Founding member Seal Team Six Richard Marcinko dies at 81
A Vietnam War veteran, he led the group for its first three years and was awarded more than 30 medals and citations during his career with the US Navy.
His direct and abrasive leadership style brought great success but often caused conflict with superiors. Some accused him of encouraging a reckless, "bad boy" culture at Seal Team Six.
Marcinko faced legal battles off the battlefield and was briefly jailed for defrauding the US government.
Despite this, he played a vital role in boosting America's counter-terrorism capabilities at the tail end of the Cold War.
His larger-than-life personality and his autobiography Rogue Warrior helped cement Seal Team Six's place in military folklore and popular culture.
Marcinko was born in 1940 in Lansford, a small mining town in Pennsylvania.
His parents were immigrants from Slovakia and Herzegovina, and all the men in his family were miners, Marcinko recalled in Rogue Warrior.
"Life was simple, and life was hard, and I guess some of them might have wanted to pull themselves up by their bootstraps, but most were too poor to buy boots," he wrote.
After dropping out of high school, Marcinko tried to enlist in the US Marines but was rejected because he hadn't received a high school diploma.
After enlisting in the US Navy at 18, he was deployed in 1967 to Vietnam with Seal Team Two as a commissioned officer.
Marcinko was decorated with the Vietnamese Cross for Gallantry and won the first of four Bronze Stars during the conflict.
He said in his autobiography that the North Vietnamese had placed a bounty on his head, such was his success on the battlefield.
"I'm good at war," he once told People Magazine. "Even in Vietnam, the system kept me from hunting and killing as many of the enemies as I would have liked."
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