The only insider′s account ever written on America′s most powerful weapon in the war against terrorism
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The only insider′s account ever written on America′s most powerful weapon in the war against terrorism
U.S. Army Colonel Charles A. Beckwith was the founderand first commanding officer of Delta Force. For his service,he was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross, Silver Star,Legion of Merit, and Purple Heart. He is interred in the FortSam Houston National Cemetery in San Antonio, Texas.
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1st Special Forces Operational Detachment--Delta (SFOD-D) is the military's formal name for Delta Force. Delta is perhaps America's foremost elite counterterrorist unit along with the FBI's Hostage Rescue Team (HRT) and Navy SEAL Team Six. Beckwith created Delta Force after spending a year with the British Special Air Service (SAS) and seeing how the US had a void that a unit like the SAS could fill. Thus, Delta was formed with the SAS in mind.
A word of caution to people who are considering reading this book. The book tells of how Delta Force was formed...from its beginnings as a US version of the British SAS to its failed first mission freeing the hostages in the Iran. If you're looking for something on what Delta Force currently does and how its operators are currently trained or selected, this isn't the book for you. Beckwith tells us how the first Delta operators were trained and selected, but that selection process has probably changed some by now. This book is more a detailed history on the formation of the Delta Force, and not a book on its current engagements and operations (which are most likely classified anyway).
I HIGHLY recommend this book.
Rather, Delta Force is the plain-spoken memoir of a real-life Special Forces officer's long career advancing his art, if not his army career. Charlie Beckwith was a prophet before his time, and his campaign for the creation of an SAS-style special ops unit in the U.S. Army was stymied at every turn for nearly his entire career. Branded a rogue, even a traitor to the S.F. community, in the end, of course, his ideas won out, and Delta came into being, with Beckwith as it's first commander.
There are Vietnam war stories here, but this is not a book of "there I was. . ." tales. Beckwith also offers the reader a glimpse of Army politics, but this is not a book about vain and self-absorbed senior officers. A few chapters are devoted to Delta's baptism by fire in the Iranian Hostage rescue operation, but it's not really a book about the debacle at Desert One. In Delta Force, the reader will find a memoir of one of the pivotal figures in modern ground warfare. This is the story of one tough, dedicated hombre; what he learned, and how he learned it.
I'm not sure the average reader would get all of Colonel Beckwith's humorous asides and throwaway lines. Some are pretty wry, and would probably require that the reader have a military background to even notice. This edition has a few annoying typographical errors (is proofreading truly a lost art?), and Beckwith's prose occasionally lapses from one tense to another and then back again, which creates a slight feeling of disjointedness. Given those very minor caveats, for a reader with some familiarity and interest in the operational art, this is a must read.
Sua Sponte.