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An Angel from Hell: Real Life on the Front Lines
An edgy, gripping report from the front lines by a young veteran and cast member of The Real Brooklyn
Ryan Conklin enlisted in the Army at age seventeen, following 9/11, and joined Angel Company. As a turret gunner with the famed 101st Airborne "Screaming Eagles," and a member of the famed "Rakkasans" regiment-the most decorated regiment in the U.S. Army-he endured hellish conditions in the war-torn city of Tikrit, Iraq.
When he returned to the States, he became a cast member on The Real Brooklyn in 2008. That came to an end when he received his notice recalling him to duty.
An Angel from Hell is a gritty, blunt, and laughout-loud funny war memoir from the grunt's perspective. Conklin reveals what the Iraq war is really like, day to day-the misery, the boredom, the absurdity, the horror, and even the moments of grace. With stunning candor and wisdom beyond his years, Ryan Conklin has documented a complex and unavoidably life-changing experience for his generation.
Ryan Conklin enlisted in the Army at age seventeen, following 9/11, and joined Angel Company. As a turret gunner with the famed 101st Airborne "Screaming Eagles," and a member of the famed "Rakkasans" regiment-the most decorated regiment in the U.S. Army-he endured hellish conditions in the war-torn city of Tikrit, Iraq.
When he returned to the States, he became a cast member on The Real Brooklyn in 2008. That came to an end when he received his notice recalling him to duty.
An Angel from Hell is a gritty, blunt, and laughout-loud funny war memoir from the grunt's perspective. Conklin reveals what the Iraq war is really like, day to day-the misery, the boredom, the absurdity, the horror, and even the moments of grace. With stunning candor and wisdom beyond his years, Ryan Conklin has documented a complex and unavoidably life-changing experience for his generation.
400 pages, Hardcover
First published April 6, 2010
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Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews
October 29, 2010
Can you handle it?
10/28/2010
Ryan A. Conklin hits it home with his recent book An Angel from Hell. This is the perfect read if you really want to know what’s happening overseas. This book includes twists, real life events, and even humor.
The Book follows Ryan Conklin’s one year deployment to war at just 20 years old. Written by Ryan himself and inspired by emails and letters he wrote back home while he was away the book captures every detail you could imagine.
The book takes you with him to war and almost puts you right there on the sidelines watching the war pass by. An Angel from Hell shows everything the soldiers went through from scares to injuries to the death of fellow soldiers, and PTSD (post traumatic stress disorder).
The book takes you along for rides in humvees and shows you what it’s like on the front lines. It brings you with him and his regiment on their air-raids and house invasions. The book takes you right into their CHUs and shows you what it’s like living in one with another person. It really captures a mental imagine and helps you picture everything and even including pictures this book does a great job of showing what it really looks like in Iraq and how road-side bombs are disposed of or what the men have to wear on the job.
This book really hits upon the growing up and seriousness of being overseas. It hits upon the growing up that Ryan Conklin had to do himself and what it was like for him dealing with the death of fellow members. It shows what it is like coming home for the first time since being at war.
A cliff-hanger from page 1, you won’t be able to put the book down. An Angel from Hell grabs you right up and you’ll never want to stop reading. This book truly includes everything you could ask for in a book.
10/28/2010
Ryan A. Conklin hits it home with his recent book An Angel from Hell. This is the perfect read if you really want to know what’s happening overseas. This book includes twists, real life events, and even humor.
The Book follows Ryan Conklin’s one year deployment to war at just 20 years old. Written by Ryan himself and inspired by emails and letters he wrote back home while he was away the book captures every detail you could imagine.
The book takes you with him to war and almost puts you right there on the sidelines watching the war pass by. An Angel from Hell shows everything the soldiers went through from scares to injuries to the death of fellow soldiers, and PTSD (post traumatic stress disorder).
The book takes you along for rides in humvees and shows you what it’s like on the front lines. It brings you with him and his regiment on their air-raids and house invasions. The book takes you right into their CHUs and shows you what it’s like living in one with another person. It really captures a mental imagine and helps you picture everything and even including pictures this book does a great job of showing what it really looks like in Iraq and how road-side bombs are disposed of or what the men have to wear on the job.
This book really hits upon the growing up and seriousness of being overseas. It hits upon the growing up that Ryan Conklin had to do himself and what it was like for him dealing with the death of fellow members. It shows what it is like coming home for the first time since being at war.
A cliff-hanger from page 1, you won’t be able to put the book down. An Angel from Hell grabs you right up and you’ll never want to stop reading. This book truly includes everything you could ask for in a book.
March 3, 2011
So I read this book because I remember watching Ryan Conklin on MTV's reality show "The Real World: Brooklyn" and I, like so many others that watched that show remembered that fateful day when he received the notice he was being called back to Active Duty for another tour of Iraq. I remember my heart going out to him then and my heart certiainly went out to him while reading his memoir.
This is the memoir that every young man wanting to enlist needs to read before signing their signature on the dotted line. Brutally honest would be the first words that come to my head while reading this book. Ryan Conklin has written a book that in no way sugarcoats serving in Iraq. Yes, at times I did laugh out loud and there were times that I shed tears but as a whole it was a fantastic account of his Iraqi tour.
A million "Thank You's" go out to every Veteran currently serving throughout branches and throughout the world.
This is the memoir that every young man wanting to enlist needs to read before signing their signature on the dotted line. Brutally honest would be the first words that come to my head while reading this book. Ryan Conklin has written a book that in no way sugarcoats serving in Iraq. Yes, at times I did laugh out loud and there were times that I shed tears but as a whole it was a fantastic account of his Iraqi tour.
A million "Thank You's" go out to every Veteran currently serving throughout branches and throughout the world.
December 27, 2018
A unique perspective on the real life of an active duty soldier in a time of war.
This was a smooth, fast paced read with a perspective I haven’t read before. I have a whole new appreciation for heat and combat gear. Amongst many other stories highlighted in this well written account two experiences keep popping up in my thoughts. I simply cannot relate to wearing all that combat gear in 120 degree heat for hours on end. I also now have a deeper respect and appreciation for the physical and mental strain of being threatened by roadside bombs daily. To live in that reality for hundreds of days in a row is mind bending. Thank you Ryan and all of your brothers in arms
This was a smooth, fast paced read with a perspective I haven’t read before. I have a whole new appreciation for heat and combat gear. Amongst many other stories highlighted in this well written account two experiences keep popping up in my thoughts. I simply cannot relate to wearing all that combat gear in 120 degree heat for hours on end. I also now have a deeper respect and appreciation for the physical and mental strain of being threatened by roadside bombs daily. To live in that reality for hundreds of days in a row is mind bending. Thank you Ryan and all of your brothers in arms
January 13, 2025
I'll confess, I'm a little baffled as to why this book has such a high review rating. I have read many, many "real life" war books (With the Old Breed, Helmet for my Pillow, Chickenhawk, etc.) and really enjoyed Generation Kill, which this book sounded like it would be similar to. The cover layout was even very similar. Boy, was I wrong!
The first thing that put me off with this book was that the writer was writing "above himself". What I mean by that is he tried to use long words where shorter words were as good and often better than the ones he chose. To make things worse, he misused them A LOT. I have seen this type of writing before when I myself was in the Army. I call it "NCO-ise" and it consists of stringing common military phrases together and "talking up" by using "five dollar words" in an effort to make yourself appear smarter than you actually are. In the closed universe of the military, it seems normal and even professional. In the real world it seems odd and annoying.
I truly got the feeling that the author went back over his first draft, Thesaurus in hand, and "smarted" the whole thing up by looking up longer substitutes for a lot of less flashy words. Unfortunately he spent less time checking that they actually meant what he intended, so there are endless cases of using the wrong impressive sounding word.
As if peppering the whole thing with smart words wasn't enough, he never used three words when a dozen would do. This text is fluffier than cotton candy with literally paragraphs that could be better written as a few words or a single concise sentence. As a result, the entire book sounds like a police report. For example (not a direct quote), instead of saying "I ran back to see if anyone was in the vehicle" he would say something like "I gingerly and hastily double-timed the approximately 300 yards to the location where the vehicle in question had come to rest and attempted to ascertain whether it was occupied by anyone within it". I eventually decided that this was an attempt to get the word count up to legitimate book length, but the result was that it forced me dig for the meaning in every statement. It drove me crazy.
This leads the my second problem with this book. It obviously had no editor. If it did, then it was the author's buddy or spouse, not a real editor. No editor worth having would let 5% of the grammatical and wording errors remain. He LOVES the word "gingerly" and it is used very un-gingerly throughout. He constantly mangles common phrases and doesn't seem to notice. He uses words that are almost the words he intended to, meaning that they sound very similar, but are absolutely the wrong word. So on top of having to wade through the muck of excessive words, I constantly had to try to figure out what word he thought he was using. Talk about slowing down the pace! It reminded me a lot of Humpty Dumpty in "Through the Looking Glass" who said "When I use a word… it means just what I choose it to mean – neither more nor less.”
At first I attributed this all to this just being a soldier's view of the war. He was writing the way he talked, and the Army definitely has its own way of talking, but after a long painful while, I realized that I had read many war memoirs and they had the occasional minor grammatical error, but nothing approaching the language atrocities committed in this book.
Now to the story. I somehow managed to ignore the problems with the writing and actually got to what I thought would be the meat of the story but I eventually discovered that there wasn't much story there. I understand that the repetitive and monotonous missions that they were required to go on is a feature of the book and is meant to show how un-movielike the real experience of the Iraqi war was, but something is needed to keep the reader going. An entire book of "we pulled guard duty on the northeast corner of the roof from zero-two-hundred to fourteen hundred and nothing happened and then hit the mess hall for some chow" would (did) get old quick. He seems to have realized this and filled in the lack of interesting things happening with only slightly more interesting anecdotes about what they did to pass time (threw rocks at stray dogs) and some "funny" stories that told me more about the author as person and a soldier than he probably intended.
For one thing, this guy complained. A LOT. Most of his "amusing" stories were just extended complaints and rants. A very large portion of this book is dedicated to his various complaints about things that nobody could do anything about and that others apparently just accepted and "sucked it up", as the Army likes to say. He actually admitted that he prided himself on being the biggest complainer in the platoon. The food was awful, his feet hurt, his pack was too heavy, he was bored with pointless missions, he was hot, he was tired, it was too dusty, people were shooting at him, nobody was shooting at him, everybody else was having more fun getting shot at...the complaints never stopped. I'm sure the rest of the soldiers in his unit were even more sick of hearing it than I was.
When he wasn't complaining, he was telling about what a mess-up (to use a non-Army phrase) he was. Maybe these stories were included to make the point of "even awesome guys like me make mistakes", but having served with people like this, I know that the things he talked about always happened to the goof-offs and rarely to people who took their jobs (or the lives of their fellow soldiers) seriously. The "amusing" things that happened to him were not amusing to me. From a military standpoint, they were appalling and just further proof that this guy was 100% a liability to his unit.
In the end, I gave up on this book. Like cotton candy, it looks good in passing, but pretty soon you realize that it is very little substance and lots of fluff. I don't know that having an editor involved would have fixed things because I don't think there was actually a story here. Aside from "I'm a regular young guy that had to go to Iraq", there isn't much substance to it. It's a one-man circle-jerk that seems to be written entirely to establish what a cool, tough guy he is.
This book left such a bad taste in my mouth that I had to go back and re-read Chickenhawk by Robert Mason. It was as good as I remembered it.
If you found yourself wanting more from this book than it delivered, you will probably love these, which are actually well written and interesting:
- With the Old Breed
- Helmet for my Pillow
- Chickenhawk
UPDATE: After thinking about it, I may understand why I liked this book less than others seemed to. I "read" it in audiobook format and it was narrated by the author...so I got his own verbal inflections along with the book, which probably revealed a lot more about him as a person and soldier than came across in the text.
Also, after reading other reviews (I never read reviews until after I write my own), I realized that the author was apparently on a reality TV show and a lot of the great reviews are from fans of his show, most of whom probably have zero experience with the military aside from watching "Major Payne" or "Full Metal Jacket". I have never seen (or even heard of) his show and suspect that his role on it caused a lot of people to overlook the obvious shortcomings of this book.
The first thing that put me off with this book was that the writer was writing "above himself". What I mean by that is he tried to use long words where shorter words were as good and often better than the ones he chose. To make things worse, he misused them A LOT. I have seen this type of writing before when I myself was in the Army. I call it "NCO-ise" and it consists of stringing common military phrases together and "talking up" by using "five dollar words" in an effort to make yourself appear smarter than you actually are. In the closed universe of the military, it seems normal and even professional. In the real world it seems odd and annoying.
I truly got the feeling that the author went back over his first draft, Thesaurus in hand, and "smarted" the whole thing up by looking up longer substitutes for a lot of less flashy words. Unfortunately he spent less time checking that they actually meant what he intended, so there are endless cases of using the wrong impressive sounding word.
As if peppering the whole thing with smart words wasn't enough, he never used three words when a dozen would do. This text is fluffier than cotton candy with literally paragraphs that could be better written as a few words or a single concise sentence. As a result, the entire book sounds like a police report. For example (not a direct quote), instead of saying "I ran back to see if anyone was in the vehicle" he would say something like "I gingerly and hastily double-timed the approximately 300 yards to the location where the vehicle in question had come to rest and attempted to ascertain whether it was occupied by anyone within it". I eventually decided that this was an attempt to get the word count up to legitimate book length, but the result was that it forced me dig for the meaning in every statement. It drove me crazy.
This leads the my second problem with this book. It obviously had no editor. If it did, then it was the author's buddy or spouse, not a real editor. No editor worth having would let 5% of the grammatical and wording errors remain. He LOVES the word "gingerly" and it is used very un-gingerly throughout. He constantly mangles common phrases and doesn't seem to notice. He uses words that are almost the words he intended to, meaning that they sound very similar, but are absolutely the wrong word. So on top of having to wade through the muck of excessive words, I constantly had to try to figure out what word he thought he was using. Talk about slowing down the pace! It reminded me a lot of Humpty Dumpty in "Through the Looking Glass" who said "When I use a word… it means just what I choose it to mean – neither more nor less.”
At first I attributed this all to this just being a soldier's view of the war. He was writing the way he talked, and the Army definitely has its own way of talking, but after a long painful while, I realized that I had read many war memoirs and they had the occasional minor grammatical error, but nothing approaching the language atrocities committed in this book.
Now to the story. I somehow managed to ignore the problems with the writing and actually got to what I thought would be the meat of the story but I eventually discovered that there wasn't much story there. I understand that the repetitive and monotonous missions that they were required to go on is a feature of the book and is meant to show how un-movielike the real experience of the Iraqi war was, but something is needed to keep the reader going. An entire book of "we pulled guard duty on the northeast corner of the roof from zero-two-hundred to fourteen hundred and nothing happened and then hit the mess hall for some chow" would (did) get old quick. He seems to have realized this and filled in the lack of interesting things happening with only slightly more interesting anecdotes about what they did to pass time (threw rocks at stray dogs) and some "funny" stories that told me more about the author as person and a soldier than he probably intended.
For one thing, this guy complained. A LOT. Most of his "amusing" stories were just extended complaints and rants. A very large portion of this book is dedicated to his various complaints about things that nobody could do anything about and that others apparently just accepted and "sucked it up", as the Army likes to say. He actually admitted that he prided himself on being the biggest complainer in the platoon. The food was awful, his feet hurt, his pack was too heavy, he was bored with pointless missions, he was hot, he was tired, it was too dusty, people were shooting at him, nobody was shooting at him, everybody else was having more fun getting shot at...the complaints never stopped. I'm sure the rest of the soldiers in his unit were even more sick of hearing it than I was.
When he wasn't complaining, he was telling about what a mess-up (to use a non-Army phrase) he was. Maybe these stories were included to make the point of "even awesome guys like me make mistakes", but having served with people like this, I know that the things he talked about always happened to the goof-offs and rarely to people who took their jobs (or the lives of their fellow soldiers) seriously. The "amusing" things that happened to him were not amusing to me. From a military standpoint, they were appalling and just further proof that this guy was 100% a liability to his unit.
In the end, I gave up on this book. Like cotton candy, it looks good in passing, but pretty soon you realize that it is very little substance and lots of fluff. I don't know that having an editor involved would have fixed things because I don't think there was actually a story here. Aside from "I'm a regular young guy that had to go to Iraq", there isn't much substance to it. It's a one-man circle-jerk that seems to be written entirely to establish what a cool, tough guy he is.
This book left such a bad taste in my mouth that I had to go back and re-read Chickenhawk by Robert Mason. It was as good as I remembered it.
If you found yourself wanting more from this book than it delivered, you will probably love these, which are actually well written and interesting:
- With the Old Breed
- Helmet for my Pillow
- Chickenhawk
UPDATE: After thinking about it, I may understand why I liked this book less than others seemed to. I "read" it in audiobook format and it was narrated by the author...so I got his own verbal inflections along with the book, which probably revealed a lot more about him as a person and soldier than came across in the text.
Also, after reading other reviews (I never read reviews until after I write my own), I realized that the author was apparently on a reality TV show and a lot of the great reviews are from fans of his show, most of whom probably have zero experience with the military aside from watching "Major Payne" or "Full Metal Jacket". I have never seen (or even heard of) his show and suspect that his role on it caused a lot of people to overlook the obvious shortcomings of this book.
January 11, 2014
I purchased this book because I adored Ryan Conklin on The Real World and was interested in learning more about his time in Iraq. This book is as raw as it gets. Ryan doesn't sugar coat anything. This book describes in detail not only what was occurring around him, but inside of him as well. There's good times, pain, and fear, all spilled out onto the pages of this book. This isn't one of those "I'm a reality star, so I'm going to pretend like I have something interesting to write about before my 15 minutes of fame run out" type of books. It is raw, real, interesting, and inspiring. Many thanks to Ryan, everyone he served with, as well as everyone that has served before and after this.
April 26, 2016
Very good read about a young Soldier going to war; insightful, exciting, sad and even funny at times. This is a great book for Senior Enlisted and Officers to read as it gives you the reminder and insight of how your Junior Soldiers are viewing things; perceptions of your Junior Soldiers are just as important as the perceptions of other Leaders. Mr. Conklin's view as a Jr. Enlisted Soldier and even use of words (such as calling himself "Lower" Enlisted) explain not just why he feels the way he did about his part in the War but why and how his views were formed that way.
February 28, 2012
If you loved Ryan A. Conklin in The Real World Brooklyn, you should read this book. If you want an honest portrayal of a grunt's year in Iraq, you must read this book. There have been some negative reviews, criticizing Conklin for complaining...well damn, I'd complain too. This memoir is a basic play-by-play of how things happen in the infantry while in service and will provide much needed insight to the beginning days of war in Iraq from the perspective of a twentysomething kid.
January 9, 2014
I'm surprised to read about how undisciplined the army appeared to be before, during & after the Iraq war...sleeping in & not really doing PT or anything. He's not a professional writer but did a solid job of painting a picture for me about what the place would have been like to see and work in. The end of the book ends rather abruptly and would have been interesting to read more *(edit: don't want to spoil the ending).
He sounds like a pretty squared-away guy and I'm glad I read his book.
He sounds like a pretty squared-away guy and I'm glad I read his book.
July 21, 2011
What I liked.....the realness factor...that it wasn't the b.s you hear about the war on tv...but it wasn't all angst either. This book definately gave me a greater appreciation for our soilders in war
What I disliked....not much....maybe some of the war scenes gave me nightmares, but I'm sensitive to that stuff....plus the author lived it so what do I have to complain about!
What I disliked....not much....maybe some of the war scenes gave me nightmares, but I'm sensitive to that stuff....plus the author lived it so what do I have to complain about!
February 8, 2013
It's good to see no matter what country you're serving the gripes are the same! Cack rations under manned and shoddy equipment!
Enjoyed this book it was a well written and laid out. It's good to compare the different tactics employed by US forced and UK forces and was a thoroughly enjoyable read well recommended to pass a few hours.
Enjoyed this book it was a well written and laid out. It's good to compare the different tactics employed by US forced and UK forces and was a thoroughly enjoyable read well recommended to pass a few hours.
February 14, 2012
Given to me by my mother-in-law because she thought I might enjoy reading about another soldier's war stories in Iraq. Stories were short and absolutely accurate when it comes to a modern deployment. Good read!
July 8, 2012
It's refreshing. Funny and honest.
January 11, 2011
Incredible. Very honest account of what it's like to serve.
Read
December 22, 2012He tells it like it is;real life on the front line.It's one of those books that hook you with the first sentence!
February 12, 2011
An honest, intensive Army memoir with a mixture of emotions throughout.
August 13, 2011
Good book, although it was a slow read for some reason.
Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews