Jerry Coker
Initial reviews of INTO THE WET
Jerry Coker
PHOTO CREDITS:
1. Group portrait of 9 Platoon, A Company, 2/14th Infantry Battalion on
the Kokoda Trail. (Original photo hanging in the Australian War
Museum, AWM 089220.) Used with permission.
the Kokoda Trail. (Original photo hanging in the Australian War
Museum, AWM 089220.) Used with permission.
2. Golden
Stairs, Kokoda Track. (Original photo hanging in the
Australian War Museum, AWM P02423.009.) Used with permission.
Australian War Museum, AWM P02423.009.) Used with permission.
"One of the most infuriating reads I have ever undertaken. The depth of Jerry Coker’s research is remarkable
and illuminating. The immediacy of his portrayals of action I have never seen equaled. I often felt I was on-site and being shot at
whilst being subjected to a monsoonal deluge. Been there and done those things, in a later war, and his immediacy evoked excruciating
memories. This book is real. It is rooted in the reeking mud of archival reality and grows a trueness of its own.
Mr. Coker’s style is a dense read, with logistics, military overview, and both martial and personal histories interspersed with that exemplary action. Because action and personal involvement with his characters’ point of view are so engaging, the reader is carried through what could have been interruptions; gradually realizing that the frustration and indignation engendered by background is a primary motivator for persisting in the read. You not only want to know what happens next, you demand to know. Those characters are alive; you have their memories and the desperation of their situations to force you to feel their fears and pains.
There are both a fine historical work and an engaging novel here, so entangled that it is necessary to really immerse in their interweaving story lines. Your attention is demanded. And you are forced to yield to it.
The author allows no escape. The sensorial intensity of his writing puts you there, whether starving while in flooded foxholes during freezing nights of unending downpour, or covered with mosquitoes in the thrall of thirst, subject to blind gunfire, or aching with fear, piloting a decrepit Gooney Bird through fighter-infested skies. You feel everything the characters feel. Inescapably. Don’t pick up this book unless you can tolerate hours of captivity.
I began by saying this book was infuriating. I stand by that; not only because of the way the thing refuses to let you go, but because of the hellishness of war, the entrapping inhumanity it brings upon men and women, and the fact that you will never be able to forget this lucid glimpse of it."
Mr. Coker’s style is a dense read, with logistics, military overview, and both martial and personal histories interspersed with that exemplary action. Because action and personal involvement with his characters’ point of view are so engaging, the reader is carried through what could have been interruptions; gradually realizing that the frustration and indignation engendered by background is a primary motivator for persisting in the read. You not only want to know what happens next, you demand to know. Those characters are alive; you have their memories and the desperation of their situations to force you to feel their fears and pains.
There are both a fine historical work and an engaging novel here, so entangled that it is necessary to really immerse in their interweaving story lines. Your attention is demanded. And you are forced to yield to it.
The author allows no escape. The sensorial intensity of his writing puts you there, whether starving while in flooded foxholes during freezing nights of unending downpour, or covered with mosquitoes in the thrall of thirst, subject to blind gunfire, or aching with fear, piloting a decrepit Gooney Bird through fighter-infested skies. You feel everything the characters feel. Inescapably. Don’t pick up this book unless you can tolerate hours of captivity.
I began by saying this book was infuriating. I stand by that; not only because of the way the thing refuses to let you go, but because of the hellishness of war, the entrapping inhumanity it brings upon men and women, and the fact that you will never be able to forget this lucid glimpse of it."
David Lloyd Sutton. Author, editor and book reviewer.
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"Many Australians still cling stubbornly in the intended invasion of Australia and the repelling of the Japanese
on the Kokoda Track prevented it, but either way the campaign was a brutal affair fought in inhuman conditions, suffered by both sides…This
is the setting for INTO THE WET. The characters bring a personal dimension to the story, but its strength is the way Coker captures
the experience of the battlefront in miserable conditions: the heat, the mud, the sheer helplessness, and the endless rain of the
Wet, the equatorial downpour that characterizes the region’s summer.
Meticulously researched and described in intricate detail, Coker’s story carries a gritty authenticity as a result. It could almost serve as a manual for participation in the conflict, of the day-to-day grind. In his search for authenticity, the author has tried to capture the distinctive Aussie accent and vernacular. It’s a brave attempt that most wouldn’t try, but doesn’t quite ring true to an Australian ear. It’s the only shortcoming in a book that makes you feel you are there, going through the agony of the unfolding drama of a thoroughly unpleasant military campaign."
Meticulously researched and described in intricate detail, Coker’s story carries a gritty authenticity as a result. It could almost serve as a manual for participation in the conflict, of the day-to-day grind. In his search for authenticity, the author has tried to capture the distinctive Aussie accent and vernacular. It’s a brave attempt that most wouldn’t try, but doesn’t quite ring true to an Australian ear. It’s the only shortcoming in a book that makes you feel you are there, going through the agony of the unfolding drama of a thoroughly unpleasant military campaign."
Craig Collie, co-author of THE PATH OF INFINITE SORROW, THE JAPANESE ON THE KOKODA TRACK. August 9, 2015, Sydney, Australia.
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