Reviews for Beyond Hell and Back: How America's Special Operations Forces Became the World's Greatest Fighting Unit

The average rating for Beyond Hell and Back: How America's Special Operations Forces Became the World's Greatest Fighting Unit based on 2 reviews is 3.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2011-12-26 00:00:00 Chris Chirillo I started out giving this 4 stars. I am not sure why exactly I pulled it back to three. I suppose as I write this review I will be able to bring clarity to my thoughts on this book. As sometimes, you don't quite know what your feelings are on a book until you start to talk about it/write about it. The book was very well researched. Impeccably so. I have to commend the authors for compiling such small and finite details. And then for managing to pull them together to give the reader a clearer awareness of the operational field within each event. Those events being; Operation Kingpin: The Son Tay Raid The Rescue of Bat 21 Operation Eagle Claw Task Force Normandy The Rescue of Captain Scott O'Grady ODA 551 In the Karbala Gap Task Force Viking at Debecka Pass However, I feel they actually may have gone a little too far in trying to recreate that operational field and the place I think they went too far on occasion was in the air. Of course air is as much a part of the modern Special Operations Force as ground and sea. You can't have one without the other. But in this book I found the authors concentrated a lot of their efforts on the tactical air component of the above mentioned operations. While it was needed, I think maybe they could have cut some of that detail. This is one of the reasons that sometimes I was on the bench with the book. Not really enamoured. The biggest problem I had with the book actually came from the place you'd least suspect. The sub title. Firstly, there is no 'greatest fighting unit' in the world. To even boast of such a thing to the rest of the world makes me grind my teeth. I do not question that America has 'one' of the greatest fighting units, but saying you are 'the' greatest does not sit well with me. Then again, I come from a country where we only say we are the greatest at something in jest or in the spirit of good fun. We never actually think it. And we would not put it on a book cover unless the intention was satirical. I can get over a bad sub title though. It was the contributing factor behind my owning this book since about 2010 and not reading it until late 2014, but it wasn't what bugged me enough to give it three stars. It was that the authors did not write a book to live up to that subtitle. The problem with titles like that is that the reader will go into the book with a certain expectation. If those expectations are not met, then it can frustrate your reader. If the Operations outlined were going to impress anything on the reader, it is that America's SOF history was marred by a bumbling, underwelming over-strategised melee of failed operations and that it was not until the 21st century that they got their act together. I am sure this was NOT the message the authors were trying to get across, but it is the message I got. Which seems unfair to the men responsible for tightening up and professionalising 'one of' the greatest fighting units in the world.

Review # 2 was written on 2019-03-12 00:00:00 Evonne Ames Certainly a very engaging and informative account of several US SF operations from Vietnam to the second invasion of Iraq. For the most part, the focus is of course on the missions themselves, the planning, the key personnel and equipment, without siding politically. It is however, not surprisingly, in the final chapter on the Debecka Pass and the subsequent Afterword, where the flags start to wave and some objectivity is lost. Still, an insightful and consumable piece.