Customer Reviews

Combat Team: The Captain's War: An Interactive Exercise in Company Level Command in Battle

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An  unusual book that deals with leadership at the tactical level.  "Combat Team: The Captain's War, An Interactive Exercise in Company Level Command in Battle, is by John F. Antal, an Army officer presently serving in the office of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The premise of the book, which the author describes as a "scrambled text"; is that the reader commands a company-sized combined arms team and leads it through a series of combat situations. The "scrambled text" requires an action at the end of each section of the book. Readers will jump to specified sections of the narrative based on a roll of the dice or decisions they have made while working through each section. This replication of a profoundly nonlinear process illustrates the passage from Clausewitz's On War with which Antal introduces the Foreword: "Everything in war is simple, but the simplest thing is difficult. The difficulties accumulate and end by producing a kind of friction that is inconceivable unless one has experienced war." From PARAMETERS, US Army War College Quarterly, The United States Army's Senior Professional Journal,  Winter 1998, pp. 143-44.

Should be required reading for all Army officers. If you want to be able to save "Private Ryan" someday, Captain, then you'd better start working on this book. Antal is a master of leadership and tactics and excels in his ability to teach the reader these difficult subjects. He is also a fascinating storyteller. His characters and the events they experience are vibrant but ,unlike other novels, you don't just observe the action you live it. Your active participation in the decisionmaking process lets you come as close as possible to truly experiencing the leadership challenges faced by today's young commanders. A must read for anyone who wishes to improve their leadership skills and to better understand America's Army.

The third interactive exercise by this author deals with tank warfare at company level: Two Abrams platoons and two Bradley platoons are tasked to fight through difficult terrain in order to assist surrounded friendlies behind enemy lines. The reader can experience different phases of combat and make decisions which determine the outcome of a whole operation. The book teaches some basic military tactics, because obvious tactical mistakes will immediately lead to friendly losses.For professional soldiers (especially tankers) this exercise should be no challenge. Nevertheless it's more interesting and colourful than most of the decision games I faced so far. For people with military interests this book is worth reading anyway.

By the way: The author seems to like quotations. Every section starts with one. I wonder why you can only encounter German sources here if you choose the wrong decision somewhere. As a German officer I don't mind - as long as that doesn't mean anything...

Few Americans will ever actively lead a combat unit, like the combined tank and mechanized infantry force led by the fictional Army captain in John Antal's COMBAT TEAM, yet almost anyone who must direct the efforts of others, whether it be in business, education or healthcare, can and should learn the central lesson of all the books in Colonel Antal's series of three interactive combat scenarios. To succeed, a commander at any level must develop and consider all reasonable options, then delegate authority enhanced his or her expertise, augmented in turn by what the teacher gains from the student. As the captain commands he also learns from his lieutenants, sergeants and privates. This principle should guide us all, regardless of uniform, or mission in life.

This book is fun and interactive. You are thrust into an immediate combat situation and are given a company of tanks, you have very little time to organize and to get to know your men. So how do you find success? Who do you rely on? What kind of information do you need before you can make your decision? This book will challenge your assumptions, preconceptions, and your skill in making sense out of information in battle.

Good luck and Enjoy!

I was expecting this to be a dry informational book. But it briefs you on the basic of tanks, and throws you into battle in an interactive, sectioned book where you choose what will happen next.
You learn a lot from the story, from your mistakes, and from appendixes in the back. If you end up dying in combat, or even succeeding, there's is a section which tells you what you did right or wrong with quotes from famous generals and military theorists like Patton and Sun Tzu.
Great book, great read, and cheap! Love it!

www.aaronsinfo.com

I wish I could use this series of books on new platoon leaders. It would teach them to manage resources, be tough when they have to be and no try to be everyone's friend (and the consequences that come with that). Get the other two in the series first.

I read Antal's other book (Infantry Combat) a number of years ago and felt like I actually learned some valuable insights (albeit as an "armchair" expert). This book however seemed too binary and simple. I finished it to the "best" outcome in one pass and most of the potential for bad outcomes relied on a dice roll. By binary, I mean that if you made the right choice (which seemed obvious) things went very well, if you made the wrong choice, you were dead within a couple of pages. Overall, I would say that this text oversimplifies the decision making process in combat too greatly by limiting the number of choices and with the abundance of information available. The best plans are truly simple (overly complicated plans almost never work), but if you've read anything about armor tactics, this book isn't worth much for educational value. There is no real information quandary and the fog of war seems very thin in this text. I would expect that any commander would make the right decisions in these situations, thus the limited value of this book. It would seem obvious that sometimes in combat, there is no perfect solution with an ideal outcome, just a choice about how to deal with a deadly situation in the best possible way.
That being said, I did enjoy reading this text and it was a nice entry-level exam that, in my own mind, validated what I felt I understood about armored combat.

This book is a must read for every professional soldier and Marine ... or for that matter, anyone interested in ground combat. If you want a glimpse of what combined arms, ground combat might be like in Kosovo or Korea, read Combat Team!