Book Review: Harold Coyle's The Are Soldiers
What a joy it is to read fluid, breathless narrative. A master of American English syntax, Harold Coyle grabs you by the hand and won’t let go until you are done with the book. They Are Soldiers is a showcase for athletic prose. But how does he do it?
The secret is in his sentence openers. Seldom does one find the pattern subject, verb, complement. His openers are all prepositional phrases; that is plenty of subordinate clauses.
The grunts fighting the war in Iraq are in great numbers our friends, neighbors, and relatives: The Army Reserve and the National Guard. Coyle’s theme is that these citizens are soldiers-not to be looked down as a half-ragged militia.
Read Coyle’s book. Pray for our men and women in uniform. Let’s bring them back--unharmed and whole--to their friends, their moms, and pops, siblings, friends, their hoods, their towns, their states-bring them back to a grateful nation!
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