In 1999, I joined SEAL Class 228 and followed them start to finish. I was their graduation speaker. During the journey of Class 228, while I was a writer and only auditing the course, the experience took me back to my own trial as a Basic Underwater/SEAL (BUD/S) trainee. This was now thirty years later after I had graduated with SEAL Class 45 from this same difficult and demanding school. Then as now, it is the toughest, longest, and most relentless military training in the free world.
This Second Edition of The Warrior Elite still follows my classmates from Class 228. But there’s more. I recently visited the Naval Special Warfare Center on Coronado for an update on current SEAL training. There have been some changes from when Class 228 endured the BUD/S training gauntlet, and those differences are documented in this edition. I found it still to be the toughest, longest, and most relentless military training in the free world.
What does it take to become a Navy SEAL? What makes talented, intelligent young men volunteer for this physical punishment, cold water, and days without sleep? The Warrior Elite documents the process that transforms young men into warriors—evolution by evolution, week by week, month by month. SEAL training is the distillation of the human spirit, a tradition-bound ordeal that seeks to find men with character, courage, and the burning desire to win at all costs, men who would rather die than quit.
As with my others works that document the training of Rangers, Green Berets, and Marine Special Operators, I was permitted unprecedented access to the BUD/S training venues and to the individual SEAL trainees and training cadres. The Warrior Elite is the unique story of The Forging of SEAL Class 228.
The Warrior Elite is available in Trade Paperback, e-Book, and Audio Book.
