Dick Couch

Dick Couch is a former U.S. Navy SEAL and a graduate of the United States Naval Academy (class of 1967). He completed Basic Underwater Demolition/SEAL (BUD/S) training as the Honorman of Class 45 in 1969 and served as Whiskey Platoon Commander with SEAL Team One during the Vietnam War, where he led one of the conflict's few successful prisoner-of-war rescue operations. After his active-duty service he worked as a CIA case officer, and he retired from the Naval Reserve in 1997 with the rank of Captain.

Couch's writing draws directly on that career. His fiction includes the standalone military thrillers SEAL Team One (1991) and Silent Descent (1994), and he later teamed with fellow author and naval veteran George Galdorisi to co-write two novels reviving the Tom Clancy's Op-Center franchise, Out of the Ashes (2014) and Into the Fire (2015).

He is equally known for his nonfiction chronicling elite military training, including The Warrior Elite: The Forging of SEAL Class 228 (2003), The Finishing School (2005), and Sua Sponte: The Forging of a Modern American Ranger (2012). Couch currently serves as a professor of ethics at the United States Naval Academy and lives in Idaho.