It’s official: I’m a geek. I have progressed from reading about fictional Navy SEALs to reading about real ones. The Warrior Elite was reviewed in my local paper recently, and I picked it up from my library for a couple of reasons. First of all, I’ve read a lot of Brockmann in the last couple of years, and I was curious to read a real account of what her fictional SEALs went through. Secondly, there is a lot of focus right now on the special forces units of the military. Since we’re in the midst of a war, I thought it would be interesting to educate myself on what a soldier must go through to be the best of the best.

The Warrior Elite is the account of the BUD/S (Basic Underwater Demolition/SEAL) training of SEAL class 228. The author himself is a Vietnam Era SEAL who observes the training of the class and what they will go through to become the elite of the warrior culture. He follows them as they arrive in Coronado for indoctrination, and move through all the phases of training, including the notorious hell week. The reader gets a front row seat as the training becomes harder and the class becomes smaller. A few of the men stand out from the pack and it gets suspenseful at times as the reader wonders whether they will make it through.

I learned all kinds of things that I didn’t know from this book. I’d visualized training as hard, but I really had no idea how few men made it through. The numbers say it all. Class 228 originally has 114 men assigned to it, but only 94 of them show up for training. At graduation time there are only twenty – and just ten of those are original members of class 228. The rest are rollbacks from other classes who were injured during their training.

Of necessity, the book is occasionally repetitive. A lot of the training involves surviving and enduring. There are obstacle courses, timed runs and swims, exercises with small, inflatable boats, and push-ups. Lots of push-ups. They spend most of the early training cold, wet, and sandy. The chapter on hell week is probably the most interesting, as we get to watch the trainees engage in all of the above activities, only with no sleep. They are allowed only five hours during the five day period, and by the end of it there are several would-be SEALs who can hardly walk. This is when the class really whittles down to a small number, as men drop out right and left. Still, there are several men who make it through hell week only to leave training in later stages, either for medical reasons, or because they can’t meet the training standards. At times the book is heartbreaking as we watch men who have the will to become SEALs, but bodies that can’t quite measure up to the rigorous standards.

I found the book very informative, although I would have liked to have seen the author talk a little more about himself. He was the top man in his own SEAL class, but we hear surprisingly little about his own training experiences. It is clear, however, that he becomes pretty attached to the men in class 228 as he watches them complete their training, and he gets quite emotional when they graduate (he gives a speech at the ceremony).

I would recommend this to anyone who is curious about military training, whether they’d like simply like more information or they see themselves as becoming part of the military some day. About two pages in, I was sure I would never survive it. Not only do I lack the necessary Y chromosome; a long ago visit to the Naval Academy convinced me that a life which included cutting off my long hair, folding my socks perfectly, and obeying orders was probably not for me. Those men who survive this tough training are truly the best of the best, and my hat’s off to all of them.