I enjoyed the book written under the pseudonym Mark Owen called “No Easy Day”. He was one of the Seal leaders on the raid on Osama Bin Laden. Written in an easy to read action style, the book describes what is, after all, just a different job. Putting new batteries in your equipment before leaving, packing replacement batteries, learning to duck after you have knocked on a door because people generally shoot through the middle of the door thinking that you are standing, etc and various other tricks of the trade are detailed in the book but of course most people will rush to the pages detailing the actual raid on Osama Bin Laden. “Mark” was on the helicopter that crashed and thought he was going to die before actually accomplishing the mission and was the second person into the room where Osama was killed.

In a way, what clearly stood out to him the most was that although from when the helicopter crashed on Osama Bin Laden’s compound, to when they actually killed him, 15 minutes had passed, gun fights had taken place with even his courier but Bin Laden himself made no effort to fight. His son popped his head around a corner when his name was called out, and promptly got two bullets in the head and Osama Bin Laden likewise must have known for at least 15 minutes that the compound was under attack. One would have expected from a man, who was quite happy to send suicide bombers to their death, to at least have put up more of a fight, and yet it seems that he and his men really were not very good at that, and he was spending far more time focusing on his hair dye, and trying to look young.