Customer Reviews

Death Ground: Today's American Infantry in Battle

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

I enjoyed reading this book especially about what this senior Army infantry colonel said about the USMC. I thought that the book was a better review of Marine Corps Planning, capabilities and traditions than "The Making of the Corps". The notes at the end of the chapters are as interesting as the text.I hope TR Fehrenbach who is alive and living in Texas doesn't mind the use of his quote "Infantrymen really have no place in polite civil society" .I am remembering this quote from memory as I can't find my copy of "This Kind of War as It is always being borrowed by friends. But I am sure that TRF who is quoted and epigramed with attribution by Bolger in past books would think this is a wonderful book about the Legions that we would need when he wrote his book back in 1963. I found the book showed how the use of maneuver is no longer just nice but necessary as we must make do with less and do more. The book should certainly be added to the USMC Commandant's reading list .Bravo Zulu to Colonel Bolger

I just read your rules which state that you should not attack another reviewer's opinions but when the review has official status,I think the rule should be Modified. There are people who may be unduly influeced because this was done by an official reviewer- the Kirkus review.I think that the type of person who would like this book who is interested in this subject will realize that this review was biased by a heavy dose of Liberal thought process.The very fact of its publisher- Presidio Press is condemnatory.It is to Army literature what the Naval institute Press is to Navy/Marine Corps Material.I am sure that the military professional will just ignore the reviewer's advice(Kirkus) but I hope that the book will be read by a larger audience.We must not lecture to the choir only especially as the number of influential people (the Congress) continues to have fewer and fewer people who have been to the circus-combat.Also one man's Jingoism is another man's patriotism.Semper Fidelis

This book showed great promise...an indepth look at the American Infantry on today's battlefield. As an Infantry officer on active duty I was very disappointed. I have three major complaints with this book. First, it's super cheesy and hard to take seriously. For example,"Like lightning and thunder, hard fliers and hard grunts together bring down the storm." Very colorful language, but not academic in the least.
Second, this book has little to no in-depth analysis. The author had a great opportunity to demonstrate lessons that we continue to learn across the spectrum of Infantry operations. Instead, he simply retold a few fairy tale versions of modern battle. No origional thought!
Third, this book is overly simplistic to the point of being inaccurate. For example, on page 207 the author describes the Ranger action in Mogadishu on 3 Oct 93. He states that MSG Gordon and SFC Shugart were the task force "final reserve." This is so simplified and dumbed down that its really not an accurate portraite of events.
The only reason I finished this book is because I am stuborn. I consider reading it a waste of my time.

'Death Ground' is as sharp and to-the-point as its title suggests, and many reviewers, both professional and lay, are repulsed by such frank discussion of killing. Author Dan Bolger is a full bird colonel and does not have time to muck about with subtlety, he's where the rubber meets the road, the fate of a brigade of over 6000 troops is in his hands 24/7. Critics have bemoaned the amount of jargon within the text, but anyone with even a brief smattering of knowledge will barely notice. Others have taken offense to the assertion that up until the current war in Iraq, tankers had only done 'four days of honest work in twenty years,' which is a factually true statement. Others have complaints about his handling of the marines, which upon reading is quite the opposite. Bolger's admiration for MEUs, Marine Expeditionary Units, is quite apparent, and his top-to-bottom tour of one occupies a significant chunk of the book. Bolger's new analysis of the battle of Mogadishu is incisive and takes a perspective not yet seen. While the movie 'Black Hawk Down' focuses on the Rangers and Deltas in Mogadishu, Bolger instead investigates the remarkable 2-14 Infantry who came to their rescue. He documents the 2-14th carrying out twenty-two of the hallowed sixty possible tasks that an infantry battalion can perform. Bolger's barrel-centric, boots-on-the-ground view of the world has simply rubbed some people the wrong way, but vindication recently came to Bolger when his name was mentioned in the introduction to the brilliant FM 3-24, the 'radical' new U.S. Army and Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Field Manual that actually garnered a Pulitzer. Read 'Death Ground' for yourself, and don't let some Kirkus hocus pocus deter you.

Disregard the Kerkus review and read the book. This is not a book written for a PC audience, but rather a book to be read and used by professional soldiers. The jargon comes with the territory, and at least Colonel Bolger didn't resort to the usual salty language that characterizes infantry service. As Lord Wellington allegedly once said, "One's perspective on the battlefield is determined by how close one is to the muskets."

Having read the book, I believe that Colonel Bolger has given an accurate and informative view of the present day US Army infantryman and their world. Contrary to the popular jokes and perceptions, the infantryman is plenty smart and tough. They are the ones who do their duty and keep going until they are either killed or wounded. Laugh at that at your own peril. Low pay, low morale, Gulf War Syndrome, etc., are all interesting and critical topics, but not in this book.

Keep your eyes on Colonel Bolger; he'll be a general someday, and a damned good one. We were cadets together and I have watched his career from afar. I always thought that he was too smart to stay in this racket, but he's stayed with it and will hopefully change it for the good. Me, I took my fighting and wars to other locations since I could no longer take the US Army's shilling to do the US Army's work. In the end, perhaps it's not the critic, but the one who stays and guts it out that makes the difference.

A GREAT BOOK FOR THE ARMCHAIR WARRIORS AND MILITARY PEOPLE WHO JUST WANT TO KNOW WHAT INFANTRY LIFE IS LIKE AT GROUND LEVEL. I WAS AN 11 BRAVO MYSELF FOR 24 YEARS,SO I KNOW A LITTLE ABOUT WHAT I'M TALKING ABOUT. IT GIVES A GREAT OVERALL VIEW OF MODERN INFANTRY COMBAT IN IT'S DIFFERENT TYPES OF UNITS, AND THE WAY THEY USE THIER DIFFERING EQUIPMENT AND WEAPONS CAPABILITIES TO CARRY OUT THEIR MISSION. WRITTEN BEFORE 9/11 AND THE STRYKER INFANTRY FIGHTING VEHICLE'S INTRODUCTION INTO AFGHANISTAN AND IRAQ, IT UNFORTUNATELY DOES NOT COVER THAT GREAT VEHICLE'S CAPABILITIES. BUT IT'S STILL 5 STARS, IN MY OPINION !!!!!!!

As a Vietnam Veteran, Death Ground has a unique perspective on how things have changed for the better for our troops. Dan Bolger's descriptions are well thought out, not just for present or retired soldiers. The book offers an insider's view with a simplicity that makes it a good read and complexity that makes you think about war and who really is at risk when action is necessary. I can't wait for the author to pen a fiction thriller like Clancy, Patterson, or others. Well done Sir Cavalier!

As a former Marine I have always carried the opinion (perhaps biased) that the Army was archaic and hopeless in its approach to modern warfare, that it clung too stubbornly to a method of combat more fitting a full-scale European Theatre conflict (ala the Soviet Union).

Col. Bolger has certainly enlightened me to the Army's ability to handle modern warfare. Anyone with any understanding of the paradigm shifts which have occurred following the end of the Cold War will understand and appreciate this book. Anyone seeking a better understanding of how the military is prepared to deal with the paradigm shifts which have occurred following the end of the Cold War will understand and appreciate this book.

Those who long for the strategy & tactics of the Cold War period and wish the world wouldn't change will have little appreciation for this book. Those who can't see beyond pride in their current units to face reality will have little appreciation for this book.

I hope Army hard-liners will take this analysis to heart.

I would share a fighting hole with Col.Bolger. That's a statement I make about few people.

I enjoyed reading this book and highly recommend it to anyone who wants a clear view on the current state of U.S. Infantry. The book is not overly technical in my estimation. It is, however, geared for the reader who has more than a passing interest in things military. It is interesting to note that Col. Bolger is very qualified to write such a book.

Before I started this book, I was a great fan of Daniel Bolger's and had read all his previous books. Based upon his excellent earlier works of both fiction and non-fiction, I felt that Bolger was both a talented professional soldier and a gifted writer. Death Ground changed that impression. This book is a polemical piece with elitist contempt virtually dripping from its pages. Nor are there any great lessons to be learned here.

Organizationally, the book has seven chapters that focus on different types of US infantry units involved in recent operations. The vignettes include Panama (1989), Desert Storm (1991), Somalia (1993), Haiti (1994) and Liberia (1996). With the exception of the Battle of Mogadishu in 1993, all these tactical vignettes are company or smaller size actions. Each chapter is used to highlight the unique characteristics of that type of unit. According to Bolger, there are approximately 100,000 US infantry in 91 Regular Army and Marine battalions. Actually, using his tables of organization, the number is 69,189 and that includes non-infantry personnel in those units.

Only regular US Army and Marine units are included in the survey of modern American infantry. Bolger begins in the first chapter by contemptuously dismissing the Army National Guard and Reserve infantry units; "these part-time warriors ...are not manned, equipped, trained, disciplined, or led to the standards of the Regulars. Perhaps in the days when preparing for battle meant grabbing a squirrel gun off the mantel and learning a few parade-ground evolutions, the armed forces could get by with that caliber of soldier... Close combat demands professionals..." Aside from the obvious insult to the over 100 Army National Guard infantry battalions who are treated as pathetic sub-humans, Bolger ignores the fact that the tough Chinese, Korean and Vietnamese infantry who gave us so much trouble in 1950-1975 were conscripts with no special training and usually limited combat experience. The Somali militiamen who came close to annihilating Task Force Ranger were not well-trained professionals, merely motivated amateurs. In fact, when Bolger quips about the National Guard that, "for a variety of good reasons, those happy warriors had not been called to federal service," he ignores the deployment of Army National Guard infantry to the Sinai, Croatia and Bosnia in recent years.

Bolger then moves on to heap derision on the Military Intelligence Community. Citing the 101st Airborne air assault into Iraq in February 1991, Bolger claims that MI analysts who forecast little or no Iraqi resistance on the Landing Zone "could afford to be smug". Bolger ignores the fact that US commanders had the most thorough intelligence picture of an enemy that any army has had in history and wisecracks, "intelligence expertise be damned". In a typical swipe, Bolger claims that "intell analysts work in air-conditioned trailers; they don't patrol." False. I served as a battalion, brigade and division intelligence officer in a light infantry division and we had no "air-conditioned trailers" - we worked off the ubiquitous Humvees liked everybody else. And when not engaged in intelligence activities, MI soldiers must engage in local security which includes patrolling.

Bolger's next target is the armor community, lamenting that the mechanized infantry battalions are "an endangered species" because they are "yoked to a corpse, the US Army's heavy armored force." Bolger insultingly claims, "the combat arm of decision excels at waging yesterday's war. Armor's time has passed...American armor has contributed exactly four days of honest work in the last five decades." Bolger suggests that a few tanks should be retained for infantry support work, but the vast majority should be retired. This blatantly biased view ignores the valuable contributions that US tankers made in the Korean and Vietnam Wars, as well as maintaining the peace along the Inter-German Border in the Cold War.

Throughout the book, Bolger makes constant chest-thumping assertions that "every active battalion is an elite body" and that only Regulars can handle infantry combat. American draftees from earlier wars are derided as lacking intelligence and motivation (World War Two veterans should also be insulted by this book); Bolger claims they were unwilling to close with the enemy. Wasn't one of the greatest American infantrymen of all time, Sergeant Alvin York, a mere draftee with no special training? How many West Point Ranger School graduates have single-handedly eliminated 157 enemy soldiers and 35 machineguns? Check the other Medal of Honor winners from 1917-1972; not many "professionals" in that elite group.

This bad book ends with some truly awful conclusions. Bolger anticipates that the 91 current Regular battalions will further shrink but become even more elite as they "merge" with the Special Operations Community. He forecasts a bright future for the Marines and Rangers, less bright for the airborne/air assault community and virtually none for the light and mechanized units. That only makes sense if you anticipate military operations that only last a few days or weeks, but not well-suited to more drawn-out campaigns. Bolger makes incredibly broad generalizations about the future using only his examples from 1989-1996. For somebody with a PhD in Military History, Bolger shows a great deal of ignorance for that subject. American and British professional soldiers in the Nineteenth Century adapted to frontier warfare, but they never lost sight of the true mission, which was preparation for the Big One, as Bolger puts it. Bolger is correct in pointing out the obvious that there will be more wars, but probably incorrect in forecasting that the next decade will look like the previous one. They rarely do. Should we become involved in a major, long-term conflict in Asia or Latin America - distinct possibilities in the next decade - then a small, elitist US military will not suffice as a deterrent. This book should not be on anyone's professional reading list.