Dick Couch - Seal Team One

Other books by Dick Couch

Fiction

Pressure Point

Silent Descent

Rising Wind

The Mercenary Option

Covert Action

My Brothers Keeper

Nonfiction

The Warrior Elite: The Forging of SEAL Class 228

The Finishing School: Earning the Navy SEAL Trident

The U.S. Armed Forces Nuclear, Biological, and Chemical Survival Manual

Down Range: Navy SEALs in the War on Terrorism

Chosen Soldier: The Making of a Special Forces Warrior

The Sheriff of Ramadi: Navy SEALs and the Fight for al-Anbar
(forthcoming from Naval Institute Press in 2008)

The latest edition of this work has been brought to publication with the generous assistance of Marguerite and Gerry Lenfest.

Naval Institute Press

291 Wood Road

Annapolis, MD 21402

2008 by H. R. Couch

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

SEAL Team One is an original publication of Avon Books. This work is a novel. Any similarity to actual persons or events is purely coincidental.

First Naval Institute Press paperback edition published in 2008

ISBN 978-1-61251-419-2 (eBook)

The Library of Congress has cataloged the paperback edition as follows:

Couch, Dick, 1943

SEAL Team One / Dick Couch.1st Naval Institute Press pbk. ed.

p. cm.

1. United States. Navy. SEALsFiction. 2. Vietnam War, 19611975Fiction. 3. Vietnam War, 19611975Commando operationsFiction. I. Title.

PS3553.O769S33 2008

813.54dc22

2007045191

Print editions meet the requirements of ANSI/NISO z39.48-1992 (Permanence of Paper).

9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2

For my fellow warriers from Team One and Team Two who fought in Vietnam. Brothers, we deserved a better war.

The Staff Officer plans,

The Logistician provides,

And the General says when to begin.

But the killing is done,

And the battle decided,

By the work of much younger men.

THERE IS A SAYING that you cant go back. Things will never be the same as they were when you first experienced them. That may be true; however, the first time I read SEAL Team One, I thought that it was the best portrayal of the times and experiences that I lived through as a young SEAL officer in Vietnam. SEAL Team One is not about a series of atrocities committed by young men who were thrust into a situation beyond their comprehension. Dick Couch does not try to shock the reader with exaggerations that are beyond the experience of virtually all of us who deployed to Vietnam with a sense of duty and who served with honor. Too many others have done that already and left most readers wondering what is real and what is the result of one too many drug-filled nights on the part of the author.

SEAL Team One does none of that. My first read was colored by the fact that I had experienced exactly what Dick Couch has portrayed. It was a firsthand description of my own deploymentpre-deployment training, anxiety, deployment, initial combat experience, the whole shooting match. Even some of the names seemed like they were the same.

I was in a different place for my second and third readings of SEAL Team One. It is still the best description of that era in SEAL Team One, back when there was only Team One on the West Coast and Team Two on the East Coast. I found that there was much beyond the accurate tactical experiences of SEALs in combat. There was the challenge of a young SEAL officer to earn the respect of the senior enlisted men of his platoon. There was the struggle of the new junior enlisted man to prove he could do the job and contribute as a member of the team. These dynamics are painstakingly real and remain unchanged in the SEAL teams of today; thats what makes SEAL Team One a timeless read. The current generation of SEAL warriors is the same group of guys that I fought with, argued with, drank with, and bled with during my thirty-year career as a SEAL. Today they are stronger, faster, and better trained, but the core of the man is the same. Theres that same cocky lieutenant out there whos actually as good as he thinks he is. His men will test him and may not give him that credit to his face, but theyll trust him and follow him into battle. Theres that same 150-lb. SEAL of twisted steel who is going to carry the heavy machine gun and four hundred rounds of ammo because thats who he is. I remember his kind all too well, and at 220 lbs., I was not going to argue with himnot then and would not today.

As you read this book you will learn about men who just do it, whatever it happens to bewhether it is to carry a teammate to safety in the midst of a firefight or to finish off some minor, unpleasant detail. SEALs dont have a start time or a finish time; theres simply the task in front of them. SEALs dont punch a clock; they get the job done and will not quit part-way there. And one of those jobs is to always bring everyone back from an operation. You dont ever leave your fellow SEAL out there on the battlefield. That was never more apparent than on 28 June 2005 in the mountains of Afghanistan. On that terrible day, Navy SEALs and their fellow Special Operations airmen went in harms way in a dangerous attempt to rescue four surrounded and embattled SEALs. The result was the greatest loss of life in Special Operations history. Every one of those men would risk their lives again regardless of the odds, because they know that their Special Operations brothers would do the same thing for them in a heartbeat. Its who we are.

For those of you readers unfamiliar with the military or the Special Operations brotherhood, you may in the course of events meet a Navy SEAL. Few SEALs advertise this, as theres no reason for them to do so. And it matters not whether they are on active duty, because once a SEAL, always a SEAL. Unfortunately, there are individuals out there who say they are, or have been, Navy SEALs; for some reason they have a need to make this claim. There is one fairly reliable way to determine if the person in question really is a SEAL. You need only ask, Is this person a success in what he is doing today? Is he comfortable with the path hes chosen in life, and is he passionate about that choice? What does that have to do with anything? SEAL training does a lot for an individual. It teaches you to dig down to your very soul for the strength to continue, even when you know overwhelming hardship and even death may result. Once youve found it within yourself to bring up reserves of strength and resolve to get through SEAL training, you know that you can apply that same inner strength to any task. If that person is not a success in his given endeavor, it means one of two things. He was not a SEAL, or the task at hand is unworthy or unimportant.