Combat Swimmer: Memoirs of a Navy SEAL By Robert Gormly

Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
This book is at once a memoir, a history and a warning. Gormly has been part of the SEAL community virtually since its emergence. In Vietnam as a junior officer, he met the absence of strategic policy with a tactical approach: killing as many Viet Cong as possible. Even in retrospect, Gormly concludes that the most effective U.S. approach might have been attacking the enemy's infrastructure by eliminating the "cadres" who spread and enforced Communist ideology by terrorist means. The limited political sophistication of this approach is suggestive, particularly in the context of Gormly's progress through the Navy's special operations system from 1968 to his assignment as commander of SEAL Team 6 in 1983. When Gormly relieved the notorious Richard Marcinko, he inherited a unit that had made a policy of pushing envelopes and ignoring rules. His description of the intraservice politics involved in taming the organization without breaking its morale is as good as anything in print on the challenge of maintaining effective special operations forces in the contexts of a democratic system. His account of the 1985 capture of the Achille Lauro's hijackers reveals a delicate balance of roles and responsibilities in managing doctrine and training considerations, tactical issues and policy questions. Gormly is no knight without fear and reproach in the mold of Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan. He is a warrior for the working day, not always right and not always wise. But in a harsh world, it will comfort many to know that men with Gormly's spirit, character and patriotism wear this country's uniform. 8 pages of b&w photos, not seen by PW.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal
In this literate and straightforward memoir, Gormly details the events of an exciting, 29-year career in the Navy, almost all of which was spent as a SEAL. His recollections of fighting the Viet Cong in the Mekong Delta are exciting and give one a glimpse of how nasty guerrilla wars are. Of special interest will be his accounts of the SEAL's performances in Grenada in 1983 and in covert actions against the Iranians in the Persian Gulf. Adams Morgan's performance is as straightforward as the... read more --This text refers to the Audio Cassette edition.

Combat Swimmer: Memoirs of a Navy SEAL By Robert Gormly

I have read this book and i loved it. Great book to read.

Simply a must read. He is the man to tell these parts of history. Got a lot of questions answered about SEAL stuff I did't quite understand before. Yeah, it's pretty cool. And the cover looks sweet facing out on your shelf.