I make it a point every year to try and read one long book, often a work of literature, that I have never read before. This year I opted for one I don’t think I even knew existed prior to 2019: Anton Myrer’s 1,300 page novel Once an Eagle. It’s a book that comes on multiple reading lists for various branches of the American armed forces and often is required reading for West Point Cadets. Whether or not it currently is, I do not know.
Well, I finished it, so was it worth the time it took to read it?
Let’s just say this much: I knew within the first ten pages exactly why West Point wants its Cadets to read this one. The novel follows the life of one Sam Damon, the son of a Nebraskan farmer, from the age of 18 or so until 65. He wants to go to West Point but never quite makes it, instead enlisting and going off to fight in the first World War. He shows a gift for leadership under fire, rising in the ranks, marries his commanding officer’s daughter, goes through the period between wars, has two kids, fights in the second World War, and finally dies in a Vietnam stand-in at the rank of general, having lost many friends along the way.
By contrast, the novel offers us Courtney Massengale, the son of a more privileged upbringing and the nephew of a Senator, who rises in the ranks as well, always just ahead of Sam in terms of rank. Massengale only cares about rank and glory, always willing to send soldiers off on unnecessarily fancy maneuvers all to make himself look good and while never once stepping into harm’s way himself. He is, in every way, Sam Damon’s opposite, a man who works hard to persuade people to his will using gracious manners and fancy vocabulary to do what Sam does by simply listening and giving his own views.
Yes, in a nutshell, Sam Damon is the ideal Army officer. He stays in the Army because he believes in the service, more or less, knowing there will always be another war and people need him to do what needs to be done. Yes, that puts him in frequent conflict with his wife Tommy, a woman who continually demands to know why he keeps going on missions but always comes to understand Sam can’t say no. Sam is the officer who would rather listen to his soldiers rather than hobnob with his superiors for increases in rank. Sam, the outsider who still somehow makes general (something that in the real world from what I’ve learned), is the very epitome of what the military wants good leadership to look like. He’s smart, self-taught, and will put himself on the line when there’s danger afoot. And he feels the weight of every death of every friend who doesn’t make it out of the war zone.
That said, he’s also a pretty static character. The ideals and purpose he had and can’t articulate at the beginning of the book at the same at the end. If anything, he simply gets more and more angry and frustrated at Massengale and the other privileged people he occasionally runs into who are more about making money or fame for themselves than for the larger obligations of the soldier like Sam. There isn’t any real character growth for any of these characters, and most of them don’t have much in the way of a distinct personality. Sam has a magnetic pull that sucks in everyone. Even Massengale feels it, making it a minor mission to someday get Sam to agree with one of Massengale’s plans. On that front, Massengale never succeeds.
Now, Myrer can write a good action scene, and his style here, as new chapters jump forward different spans of time to different locations that have some importance to the life of Sam or Massengale or some other character associated with either of them. It’s not a bad book, but it also isn’t a particularly deep book. I think it is telling that, for this book’s Wikipedia entry, the “critical response” section only references military figures and not literary critics. That makes sense. Sam Damon is the ideal that the military wants its officers to aim for. It’s a fine enough book for that, but for other readers, maybe not for anyone looking for anything more than one fictional character’s somewhat eventful life.
Grade: C+
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