Navy SEALs practically write Hollywood’s military scripts with their accounts of blood, sweat and never-say-die brotherhood. And they’re not shabby writers, either. Two new books by former SEALs are welcome additions to the canon of American soldier lit, right as the international spotlight focuses on their special calling.
Howard Wasdin, co-author of “Seal Team Six: Memoirs of an Elite Navy SEAL Sniper, ” was influenced by his experiences with an abusive stepfather; he became a sniper in the elite SEAL Team Six, the group that recently took out bin Laden. (“My father’s harshness to me as a child had prepared me for difficulties like this.”) Eric Greitens, a Duke graduate and Rhodes scholar, was inspired to pen “The Heart and the Fist: The Education of a Humanitarian, the Making of a Navy SEAL” following trips to Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia in the wake of genocide. Each book follows a different plotline but ends with the same conclusion: Although SEALs are capable of immense violence, they are among the most upstanding, disciplined and thoughtful soldiers, in combat and in civilian life.
Hell Week, the grueling 5½ days that weed out the weak and make even the strongest hallucinate, is a rite of passage captured by most SEAL literature. These authors’ descriptions of breaking points — whether it’s lying on a pier with Stage 2 hypothermia or running 4 miles in the sand wearing boots — are adrenaline-packed reads.
Both Greitens and Wasdin provide the requisite SEAL history lesson, but Wasdin’s in-depth approach will please even the most ardent military afficionado. Wasdin’s retelling of the fateful Battle of Mogadishu and the weeks of prior reconnaissance is gripping and memorable.
Greitens has been deployed four times since 9/11 and wields a deep understanding of America’s current counterterrorism conflicts; he’s both a scholar and a SEAL. His calm and crisp prose serves up lessons about the difficulties troops face on the ground.
Military buffs will gravitate toward Wasdin’s book, and scholars and dreamers towards Greitens’. Both books will leave the reader wanting one thing: a detailed account of that early May night in Pakistan when SEALs descended on Osama bin Laden’s compound.
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