The Navy

"The Navy" by Harold Clark takes you from the streets of Baltimore to the dark thirty chaos of Grenada's invasion, where Marines hit the beaches with guns blazing. The book displays what the real Navy looks like—where sailors live by mottos like 'Keep the screws turning and the lights burning' and learn hard lessons like 'tonnage has its privileges in the shipping channel.' Relive the Gator Navy days aboard LCU 1655 during Operation Northern Wedding, when a near-collision with a tanker in the Norwegian Sea taught Clark's crew to scan everything—high and low. Feel the tension of Beirut's Red Beach operations and the bitter retreat when the American flag came down, and the Syrian flag went up. Clark tells about his distinctive journey—a Navy life—told straight from the gut by a sailor who lived every minute of it, from boot camp to his final voyage aboard the USS Whidbey Island.