Customer Reviews

The Finishing School: Earning the Navy SEAL Trident

5 star:		(19)
4 star:		(11)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

"The Finishing School" is a terrific book, and every bit as fascinating as "The Warrior Elite." Dick Couch shows exceptional tenacity in following every twist and turn of training that these incredible warriors go through, and he handles the narrator's job superbly--giving us a personal reaction every now and then from his perspective as a SEAL in the Vietnam era.

Couch provides insight into what makes SEALS succeed (or fail) and enriches our understanding of how crucial training is to their complicated missions. I felt like I was there in the classroom and on the range with them at all times. Yes, the training evolutions do seem to go on without end, but that's one of the book's points: these guys are the best trained, toughest warriors the world has ever seen, and they will come after you from the sea, the air, or on land.

I particularly enjoyed the sections dealing with the SEAL weaponry; the choices they have are fascinating and scary. If you're a Navy buff, or in the least bit interested in what force America can project almost anywhere on earth, then this book is for you.

I read Dick Couch's The Warrior Elite: The Forging of SEAL Class 228 and was ecstatic to hear that he was working on a second book about the training post BUD/S graduates do before they go to their platoons. The Finishing School: Earning the Navy Seal Trident, follows SQT (SEAL Qualification Training) students through some of the most challenging and exciting moments of their Navy careers. Anyone with an interest in the military, an aspiring SEAL, family member or friend of one of these amazing warriors should definitly read this book. I must add that it is not necessary for one to read The Warrior Elite: The Forging of SEAL Class 228 to understand The Finishing School: Earning the Navy Seal Trident. There are several pages devoted to explaining the BUD/S process which was the topic of The Warrior Elite: The Forging of SEAL Class 228, although I highly recommend both. Hope this review was helpful to you.

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.

I gave Warrior Elite 5 stars. Finishing School was good but there were so many sections that I glossed over because all they had was Navy-Speak bureaucracy-type stuff that I didn't think was interesting at all. The parts that were great were when they focused on one of the SEALs and gave his background and story, etc, and on the details of the training. Maybe to a Navy insider it might be more interesting but it would have gotten 5 stars from me if he would have concentrated more on the actual trainees and not all the mil-speak departmental stuff.

Ok followup to The Warrior Elite: The Forging of SEAL Class 228. Follows and details the training program from the time SEAL candidates finish Hell Week/BUDS to when they finally get their Trident and then the specialty training before getting to their TEAMS. Not as dramatic and exciting as The Warrior Elite, filled with all the SEAL designations and terms, no actual combat scenarios.

Good read if you want to know exactly what happens until officially a SEAL. Otherwise a dry technical read.

Would recommend book: Lone Survivor: The Eyewitness Account of Operation Redwing and the Lost Heroes of Seal Team 10 by Seal Marcus Luttrell or The Warrior Elite: The Forging of SEAL Class 228 or Suffer in Silence by David Reid

I am a veteran of the Army. My dad got real excited when I told him I was enlisting in the Navy back in '73. However, I couldn't get through the Navy eye requirement, even in '73. So, I have a soft spot for the Navy, which is why I read 'Rogue Warrior' years ago. If you have family reading night, especially if you have a son that's thinking Spec Ops, buy Cpt. Couch's book. Cpt. Couch is an excellent counter-weight to Lt. Com. Marcinko's "Win any way that you can" anti-terrorist mentality. Lt. Com. Marcinko's "Old school" approach probably worked well in his "frontier days" of Spec Ops. However, with the 24 hour news cycle, Lt. Com. Marcinko's tactics would probably land us in front of the UN Security Council, right where no Spec Ops warrior would want to be. Cpt. Couch writes about warriors who follow instructions given by emminently qualified combat leaders. Warriors who expect to win in any endeavor, whether its taking out the trash or Somalian pirates There don't appear to be any Preston Pinkerton III type leaders (Rogue Warrior) in todays Spec. Ops community. I loved it!

This is the second book in Mr. Couch's trilogy on SEAL training and operations. To reference pop culture: it isn't "The Empire Strikes Back." The author does an oustanding job of relating all of the details of the secondary training that SEALs go through after finishing the Basic Underwater Demoltion/SEAL (BUD/S) school that he so ably covered in his previous book. In the SEAL world, BUD/S is like high school where you're struggling to find yourself and just make it through, while "the Finishing School" is more like college where the self-selected successes go on to find their specialties, while losing a few along the way. This is a worthy and interesting story to tell if you're really into the Special Operations world, but I don't see much here to keep the casual reader engaged. This second book lacks several of the important devices that made his first one such a page turner. Keep in mind that these are owed to how SEALs train, not to any fault of the author's. For one, BUD/S is comparatively well known to an informed audience (or anyone who has seen a few SEAL-related movies), while this level of training has received little or no such attention. Secondly, the drama of sheer survival, particular Hell Week, is missing. Here, it's the "best get even better." Most importantly, BUD/S (and Couch's book on it) is confined to a constantly shrinking cast of characters, giving us a chance to know quite a bit about each of the "survivors" and, consequently, care about what happens to them. The reader's emotions rise and fall with the successes and failures of those men. In this book, people move into and out of the classes regularly and split off into smaller groups for specialized training, with no singular person (other than the author who is himself a character in the book) to follow from start to finish. That makes it a difficult story to tell and even more difficult for a reader to stay engaged.

All that said, if you are an armchair warrior who wants to know all of the nitty-gritty of making SEALs, then you'll love this book. Much like a large college lecture class: those who really care about the material will sit up and take notes, while those who have a more casual interest might find themselves snoozing through portions of it.

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.

I've read several books on Navy Seal material, including Dick Couch's "The Warrior Elite", and this by far is the most comprehensive and detailed on what goes into the training of Navy Seals.

Couch starts with a quick recap of the first step into the long journey of becoming a Navy Seal, Indoc and BUDs.

He quickly moves onto the meat of the book, Seal Qualification Training (SQT). Seal candidates do not actually receive their Seal Trident's following successful completion of BUDs training, rather as Couch puts it, it merely buys them a seat at the table for SQT training. Some of the SQT training involves Army Jump school, weapons and combat training at Camp Pendleton and Camp Billy Machen, combat diving at the NSW base in Coronado, medical training, and even a special block of training just for the officers of graduating BUDs classes.

If you thought BUDs training is intense, SQT takes it to a whole new level as candidates constantly have to meet training and safety standards and are still cold, wet and tired doing so. The level of training these warriors receive is extremely impressive and even more impressive is the quality of training put on for these men and the money spent.

Be warned that this book is very detailed on the types of training they receive. It is less about mental aspects and spirit of the men that you might have read about in "The Warrior Elite". While the book does highlight repeatedly the traits that are required for good SEALs, it spends more time covering the actual training that the candidates undergo. This includes weapons training, demolitions, combat diving, close quarters combat, navigation and mountaineering, combat medical training and more. Once the candidates successfully pass SQT training, they are rewarded their SEAL Tridents and are immediately sent to Kodiak Island, AK, for cold weather training.

Couch doesn't just end with the completion of SQT, however. He then focuses on what happens to the newly appointed SEALs when they ship off to their respective teams. I found this part of the book, although almost too detailed and full of jargon at times, to be fascinating. He covers the changes to Seal Team and platoon training which occurred earlier in the decade. These changes made for more efficient and streamlined SEAL platoon training.

As outlined in the book, SEAL teams train for 18 months and are deployed for 6 months. Couch covers in specifics the stages of training (PRODEV, platoon training and SIT) during the 18 months prior to their deployment. This part of the book is what really sank home for me just how elite the Navy SEALs are compared to any other military special forces unit in the world. These men spend 3 to 4 times more time training than they actually do in deployment. As Couch highlights repeatedly throughout the book, BUDs, SQT, PRODEV, and TRADET instructors are constantly reviewing and improving their methods of training and making it better each time. These men receive world class training and are never satisfied with their efforts, but are always seeking to improve.

Overall I thought this was by far the best book I've read on Navy SEALs to date. The detailed information on platoon structure and deployment training towards the end of the book can be tough to grind through at times, but I came away with a great understanding of Navy SEAL structure and training.

"The Finishing School" takes off where "The Warrior Elite" left off, as Couch follows recent BUD/S graduates through the training that will finally earn them their tridents, and beyond.

This book doesn't quite have the same personal feel its predecessor had, due to three reasons:

1. In the War on Terror, personal details of Special Ops warriors need to be kept secret.

2. These men have made it through BUD/S, and almost all of them will make it to the teams. So "The Finishing School" is less a case study on what it takes to become a SEAL than "The Warrior Elite" was.

3. BUD/S is as much sheer physical hardship as it is training. There's only so much even a writer as good as Couch can say about ocean swims, sleep deprivation, and pushups in the sand. But post BUD/S training is highly technical and very interesting. Couch describes the numerous weapons the trainees master, complex underwater demolition missions, and the advanced medical training SEAL Corpsmen go through, among other things.

"The Finishing School" is just as good as "The Warrior Elite" (and if you read my earlier review you'll see that I loved "The Warrior Elite"). If the first one taught me just how tough America's top warriors are, this sequel taught me about their incredible level of skill.