You’re not going to learn to fight and win from a book, but Mountain Guerrilla nonetheless suggests some professional reading to serve as a useful reference for developing a training program, as well as keeping your mind in the game.
He starts with SH21-75 The Ranger Handbook, the bible of small-unit tactics, and FM 7-8 The Infantry Rifle Platoon and Squad, the non-Ranger bible of small-unit tactics, before moving on to some insurgency and counter-insurgency classics, Nagl’s Learning to Eat Soup with a Knife and Mao Tse-Tung’s On Guerrilla Warfare.
MSG Howe was a SFOD-D gunslinger. He’s a horrendous writer, God bless him, and needs a seriously talented editor. That having been said, despite my background, and having attended many of the same schools, I managed to learn quite a bit from both of these books. There is now a second edition of Training For the Fight available, that combines both titles into one volume and is readily available through mainstream booksellers like Barnes and Nobles.
The best lesson is: cheat.
Successful guerrilla insurgencies actually operate under cover of neighboring friendly states. IRA excepted.
Please obtain and review this book: The Last Hundred Yards: The NCO’s Contribution to Warfare, 1997, by H.J. Poole.
“Hit em’ as hard as they can as fast as you can, where it hurts them the most, and when they ain’t looking.” As told to Bill Slim by a regimental sergeant major.
I wouldn’t trust much of what Mao said about warfare period. He inherited a whole defecting army with TO&E, training, standard battle kit, professional officers, etc.
Mao did not work from the bottom up and reach the top.
“Successful guerrilla insurgencies actually operate under cover of neighboring friendly states. IRA excepted.”
The sanctuary. IRA did run operations from the Republic across the border and did have a safe haven when they did need one.
Mini-Manual for the Urban Guerrilla by Marighella.