John A. Dailey: Camo, Character, and Walking Point

Every brand in America is borrowing from the military right now. The camo, the dog tags, the word operator on a hoodie. John A. Dailey paid the actual price for that look.

He left West Virginia at 17 to join the Marine Corps and stayed more than twenty years. Sniper, then Force Reconnaissance, every job in the stack from point man to platoon sergeant. On 09/11/2001 he was in Darwin, Australia. By November he was in Afghanistan. In 2003 Donald Rumsfeld told the Marine Corps to build a unit that would answer to US Special Operations Command, something the Marines had never done. 86 men, a two year charter, a proof of concept a lot of people expected to fail. Colonel Robert J. Coates picked four team leaders. One was gunnery sergeant John Dailey. The recruiting brief was seven words: tough rugged bastards with strong backs and hard feet.

That unit deployed to Iraq in 2004 as Task Unit Raider, and it is the reason Marine Forces Special Operations Command exists. It is also the title of his book.

Tom Frank, Jeffrey Sledge and Bun B get the parts the movies skip. HAHO jumps from 35,000 feet in negative 200 degrees, flying a parachute sixty miles across a border. Locking out of a submarine hatch at 60 feet and swimming to the surface. Two weeks underwater sleeping in the torpedo racks, because the best cooks in the Navy get sent to the subs. Sniper school stalks where an instructor has to walk up and touch you. Why the kid who never left the library sometimes outshoots the kid whose dad taught him.

Then the turn. Dailey retired in 2008, got an MFA in creative writing, and has written his Walking Point newsletter every week for four years. It is becoming a podcast on SAVAGE.

Find him at jadaily.com and on Substack.

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