'SEAL Team Six: Memoirs of an Elite Navy SEAL Sniper' by Howard E. Wasdin & Stephen Templin

SEAL Team Six: Memoirs of an Elite Navy SEAL Sniper, Howard E. Wasdin and Stephen Templin (3)

This book had the random and fortunate timing of being published in May 2011, almost coincident with the capture and killing of Osama Bin Laden by a present day SEAL Team Six.  While many are familiar with the SEAL groups (US Navy’s elite SEa, Air and Land commandos), until last May, many were not aware of the further demarcation of the SEAL Team Six. Similar to the Army Ranger’s Delta Force, SEAL Team Six is the elite of the elite.  Top SEAL’s are encouraged to undergo further training and become part of this group.  Howard Wasdin became an elite Navy SEAL sniper and joined SEAL Team Six.  In this book he recounts several of his major engagements, including the Battle of Mogadishu, with extreme tactical detail.  While I found much of the book to be interesting, I had some issues with the writing style.  He describes so many parts of each assignment before and during the action that I wasn’t clear on what level of importance each piece of information had on the overall picture.  As a sniper, he was trained to observe, but I don’t think this lends itself to an easily readable prose.  It felt like staccato bursts of streams of consciousness.  I did get a good idea of the strength, discipline and teamwork that the SEALs attain and how hard they work to achieve it.