The Ten Thousand

This is the first of his books that I read. Coyle is the best at military fiction. I have probably read this book four times it is that good.

I just finished rereading this book this weekend. It was just as thought provoking and fascinating the second (or was it third) time as it was the first. The author, Harold Coyle, does an exceptional job of detailing not just the intricacies of putting a fin-stabilized, discarding sabot anti-tank round on target as he does describing the character's emotions and thoughts at the moment of truth. Therein lies the strength of this author and what brings enjoyment to a wide variety of readers. The book should appeal to a variety of readers as two of the main characters are female; the President of the United States and Nancy Kozak, a mech infantry Captain. In a genre that is often a mindless testosterone orgy, it is nice to find female characters of strength, insight, nerve and humanity that are central to the story line.The story line is plausible. The action is on often intense and always engaging. The author's detail is sufficient to explain without overwhelming the reader. The characters are well developed (it also helps that the same characters show up in other Coyle books). Finally, the book has the ability to make you laugh, cry and, most importantly, think. Particularly if the search for meaning in the concepts of "Duty, Honor, Country" are important to you. (Are you listening Bill?) Overall, The Ten Thousand (and actually the title is a historical reference to the ancient Greeks, not the number of Americans) is an excellent book and well worth your time (and time again).

The premise for this story where a neo-Nazi becomes the German Chancellor and vents his fury at the American forces by stealing their nuclear warheads they had captured from the Ukraine days earlier in a joint exercise with Russia is not far from what could happen in real life. With the resurgence of far-right sentiments in continental Europe in the news recently, this book shows how much research Coyle has done. The locations featured are also authentic, I have travelled across Germany myself and could easily visualise certain towns and countryside settings. The military action is not just confined to ground warfare; the F-117 Nighthawk stealth fighter makes an appearance and there's several Army airborne unit action with the UH-60 Blackhawk helicopter roaring across the countryside at low altitude. The combat scenes are first rate and the battle maps in the back of the book provide a close-up insight on how exactly the tank sequences take place. Coyle knows his stuff ! about real soldiering and is not afraid to show it! As for the human interest, it's good to see a war novel which puts as much dimension into character creation as it does to the military hardware elements. Soldiers are human beings, and war does screw some people up; especially with the nurse storyline. If this were made into a movie, it would be a first-rate one. Come on Hollywood, there's a surefire hit here. Altogether, this Harold Coyle novel was the first of his I have read, and I'm definitely looking for more! FIRST RATE.

Dwight Eisenhower once said that we'd know if we were successful in rooting out Nazism if fifty years from now there was a stable democracy in Germany. He was right. Today there is a stable democracy in Germany but for some Germans old habits die hard. Anti-Semitic violence by neo-Nazis and Skinheads is on the rise. These people worship the ground that Hitler walked on and want to return Germany to the bad old days. The ideological descendant of the Nazi Party is the Republican Party. Unlike our Republican Party, the German Republican Party is like Vladimir Zhirinovsky's misnamed Russian Liberal Democratic Party. It begins in April 1945 with a twelve-year-old Johann Ruff, a Hitler Youth, who believes that American tanks rumbling through the streets of the city where he and his family are refugees, are those of his father's tank division. Flash forward to the present. That disappointed twelve-year-old boy is now Chancellor Johann Ruff. The Americans, and their Russian advisers, are taking Ukrainian nuclear weapons to a U.S. Army storage depot in Germany to be stored there until they can be shipped to the United States for destructions. Chancellor Ruff, who's never gotten over the German defeat in World War II, orchestrates a diplomatic and military crisis. As his war goes badly, many western Germans, the majority of the officer corps, and their men, including the chief of the German general staff, defect to the Russo-American force.Those who remain, are eastern Germans, are loyal to Ruff. As the threat of civil war grows stronger, an American convoy is ambushed and an American Army nurse dies of exposure.

OK, so the premise is pretty crazy and it the Washington DC sections are a little much. The fact is that descriptions of the battles are really good. And, also of the real issues that the German Army faces today