First SEALS: The Untold Story of the Forging of America’s Most Elite Unit
Patrick K. O’Donnell. Boston: DaCapo Press, 2014. 288 pp. Ilus. Index. Notes. $25.99.
Reviewed by David Mattingly
From their inception, Navy SEALs were known as the “quiet professionals” and little was written about their operations in books or the press. This changed after the attacks on 9/11 and with the major role SEALs played in the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, and smaller operations such as the rescue of the MV Maersk Alabama. Patrick O’Donnell is an award-winning author of military history and served as a combat historian during the Battle of Fallujah. He is an expert speaker on World War II espionage and special operations, and he received the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) Society’s John Waller Award.
World War II introduced many new tactics and weapons to the battlefield as well as to naval warfare. Almost simultaneously, Navy units were formed to provide reconnaissance of beaches prior to amphibious operations while the OSS saw the need for swimmers with special equipment to covertly approach targets in port as well as operate ashore behind enemy lines. O’Donnell argues that the Office of Strategic Services Maritime Units (OSS MU) more closely resembled today’s SEALs than the Navy’s underwater demolition and combat demolition teams.
While divers in the more traditional Navy units were outfitted with nothing more than trunks, a face mask, and a knife, the OSS MU saw the need for a rebreathing apparatus that did not discharge the tell-tale air bubbles of other diving equipment, as well as weapons, special boats, and “torpedoes” that the swimmer could ride ashore. It invested in the research and development of the special weapons and equipment and used Washington, D.C., hotel swimming pools and the U.S. Naval Academy natatorium as test sites. Waterproof watches with illuminated faces visible in dark water and other equipment that would seem ordinary to today’s sport divers had their beginning as OSS special equipment.
As the Pacific theater had different missions—most of the operations would support amphibious landings—the Navy did not see the value of the OSS MU special equipment, most of which was stored in warehouses on Oahu and not discovered until after the war. O’Donnell argues that this set back rebreather diving research several years.
While Navy units often drew their members from Navy sources, the OSS MU recruited a wide variety of individuals who had traveled, sailed, spoken various languages, studied anthropology, and most important, were strong swimmers. The teams included a movie star, a Hollywood dentist, and lifeguards from California beaches. Members of OSS MU teams had many of the skills seen in today’s SEAL and human- or cultural-terrain teams. Parachuting was a common means of insertion of OSS teams behind enemy lines, and Navy OSS MU operators became jump-qualified, which further differentiated the teams from Navy units.
The OSS MU first deployed to Cairo and operated in Italy and the Balkans, supporting partisans fighting the Axis powers. After the fall of Benito Mussolini and the occupation of Italy by Germany, it incorporated many former members of the Italian Navy’s Decima MAS into its ranks, who brought with them diving equipment—more advanced than that of the Americans—experience in special operations, and language skills, which remain important to today’s SEALs working behind enemy lines or with foreign forces.
O’Donnell’s previous books have earned him a spot in the special-operations community, and he was able to interview several members of the teams, though many of the members took the secrets of their missions to their graves. He used his access and historical documents to tell of the successes and the contribution that OSS MU, Navy underwater demolition teams, and naval combat demolition unit operators made to defeat the Axis powers. He also candidly discusses their failures, such as teams operating without radios, risking the loss of intelligence if the team were captured, and the failure of equipment that had not been tested in the extreme conditions the operators would face. One of the greatest failures was allowing leaders who possessed knowledge of theater-wide operations to accompany the operators and sometimes lead the teams. This resulted in the compromise of operators, operation camps, and details of many missions.
The recent successes of the SEALs and other special-operations forces have brought their exploits to the headlines, bookshelves, and movie theaters, where the average person sits mystified watching SEAL candidates endure Hell Week and the rough surf of Coronado’s beaches without realizing the full history of U.S. maritime special operations. In this book, O’Donnell sets the scene for today’s SEALs and provides the reader with the history of the inception of Navy special operations.
Why We Lost: A General’s Inside Account of the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars
Daniel P. Bolger. New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2014. 502 pp. Biblio. Index. Notes. $28.
Reviewed by Lieutenant Colonel John A. Nagl, U.S. Army (Retired)
In autumn 1991, fresh from service as a tank platoon leader in Operation Desert Storm, I read an article in the Army War College journal Parameters that rocked my world. Dan Bolger’s “The Ghosts of Omdurman” was so contentious that its editors felt compelled to insert a prominent boldface disclaimer that the views expressed were exclusively those of the author.
Major Bolger’s heresy? In the immediate aftermath of Operation Desert Storm, he wrote that “To meet future challenges, America’s Army must turn from the warm and well-deserved glow of its Persian Gulf victory and embrace, once more, the real business of regulars, the stinking gray shadow world of ‘savage wars of peace,’ as Rudyard Kipling called them.”
Reading “The Ghosts of Omdurman” in my Fort Knox apartment as a student at the Armor Officer Advanced Course was a eureka moment for me. I chewed on Bolger’s insight for years, eventually citing it approvingly in the final chapter of my doctoral dissertation, which later became the book Learning to Eat Soup with a Knife. A decade before the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, Bolger saw that the future of conflict was irregular warfare and insurgency, and he accepted risk by saying so in print. Bolger was one of my intellectual guides, an example of brave, bold, solid national-security thinking—even at the risk of his career. I have tried hard to emulate that example ever since.
That makes this review very difficult to write. Recently retired Lieutenant General Bolger has now published a book titled Why We Lost: A General’s Inside Account of the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars that turns upside down and inside out his writings that I so admired. It is hard to reconcile his argument with his previous publications. Why We Lost is largely a capable review of American military policy and strategy in the Middle East from Operation Desert Storm through the war on terrorism, comparable to Peter Bergen’s The Longest War. But Bolger has little new to offer here. Osama bin Laden’s al Qaeda struck the United States, the far enemy, to incite a military response that would lead to a global struggle between Islam and the West. The initial Western response in Afghanistan succeeded, but America overreached by unnecessarily attacking an Iraq suspected of an active weapons-of-mass-destruction program. A military force that had not heeded Major Bolger’s prescient warning to prepare for irregular warfare was forced to attempt to learn the ancient art of counterinsurgency under fire.
The driver of much of that learning was General David Petraeus. It is fair to say that Bolger is not a fan, unlike Bergen and many other chroniclers of this period. Bolger titles his chapter on Petraeus’ work turning around a failing Iraq war in 2007 and 2008 “Malik Daoud,” the Arabic version of Petraeus’ nickname “King David,” and is scathing in his assessment of a man whose arrival in theater he compares to “Christ come to cleanse the temple.” Bolger admits that the war “did turn, and it turned on his [Petraeus’] watch—not a win, but no longer a descent into chaos.” As Bolger well knows, that is the best one can hope for in the stinking gray shadow world of savage wars of peace, but he buries that knowledge here.
Instead, he promulgates a sensationalist narrative, beginning with the title of his book. Whether we lost the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan is a subject of some debate, but there is good reason to argue that our interests in both theaters have largely been met, albeit at an enormous cost. In fact, as General Bolger grudgingly admits in his epilogue, the surge of U.S. troops to Iraq under Petraeus “gave America space to withdraw on its own terms and provided Iraq, however ungrateful, a chance to chart its course as a responsible nation-state.” That result constitutes success in irregular warfare, a kind of fighting that tends to drag on for years after the withdrawal of foreign forces as local troops slowly gain the upper hand over their insurgent enemies. There is every chance for a similar outcome in Afghanistan, as long as America continues to provide combat advisers to the Afghan troops trained by Lieutenant General Bolger during his own service as the commander of the military training mission there from 2011 until 2013.
Reading the book, it is hard not to conclude that the incendiary title, the author’s note that begins the book, and the epilogue that ends it were tacked onto an otherwise capable but unexciting manuscript to make it controversial and appear forthright. That would fit the accolade Bolger awards to himself by saying, “If I remind you of anyone at all, maybe it’s Joe Stilwell, ‘Vinegar Joe,’ of the China-Burma-India theater in World War II. He told it like it was, eventually got sent home for it, and deserved a better war.” I appreciate that Dan Bolger has brought controversial issues to the table, both in 1991 and today. But that does not mean I agree with his opinion any more than Franklin D. Roosevelt agreed with Stilwell before relieving him in 1944.
The best general’s memoir of World War II is Defeat Into Victory by Field Marshall Sir William Slim, a title that I believe more accurately describes the wars of the past decade than does Why We Lost. Field Marshall Slim wrote that Stilwell “had something of a reputation for shortness of temper and for distrust of most of the rest of the world . . . he could be, and frequently was, downright rude to people whom, often for no very good reason, he did not like.” Here, at least, Bolger’s comparison of himself with Vinegar Joe appears to have merit.
Rice Paddy Recon: A Marine Officer’s Second Tour in Vietnam, 1968–1970
Andrew R. Finlayson. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, 2014. 320 pp. Illus. Index. $35.
Reviewed by Colonel Dick Camp, U.S. Marine Corps (Retired)
Andy Finlayson has penned a fascinating account of his 19 months in Vietnam as the operations officer in a reconnaissance company in the Annamite Mountains of Vietnam’s Northern I Corps, an infantry company commander in the rice paddies and mountains of Quang Nam Province, and assignment as a Provincial Reconnaissance Unit (PRU) adviser in Tay Ninh Province for the Central Intelligence Agency. In this extremely well-written memoir, Finlayson takes the reader on a very personal narrative of his experiences in combat during a critical period of the war, 1968–70. As he states in the preface, “I gained a perspective that I suspect was far different from many of my comrades who served in the war, and I hope to convey this perspective to the reader.”
Initially assigned to the 1st Force Reconnaissance Company because of his previous tour as a platoon commander in the same unit (which he described in his book Killer Kane: A Marine Long-Range Recon Team Leader), Finlayson found that the war had not changed, much to his regret. “It seemed the priorities were the same, the enemy units were still the same, and the strategy was still the same.” As the operations officer, he was responsible for the employment of small teams into the enemy’s backyard to collect tactical intelligence—at their great peril.
His detailed accounts of these patrols provide a revealing glimpse into the deadly cat-and-mouse pursuit-and-escape clashes between reconnaissance Marines and North Vietnamese soldiers in the remote jungles and mountainous terrain of Base Area 112, reputed to be the enemy command-and-control headquarters for the entire province. “I could easily see that conducting ground reconnaissance patrols would be both challenging and dangerous.” In a writing style that captures the reader’s attention, Finlayson recounts several of these patrols to illustrate the challenges faced by the teams.
In one particularly hazardous patrol, team “Serviceman II” requested an emergency night extraction after calling in fire on a large group of enemy soldiers. The request was denied and the team was forced to continue the mission, only to suffer heavy casualties before being extracted. Finlayson noted that “this event, along with several others . . . added to a growing disenchantment among some of our officers and men.” He struggled to overcome the lack of understanding on how to employ the reconnaissance teams, which often placed the teams in danger. “I was often perplexed whenever I discussed reconnaissance capabilities and employment with my counterparts on the regimental staff.”
Reassigned after six months at his own request—to gain experience in his basic military occupation specialty—Finlayson assumed command of Company G, 2d Battalion, 5th Marines in the heavily contested Arizona Territory, after its commander was wounded and evacuated. What follows next is his gripping account of commanding an infantry company in heavy combat. Two weeks after taking command of “Golf” Company, Finlayson found himself attacking a heavily defended village. “As I moved with the second platoon toward the pagoda, we began to take casualties . . . My radio operator was shot in the head and killed instantly, and another Marine kneeling to my left was also killed.” His spellbinding description of the action is riveting—and that is just one incident in his six months in command.
Finlayson has a unique ability to weave infantry tactics into his narrative without making the story read like a textbook. “I dug a foxhole on the western side of the perimeter and spent the rest of the day checking our lines to make sure every avenue of approach into our position was well covered with machine guns and every dead space was covered with mortar and artillery concentrations.” That sentence speaks volumes about his tactical savviness. And as for those military-oriented readers, they will immediately know that Finlayson has his “stuff in one bag!”
Halfway through his company command tour (normally six months), Finlayson requested to extend an additional six months in country to be an adviser with the Vietnamese. “I was intrigued by [this] kind of work and the mystery surrounding the activities of the PRU.” The request was approved, and he found himself assigned to replace an officer who had been relieved for cause and was facing a court-martial.
In this third assignment, Finlayson introduces the reader to a wide range of real-life characters who are compelling studies of the men and women fighting the “hidden war” against the Vietnamese infrastructure. Finlayson’s revealing chronicle lays waste to the much maligned and misunderstood Phoenix program. In a straightforward style, he tears apart the myth that the program was nothing more than an assassination effort—when in his eyes, it was “how the [CIA] conducted special police operations against the enemy’s political leadership in the hamlets and villages of rural South Vietnam.”
In the last chapter, Finlayson answers the question that plagued him for 40 years—“Why we lost the Vietnam War”—at least in his own mind. He also presents an alternative strategy that might have enabled the United States to defeat the North Vietnamese. This wonderfully written book is more than a personal memoir; it is a “firsthand account of how one young Marine officer fought in that war.”