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  • Published: 31 May 2005
  • ISBN: 9780609810460
  • Imprint: Crown
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 320
  • RRP: $39.99
Categories:

The Finishing School

Earning the Navy SEAL Trident




For all the readers of military narrative who made Dick Couch's The Warrior Elite and Bob Baer's See No Evil so successful.

In The Finishing School, former Navy SEAL Dick Couch, author of the acclaimed Warrior Elite, follows SEALs on the ground and in the water as they undergo SEAL Tactical Training.

In America’s new war, the first guns in the fight are special operations forces, including the Navy SEALs, specially trained warriors who operate with precision, swiftness, and lethal force. In the constantly shifting war on terror, SEAL units—small in number, flexible, stealthy, and efficient—are more vital than ever to America’s security as they take the battle to an elusive enemy around the globe.

But how are Navy SEALs made? In Warrior Elite, Couch narrated one SEAL class's journey through BUD/S training, the brutal initial course that separates out candidates with the character and stamina necessary to begin training as Navy SEALs. In The Finishing School, Couch follows SEALs into the next levels of training—SEAL Tactical Training—where they master combat skills such as precision shooting, demolitions, secure communications, parachuting, diving, and first aid. From there, the men enter operational platoons, where they subordinate their individual abilities to the mission of the group and train for special operations in specific geographic environments.

Never before has a civilian writer been granted such close access to the training of America’s most elite military forces. The Finishing School is essential reading for anyone who wants to know what goes into the making of America’s best warriors.

  • Published: 31 May 2005
  • ISBN: 9780609810460
  • Imprint: Crown
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 320
  • RRP: $39.99
Categories:

About the author

Dick Couch

Dick Couch is a graduate of the U.S. Naval Acade-
my and served with the Navy UDT and SEAL
Teams. While a platoon commander with SEAL
Team One in 1970, he led one of the only successful
POW rescue operations of the Vietnam War. On
release from active duty in 1972, he joined the Cen-
tral Intelligence Agency where he served as a Mari-
time Operations officer. Dick retired from the
Naval Reserve in 1997 as the senior reserve SEAL
officer with the rank of captain. He began his writ-
ing career in 1990 and has published four novels:
SEAL Team One, Pressure Point, Silent Descent, and
Rising Wind. The Warrior Elite was his first non-fic-
tion work, published in November of 2001 by
Crown Books. US Armed Forces Nuclear, Chemical,
Biological Survival Manual (Basic Books), edited by
Dick, will be publishing in Feb. 2003. In the sum-
mer of 2003, Dick and Cliff Hollenbeck, award win-
ning photo journalist, will publish To Be a Navy
SEAL (Motor Books International), a table-top, full-
color pictorial book that will feature Basic
UDT/SEAL Training with a 20,000 word essay by
Dick. Scheduled for release in the fall of 2003 is The
Mercenary Option, a novel to be published by Pock-
et Books.

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