!

Rating:
Summary: National Guard at War
Review: This book told a story about a seldom-covered part of our military. It is written from the perspective of an active duty Captain (son of the ubiquitous Scott Dixon) who is assigned to a Virginia National Guard unit in order to quickly bring it up to speed in order to fulfill a mission in the Middle East that apparently only a Guard unit could handle. It gives a godd insight into a side of our military that is seldom written about as a novel, rather than a "history". Having served in both the Regular Army and the Guard, I was impressed with the more personal face this novel put on an entire unit- a subculture, as it were, in our military.
Having said that, I was not impressed with the plot; I cannot believe a semi-raw unit of any kind would be sent into a political powderkeg like duty in Israel involving confrontation with the local Arab terrorist infrastructure. Biological warfare, especially a strain of Ebola? Please- Clancy handled that plot awhile back...