All Secure: A Special Operations Soldier’s Fight to Survive on the Battlefield and the Homefront

One of the most highly regarded special operations soldiers in American military history shares his war stories and personal battle with PTSD.
As a senior non-commissioned officer of the most elite and secretive special operations unit in the U.S. military, Command Sergeant Major Tom Satterly fought some of this country’s most fearsome enemies. Over the course of twenty years and thousands of missions, he’s fought desperately for his life, rescued hostages, killed and captured terrorist leaders, and seen his friends maimed and killed around him. All Secure is in part Tom’s journey into a world so dark and dangerous that most Americans can’t contemplate its existence. It recounts what it is like to be on the front lines with one of America’s most highly trained warriors. As action-packed as any fiction thriller, All Secure is an insider’s view of ＂The Unit.＂ Tom is a legend even among other Tier One special operators. Yet the enemy that cost him three marriages, and ruined his health physically and psychologically, existed in his brain. It nearly led him to kill himself in 2014; but for the lifeline thrown to him by an extraordinary woman it might have ended there. Instead, they took on Satterly’s most important mission-saving the lives of his brothers and sisters in arms who are killing themselves at a rate of more than twenty a day. Told through Satterly’s firsthand experiences, it also weaves in the reasons-the bloodshed, the deaths, the intense moments of sheer terror, the survivor’s guilt, depression, and substance abuse-for his career-long battle against the most insidious enemy of all: Post Traumatic Stress. With the help of his wife, he learned that by admitting his weaknesses and faults he sets an example for other combat veterans struggling to come home.

Tom Satterly is a highly decorated combat veteran who was portrayed in the Oscar-winning 2001 film Black Hawk Down. He served in the Army twenty-five years, twenty in the nation’s most elite and secretive special operations unit. He has led hundreds of missions, including some of our nation’s most important special operations campaigns. He was awarded five Bronze Stars, two of them for valor. Today, he is fighting that battle against PTSD for other veterans through the All Secure Foundation. He lives in the Midwest. Steve Jackson is a New York Times bestselling author of nonfiction crime, biographies and history, including Lucky Lady: The World War II Heroics of the USS Franklin and Santa Fe. He lives in western Colorado.