Ship’s Library

By DAVID W. MUNNS
Assistant Editor

BOOTS ON THE GROUND: Stories of American Soldiers from Iraq and Afghanistan
Edited by Clint Willis, New York: Thunder’s Mouth Press, July 2004. 297 pp. $17.95

ISBN: 1-56025-587-0

The experiences of American troops in Afghanistan and Iraq are as diverse and unique as their enemies. But to try and understand the day-to-day challenges and atrocities witnessed by troops, one must look into the accounts surfacing about this new generation of American soldiers.

Editor Clint Willis brings these stories to light in his latest anthology, Boots on the Ground: Stories of American Soldiers from Iraq and Afghanistan. Compiled from numerous sources, Willis reprints pertinent, although often hard-to-find, stories about the men and women who serve the country abroad.

Willis notes that the experiences of the troops fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq “are not easy to uncover, in part because few soldiers are yet in a position to write or to speak openly about their life in these wars.” He extracts these tales from the journalists who covered the wars, and whose experiences often parallel the troops whose daily routine they are sent to document.

This voluminous anthology points to the hard truth that although many troops share the values of the American military, the young men and women overseas are often ill-prepared for the fundamental challenge that awaits them in combat. It conveys that the American military is as diverse as America itself: while some troops exemplify compassion and bravery, others are taken aback by the brutality of war and often become components of its viciousness.

The first story, entitled “The Marine,” excerpted from Esquire magazine, takes one Marine, Lt. Col. Robert Sinclair, and his battalion through training exercises pre-Sept. 11, 2001. Sinclair’s thoughts on war are succinct: “There’s something primal about each one of us Marines. If we’re at war, you want to be in the operating forces. You don’t want to be sitting on the sidelines.” He, in this way, exemplifies the readiness and selflessness that was instilled in Marine Corps fighters before the nation was at war.

In contrast, John Koopman’s excerpt from “McCoy’s Marines: Darkside Toward Baghdad,” an account that originally appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle, traces the 3rd Battalion, 4th Marine Regiment, on the path toward Baghdad led by Lt. Col. Bryan P. McCoy. It shows the struggle that troops face as chaos ensues and bodies fly. At one point, after a mortar attack, the voices of Marines echo in the desert after several are killed and Koopman questions McCoy’s assertion that “the artillery shell came from the Iraqis, not the Americans.” Koopman opines simply, “I don’t believe him.”

Boots on the Ground is about the diversity of war experiences that soldiers encounter abroad. It conveys the reality of war in frank and brutal terms while remembering the heroism that often prevails during these most difficult encounters.

Also Received:

THE FACE OF NAVAL BATTLE
Edited by John Reeve and David Stevens, Chicago: Independent Publishers Group, June 2004. 384 pp. $24.95

ISBN: 1-8650-8667-3

Naval history is often written as a catalog of the structure, endurance and ingenuity of battleships. But The Face of Naval Battle portrays the human element — the personnel working on the ships and bringing them to life — as an essential component to understanding past and present naval battles.

The book utilizes narratives, journal excerpts and academic analyses to assert that the source of true naval strength is found in the actions of naval personnel. Edited by experts John Reeve and David Stevens, the human experience of 20th-century naval battle comes to life through heroic deeds of the soldiers profiled in the book. The book shares the stories of life on the sea during wartime, featuring great milestones in history and naval traditions. It explores the foresight and consequences behind naval power, and is a rare examination into the brilliant composition of present military life and future naval battles.

THE BATTLE OF SALAMIS: The Naval Encounter That Saved Greece — and Western Civilization
by Barry Strauss, New York: Simon & Schuster, July 2004. 294 pp. $25.00

ISBN: 0-7432-4450-8

The Battle of Salamis, a naval conflict between the Athenians and the Persians in 480 B.C., is perhaps the most important naval encounter in the ancient world because it prevented democracy from being vanquished from Greece.

Barry Strauss, a Cornell history and classics professor, weaves this narrative from ancient texts and supplements it with modern scholarship to suggest a novel view of the Greeks, suggesting they pushed an “imperial democracy” abroad much different than the pure democracy purportedly practiced by the Athenians.

Strauss uses the establishment of the Delian League, the Greek maritime empire, to supplement his view that the Greek imperialist democracy was propagated via sea. This is not only a great book about an ancient sea battle, but a cleverly molded history lesson about the distant past of Western philosophy and democratic principles.