Always Faithful, Always Forward by Dick Couch | Books in Review

Dick Couch graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy in 1967 and spent five years in the Navy serving with Underwater Demolition and SEAL teams. His Vietnam War service included leading one of the few successful POW rescue operations as a platoon leader with SEAL Team One in 1970. He later joined the CIA.

In his third career Couch has become a prolific author, specializing in books about military special ops. His many volumes include novels such as SEAL Team One and Covert Action , and nonfiction books including The Warrior Elite: The Forging of SEAL Class 228 , Chosen Soldier: The Making of a Special Forces Warrior , Sua Sponte: The Forging of a Modern American Ranger  , The Sheriff of Ramadi: Navy SEALs and the Winning of al-Anbar,   and The Finishing School: Earning the Navy SEAL Trident .

In his latest book, Always Faithful, Always Forward: The Forging of a Special Operations Marine (Berkley Caliber, 353 pp., $26.95), Couch zeroes in on  the U.S. Marine Corps Special Operations Command, which formed early in 2006. Couch offers a brief history of American U.S. military special ops, then goes on to chronicle the progress of a class of seventy-nine Marines who went through the nine-month Individual Training Course at Camp Lejeune that started in November 2012.

—Marc Leepson

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