Navy Seals: A History: Post-Vietnam to the Present

A fine conclusion to the author's valuable oral history of the Navy SEALs, this volume actually covers most of the history of the Teams. Dockery, a former soldier in the President's Guard under Nixon and Ford, uses the personal narratives of at least a dozen well-known and obscure SEALs to weave together the story of how, after Vietnam, the organization faced drastic cutbacks even as it enjoyed new and improved weaponry and delivery techniques. Eventually, the SEALs were merged with the old Underwater Demolition Teams and incorporated (much to their benefit) in Special Operations Command. Through it all, they have swum out of submarines, jumped out of airplanes and rappelled down cliffs. They have died in the waters off Granada, in firefights in Panama and in last stands in Afghanistan. Dockery's history covers all the major post-Vietnam military engagements, but this volume also spends more time than the first two did on modern SEAL training. The book's last chapter,""The Building of an Operator,"" provides a detailed description of the 26-week long training course, which includes an aptly named Hell Week, in which would-be SEALs must survive malfunctioning experimental equipment, flesh-eating bacteria and attack-trained dolphins. The course is designed not only to cultivate tactical sea, air and land skills but also to develop a SEAL's total commitment to his or her Teammates.""There is no 'I' in SEAL Team,"" Ensign Erick Peterson points out.""Everything you did was for the betterment of the Team and not for yourself."" Dockery's whole series deserves praise for letting some accomplished warriors tell their own stories.