Rogue Warrior: Rogue Warrior I
- Book Review,
by Richard Marcinko
From Publishers Weekly
Special-warfare devotees will find this to their liking: an insider's account of the Navy's amphibious commandos known as SEALS, by one of the group's most controversial veterans, along with Weisman (coauthor of Shadow Warrior ). Marcinko describes his combat adventures in Southeast Asia in the '60s; his command of SEAL Team Six, one of the most effective counterterrorist outfits in the world, in the '70s; and his pioneering leadership in the '80s of Red Cell, a unit designed to test the Navy's vulnerability to terrorists. Super-macho in outlook and behavior, Marcinko delights in recalling the traditionally gross behavior of the SEALS as well as his own unique experiences such as eating the brains of a live monkey to impress his Cambodian allies. The super-secret Red Cell successfully penetrated many key U.S. naval installations, creating so much havoc that Marcinko was arrested. He is evasive about the conspiracy charges brought against him but reveals that he is currently serving time in a federal prison. Marcinko's anti-authoritarian behavior, as he improvises his own doctrine of unconventional warfare, makes for entertaining reading. Military Book Club selection. Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
An autobiography of a career naval officer who dropped out of high school, enlisted in the U.S. Navy, and spent his ca reer struggling to win acceptance for special warfare SEAL (sea-air-land) units within the Navy establishment from the late 1950s to the present. Marcinko provides detailed descriptions of the early transformation of underwater demolition teams (UDT) into SEAL units. With interesting vignettes about training and actual missions during the Vietnam War, he gives a close-up view of this specialized and little-known brand of warfare. Marcinko's participation in the Iran hostage rescue attempt in 1980 and the U.S. invasion of Grenada in 1983 provide a perspective vastly different from the accepted versions of these events. However, the overuse of salty language throughout the book that lends new meaning to the phrase "curse like a sailor" and Marcinko's polemical accounts of his struggles to win acceptance for specialized warfare within the Navy are unfortunate. Not a necessary purchase. Military Book Club main selection.- Harold N. Boyer, Marple P.L., Broomall, Pa.Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From AudioFile
Richard Marcinko describes his life as a combat soldier with the fearless tone of a commanding officer. His boldness helps reveal that he will stop at nothing to achieve his objectives. However, much of the excitement of his daring operations in the Navy's first anti-terrorist unit is lost since there's no emotion in his voice when recounting the stories. There's a noticeable starched quality to the narration as if Marcinko were standing at attention while delivering the text. His failure to step out of his role as military commander and take on the role of storyteller contributes to the lack of firepower in this program. M.P.T. (c)AudioFile, Portland, Maine
From Kirkus Reviews
The stormy career of a top Navy SEAL hotspur. Commander Marcinko, USN Ret., recently served time at Petersburg Federal Prison for conspiracy to defraud the Navy by overcharging for specialized equipment--the result, he says, of telling off too many admirals. It seems that his ornery and joyous aggression, nurtured by a Czech grandfather in a flinty Pennsylvania mining town, has brought him to grief in peace and to brilliance in war. Serving his first tour in Vietnam in 1966 as an enlisted SEAL expert in underwater demolition, Marcinko returned for a second tour as an officer leading a commando squad he had trained. Here, his accounts of riverine warfare--creeping underwater to Vietcong boats and slipping over their gunwales; raiding VC island strongholds in the South China Sea; steaming up to the Cambodian border to tempt the VC across and being overrun- -are galvanic, detailed, and told with a true craftsman's love. What did he think of the Vietcong? ``The bastards--they were good.'' His battle philosophy? ``...kill my enemy before he has a chance to kill me....Never did I give Charlie an even break.'' After the aborted desert rescue of US hostages in the Tehran embassy, Marcinko was ordered to create SEAL Team Six--a counterterrorist unit with worldwide maritime responsibilities. In 1983, the unit was deployed to Beirut to test the security of the US embassy there. Easily evading the embassy security detail, sleeping Lebanese guards, and the Marines, the SEALs planted enough fake bombs to level the building. When Marcinko spoke to ``a senior American official'' about the problem, the SEAL's blunt security advice was rejected, particularly in respect to car-bomb attacks. Ninety days later, 63 people in the embassy compound were killed by a suicide bomber driving a TNT-filled truck. Profane and asking no quarter: the real nitty-gritty, bloody and authentic. (Eight-page photo insert--not seen.) -- Copyright ©1992, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
Book Description
Richard Marcinko was the U.S. Navy's most unconventional warrior -- and its most deadly. A master practitioner of the "Let's Do It to Them Before They Do It to Us" school of survival, he was often as feared by his own high command as by the enemy. This brilliant, tough-as-nails military virtuoso of violence -- ambushes, booby, traps, exotic weaponry, high altitude parachute drops, underwater infiltrations, face-to-face killing -- rose through Navy ranks to create and command one of this country's most elite and secretive counterterrorist units, SEAL TEAM SIX. Now, in his own colorful voice, this thirty-year veteran recounts the story of the secret missions and Special Warfare madness that make up his harrowing worldwide military career. Here, too, he opens doors that have long been locked: the riveting truth about the mystery-shrouded Navy SEALS; what went on behind the scenes during the infamous Desert One hostage rescue attempt in Iran; and the stunning inside realities of the Granada invasion. Born on Thanksgiving Day, 1940, Dick Marcinko was raised in mining towns, housing projects, blue-collar bars, and on the streets. He quit school at seventeen and enlisted in a new life of thrill-seeking. He joined the Navy's Underwater Demolition Teams, which he calls "a masochist's dream." Then he attended over eighteen special-training schools, where he excelled in the lethal, survival and leadership skills that would gain him entrance into the upper strata of military warfare: the SEALS. Marcinko was almost in humanly tough, and proved it on hair-raising missions across Vietnam and a war-torn world: blowing up supply junks, charging through minefields, jumping at 19,000 feet with a chute that wouldn't open, fighting hand-to-hand in a hellhole jungle, and experiencing the tragedy of watching a buddy die in his arms. He was such a threatening force on the killing fields of Vietnam that the enemy posted a reward for his death. For the Pentagon, Marcinko organized the Navy's first counterterrorist unit, the legendary SEAL TEAM SIX. One of the most feared weapons against terrorism in the world, the Team went on classified missions from Central America to the Middle East, the North Sea, Africa and beyond. Out of this success, Marcinko was tapped to create the explosive unit know as Red Cell, a dirty-dozen team of the military's most accomplished and decorated counterterrorists. Their unbelievable job was to become terrorists themselves -- to test the defense of the Navy's most secure facilities and installations. The Navy was actually going to pay go-for-broke Marcinko to wreak havoc. The result was predictable: all hell broke loose. In Rogue Warrior, Marcinko recounts his searing adventures in the special branches of the military reserved for a handpicked few. Here is the hard-working hero . . . the killer who saw beyond the blood to ultimate justice . . . and the decorated warrior who became such a maverick that the Navy brass wanted his head on a pole, and for a time, got it. This, and more, is Marcinko, a man made for war.
From the Publisher, Simon & Schuster
Richard Marcinko was the U.S. Navy's most unconventional warrior -- and its most deadly. A master practitioner of the "Let's Do It to Them Before They Do It to Us" school of survival, he was often as feared by his own high command as by the enemy. This brilliant, tough-as-nails military virtuoso of violence -- ambushes, booby, traps, exotic weaponry, high altitude parachute drops, underwater infiltrations, face-to-face killing -- rose through Navy ranks to create and command one of this country's most elite and secretive counterterrorist units, SEAL TEAM SIX. Now, in his own colorful voice, this thirty-year veteran recounts the story of the secret missions and Special Warfare madness that make up his harrowing worldwide military career. Here, too, he opens doors that have long been locked: the riveting truth about the mystery-shrouded Navy SEALS; what went on behind the scenes during the infamous Desert One hostage rescue attempt in Iran; and the stunning inside realities of the Granada invasion. Born on Thanksgiving Day, 1940, Dick Marcinko was raised in mining towns, housing projects, blue-collar bars, and on the streets. He quit school at seventeen and enlisted in a new life of thrill-seeking. He joined the Navy's Underwater Demolition Teams, which he calls "a masochist's dream." Then he attended over eighteen special-training schools, where he excelled in the lethal, survival and leadership skills that would gain him entrance into the upper strata of military warfare: the SEALS. Marcinko was almost in humanly tough, and proved it on hair-raising missions across Vietnam and a war-torn world: blowing up supply junks, charging through minefields, jumping at 19,000 feet with a chute that wouldn't open, fighting hand-to-hand in a hellhole jungle, and experiencing the tragedy of watching a buddy die in his arms. He was such a threatening force on the killing fields of Vietnam that the enemy posted a reward for his death. For the Pentagon, Marcinko organized the Navy's first counterterrorist unit, the legendary SEAL TEAM SIX. One of the most feared weapons against terrorism in the world, the Team went on classified missions from Central America to the Middle East, the North Sea, Africa and beyond. Out of this success, Marcinko was tapped to create the explosive unit know as Red Cell, a dirty-dozen team of the military's most accomplished and decorated counterterrorists. Their unbelievable job was to become terrorists themselves -- to test the defense of the Navy's most secure facilities and installations. The Navy was actually going to pay go-for-broke Marcinko to wreak havoc. The result was predictable: all hell broke loose. In Rogue Warrior, Marcinko recounts his searing adventures in the special branches of the military reserved for a handpicked few. Here is the hard-working hero . . . the killer who saw beyond the blood to ultimate justice . . . and the decorated warrior who became such a maverick that the Navy brass wanted his head on a pole, and for a time, got it. This, and more, is Marcinko, a man made for war.
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