Tough Rugged Bastards with John A Dailey

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I’m John A. Dailey. I grew up along the Virginia/West Virginia border, and while I had a great childhood, I couldn’t get away fast enough. I joined the Marines at seventeen and never looked back. Early in my career, I was fortunate to be trained as a sniper, from there I moved on to Force Reconnaissance Units where I spent the bulk of my time. I served in every position from point man to platoon sergeant and loved every minute of it. I got to throw myself out of airplanes from 30,000 feet, dive murky waters, shoot until my trigger finger was sore, blow stuff up, run thousands of miles, and carry countless tons of weight on my back. I watched the 9/11 attacks with my platoon from a pub in Darwin, Australia. By November we were in Afghanistan to help kick off the War on Terror. Shortly after, the Marine Corps was directed to hand-pick a group of ‘tough rugged bastards’ to serve as the first USMC unit assigned to the US Special Operations Command. We were called Detachment One. We were sent to Iraq in 2004 to hunt insurgents, bomb makers, terrorist financiers, and other HVTs or ‘High-Value Targets’. The success of our deployment led to the creation of the modern Marine Raiders. I retired from the Marines in 2008 and took a job that still has me training Raiders. As a kid I hated school, but I loved reading and learning. Since retiring I used the GI Bill to get a couple of master’s degrees, one of them was an MFA in creative writing from UNCW where the idea for this book came from.