By Water Beneath the Walls

A gripping history chronicling the fits and starts of American special operations and the ultimate rise of the Navy SEALs from unarmed frogmen to elite, go-anywhere commandos--as told by one of their own. How did the US Navy--the branch of the US military tasked with patrolling the oceans--ever manage to produce a unit of raiders trained to operate on land? And how, against all odds, did that unit become one of the world's most elite commando forces, routinely striking thousands of miles from the water on the battlefields of Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, even Central Africa? Behind the SEALs' improbable rise lies the most remarkable underdog story in American military history--and in these pages, former Navy SEAL Benjamin H. Milligan captures it as never before. Told through the eyes of remarkable leaders and racing from one longshot, hair-curling raid to the next, it's a tale of the unit's heroic naval predecessors, and the evolution of the SEALs themselves. But it's also the story of