Team Yankee: A Novel of World War III

Captivating description of modern warfare. There is no attempt to sugar coat the narrative. Coyle certainly knows what he’s writing about. The novel is especially pertinent now considering events in Ukraine.

I served as an artillery forward observer, Assistant Executive Officer (AXO) and Executive Officer (XO) in Germany in the late 1970s. This novel is largely spot-on, and takes place before the great Reagan Modernization of the 1980s. While it largely assumes that Russian equipment is not the junk that we now know it to be, and that the Russian army and tactics are better than they really are, it still captures the reality of the NATO forces in the late 1970s. There are no sappy love plots or other distractions here; just how it would have been. And the author at least had some notion, which few had at the time, that the Soviet (Russian) Army was corrupt, and poorly led, motivated, and trained. This is an excellent novel about a war which, thank God, was never fought, at least not until the Russo-Ukrainian War.

Well written, and a landmark example that other authors have more recently have not followed. Doyle is a great storyteller and adheres to realism.

First, this novel – and I assume this is due to the Kindle edition – is filled with awful typos. It’s a bit like a bad OCR, with words missing, words crunched together, etc. It is a bit distracting, but one can get past it.This novel is about a mixed armored and mechanized infantry company of M-113s and M1 Abrams (with 105mm cannon, so not the M1A1s with the much better 120mm) fighting in Germany during World War 3 against Soviet and Warsaw Pact forces in, approximately, 1980. This novel is practically a dramatized scenario of various combat scenarios: fixed defense, planned attack, hasty attack, hasty defense, ambush, etc. In this novel, sometimes the Soviets came out on top, but in general the Americans almost always won – at least within the battlespace that the novel takes place. It mentions how elsewhere, NATO is overrun and northern Germany falls.Where this novel takes place, in Central Germany, the Warsaw Pact does not outnumber NATO near as much. As a result, Team Yankee (the mixed company) generally defeats its opponents handily eventually going so far as to route the entire Warsaw Pact front and drive on to Berlin practically with just one division. Apparently, the Warsaw Pact had no defense in depth – not even dismounted infantry to hold towns and cities and harass supply lines. This is not really realistic, given the size of the Warsaw Pact forces.Still, the point is that this novel demonstrates the high intensity of force-on-force conventional warfare. Attrition is much higher than in fighting an insurgency, and decisions need to be made much quicker. Everything is a tough balancing act – of defense, protecting flanks, moving as fast as possible, and allocating the right forces to the right places at the right time.One small thing the novel got wrong is the level of exhaustion the troops experience. It suggests basically that in two days combat the soldiers are so worn out the can’t stop falling asleep. In the Iraq invasion of 2003, however, armored coalition forces maintained a near non-stop pace of operation for over seven days at a time with just 1-3 hours of sleep, and that not necessarily continuous. There simply were not enough forces to provide relief and rotation as the front and flanks expanded rapidly towards Baghdad.The novel ends with a basic collapse of the Warsaw Pact – even though apparently they hold half or more of northern Germany, and would probably have a few million soldiers being flowed into the front within the coming weeks.This novel is worth reading for those who might not have any idea what a modern conventional war might be like and who think that counter-insurgency operations are the “masters” of warfare. In the WW3 scenario, all decisions were likely to result in dozens of friendly forces KIA, and all decisions had to be made within hours with limited information.Liam H. Dooleywww.liamhdooley.com

Great read , having served in the A.F In Europe during this time of which the book is written it brings back a lot of memories good , and bad

I first read this novel when it came out in 1994 and I was active duty in the US Navy. In the context of the just concluded Cold War, it was a great read, especially since my focus on the then Soviet Union was the -Soviet Pacific Fleet out of Vladivostok (I was a Pacific Ocean Sailor). I enjoyed re-reading this newer version of the novel immensely. Harold Coyle is a great story teller. However, the editorial staff was lacking. There were a significant number of spelling, punctuation, and grammatical errors liberally sprinkled throughout the book. Although the story was very entertaining, the editorial errors took away a level of professionalism that should have been there as a default. If a reprint of this book is in the works, I'd recommend editing this version more thoroughly.

This crosses the line of humanizing soldiers at war into worship. Enemies of our heroic Team Yankee are one dimensional and laughably stupid. Still, it's entertaining.

As a kid growing up in Germany during the Iron Curtain days and then working with the 3 letter agencies for the last 25 years, every one assumed that Soviet equipment, and now Russian, worked as well as ours. As the Ukrainian military has found out, not so much, and it comes down to the people fighting as to who can impose their will, even when heavily outnumbered. The book is prescient about the Soviets, and now Russians, can only rely on terror attacks to make up for the incompetence of their military.

"Team Yankee", geschrieben 1985, handelt von einer gemischten US-Kampfgruppe, eben dem "Team Yankee". Gesxhildert wedren die Kämpfe in den ersten 10 Tagen eines 3. Weltkrieges in Europa aus der Sicht des US Kommandeurs, der eine Mischung aus M1 Abrams-Kampfpanzern, Aufklärungsfahrzeugen und Panzerjägern sowie mechanisierte Infanterie (wir würden Panzergrenadiere sagen)gegen russische und polnische Einheiten befehligt.Okay, die Amis sind natürlich besser, haben bessere Fahrzeuge und gewinnen schließlich. Aber der Roman ist, anders als der Nachfolger von Tom Clancy (Im Sturm, erschienen im Folgejahr) in meinen Augen besser, weil nicht so technikverliebt. Es wird der Panzerkampf geschildert, wie er hätte sein können. Müdigkeit, Verluste, Erfolge werden viel detaillierter geschildert. Dass viele Handlungsstränge "Im Sturm" gleichen, besonders das Ende des Buches mit dem begrenzten Nuklearwaffeneinsatz, Umsturz im Kreml und Waffenstillsctand etc, liegt daran, dass Clancy tatsächlich den Rahmen übernommen hat. Daher ist "Team Yankee" eher eine Ergänzung auf unterer Ebene zu "Im Sturm" und kein Konkurrenzprodukt.Klar, die Überlegenheit der Amis und der Verlauf sind sehr pro-amerikanisch, aber es ist erträglich. Zudem 1985 noch keine Details des GDP (German Defence Plan) der NATO bekannt waren und wir heute wissen, dass der Nuklear- und Chemiewaffeneinsatz sehr viel früher seitens der USA und auch des Warschauer Vertrages passiert wäre. Aber das wissen wir heute, und da liegt die Schwäche des Buches, es ist eher eine "schön wäre es, wenn"-Geschichte denn eine realitätsnahe Beschreibung eines Pamzerkampfes.Trotzdem gefällt das Buch, es ist schnell zu lesen, größtenteils spannend und ausreichend detailliert, ohne wie eine Werbeschrift der Waffenindustrie zu wirken (anders als die Bücher von Clncy, Coontz, Browns etc).

- this is about as far in nuance, depth, literary quality and emotion from "all quiet on the western front" as a three days old cold McD Happy Meal is from a good dinner- badly lectured/edited edition with missing words, wrong spacings...- one specific crewman dies, is back in full health 80 pages later, and 20 pages on a captain writes the crewman's parent to express his sympathy for their loss...

In vielen amerikanischen Techno-Thrillern werden GI's als edle Krieger voll Idealismus und Freiheitsliebe dargestellt; sie kämpfen nicht gerne, aber wenn es sein muß, ziehen sie den Job vor Pflichtbewußtsein strotzend durch. "Team Yankee" zeichnet aus der Sicht einer Panzerkompanie und deren Kompaniechef ein wesentlich differenzierteres Bild vom Soldaten an der Front. Angst und Übermüdung fordern ihren Tribut, und nicht wenige Kämpfer drohen unter dem Eindruck des tagtäglichen Grauens zu verrohen. Sowohl die Kampfszenen als auch die Gedanken und Empfindungen der Beteiligten sind sehr glaubhaft beschrieben. Obwohl "Team Yankee" nicht unbedingt das spannenste Buch dieses Genres ist, gehört es meiner Meinung nach doch zu den empfehlenswertesten.

Love this book since I read itthe first time during my time in Germany during the cold war.

Tolles Buch, leider ist diese Ausgabe voller Fehler und ausgelassener Worte.Great book per se, but this edition is chock-full of mistakes and omitted words.