Not Your Father’s Coast Guard Is Available Now.

Posted on 19 November 2009 by Sean P. Lawler | Comments

It’s been a long time coming, but the book, Not Your Fathers Coast Guard is now available here. It shouldn’t be to much longer until you can find it in bookstores and CGEX’s locations. There have been a few posts on this book that has peaked my interest, but I’m also psyched about it since I had the privilege of designing the books cover and a few promotional items for the author, who by the way, is a Coastie. Here is a sample of a chapter from the book:

Halloween Day, 1992, Deep in the Bolivian Jungle

The mission was simple enough. Locate and destroy a clandestine cocaine lab somewhere in the Bolivian jungle. The team had progressed five hundred meters toward the location of a suspected lab. Five hundred meters might not seem like a lot if you’re walking down the street, but every inch is earned when you’re hacking through dense bush. Covered with sweat and what can only be described as a swarm of mosquitoes, the team finally made it to the encampment. It was then that the jungle exploded all around the insertion team. Bits of wood, dirt, leaves, and whatever else was unfortunate enough to be in the path of poorly aimed automatic weaponry fire was violently launched through the air and rained upon the insertion team. The onslaught of bullets came from five heavily armed narcotraffickers, accompanied by one semi-innocent, unarmed cook. The team acted quickly, taking up defensive positions and returning fire with their M-16s. One member fired a precisely aimed MK-79 grenade round, which exploded just behind the lab. The firefight lasted only minutes. At the end of the skirmish, four of five gunmen were wounded, while the insertion team remained unscathed. Randy, who had only moments before been directing fire on the narcotraffickers, had a new fight on his hands. Randy and his team now had to fight to save the lives of the men who just tried to kill them.

I’m pretty happy to be getting the book, especially since the author told me about the critical role that MK’s played in the units mission.

In the late 90s the DEA and a bunch of mercenaries were dug in at a fire base in Northern Peru. They were surrounded by a group of narcoterrorists and under siege. It was illegal for the DOD to help because of various legal restrictions (Mansfield Amendment, Posse Commitatus, etc.). So, it was the USCG to the rescue. The plan was to resupply the fire base with a modified C-130 but there was a problem. The narcoterrorists had SAMs and USCG C-130s didn’t have flares and chaff to ward them off. What to do? The answer, strap a MK2 in a gunners belt, hang him out of the back of a C-130 with a flare gun and if he saw a SAM approaching he was to shoot a flare at it! (take a moment to think about that). Yes, we actually did this. But as crazy as that sounds, the situation on the ground was far wilder…

…one more note, believe it or not, MKs played THE crucial role in most of these specialized missions and that fact is clearly laid out in the book. Often, the MKs had to be both tactically proficient and able to tackle the maintenance of the fleet at the same time. Operation Snowcap, for example, didn’t really take off until we were wise enough to send a couple high speed MKs down south. Once the MKs hit the ground, the missions really started taking off.

You can check out more info about the book at the website www.notyourfatherscoastguard.com. Get your today, I hear that they are going fast and may be in short supply due to the Christmas season.