Seal Team Six: Memoirs of an Elite Navy Seal Sniper

An interesting story that may unintentionally reveal more about Howard E. Wasdin than he intended–what he repeatedly considers about status & gender, certain pastimes that may indicate some psychological problems that if he did not have discipline and opportunity to serve his country, would have resulted in a negative outcome. Fortunately the negatives did not (hopefully) come to fruition, and in the end, it is a riveting story of what drove him to pursue personal excellence and how he realized that he is a human being. I do wish that his ghost writer organized Seal Team Six: Memoirs of an Elite Navy Seal Sniper in a different way–Wasdin digressed & told/retold other people’s stories that are apparently in other books. It made the narrative slightly confusing and took some time to reorient myself from someone else’s story from a different time period back to his story, especially since he would frequently wait until the end of the passage to clarify that he was not a part of that story. The most impressive section deals with his experiences before and after the events represented in Black Hawk Down, which I have not read yet, but I have seen the movie. I was particularly moved by his story when he was injured, his recovery process, dealing with bureaucracy and his recognition that he could not resume his life as it was.