Pages: Book Reviews

Dragons at War
and
Team Yankee

reviewed by Bill Gibbs


Dragons at War by Daniel P. Bolger
Presidio Press, Novato, CA, 1986

Team Yankee by Harold Coyle
Presidio Press, Novato, CA, 1987 $17.95

The environment of the modem tactical battlefield is a subject open to considerable debate among analysts. Serious students of modern military operations strive to stay abreast of the latest developments and trends in military hardware, doctrine and training. Two recent books, Team Yankee and Dragons at War, appear to have been released with an eye toward this market. An analysis of the two produces some interesting comparisons.

Team Yankee is heavily patterned, with proper acknowledgements, after the scenario established in General Sir John Hackett's 1978 best seller, The Third World War. Team Yankee seems to have been written to recognize the quality and sacrifices of the officers and men of today's army. It also attempts to fill a gap in the recent string of modern military novels by adding greater detail to the land battle. It is fictional entertainment aimed at the general public and is selling quite well.

Dragons at War, by contrast, is a professional analysis of the U.S. Army's showcase National Training Center (NTC) through the eyes of one company commander. It is an informative and educational examination of this state-of-the-art training post. Dragons at War seems to have been aimed at a much smaller audience - the professional army officer. Despite the insider's approach, however, it is easily accessible to the general public due to its style and glossary.

A major difference lies in the scope of the books. Team Yankee is a novel covering the actions of an armor heavy combat team in Europe during World War III. Dragons at War is a non-fictional study of the operations of a specific mechanized infantry heavy battalion task force at the NTC during a peacetime deployment. Despite this difference, the books share several common aspects.

Both are written by active duty army officers. Team Yankee is the work of Major Harold Coyle, a VMI graduate and armor officer. The author of Dragons at War, Captain Daniel Bolger, is a graduate of the Citadel and an infantry officer. Both have been company commanders and have experienced combat arms training in the modern environment.

Both books were published by Presidio Press and feature maps that appear to have been generated by the authors' home computers. The facts are there, but they are tough on the eyes. I have been to the NTC and had a hard time interpreting the maps in Dragons at War. It is difficult to understand Presidio's failure to reproduce the maps professionally.

Both books have a similar viewpoint. The key character in each is the commander of a company team in action. Dragons at War attempts to present the view from the battalion level, but the actions of the author's company are the most extensively examined. Both present the featured company as the only fully competent unit in the battalion.

Both also present the battalion's actions from a relatively isolated viewpoint. This is to be expected in Dragons at War as the training exercise is conducted at the battalion level. For Team Yankee, this viewpoint is less accurate. I feel a greater treatment of the other units on the battlefield would have been more realistic. These units were treated in a relatively abstract manner.

Both books have operations occurring at the same pace. Team Yankee covers several weeks of continuous combat at the outbreak of WWIII. Dragons at War covers two weeks of individual simulated battles. Both books, however, illustrate the stop-start pace of U.S. Army training operations. Between battles the mock enemy withdraws for the units to conduct evaluation and planning. In both books, the enemy remains conveniently quiet during those planning periods. At NTC, this is by design. While such lulls would occur during a modem war, I have a hard time believing the Soviets would launch an invasion of Europe at the slow, unorganized pace presented in Team Yankee.

Team Yankee is well written and entertaining. The characters are realistic when examined individually. I didn't care for the fact that once the shooting started, every officer in the company team became a superstar while those in other units performed in a uniformly poor manner. While some units are certainly better than others, overall the army's talent is not that lean.

The book offers an excellent view of the effects of a first use of chemical and nuclear weapons. While neither has been used in modern times, the accounts seemed very realistic and are chilling. I also enjoyed the character development of the soldiers in the unit. Too many books would have overlooked this important aspect and concentrated only on the officers. The officers just didn't have the right mix of character strength and tactical ability. I will admit that I didn't care for O'Bannon much as I couldn't feel comfortable with many of his actions.

The major problem I had with Team Yankee is the performance of the Soviet units. In the book the Soviet companies operate independently, something their doctrine doesn't allow. Certainly their doctrine may change during the war, but not so drastically in a few weeks. The Soviet counterattack on Hill 214 is completely out of step with Soviet doctrine as it is currently known. I found the Soviet actions totally unrealistic for the first weeks of a war, especially one they started.

There is a great deal of detail in Team Yankee, presented in an easy to read manner. There were some incorrect details, though. The descriptions of thermal sights and the quality of images they produce are more correct for the older passive sights than for the current thermal versions. I also took issue with the company's conduct of stand to, the references to a lack of chemical training in Europe, and the conduct of frequency changes during operations. I also don't believe that three days into WWIII, the unit would worry about baths and leave their defensive positions for that purpose. Such errors were a surprise given the author's credentials.

While Team Yankee offers one man's view of how WWIII might be fought, Dragons at War is an in depth analysis of an actual peacetime deployment. Army units stationed in the continental US conduct annual rotations to the NTC at Fort Irwin, California. This event is the focus of the unit's training year and is an important, intensive evaluation. A two week war, using mostly poorly maintained, cast off equipment, is then conducted against a Soviet regiment on its home turf. Every action is videotaped and aggressively critiqued. The NTC is a very important facet of life in a CONUS army unit.

I was surprised to learn that a collection of peacetime war stories had been published, as the subject seems of doubtful interest to the general public. I was even more surprised to realize I knew the subject unit and, to a lesser extent, the author. I had spent three years, including the period covered in Dragons at War, in the 1st Brigade, 24th Infantry Division and had been to the NTC in the earlier deployment mentioned in the book. I knew of Cpt. Bolger professionally and thought well of him.

I must admit two things before proceeding further. My deployment at the NTC was very different from that discussed in the book. Our pace was varied and the exercises were extensive, but not the canned evaluations against the Opposing FORCE (OPFOR) as practiced since. The NTC, as currently operated, emphasizes evaluation over training. The intent of the NTC cadre is to rigorously evaluate a unit in an adverse environment for their own good, but the deployed unit's chain of command attaches too much importance to the evaluation of the unit to really benefit. The loss of the outstanding training opportunity I experienced in lieu of another home version of You Bet Your Rank is regrettable. Despite this, the NTC is still of tremendous value to the army.

Second, I did not leave Fort Stewart with a good impression of the tactical abilities of Bolger's battalion. With exceptions (including the author), the officers and NCOs seemed less motivated than those of the other two battalions. These observations were born out repeatedly during field problems.

With these admissions, I find Cpt. Bolger's study presented a highly accurate picture of the NTC environment. His descriptions of the terrain and pace of the operations matches my recollections perfectly. I must, however, take issue with him on two major points.

First, as alluded to in the book's introduction by retired General Gorman, too much of the book's emphasis is placed on the career game. To paraphrase the introduction, the army needs officers to perform their duty not preoccupied with personal career gain. Such concerns seldom surfaced in my battalion, but if the Dragons actually suffered from such a complete preoccupation with the army's career system, as depicted in this book, it is no wonder the battalion never performed as well as they should have.

In fairness to Cpt. Bolger, it must be pointed out that many good officers perform their duties for years with little reward in comparison to the more selfish career oriented officers. As long as the army continues to promote the latter type of officer early, intelligent men cannot ignore the obvious.

The second disagreement concerns the presentation of doctrinal errors. Cpt. Bolger does not properly distinguish his doctrinal errors for the reader in many cases. If a company commander chooses to ignore an order to move his company to a key defensive position and go to sleep, it should not be vindicated as a sound decision because the company was not crushed when the rest of the battalion was routed a few hours later. I found several instances in the book where a major error was not pointed out as such. The value of Dragons at War as a learning tool is greatly diminished due to such instances. It requires a prior knowledge of doctrine to properly interpret every decision during the two week period.

Overall I like Dragons at War. I would recommend it wholeheartedly to anyone interested in the NTC or modern tactical warfare. The author knows his subject and presents it well. My only caution is for readers with little military training or without a knowledge of current battle doctrine. Beware of accepting each decision as the correct option. Everyone on a major operation is prone to make a few mistakes. Most of these in Dragons at Warare identified as such.

Team Yankee is also a book I would recommend with a caution. It succeeds as an entertaining novel, but fails in properly presenting likely Soviet operations in the event of such a war. For example, compare the actions of the Soviets in Team Yankee with those of the OPFOR in Dragons at War. If the Soviets were to cooperate with such a poor performance, the US could certainly reduce its defense efforts.

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