Reviewed by Captain Carl O. Schuster, U.S. Navy (Ret.)
By Dick Couch
Crown Publishers, New York, 2005
Despite its innocuous title, Captain Dick Couch’s new book has nothing to do with high society or table manners. It is instead a succinct but comprehensive book about how SEALs (sea, air, land), the Navy’s special forces, train for war. The Finishing School: Earning the Navy SEAL Trident (Crown Publishers, New York, 2005, hardcover $25) focuses on SEAL qualification training (SQT), the 15 weeks of training that follows the initial 30-week Basic Underwater Demolition/SEAL training course (BUD/S). It is at SQT that the U.S. Navy transforms its elite sailors into land warriors capable of fighting the world’s best infantry on an equal footing. This is an essential step in the SEAL training program, because unlike the Army’s Special Forces, the SEALs’ personnel pool does not consist of already trained infantrymen but of sailors. As such, their land combat skills must be built from the ground up. Anyone who does not master those skills cannot join a SEAL platoon. Thus, in Army parlance, BUD/S should be seen as the SEAL’s boot camp and SQT as his advanced infantry training (“finishing school” in Navy slang, hence the book’s title).
Captain Couch also takes readers beyond the training curriculum, into the SEAL platoon itself as it prepares to deploy, conduct its operations and return. This book tells you what it takes, what it means and what it is like to be a SEAL.
The Finishing School builds on the author’s outstanding earlier book, The Warrior Elite, which followed the training of BUD/S class 228 as its members worked their way through the basic 30-week course. In this new book, which follows SQT class C-202 (second class of 2002), Couch similarly explains the prerequisites, stages and purposes be-hind each element of the training. In a free-flowing narrative that educates without lecturing, he describes how and why the training has changed since Vietnam. The reader can see how lessons learned from the Army Special Forces’ experiences in Mogadishu — as well as from their own operations — have been incorporated into SEAL training, tactics and procedures. There is no pursuit of the perfect school solution here, only the cold, hard understanding of combat and the harsh decisions it forces you to make. For example, what do you do when you are under fire with wounded bleeding out in front of you, or when a man is disabled en route to the target? Trainees must weigh the risks and consequences, first in the classroom and then in the field.
It is all here, from training on the full range of small arms that the SEAL may use or face, to the vital orienteering, combat tactics and medical practices essential to land operations and combat. Above all, Couch emphasizes unit integrity, teamwork and mission accomplishment. Only those willing to stay the course when the odds are the worst and the obstacles almost insurmountable need apply. This is high-risk, intensive training that challenges every aspect of the trainee’s mind, body and character. The names have been changed in many cases to protect the men’s identities, because these men are preparing for or may already have participated in the war on terror, in which the enemy seeks not to limit civilian casualties but to inflict them in the largest possible numbers. Assassination and ran-dom car bombing are favorite terrorist tactics with family, friends and neighbors as the most likely targets. Security issues also affect some aspects of the book: Details on tactics, procedures and strategy are omitted, lest the author provide insights that terrorists might exploit to their advantage.
The Finishing School is an informative narrative and a tribute to SEALs past and present. Captain Couch provides as much insight into family and professional life as he does into the building and preparation of the SEALs themselves. He does it without fanfare, embellishment or hyperbole. Anyone seeking to understand the Navy’s special warfare forces, both in the Vietnam era and now, should read this book.
