Francis J. "Bing" West is an author and former Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs during the Reagan Administration. His 2004 book The March Up: Taking Baghdad with the First Marine Division, written with United States Marine Corps General Ray L. Smith, was awarded the Marine Corps Heritage Prize for non-fiction, as well as the Colby Award. West writes about the military, warfighting, and counterinsurgency. In the Vietnam War, he fought on major operations and conducted over a hundred combat patrols in 1966-68. For the United States Marine Corps, he wrote the... training manual Small Unit Action in Vietnam, describing how to fight in close combat. As an analyst at the RAND Corporation, he wrote a half dozen detailed monographs about fighting against an insurgency. Later, as Assistant Secretary of Defense, he dealt with the insurgencies in El Salvador. From 2003 through 2008, he made 16 extended trips to Iraq, going on patrols and writing three books and numerous articles about the war. Since then, he has made six trips to Afghanistan. He is writing a book about that insurgency, based on patrolling with battalions in the south and the north.
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