Leave No Man Behind

When Tom Phillips and I first conceived the book almost six years ago in a chance encounter at the 2003 Naval Helicopter Association Symposium, we had no idea what this journey would be like and no idea how enriched we would be hearing from and reading about the heroes who have risked their lives to rescue their comrades from the clutches of the enemy.

Nor did we have an idea how big the book would be. When we first contracted with Zenith publishers to do this book we all thought 100,000 words sounded like a “good number.” But the more stories we uncovered the more the book grew and to our editor’s and publisher’s great credit they allowed this saga to grow into the substantial book it is while pricing it competitively in a tough book market. You can get your copy of Leave No Man Behind on Amazon.com

While Leave No Man Behind does not contain every heroic rescue in every conflict – no book could – it does bring together a tremendous number of stories, and perhaps as importantly, shows how the discipline of combat search and rescue evolved over the past 100 years to give combat rescue crews the awesome capability they have today.

But this book isn’t just about past heroics; it’s about the future of combat search and rescue. And given our mutual professional backgrounds, we think it’s more important now than ever before that we all remain well-informed about the future of combat search and rescue and the issues surrounding this capability.

The Pentagon’s former top procurement official, John Young, expressed skepticism that the military should buy new CSAR-X helicopters at all, opining; “I don’t know if the community has to have its own set of assets for the occasional rescue mission.” Our warriors who will be stranded behind enemy lines and the heroes who go in harms-way to rescue them deserve better – much better – regardless of who ultimately builds the CSAR-X.

We believe the quality of the book speaks for itself so we’ll leave further talk about the book to the opinions of critics and reviewers. The Military Book Club has made Leave No Man Behind a featured book in advance of its publication date and the book is on the U.S. Navy Chief of Naval Operations Reading List.

To read more about Leave No Man Behind click here.