An MTV soldier’s shallow report from ‘Hell’ - Entertainment, Books - Navy Times

An MTV soldier’s shallow report from ‘Hell’

An Angel From Hell: Real Life on the Front Lines by Ryan A. Conklin, Berkley Caliber, $24.95, 391 pages

“As seen on ‘MTV’s Real World: Brooklyn,’” the jacket touts.

With that sell, you expect to learn how former Spc. Ryan Conklin’s fellow MTV cast members react to his Individual Ready Reserve redeployment notice. And you expect to read what his fellow soldiers in Iraq think about being in the same company as the guy who was an MTV celebrity.

And because he lived in Gettysburg, Pa., from age 11 (he enlisted at 17), you might anticipate that Conklin will connect growing up near a famous Civil War battle site to the infamous sites of Iraq.

But if you read “An Angel from Hell” for even one of these reasons, you’ll be disappointed. On the penultimate page, Conklin mentions going to Brooklyn to participate in “Real World.” On the final page, he mentions getting called back to active duty in 2008.

What happens before that? It’s one thing to write that “just another day ... came and went” and “dinner at Hooter’s [sic] was the first and best meal I had back in the U.S.,” and another thing to read about them.

He chips a tooth during a shooting exercise at Forward Operating Base Remagen in Tikrit. His roommate snores. He suffers an ingrown toenail. He endures routine daily patrols, all part of Army life in 2005-2006 for a turret gunner with Angel company of the 3rd Battalion of the 101st Airborne’s 187th “Rakkasans” regiment.

The gunner offers many, many details in a conversational style, but most of the content fails to compel with significance or substance.

There is occasional soberness:

• Conklin relates an incident in which “unarmed Iraqi men were shot down dead and a story was concocted” to protect the two soldiers of Charlie Company who were responsible. Everyone was told to keep his mouth shut.

• After a suicide-bomb attack, he “immediately stepped into Hell. The closer I got to the bloodstained wall, the bigger and bigger the chunks of human flesh got.”

• The book is dedicated to Cpl. Andrew J. Kemple, who died when “a single shot from an enemy sniper” went into Kemple’s collarbone, neck and lungs, and to Sgt. Benjamin J. Miller, who committed suicide while on leave from Iraq.

There is no doubt Conklin is earnest and genuine, and to his credit, the veteran puts a face on the Iraq war for many MTV watchers.

But next time Conklin writes a book, this reviewer hopes his editor and publisher will help him go more than skin deep.

Huffman is a Military Times book reviewer.