Now this is the book that I've been waiting to read. Hello everyone, Dylan Schumacher, Citadel Defense, and we are back with another edition of Tactical Book Review. Today's book is the last hundred yards, the NCO's contribution to warfare by our good friend John H. Poole. Now this is the third John Poole book that I have read and reviewed on this channel and this is the one that I've been looking for. This was his first book as far as I know and this is the one that kind of put them on the map. This book is very inappropriately subtitled. Basically this is his book on maneuver warfare small unit tactics. It's really what it is and he's saying, hey I pulled all this information from NCO's and that's how I got it and I compiled it into this book. So I understand how we got the subtitle but it's not exactly accurate to what's actually in the book. This book is thick. It took me a couple months to read. I mean it is like full body, it's like reading a textbook type of deal and it's like it said it's not light. We're talking 350 pages, 356 pages of solid reading. There's quite a lot in here. To be fully up front with you there were two chapters of this book that I skipped. Those chapters were about how to call in air support and how to call in artillery fire. Since I don't have resources to call in artillery fire unfortunately or air support unfortunately I just skipped those chapters because that's not something I'm ever going to be doing. At least anytime soon remember that when you're talking about reading books for tactical purposes. I'm reading these books for tactical purposes just as an everyday guy. I'm not in the military. I don't have access to all the corporate support structure that the army and military has so I don't have some naval ship just sitting off shore in the Great Lakes ready to call in fire for me. That's not a thing. Therefore because I don't have those resources not all of this directly is going to apply to you. So what does this book cover? It covers how to attack a larger force, ambush a larger force, extricate from an ambush, deal with it when you get ambushed, you know basically that. Perform short range infiltration, how to open up gaps in enemy lines, urban offense and defense, how to deal with nuclear biological chemical attack and how to open up gaps in enemy lines in daytime. It also talks about different defense procedures and kind of mobile defense type of deals. It's a super good book. Listen, if you're interested in small unit tactics as an everyday American and you really want to be like an effective force and knowledgeable in that area, I would put this on your must read list. It's going to take you a while, it's thick, it's a monster but this has to be on your reading list because it's really going to give you a thorough understanding of how as a small unit you can be the most effective. He's very, very big, and he is in all his books on emphasizing stealth and surprise. Those are really the two watchwords of John Paul, he's saying effective small unit tactics are built on stealth and surprise. When you don't have stealth and surprise you're going to have less effective small unit tactics and the crem to crem of him of small unit tactics is stealth and surprise because then you can do maneuver warfare. When you're not necessarily just trying to wipe out the enemy although hey that's always great but you're trying to surround them. You're trying to destroy their ability to fight. You're destroying their command and control centers. You're destroying all their stuff that they have, right? Ammo vehicles, planes, etc, etc. So they don't have an ability to fight and you're winning the war through potentially less casualties on both sides by crippling their ability to fight so to no contest, right? That's what he's really arguing is the best way to fight combat and in general typically let's be honest we don't really do that as Americans. We say we try to do it kind of sort of but the United States military really doesn't fight like that. Now listen a lot of the small unit deceptions that he uses in this book involve artillery, mortars, grenades and other explosives, none of which we really have, right? So there's definitely a grain of salt you gotta take that with and applying it to your context. However it's still a very helpful book and it still gives some really good insights and creativities into how you can think through this and not just having you say okay well I read a manual, I read a battle drill so I know how to do that now. It really goes a step beyond that to get you thinking and processing and help you understand the larger context of what it is that you're doing. In general I can't say enough good things about this book. Like I said I skipped the chapters that didn't think applied to me and some of the stuff in here doesn't apply to you. This was written for the United States military, it wasn't written for you and me. So again you're gonna have to transport that to your context a little bit. The other thing I will say about this book is the original copy was written in 1994 and the last update was 2002. 9-11 happened in 2001 if memory serves. So this book is really pre- you know global war on terror and I'd be curious to read an updated version of this book now. Like I'd be curious to have him go back through here and update. Sometimes he references equipment or different ways that tanks work or whatever. I'd be curious to have him go back through and update that and read this book now and see what he would say. Just because we've you know minute war for what the past 20-ish years give or take and we've learned some things we do some things different now than we did when this book was originally written. I still don't think we're doing what he wants us to do according to the gospel of John Poole but I think that I'd really curious to read an updated version having seen the global war on terror now and seen how we've operated now and what lessons he would pull that are positive, what lessons he would say no we we still suck at that. There is a lot of value in this book and like I said if you're at all on the fence about it or if you want to be a knowledgeable combat leader I would recommend this book to you it's really hard to pass up in that regard. I am going to include a link in the description below of where I bought this book because everywhere I've ever found this book it's like seventy seventy five dollars and that's just ludicrous. I ended up seeing a link for it for twenty dollars someone dropped a comment I wanted my videos for it and that's why I bought it so I would recommend it for twenty dollars buy it read it and learn its lessons. I hope that's helpful do brave deeds and endure.