H John Poole

After 28 years of commissioned and noncommissioned infantry service, John Poole retired from the United States Marine Corps in April 1993. While on active duty, he studied small-unit tactics for nine years: (1) six months at the Basic School in Quantico (1966); (2) seven months as a rifle platoon commander in Vietnam (1966-67); (3) three months as a rifle company commander at Camp Pendleton (1967); (4) five months as a regimental headquarters company (and camp) commander in Vietnam (1968); (5)...See more

After 28 years of commissioned and noncommissioned infantry service, John Poole retired from the United States Marine Corps in April 1993. While on active duty, he studied small-unit tactics for nine years: (1) six months at the Basic School in Quantico (1966); (2) seven months as a rifle platoon commander in Vietnam (1966-67); (3) three months as a rifle company commander at Camp Pendleton (1967); (4) five months as a regimental headquarters company (and camp) commander in Vietnam (1968); (5) eight months as a rifle company commander in Vietnam (1968-69); (6) five and a half years as an instructor with the Advanced Infantry Training Company (AITC) at Camp Lejeune (1986-92); and (7) one year as the Staff Noncommissioned Officer in Charge of the 3rd Marine Division Combat Squad Leaders Course (CSLC) on Okinawa (1992-93). While at AITC, he developed, taught, and refined courses on maneuver warfare, land navigation, fire support coordination, call for fire, adjust fire, close air support, M203 grenade launcher, movement to contact, daylight attack, night attack, infiltration, defense, offensive Military Operations in Urban Terrain (MOUT), defensive MOUT, Nuclear/Biological/Chemical (NBC) defense, and leadership. While at CSLC, he further refined the same periods of instruction and developed others on patrolling. He has completed all of the correspondence school requirements for the Marine Corps Command and Staff College, Naval War College (1,000-hour curriculum), and Marine Corps Warfighting Skills Program. He is a graduate of the Camp Lejeune Instructional Management Course, the 2nd Marine Division Skill Leaders in Advanced Marksmanship (SLAM) Course, and the East-Coast School of Infantry Platoon Sergeants' Course. In the 21 years since retirement, John Poole has researched the small-unit tactics of other nations and written 13 other books: (1) The Last Hundred Yards, a squad combat study based on the consensus opinions of 1,200 NCOs and casualty statistics of AITC and CSLC field trials; (2) One More Bridge to Cross, a treatise on enemy proficiency at short range and how to match it; (3) Phantom Soldier, an in-depth look at the highly deceptive Asian style of war; (4) The Tiger's Way, the fighting styles of Eastern fire teams and soldiers; (5) Tactics of the Crescent Moon, insurgent procedures in Palestine, Chechnya, Afghanistan, and Iraq; (6) Militant Tricks, an honest appraisal of the so-far-undefeated jihadist method; (7) Terrorist Trail, tracing the jihadists in Iraq back to their home countries; (8) Dragon Days, an unconventional warfare technique manual; (9) Tequila Junction, how to fight narco-guerrillas; (10) Homeland Siege, confronting the 4GW assault by a foreign power's organized-crime proxies; (11) Expeditionary Eagles, how to outmaneuver the Taliban; Global Warrior, forestalling WWIII with tiny contingents; and Gung Ho, how supporting arms are not needed to take strongpoint matrices. Since 2000, he has done research in Mainland China (twice), North Korea, Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand, India (twice), Pakistan (twice), Iran, Lebanon, Turkey, Egypt, Sudan, Tanzania, Venezuela, and Sri Lanka. Over the course of his lifetime, he has visited scores of other nations on all five continents. When he tried to visit Lahore in the late Spring of 2011, his Pakistani visa request was not honored. As of April 2014, John Poole had conducted multiday training sessions (on advanced squad tactics) at 41 (mostly Marine) battalions, nine Marine schools, and seven special-operations units from all four U.S. service branches. Between early tours in the Marine Corps (from 1969 to 1971), he served as a criminal investigator with the Illinois Bureau of Investigation (IBI... See less