They Are Soldiers

As usual a strong well written novel with a familiar storyline. A word of warning - read 'against all enemies' and God's children' first.

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.

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...