Dan Schilling

Alone at Dawn: Posthumous Medal of Honor Recipient John Chapman and the Untold Story of the World's Deadliest Special Operations Force, by Dan Schilling and sister Lori Chapman Longfritz (audio book 11 hours). This is an inspiring and maddening account of Medal of Honor recipient and Special Ops Combat Controller MSgt. John Chapman, USAF, during combat in the early stages of the Afghan war. Arguably, his heroics in saving 23 comrades should have earned him two Medals of Honor, but that is a tale best related by the authors. This story includes a brutally frank assessment of the bravery of front lines special operations troops and obtuse death-causing decision-making of behind-the-lines senior officers. The engagement that cost Chapman’s life was constructed from firsthand accounts, drone video feeds, classified records, and other reliable information. At times the claims made by the author seem over the top, especially when claiming Combat Controllers are the best special operators in the military, but Chapman’s story is compelling, amazingly detailed (be prepared for an onslaught of acronyms), and worth reading about.

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Not that Americans need any more to fear and fret over, but one of their toughest, Dan Schilling, has written a book about awareness. Schilling is a 30-year, top secret, special ops combat controller, conducting clandestine missions all over the world. His book, The Power of Awareness, is a lively, often sarcastic and even funny guide to being awake to the possibilities, wherever you find yourself. It is fast paced, and actually, full of suspense.

Schilling weaves about a dozen stories in and out throughout the book. They all read like Hollywood action films, where the viewer absolutely knows something is going to happen, but must wait for it. It’s not your average lecture on safety first.

Some of the stories are well known, like mass murderer Ted Bundy and how he got all those women in his power, or the Columbine mass murders. But many are his own experiences, and those of his colleagues. They all have lessons to teach the reader — and the author — who admits to lapses both expensive and near fatal. Humans are not always on their game.

He breaks safety and survival down to six rules. Possibly the most important is the first one, Situational Awareness (SA). Be observant. Look for things and people and actions that don’t fit. Have an idea of where to head if things take a bad turn. It’s not an exercise or a test, but rather a habit, an attitude, a muscle everyone has let soften. His stories show how very much of a difference SA can make.

He is also big on intuition. He says “Instinct is the automatic fight-or-flee reaction when someone punches you, and intuition is knowing they were going to do that.” It seems humans have great intuition, and often deny it when it signals danger. Hair stands up; the stomach cramps. Denying intuition proves to be the wrong thing to do again and again. If someone gives you the creeps, steer clear, kind of thing. If the place doesn’t feel right, get out. Schilling says “Situational awareness and your intuition are your power of awareness. And your power of awareness is your personal safety.”

But readers should know that psychology is proving that human judgment is extremely faulty. Even the simplest models outperform human judgment essentially every time. So intuition and instinct are actually rather iffy.

Another place where Schilling’s advice counters the conventional wisdom is in rape. He says fight as hard as you can. Make him understand in the strongest terms you are serious about this and will make it as difficult for him as is humanly possible. For decades, we have been told the opposite: don’t fight, just let it happen quickly and with the least damage. Go limp and make it uninteresting. Save your own life, which is, after all, at real risk. Schilling does not talk about this entirely different approach.

Beyond Situational Awareness and Intuition, there are rules for determining if there is a problem, developing a plan, acting decisively, and R&R – regroup and recover.

I particularly liked the chapter on developing a plan. There are different kinds of plans. There are the advance plans that relate to SA, seeing where the exits are, knowing where to find an authority figure (cop, guard, bouncer, manager…), and where to run to. Sitting where mirrors and glass can provide far wider views. Then, there’s planning during a situation, taking just a few seconds to decide where to go and what to do given the chance. Last and least, hatching a plan on the fly, according to the action.

The main thing is have a plan. Having no plan is worse than useless. It can be dangerous to yourself and others. Being able to follow a plan gives you focus. The idea is to get out, and as far away as possible. Safety, he says, equals distance.

A fine example of a plan was a female colleague (agent) in Kuwait, who found she was being followed by several Kuwaiti men (almost certainly because she had no veil and didn’t look Kuwaiti). She confirmed it by walking an irrational path that no tourist would take (a Surveillance Detection Route), and the men were still there behind her. She headed into a crowded souk for safety, and found a couple of large men she could identify from a distance as Americans (By their swagger she knew they were soldiers on leave). She went right up to them and asked them to accompany her back to her car, because some Kuwaiti men were creeping her out. They did, and she escaped to tell the tale.

Another interesting tip is the sneer. Someone whose upper lip rises at one end, in an involuntary sneer, is not your friend. People who sneer are exhibiting contempt. Contempt is a precursor to making you a victim. It’s how soldiers learn to kill without remorse. If someone gives you the creeps – because they are sneering – that is all the cue you need to exit.

There is also advice on digital dating and cellphone safety. Basically, protect yourself and leave yourself an out, whether it’s a bad match or losing your phone. The devil’s in the details that readers might not think of in the midst of it all. Schilling wants readers to think about them, repeatedly, until they become second nature.

For a man who pulls a gun out of the front of his pants and tucks it under his thigh when the barber drapes the sheet over him, and who has made his living by the gun for three decades, Schilling is surprisingly concerned about guns in the USA. He points out that the 331 million Americans own 393 million guns, more than all the private arms in all the other countries of the world combined. He says only one million of the guns are registered, so the vast majority of guns and gun owners are unknown to police. Deaths by guns are running at 120 per hundred thousand, numbers in the pandemic range. Americans are eight times more likely to be shot in a mass shooting than being hit by lightning. Just sayin’.

Schilling is quite expert at keeping up the suspense. He rarely tells a story all the way through. He will leave the reader hanging, and pick up the thread 30 pages later, in reference to some other point. He ties off three or four of the stories only at the end of the book, having kept the reader’s interest with a paragraph or two of progress here and there. It all makes for an unusually entertaining serious book.

David Wineberg… (plus d'informations)