Team Yankee–A novel of World War III

“All Bravo 3 Romeo elements, upon impact of friendly artillery, you will commence firing. Maintain fire distribution and good shooting. Romeo 25, out.”

Team Yankee, page 53

Harold Coyle is a retired armor officer who, among other assignments, served in Desert Storm. Team Yankee was his debut novel, first published in 1987. The story follows a tank company combat team in the initial phase of a Warsaw Pact attack against NATO during the Cold War. Although the characters and events are fictional, Mr. Coyle drew upon his extensive armor experience to lend authenticity and realism to his story.

There are many books in the realm of military what-if fiction, yet few authors have achieved the feel and atmosphere of Team Yankee. Even after so many years in print, it still ranks among the best novels in the genre. I first read the book in 1987 while serving as a cavalry scout with the 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment in Germany.

One day during lunch, I was browsing in our post Stars and Stripes Bookstore as the clerk stocked some newly-arrived books. She placed a copy of Team Yankee on the shelf and I immediately picked the book up to see what the story was about. Flipping through the pages, this passage caught my eye:

The drumbeat of Soviet artillery continued unabated in the distance. The Russian gun crews had to have been getting tired of humping rounds by now, Bannon thought, for the rate of fire was slowing down. The distant rumble was joined by the noise of Team Yankee coming to life. 

Team Yankee, page 29

That was it. I was hooked. I marched over to the register and bought the book. That afternoon, I sat in the turret of my Bradley on the hardstand and began to read. We were doing motor stables, which was the cavalry name for vehicle maintenance. Even though I got sucked into the narrative, there were times when I had to put the book down to do some actual work.

There I was, surrounded by M1 tanks, Bradleys, M109 howitzers, M113s; all of the combat vehicles that were part of Mr. Coyle’s story. We trained all the time to perform the actions of Team Yankee’s characters, the tankers, infantrymen, and other Soldiers. Their lives before the balloon went up (that was our euphemism for the start of that unthinkable war) would have been identical to ours.

By the late 80s, there were few combat veterans in the armor force, and we talked all the time about what would happen if we went to war. I thought a great deal about how I would perform in combat, and I know other troopers did too. Sitting in your crew position, it was impossible to not think of the what-ifs. After all, that’s human nature.

Here’s a section that really caught my attention. Before their first battle, the team commander, Capt. Bannon, has just asked his crew if the tank’s crew-served weapons were loaded:

Sheepishly, Folk [the tank gunner] replied that it hadn’t occurred to him to do so while they were in an assembly area with the cavalry still out in front. All the range safety briefings and all the times the men had been harangued about keeping weapons clear and elevated except when on a live fire range were coming back to haunt them. Bannon couldn’t blame his crew. It was their first battle.

Team Yankee, page 31

I could totally see this happening. Just like Mr. Coyle wrote, we had weapons safety drilled into our heads. The Bradley’s 25mm chain gun had two safeties, an electric toggle switch on the control panel and a manual safety on the bottom of the receiver. After firing, we placed both in the safe position. To fire again, both had to be switched to the fire position.

If you forgot to switch the manual safety to fire, the 25mm gun still cycled, but didn’t fire the rounds. Instead, they would launch out the ejection chute onto the engine intake. There was a funny expression for this embarrassing event: launching torpedoes. It wasn’t dangerous, just dumb. But I remembered the time one of our tank commanders had accidentally cranked off four rounds with his .50 caliber machine gun in an assembly area at Grafenwoehr. Better safe than sorry.

As the events of the story began, Team Yankee was set in a battle position with the cavalry out in front. That would have been my buddies and me in a real war. Our job was to fight the covering force battle. By trying to slow the Soviet juggernaut, we would trade time and space (and probably lives) to give units like the fictional Team Yankee a chance to deploy.

The critical moment occurred when the cavalry handed off the battle to the main force in what we called a passage of lines. When this happened in the story, the cav was locked in a tough fight for its life, limping back through the friendly obstacles to a passage point in Team Yankee’s lines:

M-1 tanks and M-3 Cavalry combat vehicles, mixed together, their guns to the rear and … orange identification panels flapping as they moved, came rolling through the lanes marked in the Team’s minefields. … The ordeal for the cavalry wasn’t over yet. As the first vehicles entered the village, the streets erupted in flame and explosions. The Soviets were dumping at least a battalion’s worth of artillery against the town in an effort to extract one last modicum of vengeance on the retreating cavalry.

Team Yankee, pages 46-47

When I first read Team Yankee, I had never been to war. My crew and I fired countless live rounds on the ranges. We had maneuvered all over Germany on exercises, using our laser engagement gear to fire at other Soldiers and vehicles. Before moving out, we were issued big kits with sensor belts, laser devices, and big orange strobe lights that mounted on the turrets.

If your track got hit, the light started blinking and you had to stop movement and quit using your radio. The laser transmitter for your guns stopped working, and you had to sit there until an umpire reset the system. In big exercises, there were often dozens of tracks all sitting with their strobes flashing. We had a name for the strobes: lunch lights. If you got hit, it was time to break out some MREs and have chow. That was often the only time we had to eat out in the field during maneuvers.

I can honestly say that it never occurred to me (in 1987 anyway) what a flashing lunch light actually represented. We joked about it in an abstract way. There was this one: How can you tell if the platoon ahead of yours is heading into a kill sack? Answer: Look for the burning Bradleys. But it didn’t really mean anything real, at least not in 1987. But then I read this passage:

This time 55’s efforts were rewarded. The third round found its mark. In a quick, blinding flash, the commander’s hatch of the T-72 was blown open, emitting a blinding sheet of flame that lit up the battlefield. This was followed by a series of internal explosions that caused the T-72 to shudder. The T-72 was dead. The range showing at the bottom of the extension was 610 meters.

Team Yankee, page 170

Although Mr. Coyle didn’t mention it, you didn’t have to be a rocket scientist to know that the Russian crew had been immolated in the seconds after the American gunner hit their tank. For a peacetime armor Soldier, this was sobering information. Over the course of time, I would come to learn first-hand what happened to combat vehicles when they were hit with actual munitions. In 1987 though, that was in my future.

We practiced, rehearsed, and perfected crew procedures, actions on contact, and battle drills until we could do them in our sleep. Actions on contact: You observe the enemy moving into sector. Deploy and send a contact report: “Red 5, contact, PCs, north.” Evaluate and develop the situation. Choose a course of action. If we were attacking, there were three choices: hasty attack, bypass, or hasty defense. Execute your selected course of action. After the shooting is over, send a situation report: “Red 1, Red 5, engaged and destroyed two BMPs vicinity checkpoint 7, over.”

The fire commands and crew drills are straight out of the Army’s gunnery manuals. The reporting procedures are ripped from the then-current tank company SOP. Reading the book that first time, I recognized all of that. I didn’t have to imagine because it was real. Here’s one of many examples:

“GUNNER, SABOT, 3 TANKS!”
Kelp dropped down and yelled, “HEAT LOADED, UP!”
The last round Kelp had put in the chamber had been a HEAT round. Not as good as a SABOT round when fighting a tank, but it would have to do. There was no time to switch ammunition.
“IDENTIFIED!” Folk yelled, letting Bannon know he was ready to take over.
“FIRE HEAT, LOAD SABOT!” At least the next round would be right.
“ON THE WAAAY!” With that, Folk fired.

Team Yankee, page 143

For a book like Team Yankee to work, the author has to make you believe. The narrative, technical stuff, everything; it has to convince readers like me, who would instantly call bullshit on a crappy or inauthentic story. I’m almost certain that like me, Mr. Coyle had never seen actual combat when he wrote the book. But he had a damned good imagination for what it was like, and an expert knowledge of the tactics and techniques of the same world that I lived in.

Among Team Yankee’s many strengths is the human quality Mr. Coyle brings to his characters as they go through battle procedures again and again. Maybe most critically, they’re depicted in ways that are believable and true to life. These are young Soldiers thrust onto the sharp end of a war that would have been a horror show. Yes, they rejoice at times in their survival in desperate combat. But like real combat Soldiers, the men of Team Yankee understand what war really is:

Yet, despite the magnitude of what they had done, there was no visible sign of joy or pride to be found among the tank crews and infantry squads that made up Team Yankee that morning. The efforts of the previous day and night, the emotional roller coaster caused by fleeting brushes with death and brief but intense periods of combat had taken their toll. When Bannon trooped the line shortly after dawn, he was greeted by simple nods or stares by those who were still awake.

Team Yankee, page 306

To me as a retired armor Soldier, Team Yankee has stood the test of time. The armor force has evolved a great deal since 1987, but many aspects of the profession are timeless. Many procedures that we used in the Cold War are either still current, or at least recognizable to modern day Soldiers.

The mechanized infantry platoon in Team Yankee was mounted in M113 APCs, which were being replaced with Bradley Fighting Vehicles even as Mr. Coyle crafted his story. The M1 tanks of 1987 have been improved several times over the decades. Yet the mechanics of putting steel on steel and survival in combat are the same. Tankers and Bradley crews have proven that countless times, from Desert Storm to Iraqi Freedom.

You might be a casual reader who never served in the Army, or a gamer who loves to play World of Tanks or other video games. I’ll bet you sometimes wonder how it would feel to be in the turret of a tank during combat. Team Yankee is just a story, but it’s firmly grounded in reality. From personal experience at war, I can tell you the events in this book feel pretty damned real.

If you’re a serving armor Soldier, Team Yankee is a must-read. It would make a great starting point for NCOPD/OPD in line companies and troops. Since Mr. Coyle was an experienced armor officer, he blended much that will be familiar to you into the storyline.

Junior Soldiers would benefit from reading the book too. Drivers, gunners, loaders, and infantrymen are depicted doing the countless small things that make or break mission success. Their actions have life and death consequences in the book, just as they do in the real world.

This could be the perfect way to discuss and analyze actions on contact in platoons, the orders process, change of mission, casualty evacuation, and much more. The story is very relevant in light of the Army’s reset from counterinsurgency to the peer/near-peer fight.

To put it simply, Team Yankee is an epic story of Soldiers at war. It’s a compelling tale; accurate enough to satisfy the professional armor Soldier, yet accessible to the general reader.

Never forget,

Mark

Note to the reader: Team Yankee (350 pages) is still available in print, ebook, and audible editions from major booksellers. It includes illustrative maps and an extensive glossary. The latest version is copyright 2016 by Casemate Publishers.