Excellent! Knowledgeable and told me all I wanna know about SEAL

books:


	• The Finishing School: Earning the Navy SEAL Trident Dick Couch Three Rivers Press, 2005 - 304 pages average customer review:based on 16 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Excellent Followup!

If you've read The Warrior Elite, you know what you'll get in this book. Captain Couch does a great job describing what happens from the day the BUD/s graduates are secure from Coronado to the time they go on forward deployment with their SEAL Platoons. I especially liked that he offered details on both the Officer and Enlisted sides of things. As a person hoping to secure an Officer billet to BUD/s while maintaining a family, it was refreshing to see that others do it. It also does justice to the modern SEAL and inadvertently dispels negative notions that the likes of Marchinko and Carracci have impressed on us. The modern SEAL is above all a Professional, like most of his processors, not a blood thirsty Rambo like the previously mentioned would have you believe. If you want to truly understand this world, read this book, if not go back to Rouge Warrior. It's pretty detailed and has a few pictures just like the last book. On the negative side, I was left wanting more for the $25.00 hardcover price. The 263 pages read more like 170. It's worth the 5 stars I gave it, but I also felt it was not as complete a product as The Warrior Elite.

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good, but not as good as The Warrior Elite

SQT or SEAL Qualification Training is a four or five month program which SEAL candidates must pass before earning the Navy SEAL trident which is what The Finishing School is all about. After BUDS, which is six months long, SEAL candidates go to airborne school and then to a station for SQT. After SQT they have more training with their team, which can be as long as 18 additional months before they are considered deployable. After a deployment tour of duty, they are given some time to rest but after that they have more training to do which depends on their specialty. Do want to be a Navy SEAL? Get used to being cold, wet and tired half the time. Don't think this is a bunch of fun and games.

One of the things I didn't like about this book is that I expected it to be a sequel to "The Warrior Elite". The author didn't keep track of the graduates of class 228 from his previous book. I also wasn't particularly fond of the author's style of writing this book, but maybe it just has to do with the nature of SEAL training. SEAL training may seem exciting on the surface, but it is very boring and brutal work. The trainees work with very little sleep and are forced to endure all kinds of hardship with the weather.

SQT consists of the meat and potatoes of SEAL operational tactics. In SQT the candidates learn hand to hand combat, close quarters defense, field medicine, firearms (which they must become experts at), land navigation, combat swimming, demolitions, etc. Based on the SEAL trainees scores and performance, some of them get hand picked for additional specialized training (i.e. snipers, demolition experts, medics, etc.)

Throughout the book there are some bios of SEAL trainees which I found quite interesting. One SEAL trainee was a PhD in philosophy from Oxford University. Another one was 126 pounds and 5'6" which really goes to show that you can't always tell by looking at a person's physique whether or not they could be a Navy SEAL. The author made a point in his previous book that the big burly types are often some of the first men to drop out of the program. The smaller men tend to be more successful. SEALs are like triathletes... they must be able to run and swim well and have good physical strength. Triathletes are mostly rather small in stature.

I'm against a lot of what the US military does and is doing, but I have to admire the top notch training that these guys go through. It's an inspirational book in the sense that it teaches us to look deep into ourselves and realize that things are not as hard as they seem and through determination, heart and spirit, anything is possible.

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one of the greatest books i have read

If you have ever wanted to be a NAVY SEAL, then this is the book for you. This book takes place from the Vietnam War up to the 2000's. This book is about the training a NAVY SEAL has to go through before earning his trident. The story is told by the author, Dick Couch. This is an action packed book. The characters in this book are changed about every five pages because there isn't really any main characters. The conflict in this book is about trying to get the NAVY SEAL trident. I believe you would like this book because it tells about NAVY SEAL training. Dick Couch has wrote 8 books including, The Warrior Elite, Covert Action, and SEAL Team One. Dick Couch commanded a SEAL platoon in Vietnam that conducted one of the few successful POW rescue operations of the war. He also served in the CIA. Dick and his wife ,Julia, live in central Idaho. Also his style of writing if very easy to understand. This book makes me think about how hard it would be to become a NAVY SEAL. I would recommend this book to people who are interested in the NAVY. This is a fun read.

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one of the greatest books i have read

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Excellent! Knowledgeable and told me all I wanna know about SEAL

I am not going to repeat the strengths of the book which had been covered extensively by other reviewers. I just want to add one more point. On top of the details given by the author about how "elite" every SEAL (only twelve sixteen-man platoons of Navy SEALs deployed around the world today) and how "tough" the training are (in particular the physical ones when you think of 500 push ups, 60 pull ups, 6+ miles of running, all in a "normal" day, not to mention the 60% high attrition rate "Hell Week" that trainees, beside taking extra heavy duties, sleep only four to five hours for an entire week), the author, an ex SEAL, had emphasized throughout the book, insightfully, the soft elements that make up SEALs. "I also believe one of the strongest motivators is the desire to belong....They want to be the best, and they want to serve with the best. I also believe that success at BUD/S (Basic Underwater Demolition/Seal training), is based on intelligence....the ability to think ahead and to clearly visualize one's personal goals...Those who have a clear goal of where they are going, and know why they're going there, are less likely to surrender mentally to the physical pain." pg 19

In short, an excellent read for anybody who wants to know about SEAL.

p.s. My salute to Neil Roberts, a SEAL (and other selfless heros) who fought and died bravely and honorably in the Iraqi War as described in the Introduction.

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