The Commander in Chief's Trophy
Desert Storm the Beginning of the Air Assault: 2nd Edition
Youthful ingenuity is applied to achieving military success in Operation Desert Storm in the amiable novel The Commander in Chief’s Trophy.
In Paul H. D’Anna’s brief, based-in-truth novella The Commander in Chief’s Trophy, army cadets are selected for their wiles and sent on a complex, dangerous mission during Operation Desert Storm.
A stolen mascot prank between West Point and the Naval Academy leads to a more in-depth plot to steal the trophy for the annual college football tournament between the army, navy, and air force teams. To secure it, scheming army cadets will have to surpass the Naval Academy’s massive security system. The trophy’s eventual disappearance is viewed as a fantastic stunt, with insufficient evidence left to name the culprits.
Later, when he’s putting together a team for a mission in Iraq, Army Commander Yager decides that the perfect candidates are the suspected trophy thieves. They are introduced in terms of their sizes, backgrounds, and choice details about their personalities: Toscano is a confident leader, Little is slight and soft-spoken, Icon is an expert computer hacker and mechanic, Porto is a language expert, Swift likes to crack jokes, and Higginbottom is prone to mistakes but always loyal. Sent to Iraq for training, they face a stereotypical tough drill sergeant whose methods alleviate some of the tension intrinsic to their mission.
The characters’ personalities help maintain levity in this wartime novel: Swift is hit by a ball repeatedly while the team is deep in Iraqi territory, for example, in an attempt to shut him up. Elsewhere,
Little walks into a tent with a lantern. He immediately jumps back out with a shout, “I’ve seen the Light.”
He’s ignored.
Indeed, while the soldiers know they are risking their lives, they remain warm and amiable throughout. At times, their geniality compromises the book’s realism, though: Even in handling the war, the book maintains a jokester’s tone. Still, the colloquial language keeps the book engaging from start to finish.
Moving with speed from the plot to steal the mascot to a high-stakes attack on Iraqi munitions, the story is somewhat rushed. Archival photographs appear throughout, too, pulling attention from the tale itself. And the book’s back matter, which is used to outline D’Anna’s reasons for writing the book and to share some of the material that inspired it, is distracting, focusing on news articles and various facts about innovative military devices, including early GPS mechanisms and attack helicopters, at the expense of the humanity that centers the rest of the book. Its speculation on what actors might be suitable for particular character roles, were the book to be adapted to the screen, are superfluous.
Highlighting the humanity of a dedicated army team’s members, the lighthearted historical novel The Commander in Chief’s Trophy follows as youthful ingenuity is applied to achieving military success in Operation Desert Storm.
Reviewed by
Caroline Goldberg Igra
Disclosure: This article is not an endorsement, but a review. The publisher of this book provided free copies of the book and paid a small fee to have their book reviewed by a professional reviewer. Foreword Reviews and Clarion Reviews make no guarantee that the publisher will receive a positive review. Foreword Magazine, Inc. is disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255.
