“Since the first navy frogmen crawled onto the beaches of Normandy, no SEAL has ever surrendered,” writes Chuck Pfarrer. “No SEAL has ever been captured, and not one teammate or body has ever been left in the field. This legacy of valor is unmatched in modern warfare.”
Warrior Soul is a book about the warrior spirit, and it takes the reader all over the world. Former Navy SEAL Chuck Pfarrer recounts some of his most dangerous assignments: On a clandestine reconnaissance mission on the Mosquito Coast, his recon team plays a deadly game of cat and mouse with a Nicaraguan patrol boat. Cut off on the streets of Beirut, the author’s SEAL detachment must battle snipers on the Green Line. In the mid-Atlantic, Pfarrer’s unit attempts to retrieve—or destroy—the booster section of a Trident ballistic missile before it can be recovered by a Russian spy trawler. On a runway in Sicily, his assault element surrounds an Egyptian airliner carrying the Achille Lauro hijackers.
These are only a few of the riveting stories of combat patrol, reconnaissance missions, counter-terrorist operations, tragedies, and victories in Warrior Soul that illustrate the SEAL maxim “The person who will not be defeated cannot be defeated.”
“Riveting…a convincing portrait of the SEAL’s dedication to duty [that] gives insight into what it takes to be among the best of the best.”
USA Today
Order Warrior Soul: The Memoir of a Navy SEAL Today
More Praise for Warrior Soul: The Memoir of a Navy SEAL
From Kirkus Reviews
“An eye-widening, fascinating memoir of a young man’s sentimental education in the fine arts of infiltrating ‘denied areas,’ blowing things up, slashing a few throats, and otherwise visiting mayhem on the bad guys . . . frank, well-written, and memorable.”
From Booklist
”Had [Chuck Pfarrer] written his memoir in the 1980s, when he was an officer in the U.S. Navy’s special-forces organization, he might have been busted to the fleet or thrown in the brig. Even now that his stories can be told, Pfarrer masks many of the names of his fellow “operators,” a plain label that carries the highest cachet in the world of the SEALs. Earning and maintaining that designation is the theme that unites Pfarrer’s memoir, as he relates his training, relations with comrades and superiors, and discharge. The values of the operator are crystal clear in Pfarrer’s account: intolerance for mistakes and mastery of fear–with disdain for operators who can’t command courage. These martial values are necessary for survival, and their enforcement by in-group psychology is amply illustrated by operations in Honduras, Beirut, and an unnamed Arab country, which are among the stories Pfarrer recounts. A must for military affairs readers, Pfarrer’s recollections, allied with those of another SEAL (One Perfect Op by Dennis Chalker, 2002), vividly portray the elite warrior’s arduous, perilous calling.
From Publishers Weekly
“Pfarrer, a former Navy SEAL assault element commander and now a Hollywood screenwriter (The Jackal; Navy SEALS; Darkman, etc.), looks back on his time in the special forces in this adrenaline rush of a memoir that grabs readers from the first page (in which he readies for his final-and nearly fatal-jump). Writing with the efficient clarity and brawn of one of the U.S. military’s most special operators, Pfarrer describes the rigorous, nearly sadistic SEAL training that propelled him toward covert operations in the 1980s and early 1990s. He recounts his missions to various Cold War hotspots in Central America and the Middle East, where he patrolled Beirut’s bombed-out streets as part of a multinational peacekeeping force during Lebanon’s ravaging civil war. Pfarrer’s somersaults through Navy service and personal challenges, including failed marriages and a bout with cancer, expose an introspective tug-of-war between disciplined combatant and human spectator, scruffy team leader and reluctant hero. Although chock full of military jargon (thankfully Pfarrar also includes a glossary of terms) and detailed descriptions of special operations, the story remains solidly human, highlighting this “Frogman’s” facile combination of self-control and survival smarts in the face of adversities that most readers can only imagine.”
Recent comments