James Tarr - Dogsoldiers

Dillard ‘CJ’ Johnson, whose autobiography Carnivore I helped write, did one tour in Kosovo, two tours in Iraq as the Commander of a Bradley Fighting Vehicle, then worked as a private contractor for six years. He’s seen more combat than most of the other combat vets I know put together. CJ educated me (or tried to) on modern armor, guerrilla combat tactics when dealing with tanks, the horrors of war, and many other things. He is one of those vets who feels the experience of the infantryman in combat has never been accurately captured in a book or on film, and I’m sure this novel won’t change his mind on that, but I did my best.

As for “immediate-future” small arms, armored vehicles, and explosive munitions, I haven’t stretched reality at all when you know what’s out there and what next-gen weapons and grenades are likely to be capable of. How many people know that there is already airburst 40mm ammunition out there specifically designed to take down drones?

A former Green Beret I know likes to use the term Free Shit Army, and I stole it from him for this book. A wonderful gentleman I know who between the Navy SEALs and the CIA spent thirty years serving his country educated me on tricks the Taliban use to avoid FLIR.

And a quick aside on that—I’ve had many ignorant people tell me that “rednecks with their AR-15s” could never withstand the might of the U.S. military with all its drones and satellites and aircraft. The people who fight and train insurgents for a living will tell you a different tale. In Afghanistan we’ve spent twenty years fighting people living in caves, most of whom have never used toilet paper, armed with fifty-year-old rifles.

That knitted, heat-reflective material originally meant to wrap steam pipes I had the dogsoldiers using to hide themselves from the helicopters with thermal sensors? It exists, but its ability to defeat thermal scopes is just now being tested. I know somebody looking into patents for that usage, so I didn’t want to go into too much detail. But it looks like tightly-knit polyester burlap and if you take a 3000-degree torch to it… the material discolors, slightly. That’s it.

Consider for a moment how many different experiences there were of World War II. Depending on whether you fought in the Pacific or Italy, Germany or North Africa, were stateside doing support work or in England doing intelligence work, there is no single story of that war. Michener’s Tales of the South Pacific is as accurate a portrayal of what he experienced in the Pacific as The Young Lions is of what Irwin Shaw saw in the Army in England and Europe, but the two stories couldn’t be more different. Which leads me to this point—

If a civil war starts in America, there is no way to guess what will spark it, and as for what it will be like, all we can do is make educated guesses. I don’t think any of us can wrap our heads completely around that nightmare scenario. Even if that war becomes a reality, your story will be different than mine, even if we are fighting side by side. The scope of a modern American civil war would be massive, and the death toll horrific, easily into the millions. Because of that unimagined breadth of conflict I deliberately made the focus of this novel somewhat narrow. I have concocted what I think is a realistic scenario for what we’d see if such a modern civil war dragged on as long as the Revolutionary War did, told from the point of view of a small group of partisans, set in a city which would almost certainly see combat.

Trust me, it is the cities where most of the combat in America would occur.

Even before I finished this book I had people telling me how the next civil war would be, and that this or that idea I had was wrong. I honestly hope I never know. And this novel was written as 95% entertainment and only 5% warning. That said….

At least to me, a war would be preferable to losing our country. Our Founding Fathers and Abraham Lincoln felt the same way. Living in an Orwellian state where the government controls every aspect of the lives of its disarmed subjects is a prospect I, and millions of other Americans, find unacceptable. And yet many members of our government seem to be working hard to make that country a reality, with throngs of our fellow citizens, dazzled by the prospect of free bread and circuses, blindly cheering them on.

Let us all together do what we can so we are not forced to choose that fourth box of liberty to secure our freedom.

James Tarr is a regular contributor to numerous outdoor publications and has appeared on or hosted numerous shows on The Sportsman Channel cable network. He is also the author of several books, including Failure Drill, Whorl, Bestiarii, Waiting For The Kick, Splashback, and Carnivore(with Dillard Johnson), which was featured on The O’Reilly Factor. He lives in Michigan with his fiancée, two sons, and two dogs.

Bestiarii—

“Grab a handful of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Lost World , stir in a generous helping of Jurassic Park , and season with a sprig of fresh Tom Clancy and you have the makings of Bestiarii . James Tarr takes the reader on a heart-pounding trip through a dystopian landscape, where human enemies are the least of our concerns. Bringing his encyclopedic knowledge of the firearms world to bear, the author grips his audience with finely-observed technical details and highly relatable characters.”

“I love this book… a cross between Zero Dark Thirty and Jurassic Park . A wonderful romp.”

Whorl—

“From the first chapter until the last graf, I was intrigued by the plot, engaged by the characters, and surprised by (Tarr’s) breadth of knowledge. In fact, when I finished ‘Whorl’ I complained to Tarr about his leaving me wanting more. Get your own. You can’t borrow mine.”

“Engaging… well paced… impossible to put down.”

“This book is filled with memorable characters—including the city of Detroit, which serves as more than a backdrop and takes on a character of its own. Whorl is gritty, action packed… and once the story starts to unfold, you’ll find yourself engrossed in a web of treachery and intrigue. Whorl is definitely one of those books that is hard to put down.”

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, businesses, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

DOGSOLDIERS

First publication: March 2020

Copyright 2020 by James Tarr

All rights reserved.

This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission

Cover design by Damonza

ISBN: 979-8616570864

Printed in the United States of America