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  • Published: 21 August 2013
  • ISBN: 9780425253601
  • Imprint: Dutton
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 400
  • RRP: $37.00

Sua Sponte

The Forging of a Modern American Ranger



Sua Sponte
Latin for “Of Their Own Accord”
The 75th Ranger Regiment’s Motto
 
Army Rangers are not born. They are made. The modern 75th Ranger Regiment represents the culmination of 250 years of American soldiering. As a fighting force with our nation’s oldest and deepest tradition, the Regiment traces its origins to Richard Rogers’s Rangers during the prerevolutionary French and Indian War, through the likes of Francis Marion and John Mosby, to the five active Ranger battalions of the Second World War, and finally, to the four battalions of the current Ranger regiment engaged in modern combat.
 
Granted unprecedented access to the training of this highly restricted component of America’s Special Operations Forces in a time of war, retired Navy captain Dick Couch tells the personal story of the young men who begin this difficult and dangerous journey to become Rangers. Many will try, but only a select few will survive to serve in the 75th Ranger Regiment. Sua Sponte follows a group of these aspiring young warriors through the crucible that is Ranger training and their preparation for direct-action missions in Afghanistan against America’s enemies, anywhere, any time, and under any conditions.

INCLUDES PHOTOGRAPHS

  • Published: 21 August 2013
  • ISBN: 9780425253601
  • Imprint: Dutton
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 400
  • RRP: $37.00

About the author

Dick Couch

Dick Couch is a graduate of the U.S. Naval Acade-
my and served with the Navy UDT and SEAL
Teams. While a platoon commander with SEAL
Team One in 1970, he led one of the only successful
POW rescue operations of the Vietnam War. On
release from active duty in 1972, he joined the Cen-
tral Intelligence Agency where he served as a Mari-
time Operations officer. Dick retired from the
Naval Reserve in 1997 as the senior reserve SEAL
officer with the rank of captain. He began his writ-
ing career in 1990 and has published four novels:
SEAL Team One, Pressure Point, Silent Descent, and
Rising Wind. The Warrior Elite was his first non-fic-
tion work, published in November of 2001 by
Crown Books. US Armed Forces Nuclear, Chemical,
Biological Survival Manual (Basic Books), edited by
Dick, will be publishing in Feb. 2003. In the sum-
mer of 2003, Dick and Cliff Hollenbeck, award win-
ning photo journalist, will publish To Be a Navy
SEAL (Motor Books International), a table-top, full-
color pictorial book that will feature Basic
UDT/SEAL Training with a 20,000 word essay by
Dick. Scheduled for release in the fall of 2003 is The
Mercenary Option, a novel to be published by Pock-
et Books.

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