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Book Review (Non-Fiction) The Operator

The Operator

Robert O’Neill

Simon & Schuster 2017                                                                                               358 Pages

The US Navy’s elite Sea/Air/Land (SEAL) teams became more widely known to the general public thanks to Hollywood. But it was the real life raid on Abbotabad, Pakistan, Operation Neptune Spear writing finis to Osama Bin Laden, that really put Navy SEALs on the cultural radar. These naval commandos played a prominent role in two movies made about the successful manhunt for “the Sheikh”; Kathryn Bigelow’s Zero Dark Thirty (2012) and the TV docu-drama SEAL Team Six: The Raid On Osama Bin Laden.

The above films suffered the usual distortions due to dramatic licence, compression within the usual movie running time and deliberate inaccuracies due to certain highly classified aspects of the mission. The shooter who killed Bin Laden, ex-Senior Chief Petty Officer Robert O’Neill sets the record straight, sort of. As much as the US Department of Defence allowed, for his memoir The Operator had to be vetted by the DoD before publication.

The celebrated raid on Abbotabad comes only 300 pages into The Operator; what precedes it is an interesting anecdotal account of an elite military sub-culture.  O’Neill recounts details of other operations such as the attempted retrieval of fellow SEAL Marcus Luttrell (“Lone Survivor”) and the rescue of Captain Phillips from the Somali pirates who abducted him. There are also vivid descriptions of some of the 400 counter-terrorism operations and close quarter combat that the author engaged in Afghanistan, Iraq and elsewhere, over his 16-and-a-half years in the US Navy.

Unusually for a memoir of this kind, there is a lot more “We” and “They” than “I” in The Operator. O’Neill makes it a point to emphasize that special operations forces are a team effort and CANNOT be a one-man-show. For security reasons, the names of several of his serving comrades-in-arms have been changed and several individuals have been compacted into fewer characters, but it would have been nice to know more about some of these fascinating personalities.

Eschewing the macho braggadocio that afflicts so many military memoirs, the author credits his successfully passing the ordeal of SEAL selection to support from his family and fellow trainees.  Born in 1976 and raised in Butte, Montana, “Rob” O’Neill enlisted in the US Navy in 1995 with the goal of becoming a SEAL. Despite the high attrition rate he persisted, overcoming months of tortuous physical and mental challenges. These are described in harrowing detail, but with abundant humour and in blunt, plain language.

 During his service career Robert O’Neill was awarded two Silver Stars, four Bronze Stars with Valor, a Joint Service Commendation medal with Valor, three Presidential Unit Citations, and a Navy/Marine Corps Commendation Medal with Valor. He left the US Navy in 2012 realising that he’d done his time and his time was passing.



In the author’s own words, “...we had all become so used to war, it was no big deal. That was part of the reason I was getting out. I knew I was getting complacent. If I kept at it, the next destination was sloppy, and sloppy kills”.

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