Book reviews: From the Continental army to counterinsurgency - Entertainment, Books - Navy Times

Book reviews: From the Continental army to counterinsurgency

As the nation prepares to commemorate Memorial Day, here is a look at some spring-release books about military life — from training to trenches, from the personal to the big picture.

• Those Who Have Borne the Battle: A History of America’s Wars and Those Who Fought Them, by James Wright, Public Affairs, 336 pages, $28, e-book available.

How the U.S. embraces its citizen soldiers has not always been consistent or compassionate, says the former Dartmouth College president and former enlisted Marine.

The ranks of the Continental army “were often filled with soldiers who were enticed by the bonuses and bounties provided them” rather than a sense of patriotism. In World War I, 77 percent of military personnel were draftees, and leaders opposed bonus pay because, in President Hoover’s words, “the nation owes no more to the able-bodied veteran than to the able-bodied citizen.”

Wright is eloquent and evocative. “There is little doubt that most Americans are interested in doing ‘the right thing’ for veterans. But they have no clear sense of what this right thing might be.”

• The Snake Eaters: An Unlikely Band of Brothers and the Battle for the Soul of Iraq, by Owen West, Free Press, 352 pages, $26, e-book available.

The 10-man U.S. team’s mission was to teach the fledgling Iraqi Battalion 3/3-1 “how to defeat insurgents.” To do so, the reservists and National Guard soldiers led by Army Lt. Col. Michael Troster (a Drug Enforcement Administration agent in civilian life) adopt “an aggressive approach to advising that clashed with schoolhouse instruction” in counterinsurgency.

The task is familiar, but West’s facility with words makes a book that is distinctive as drama and as documentation.

West says the Iraqi troops — the Snake Eaters — “had a clear, effective streetwise philosophy that the Americans running the war did not.”

When West — a Marine major — goes to Khalidiya as a replacement in late 2006, Troster’s “persistence was now paying dividends.” The Snake Eaters become “the predators, not the prey.”

The reader wins, too. “Writing is part of my genetic code,” admits the son of author Bing West. Details such as “only the flies stirred on Market Street” stand out. The book is no memoir. Owen enters the story only during the last 78 pages. His proceeds go to the Marine Corps Scholarship Foundation and to the families of fallen Snake Eaters.

• The Red Circle: My Life in the Navy SEAL Sniper Corps and How I Trained America’s Deadliest Marksmen, by Brandon Webb, St. Martin’s Press, $27.

“The public suddenly wants to know more about the traditionally secretive world,” the author says. “I hope my own story will provide an instructive window into that unseen world.”

What’s left unseen? “Accounts and descriptions [that] may read like reports from an alien land.” The new territory is aboard the bombed destroyer Cole and inside Afghanistan caves: “Within a few days [after Sept. 11] I had joined my platoon on a nonstop flight to the Middle East.”

Webb’s style has charm but often little insight: One SEAL is “a good guy,” another “an amazing guy,” one “a very solid guy” and another “an amazing, down-to-earth guy.”

• Basic: Surviving Boot Camp and Basic Training, by retired Col. Jack Jacobs and David Fisher, Thomas Dunne Books, 320 pages, $30.

“It is ‘boot camp’ to the Navy and Marine Corps,” the authors say, “but the Army’s chronic lack of creativity in calling it ‘basic training’ gets to the unromantic but essential nub of it.”

There lies the rub. Chapters such as “If It Moves, Salute It” and “Turn Your Head and Cough” cover the essential topics, but the format — introductions followed by anecdotes from soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines — becomes repetitive.

And out of 81 stories in the book’s first half, only 16 are from vets who served since 2000. The “Basic” focus is on “how I did it” rather than “how to do it.”

• Siren’s Song: The Allure of War, by Antonio M. Salinas, Deeds Publishing, 412 pages, $25.

A prior-enlisted Marine and current Army officer says “war in the 21st century seems to have the same ancient allure that attracted men from all ages of history to Siren’s rocks,” and the sound of sirens captures him as a boy. When he hears war’s siren firsthand in Afghanistan he feels “excitement, fear, exhilaration, stress, anger and euphoria — all in a single second.”

Combat has “touched me like nothing else in my life,” and some readers may be touched, too.