Walking Point: The Experiences of a Founding Member of the Elite Navy Seals

The author of Point Man discusses the history of the SEALs, their intensive training program, their specialized skills and equipment, and their missions around the world, including an assignment to locate a Vietnamese POW camp. Tour.

In Point Man (Avon, 1995), Watson thrilled readers with his harrowing account of his experiences as a Navy SEAL in Vietnam. A dauntless platoon chief (portrayed as the legendary "Patches" Watson in the books by best-selling author Richard Marcinko), Watson recounts in his latest work the history of the SEALs, detailing their missions around the world and the intense SEAL training programs. He brings the reader to the forefront of each SEAL assignment as he describes treacherous missions in pitch-black waters, pinpointing the location of a Vietnamese POW camp, and learning to arm a "baby atomic bomb." The work is packed with excitement that will please military enthusiasts. Recommended for military history and Vietnam War collections.?Michael Coleman, Regional Lib. for Blind & Physically Handicapped, Montgomery, Ala.
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.

The second book by one of the U.S. Navy's legendary SEALS' founding fathers (and his writing partner Dockery) is more thematic than his Vietnam memoir Point Man (1993). It ranges over the things Watson did, saw, and was during 20 years in the navy: training green officers (sometimes without their knowing it) and Turks (hard cases), using nuclear demolitions charges, handling personal peculiarities, developing and deploying a wide variety of weapons from an almost equally wide variety of riverine craft in Vietnam, and surviving both the peacetime and wartime hazards of being a SEAL. Watson did survive, which is fortunate not only because his books are absorbing documents of a legendary special warfare unit but also because he is one of those invaluable noncoms for whom junior officers and the taxpayers should nightly give thanks--they are that important to building and maintaining effective armed forces. Roland Green