Solid reporting but a bit narrow

books:


	• McCoy's Marines: Darkside to Baghdad John Koopman Zenith Press, 2005 - 288 pages average customer review:based on 9 reviews view larger image
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Koopman's War

By Major Keith F. Kopets, USMC

Sometimes, you can't judge a book by its cover. This is one of those cases. LtCol Bryan P. McCoy and the Marines of 3d Battalion, 4th Marines provide most of the material for this book, yes, but McCoy's Marines is not really about them. It is, essentially, one part memoir, three parts combat report, refracted through the lens of author John Koopman. He was on a mission to cover the war in Iraq for the San Francisco Chronicle. He met the battalion in February 2003 at Camp Ripper, Kuwait, and stayed with them north into Iraq, all the way to Firdous Square, Baghdad.

Censure was not a problem for Koopman. "I don't expect you to be a cheerleader for the Marines," McCoy told him. "That's not your job. Just be fair and accurate, that's all I ask. If we screw something up, I expect you to write about it. If it's something that needs to be fixed, a story will speed things up."

Koopman got along well with the men in the battalion. He had been a Marine himself in the late 1970s, reporting to Parris Island after high school in 1976. He was 17 years old, from a small town in Nebraska. "I was pretty naïve back then," Koopman remembers. He finished his enlistment a 21-year old sergeant at Camp Lejeune. He met his wife, Isabel, on liberty in Spain during his last deployment.

He left her and their eight-year-old son in San Francisco to report on the war. Koopman, like the Marines he covered in Iraq, felt the sting of separation. "I called home," Koopman says, on his satellite phone from Iraq:

"Isabel cried when she heard my voice. I couldn't understand it at the time. But that's how it works. When you're at home, thinking about the war or anything you've not actually experienced, the not knowing is what kills you. When you're there, and you can touch and feel the dirt, and see other people, and understand the risk and threat, it's not so bad."

That's immediacy. If you served in Iraq, you know what Koopman felt like; if you were back home with a friend or loved one in the war, you know what Koopman's wife was feeling. The family separation was another bond Koopman shared with the men of 3/4. "What I came to look forward to in the war," Koopman writes, was "the look on a Marine's face when I handed him the handset and told him to call his mom."

Koopman does not wear the reader down with metaphor or political abstraction. His writing is linear, direct, and without pretension. "The Marines went in heavy," he writes, for example. "That's their way. Nothing subtle about them. Walk in with a gun in your hand and start asking questions." At times, Koopman is profane; at times, he is funny. He is never boring. But he reminds you, though, more often than he should, that he is a journalist writing his first book. The sentence fragments are the give-away. You have to bear with them.

When it comes down to it, Koopman is faithful to what he saw and what he felt. His view of 3/4 and the war may have been through a soda straw, but the book works because he stays in his lane. He is less concerned with the larger picture or making sense out of the war than he is in simply setting to print his own observations. In his conclusion, he writes, "People ask me my opinion all the time. They think because I was in Iraq a couple of times that I have some knowledge, some answers. But I know nothing."

If McCoy himself were the reviewer, I imagine he would judge this book faithful to the guidance he gave Koopman before the war. He would probably censure Koopman, though, for the hagiographic inference of the title. But Koopman, I think, would dig in and defend. He would say that 3/4, as he saw it from the outside looking in, was a battalion that took on the personality of its commander.

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Solid reporting but a bit narrow

Writing was good but I found some typos. Wasn't much of a story here, actually, and that surprised me. Not about the battalion commander so the title misleads. It's good...but not the best around. Wanted more action, to be frank.

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My comparative review

Great book! I was glued to it from the first few pages.

I found myself reading this until the sun rose in the morning it was that good. John does a great job of describing the fighting in Iraq.

My compliments to the author.

fun view of the grunts

This is not just a view of the BC...the entire battalion shines. Loved this view of a grunt battalion!

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reviews: page 1, 2

They were the soldiers who pulled down the statue of Saddam Hussein ? the 3rd Battalion, 4th Marine Regiment, led by Lt. Col. Bryan P. McCoy (radio call sign: Darkside). And this is the story of their war, seen from the inside by the reporter they called Paperboy. From the build-up in Kuwait to the first push into Basra, from the briefings to the heat of battles planned or stumbled upon, San Francisco Chronicle reporter John Koopman captures the war in Iraq as it was lived, fought, and felt ? the nitty-gritty as well as the guts-and-glory of it ? and as he saw it firsthand from Darkside?s humvee or riding with the sergeant major (the Marine infantry battalion?s "most feared, respected, loved, and hated man"). A former service Marine himself, Koopman was seeing combat for the first time, too. His account, part memoir, part biography, part battle history, encompasses all the bravery and fear, camaraderie, excitement, humor, and sorrow experienced on the shifting front line of America?s war in Iraq. In spring of 2004, author Koopman returned to Iraq and reunited with McCoy?s Marines following their return to Iraq and the new insurgent war. This "rest of the story" makes for a fascinating epilogue.

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