6.

SEAL Team Two

After airborne training, I reported to my SEAL Team. The odd-numbered Teams (One, Three, and Five) were on the West Coast at Coronado, California, and the even-numbered Teams (Two, Four, and Eight) were on the East Coast at Little Creek, Virginia. Although the Top Secret SEAL Team Six existed, I knew nothing about it. I reported to SEAL Team Two in Little Creek.

During a Wednesday run on the obstacle course, a nearly sixty-year-old SEAL, still on active duty, ran with us—Rudy Boesch. I thought I could take it easy—no instructors around yelling at us. At the end of the course, Rudy pulled aside all of us who finished behind him. “Meet me back up here this afternoon.”

That afternoon, the slowpokes and I ran the O-course again. It was a wake-up call. Even in the Teams, it paid to be a winner. Later, I would become one of the fastest men on the O-course at Team Two.

Rudy soon served as the first senior enlisted adviser of the newly formed United States Special Operations Command (USSOCOM), commanding navy, army, air force, and marine special operations units, including those in JSOC such as SEAL Team Six and Delta. After more than forty-five years in the navy, most of it as a SEAL, Rudy retired. When he reached his seventies, he competed on the reality TV series Survivor.

*   *   *

Some Team Two guys returned from deployment on an oil barge called the Hercules, one of two in the Persian Gulf. They were a part of Operation Praying Mantis. When an Iranian mine damaged the USS Samuel B. Roberts, one of the SEALs’ missions was to capture an Iranian oil platform that had been launching attacks against ships in the Gulf. The SEALs planned for a navy destroyer to shoot up the platform with armor-piercing ammo in order to keep the Iranians’ heads down. Then the SEALs would land on the helipad and take down the platform. Unfortunately, someone on the destroyer loaded incendiary and high explosive rounds instead. When the destroyer opened fire on the platform, it literally opened fire. Instead of keeping their heads down, the Iranians promptly jumped off the burning platform. The barge burned so hot that the SEALs couldn’t land their helo on it. The barge melted into the sea. Oops.

Dick, Mike H., Rob, and I hadn’t participated in that op because we still had more training to do, but that didn’t stop us from wanting to celebrate the guys’ safe return. After work, we left the SEAL Team Two compound, exited the Little Creek base’s Gate Five, and headed to a little strip club called the Body Shop. Because the Body Shop was in such close proximity to the SEAL Team Two compound, a number of us had spent some time there. The bouncer was a new guy, sitting in for Bob, a SEAL Team buddy. One of us asked him, “A group of our guys just got back from the Persian Gulf. Can you give them a congratulations over the PA?”

So he did. “Let’s send out a big thank-you to our American fighting men who just returned from the Persian Gulf.”

Applause and cheers filled the room.

We high-fived each other, buying beers.

From the back of the room where a table of four Tunisian men sat, one said in fluent English, “Why doesn’t America mind its own damn business?”

Dick didn’t go around the runway where the girls were dancing. He went straight over it. By the time I ran around it and got to the four men, Dick had the loudmouth in a choke hold. During our brief altercation, the three buddies of the loudmouth shouted expletives at their comrade. The four of us left the four Tunisians in a pile.

As we attempted to leave, the new bouncer tried to stop us. “You just had a fight in here. You’re not going anywhere.”

We catapulted him over the bar.

At the front door, a police officer showed up. He must’ve been right around the corner, because it had only been five minutes since the fight had started.

“Come on, gentlemen, let’s just sit down for a minute.”

So we did. This guy seems cool.

The bouncer had picked himself up and cut in. “These guys are Navy SEALs. They just came in here and were tearing up the place.”

Oh, no. He said the S-word.

The officer panicked, calling on his radio. “Navy SEALs are tearing up the place, and I need backup!”

We were sitting down calmly talking to him. That was enough. We stood up to leave.

“Wait, you can’t go anywhere.”

Ignoring him, we walked to the front door. Outside, a sea of blue lights flashed at us from the parking lot. The backup included a large police van with K-9 UNIT written on the side. The first officers stepped out of their vehicles.

We started to explain.

The policeman from inside cut off our explanation, suddenly becoming brave. “I’m sorry, but you’re going to have to come with me.” He grabbed Mike by the shirtsleeve.

Dick caught the policeman in the chin with a square blow, dropping him straight down.

Now police officers with batons faced the four of us with our bare hands. We fought for what seemed like ten or fifteen minutes. On TV, batons might drop people to the pavement, but these batons were bouncing off of us. The police dog jumped up and bit Dick. He grabbed the dog by the head, bent it over, fell down on top of it, and bit a plug out of the dog. The dog yelped and ran away.

I was fighting the two cops in front of me when I felt a little thud on my back. Turning around with my fist cocked back, I saw that a small female police officer had just hit me with her baton. It felt like a mosquito bite compared to the whacks the other cops were delivering. Realizing she was a woman, instead of punching her, I picked her up and pushed her onto the hood of her car.

Now there were nearly thirty cops against the four of us. We finally lost. They handcuffed us. We told them our story. The Tunisian guys had walked out of the Body Shop and resumed talking their anti-American rhetoric. Now the police were mad at the first officer. “What were you thinking? Are you crazy?”

What was done was done. We had assaulted cops. They separated us and loaded us into the back of the patrol cars. The female police officer stuck her phone number in the pocket of my shirt and said, “Hey, give me a call sometime.”

At the station, they processed us and gave us a court date. They contacted our command at SEAL Team Two. The police wouldn’t let us leave until SEAL Team Two sent a driver to pick us up.

When our court date came, I feared for my job. We were all new to the SEAL Teams and expected our careers to be ruined. On the front row of the courtroom sat police officers wearing neck braces. One had his arm in a cast. Another had a cane. They looked like fertilizer. In our dress blue uniforms, we looked like a million bucks.

Voted by my Teammates to be spokesman, I told the judge our side of the story. The people in the courtroom seemed sympathetic toward us because of what happened and how it happened.

The judge asked, “Why were three of these men taken to jail and immediately released, and Petty Officer [Dick] wasn’t released until later?”

The K-9 officer explained, “The dog bit him, and we had to take him to the doctor for a shot.”

“How long could that have taken?” the judge asked.

“Well, Your Honor, he took a bite out of my dog, so I had to take my dog to the vet for a shot.”

The courtroom behind us erupted in laughter.

The K-9 officer explained, “Your Honor, it really isn’t funny. It took me months to train him, and I still spend sixteen hours a month training him. But since Petty Officer [Dick] bit the dog, it won’t do the job anymore.”

The laughter rose to sheer pandemonium.

Down came the judge’s gavel. “Order. Order in the court!”

Except for a couple of snickers in the back of the courtroom, the noise calmed down.

“Now, the four of you need to step forward to the bench,” the judge said.

Oh, man. Lose our careers. Go directly to jail. Do not collect two hundred dollars. We were scared.

The judge leaned forward and then spoke quietly and calmly. “Gentlemen, I’m going to write this off to youthful vigor and patriotism, but don’t ever let me see you in this courtroom again.”

I heard applause from the courtroom behind us.

Turning around, I saw the cops in the front row. They looked like thieves had just robbed their houses. On our way out, I passed the cop in a neck brace and the one with a cane. As I passed the police officer with his arm in a cast, I winked at him. We left the courtroom.

Back at SEAL Team Two, we reported what happened to the Team Two skipper, Norm Carley, a short Irish Catholic guy from Philadelphia, graduate of the Naval Academy, and the first executive officer (second only to the commanding officer) of SEAL Team Six. Recently, the SEAL Team Two skipper had returned from Operation Praying Mantis in the Persian Gulf. He looked at us for a moment. “There was a time when we used to go out and fight the cops a lot. Those days are coming to a rapid end. The military is changing.”

He let us go, and his prophecy came true—the modern military has changed. On March 31, 2004, Ahmed Hashim Abed, an Iraqi al Qaeda terrorist, orchestrated the ambush of empty trucks picking up kitchen equipment from the army’s 82nd Airborne. Abed’s terrorists killed four Blackwater guards, then burned the corpses, mutilated them, dragged them through the streets, and hung two of the bodies from the Euphrates Bridge. One of the four guards was former SEAL Scott Helvenston. On September 1, 2009, the SEALs captured Abed. Then three other SEALs received courts-martial for allegedly giving him a bloody lip. Although the three SEALs were eventually found not guilty, such charges never should have risen to the level of courts-martial. If the SEALs had simply killed Abed, nothing could’ve been said. It’s hard to lawyer up when you’re dead.

In the same building as the Body Shop was a 7-Eleven. My house was 2 miles away. One evening after dinner, when Blake was still four years old, I drove with him to the 7-Eleven around seven o’clock to get some milk and bread. At the same time, Smudge pulled up in his Ford Bronco pickup truck jacked up on big wheels and big suspension. We had become friends after I joined him in Foxtrot Platoon at SEAL Team Two. Smudge walked over and, as usual, picked up Blake and gave him a hug.

As he held Blake, I said, “I’m just going to run in and get some milk and bread. I’ll be right out.” When I came back out with the groceries, they were gone. I looked at the Body Shop. Smudge’s girlfriend was a stripper there. Oh, no, he didn’t. When I hurried in, the bouncer greeted me, “Evening, Howard.”

“Hey, Bob,” I said. “Need to see if my son is in here.”

He smiled, letting me pass without paying the cover charge.

Walking into the club, it was mostly dark except for light coming from the center stage where a dancer shook her assets. Smudge sat at a table with his foot up on the stage while Blake sat on his lap. Smudge’s topless girlfriend stood next to them, bent over, running her fingers through Blake’s hair and stroking his cheek. “You’re such a cutie.” Her breasts were so huge, it’s a wonder she didn’t put my son’s eyeballs out.

I grabbed Blake, yelling at Smudge as I left, “Man, are you crazy? You’re going to get me killed.”

He couldn’t see what the problem was. “I just wanted to introduce him to Cassandra.”

I helped Blake into the car and tried to debrief him on our way home. This is going to be it. Smudge is one of my good friends, and he loves Blake—but if Laura finds out, I’ll never be able to have Smudge around my child again.

At home, luckily Laura was busy working in the kitchen. I took Blake to his room and occupied him with his Nintendo Duck Hunt game. Then I put away the milk and bread I picked up from the 7-Eleven. I went into the living room and studied some op orders and SEAL training manuals as I often did, but I had my eye on the clock, waiting for Blake’s bedtime. If I could get him to bed, I’d be in the clear at least until morning. Usually, I was the one to tuck him in for the night, and when his bedtime came that evening, I made a point of walking to his room and tucking him in. Days later, Laura, Blake, and I drove by the Body Shop on the way to SEAL Team Two. Holy crap, is seeing the place going to trigger Blake to say something to Laura? “Hey, I saw some big boobies in there.” Even for a couple of weeks after, I still worried. Fortunately, Blake never said another word about it until he was twelve or thirteen years old. And I never went back to the Body Shop again.

The first time Blake had a sip of beer, a Team guy gave it to him. When he got older, we all played golf together. Blake’s first driving lesson came on a golf cart with one of my drunken buddies—bouncing off of trees. Blake would later tell me, “Some of my best memories of Virginia are hanging out with the different guys.” They were his SEAL Team uncles who listened to Thin Lizzy’s “The Boys Are Back in Town” and sometimes let him do things he shouldn’t do.

After a few months of limbo, doing odd jobs around the SEAL Team Two compound, I finally made it to advanced training in sea, air, and land warfare, known as SEAL Tactical Training (STT). While BUD/S focused on screening out people and training the survivors, STT mostly focused on training. During the six months of STT, only two people were dropped because of poor performance. We learned advanced levels of diving and land warfare, including close-quarters combat (CQC). (For more on advanced training after BUD/S, see Dick Couch’s The Finishing School.)

When I completed STT, the SEAL Team Two skipper, Norm Carley, came out with tridents and pinned one on me. The trident consisted of an eagle clutching a U.S. Navy anchor, trident, and pistol. Because it looked like the old Budweiser eagle, we often called the trident “the Budweiser.” Both officers and enlisted wore the same gold badge, rather than following the common navy practice of making enlisted men wear silver. It is still one of the biggest, gaudiest badges in the navy. With his fist, Skipper gave it a smack on my chest. Then each member of my platoon came by and punched it in. The trident literally stuck so deep into my chest that the leading petty officer had to pull it out of my skin. The marks remained on me for weeks. Now I could officially play with the big boys.

My first platoon commander was Burt. In the navy, a “sea daddy” is someone who takes it upon himself to mentor a sailor. I never really had a sea daddy because I took advice, both tactical and personal, from a number of people, but I owed gratitude to Burt for drafting me into his winter warfare platoon right out of STT. SEALs were supposed to have served in a regular platoon before working in a winter warfare platoon, but Burt showed an early confidence in me.

Like nearly 50 percent of SEAL officers, an extremely high percentage in the military, Burt had been an enlisted man before becoming an officer—what we call a mustang—which is probably why I liked him so much. Never asked us to do anything he wouldn’t do himself. He was big on doing proper mission briefs, thoroughly evaluating the brief and the resulting op. The man was a great facilitator and diplomat. Burt loved the winter environment—skiing, snowshoeing, and the rest—and leading the Teams in high-tech winter warfare gear. For example, we tested and evaluated expeditionary weight Gore-Tex.

Burt’s second in command was Mark, who stood over six feet tall. Mark’s parents emigrated from a Russian satellite country. Low-key, he didn’t tell people he was an MIT graduate who spoke Russian, Czechoslovakian, Polish, and German. His security clearance took forever. Although highly intelligent and multilingual, he never talked down to us. Mark devised great plans, and he could explain them simply and clearly enough so everyone could understand. He spoke with a slight lisp, though, which we mimicked during his mission briefs, screwing with him. After work knocked off, give him a couple of drinks and a pretty girl on each side, and Mark’s speech would become incomprehensible.

At SEAL Team Two, one day a week, we did Team physical training. Wednesday was O-course day. The other days, we ran our own PT. Some guys used those days as time to play basketball or goof off, but Mark insisted we bust our chops doing a long run-swim-run or some other torture. He ran like a gazelle and swam like a fish—making those of us who couldn’t keep up with him hate life, although we enjoyed working with Mark.

*   *   *

At SEAL Team Two, I started to hear whisperings about a Top Secret SEAL Team Six. After the 1980 failed attempt to rescue American hostages at the U.S. Embassy in Iran, the Navy asked Richard Marcinko to create a full-time counterterrorist team. As its first commanding officer, Marcinko named the new unit SEAL Team Six. He recruited heavily from the SEALs’ two counterterrorist units: Mobility Six (MOB Six) at SEAL Team Two on the East Coast and Echo Platoon at SEAL Team One on the West Coast. They wore civilian clothes and longer haircuts and were allowed to grow nonregulation beards and mustaches. Officers and enlisted men addressed each other by first names and nicknames, not using military salutes. They specialized in rescuing hostages from ships, oil rigs, and other maritime locations. In addition, they assisted with military base and embassy security. On top of all that, Team Six also supported CIA operations.

Team Six’s baptism of fire came in 1983. After Communists allied with Cuba and the Soviet Union overthrew the government of Grenada in a bloody coup d’état, the United States launched Operation Urgent Fury to restore Grenada’s government. In support of the operation, twelve shooters from SEAL Team Six would parachute-drop off the coast of Grenada. This first mission was a goat-screw for at least three reasons. First, although SEAL Team Six had trained intensively in numerous counterterrorist tactics, they had not trained in nighttime water drops—which is even more difficult with boats. A mission that probably should’ve gone to SEAL Team Two, who were standing by, went to SEAL Team Six instead. Second, intelligence was crap. The mission was planned without taking into account daylight saving time; as a result, that hour difference made a daytime drop turn into a nighttime drop. Not even the moon was out. No one told the Team Six guys about the ten-foot ocean swells, high winds, and hard rain. Third, probably because the air force pilots weren’t experienced with water drops, the second plane dropped the SEALs in the wrong spot, far from everyone else.

As a result, when the twelve men hit the water, the wind continued blasting their parachutes, dragging them. With too much equipment and not enough buoyancy, some of the SEALs were sinking. Although they had practiced with high-tech parachutes, now they were using old MC-1 chutes. The guys fought for their lives to keep the parachutes from dragging them to watery graves. Without lights, gathering everyone together became impossible. One SEAL kept shouting and fired three shots into the night—but no one could reach him. A total of four SEALs disappeared. The survivors searched, but they never found their Teammates: Kenneth Butcher, Kevin Lundberg, Stephen Morris, and Robert Schamberger. Although heartbroken, the other SEALs still had a mission to do.

Black Hawk helicopters raced for an hour through the early-morning darkness to the governor-general’s mansion to rescue Governor-General Paul Scoon. Soviet aircraft rounds carved green lines into the sky. Aboard one of the helos, the fifteen SEALs crammed inside appeared calm—until enemy fire started punching holes in the helo. Denny “Snake” Chalker and the others who had never been in combat dropped their poker faces. Vietnam veteran SEALs officer in charge Wellington T. “Duke” Leonard, Bobby L., Timmy P., and JJ smiled. “How’s it feel getting shot at?” After a tense moment, Denny and the others smiled—what else could they do? The command helo, carrying SEAL Team Six’s commanding officer, Bob Gormly (Dick Marcinko’s replacement), took the heaviest fire and had to break off from the others in order to limp back to the aircraft carrier before the wounded helo fell out of the sky.

Duke and Denny’s chopper flared its nose up to a stop 90 feet in the air in front of the mansion while the other helo took the rear over the tennis court. One of the pilots was shot, but he continued flying. AK-47 fire popped at them from the mansion. A SEAL leaned out and fired back. Rich had been hit, but he was so pumped on adrenaline that he didn’t notice. Denny kicked out the rope and fast-roped to the back of the mansion, crashing through pine tree limbs on his way down. Duke and the others followed close behind—hitting the limbs Denny hadn’t already broken.

As Denny neared the mansion, an AK-47 poked out from a door in his direction. Denny held fire with his CAR-15 (forerunner of the M-4) assault rifle until he could identify the target—it was Governor Scoon. Duke, carrying a shotgun, relieved the governor of his weapon. The guys cleared the mansion, but only the governor, his family, and staff were inside. They set up a perimeter. RPGs—rocket-propelled grenades—skipped across the top of the roof without exploding.

Their satellite communication (SATCOM) radio had flown off in the wounded command bird, limiting communications, so they had to conserve the batteries in their handheld radios.

Duke told everyone, “Don’t challenge anyone unless they enter the compound.” They didn’t want to start a fight they couldn’t finish. Rescuing the governor was the priority.

As night began to fall, thirty enemy fighters and four Soviet eight-wheeled armored personnel carriers (BTR-60PBs) circled the mansion. Duke used his little MX-360 handheld radio to contact Master Chief Dennis Johnson at Port Salines airfield. The master chief relayed Duke’s message to an AC-130 gunship flying overhead. “Do a 360-degree firing run around the mansion.” The Spectre fired its 40 mm gun: bloop, bloop. The resulting explosions took out the surrounding enemy except for two that ran. Soon the little MX-360 radios ran out of power. Duke used the governor’s telephone to maintain communications.

Two Cubans armed with AKs walked up the driveway. The Cubans raised their weapons. So the guys fired: shotgun, CAR-15s, Heckler & Koch 21 light machine gun, M-60 machine guns, and a .50 RAI 500 (Research Armament Industries Model 500) sniper rifle. One Cuban tried to escape over a wall, but he and his comrade were literally cut down.

The next morning, Force Recon Marines helped the SEALs, the governor, and his family out. They saw the charred remains of burned-out trucks, weapons, and blood where the Spectre had fired—someone had removed the bodies. On their way out, the SEALs found a Grenadian flag, so they replaced it with a SEAL Team Six flag, which someone always carried for such an occasion. Later, the guys would hang the Grenadian flag up at SEAL Team Six when they returned. The entourage proceeded to a helicopter landing zone where a helicopter extracted everyone.

On a separate mission in Grenada, twelve SEALs, led by Lieutenant Donald Kim Erskine, flew in a helo to the radio station, which they were to secure until Governor Scoon could come in and broadcast a message to the people on the island. While in the air, they received some small-arms fire, but when they landed, the enemy had deserted the radio station. Erskine’s men had radio problems and couldn’t make contact with the command post—someone had changed the frequencies without informing the SEALs.

They set up a defensive perimeter. Before long a truck arrived loaded with twenty enemy soldiers. The SEALs ordered them to drop their weapons, but they didn’t. So the guys opened up on them, using about a third of their ammo, and killed ten of the enemy. They took the surviving ten as prisoners and used up most of their first aid supplies patching them up in the radio station. None of the SEALs were wounded.

A BTR-60PB and three trucks climbed up the hill to the station. Forty to fifty enemy soldiers poured out of the vehicles. The Cuban officer swatted his men on the butts with a command stick: “Attack.” Erskine and his guys defended from the building. The enemy tried to outflank them while their BTR rolled up toward the front door and unleashed its 20 mm cannon. The cannon blasted holes through the building’s concrete like it was paper.

One of the SEALs mounted a Rifleman’s Assault Weapon (RAW), a rocket-propelled grenade, onto the barrel of his CAR-15 and pulled the rocket’s safety. He aimed at the BTR and pulled his rifle trigger, the shot launching the rocket. Two pounds of high explosives scored a direct hit on the BTR.

Running out of ammunition in the face of overwhelming enemy firepower, Erskine and his SEALs set their explosives on the station and ran out the back door. They all thought they were dead, but the SEALs dashed across the meadow behind the station. With enemy closing in on their rear and both sides, Erskine calmly led his men in a leapfrog across a wide-open kill zone to the beach. He and half his men fell to the ground and fired at the enemy while the other half retreated. Then the retreating men dropped and fired at the enemy while Erskine and his shooters retreated. Bullets hailed down on them, one blowing Erskine’s canteen off; even though Erskine stood taller than six feet and weighed over 200 pounds, the shot knocked him to the ground. His squad members hit the dirt with him. They turned around and fired while the other squad retreated. As the guys continued their leapfrog, another round tore off Erskine’s boot heel, sending him to the earth. The next time he got up and ran, a shot ricocheted off the ammo magazine on his belt, whacking him down again. Bullet number four was less kind. It ripped out a chunk of Erskine’s right elbow, literally picking him up off the ground before slamming him into the dirt. He felt like his entire arm had been blown off. At the end of the meadow, the guys cut through a chain-link fence and crawled through. As Erskine counted his men, he realized a SEAL leader’s worst nightmare—he was missing a man. Then the SEALs saw their missing Teammate. Erskine and his men fired at the enemy as the radioman lugged the useless SATCOM radio across the field.

“Drop the radio!” Erskine yelled.

The radioman took off the radio and fired several rounds from his SIG SAUER 9 mm sidearm into its cryptographic parts. Then he sprinted to join his buddies.

They ran into a jungle of vegetation, which hid them from the enemy. Even though they had killed some of the opposition, the SEALs were still outnumbered and had almost no ammunition left in their rifles. The men continued down a path and embraced Mother Ocean. Swimming straight out to sea would make them targets for the enemy. Erskine told the guys, “Ditch everything except your primary gear and swim parallel to the beach.” They shed their rifles, backpacks, and nearly everything except pistols, pistol ammo, and E&E (escape and evasion) kits. The SEALs swam parallel to the beach and found shelter in the cliffs, where an overhang concealed them from the enemy above.

Friendly forces, not knowing they were still alive, blasted the bad guys near their position. The SEALs waited until the enemy had gone, then at 0300 swam out to sea. The SEALs floated in the ocean for six hours until a rescue plane saw them and called in a navy ship to pick them up. The guys had been awake for forty-eight hours. After making sure he had all his men on the ship, Erskine passed out. He later recovered. The navy awarded him the Silver Star Medal.

In 1985, PLO (Palestine Liberation Organization) terrorists hijacked the cruise ship Achille Lauro and killed passenger Leon Klinghoffer. The terrorists sought shelter in Egypt, and when Egypt tried to sneak them out on a flight to the PLO headquarters in Tunisia, U.S. Navy fighter planes forced the plane down at the NATO base in Italy. SEAL Team Six surrounded the terrorists on the runway, but the Italians stopped the SEALs from taking the plane down, demanding the five terrorists be turned over to them. After a brief showdown of SEALs vs. Italian military and law enforcement, America agreed to turn over the terrorists to Italy. Unfortunately, the Italian government freed the leader, Abu Abbas (who was later captured in Iraq in 2003). Although the other terrorists went to jail, one was granted furlough and escaped (he was recaptured in Spain). Another terrorist disappeared from Italy while on parole.

In 1989, SEAL Team Six went to Panama to capture drug-dealing dictator Manuel Noriega. Noriega tried to hide out in a Catholic church, but with no way out of the country, he finally surrendered.

Grenada, the Achille Lauro, and Panama were just three of the many operations SEAL Team Six performed before I joined them.

*   *   *

I took my first deployment with SEAL Team Two to Machrihanish, Scotland—land of my mother’s Kirkland ancestors, who changed their name to Kirkman when they immigrated to the United States. The Scottish locals gave Smudge his nickname, taken from a famous English soccer athlete. We went with some of the guys to a tartan museum in Edinburgh, where I found that my clan had come from the Highlands.

Smudge teased me about finding my tartan. “Wow, Howard’s the Highlander.”

“Yeah, there can be only one!” I exclaimed.

From Scotland, we trained alongside or interacted with a number of foreign special operation units: the British Special Boat Service, French Commando Hubert, German Combat Swimmers (Kampfschwimmer), Swedish Coastal Rangers (Kustjägarna), Norwegian Navy Ranger Command (Marinejegerkommandoen), and others. During a harbor penetration exercise in Germany, I exchanged a case of my MREs with the rations of a Commando Hubert. His commando frogman unit had received much help in its creation from a World War II naval officer named Jacques-Yves Cousteau, whom many came to know because of his TV series about the underwater world. The French rations included bottles of wine, cheese, and pâté. It amazed me how much they liked our freeze-dried food and Maxwell House coffee—just add water. When I returned to the barracks in Scotland, nearly everyone begged me for some of my wine, cheese, and pâté.

For winter warfare training, I enjoyed over a month of fun with the Swedish Coastal Rangers, who perform long-range reconnaissance, sabotage, and assaults against enemies invading Sweden’s coast. Although all young Swedish males must serve in the military for one year, some of them attempt to become Coastal Rangers. During the Cold War, Russia was their biggest threat.

Burt, DJ, Steve, and I flew into Stockholm, the capital of Sweden. Historic churches, palaces, and castles mixed with green parks and waterways, making it a Venice of the North. Newer buildings blended ecological designs with high tech and functionalism. Our hosts put us up in a wonderful hotel. One evening, as we returned from training, a short, skinny guy with spiky hair sat in the lobby, a long-legged woman sitting on each leg and one in his lap. Who is that? Two of us walked in closer to see who it was: Rod Stewart. There’s hope for ugly guys everywhere—become a rock star.

In the morning, Burt drove us in a rental car to a ferry, which shuttled us across the water, so we could drive to the Coastal Rangers’ base, located in Berga at the Swedish Amphibious Corps, First Marine Regiment (Första Amfibieregementet, AMF1). Our first operations began in the Stockholm archipelago. With thousands of islands, it is one of the largest archipelagos in the Baltic Sea. My counterpart and I pushed off in a light, two-man, nonmetallic folding kayak to search for Soviet submarines. I wore Vuarnet sunglasses, named after the French Olympic gold medalist Alpine ski racer, to shield my eyes from the sun. We landed on islands and searched them for any human activity—a cat-and-mouse game with the Soviets. Kayaking from island to island while carrying all our equipment was cold, hard work.

After nearly a week, we loaded up with the Coastal Rangers on several charter buses. They brought bags of food on the bus. “How far are we going, again?” I asked.

“Sixty-one miles.” The Coastal Rangers spoke good English.

“Why all the food?”

“Long trip.”

Only sixty-one miles—I could do that standing on my head.

After three hours on the road, I said to another Coastal Ranger, “I thought this was only going to be sixty-one miles.”

“Yes, sixty-one miles.”

“We’ve gone over sixty-one miles.”

Another Coastal Ranger smiled. “Sixty-one Swedish miles.”

I frowned. “How far is that?”

“Oh … about three hundred and eighty American miles.”

You’ve got to be kidding me. I was glad I hadn’t offered to go on any 4-mile runs with them.

We passed a MOOSE CROSSING sign before arriving in a small snowy town called Messlingin, next to Messlingin Lake, which was frozen over. Not found on any tourist maps, Messlingin is located 134 miles southwest of Östersund in central Sweden. The four of us checked into a wooden hotel with a sloping roof and overhanging eaves that looked like a chalet. Soon the Coastal Rangers took us for a dip in an ice hole. Although optional for us, everyone jumped into the nearly frozen water. We led by example—one of the stupid SEAL Team “kick me in the nuts I can take it” traditions. Around our necks we wore a cord with an ice pick dangling off it at chest level. The wooden handle was hand-sized, and the pick was an inch long. We had to jump into the ice hole, calm down, and request permission to get out of the water. Then we could reach forward, stab the ice with the pick, and pull ourselves out. On the first try, my vocal cords didn’t even work, it was so cold—I just jumped out. During the third attempt, I calmed down and allowed my vocal cords enough time to function. My voice squeaked, “Request permission to get out.” After exiting the water, getting warm became the priority.

I thought back to winter warfare training in Alaska. Kevin and I became partners. He was a big, easygoing SEAL with dark hair and dark eyes. Trained as a hospital corpsman, he could handle most combat medical emergencies until the injured could be transported to a hospital (later, I heard he left the SEALs and became a doctor for the navy, stationed in Spain). Kevin and I skied a deception trail—skiing past the area where we would pitch our tent. Then we’d do a fishhook back to our tent. This way we could hear someone coming before they reached us. We pitched a North Face two-man tent, put our rucksacks under the front of it, and piled snow outside the entrance, so we could melt it later for drinking water, including what we’d use on our ski the next day; people actually dehydrate more in the winter because their lungs use a lot of moisture to heat up the air. We’d also add it to our freeze-dried meals. Inside the tent vestibule, we stripped off wet clothing down to our polypro underwear. We lit the MSR WhisperLite stove to make water. The heat it put out warmed up the tent fast. Kevin’s feet were huge—his overboots wouldn’t fit over his ski boots. While we waited for the snow to melt, Kevin would take off his boots, and I’d put his toes under my armpits to prevent them from getting frostbite. Other guys looked forward to getting in their tents, but not me. Every night for ten days, I warmed those damned ice cube toes under my armpits. Then I could jump into a sleeping bag on my ground pad.

Fortunately, in Sweden, only 50 yards away from the ice hole, they had a sauna—and beer.

Also in Sweden, I experienced a snowcat for the first time—an armored personnel carrier on tracks that runs on the snow. Troops can shoot at the enemy from inside. They would attach a tow rope to the back of the snowcat and tow ten or twelve soldiers on skis. Hooking a ski pole into the rope, I held onto the handle as it towed me. Many of the Coastal Rangers had grown up skiing. One of them was an Olympic athlete in the ski jump event. Of course, there were no ski slopes in South Georgia, where I grew up. I’d fall down, and the Coastal Rangers behind would try to maneuver around me. Four of them ended up going down with me. After a while, they started arguing. I couldn’t understand the words, but I knew they were fighting over who would have to ski behind me. My three Teammates and I fell down so many times, taking the Coastal Rangers down with us like dominoes, that they respectfully moved us to the tail of the rope. If we could’ve videotaped our SEALs on Ice Show for America’s Funniest Home Videos, we probably would’ve won.

Because we were there as cadre to help train the young conscripts, the conscripts treated us like officers, cleaning and waxing our skis while we ate dinner. In the evening, if we left our boots outside the door, they’d clean and polish them before the next morning. The recruits would even clean our weapons for us.

Another cool thing we did was learn how to make a snow cave. My Coastal Ranger counterpart stood tall and slim. He could effortlessly ski circles around me. We dug horizontally into the side of a snowdrift, up, and horizontally inward, creating a plateau for the heat to rise to while the cold air dropped to the lower level. The Coastal Ranger and I put our packs in the entrance to block the wind and kept our ice axes inside, just in case we might have to dig ourselves out. From the plateau, we shaped the roof into a dome, so it wouldn’t drip directly on us.

We took off our overboots before entering the plateau area. With only four SEALs serving as cadre, my partner seemed honored to be paired up with me. He tried to clean off my boots.

“No, it’s OK. I’ll take care of it,” I said.

He gave me a strange look. Later, he appreciated not having to be my servant.

One or two candles were sufficient to heat the cave. Outside, the temperature was −40° F. Inside, I sat on a sleeping bag wearing just my navy blue polypro long undergarments. We didn’t want to heat up the interior temperature much higher than 32 degrees, or our snow cave might unfreeze, start raining, and then collapse on top of us. The difference between the temperature outside and inside, 70 degrees, made it feel like living in the Bahamas. The interior heat softened the walls and ceilings, so we patted them until they became hard again.

After living in the same snow cave for two weeks, using it as a base to run ops from, we had patted the walls and ceilings so much that the interior space seemed on its way to becoming a snow house. The Swedes knew how to fight a war—their rations included cognac and the best hot chocolate mix I’d ever had, plus meals like pasta Bolognese with rye bread. To my amazement, my Swedish counterpart wanted to trade his rations for my MREs. Guess he got tired of the same meals all the time. We enjoyed eating each other’s food in our snow cave.

In fact, part of the fun training with foreign special ops units was the gear exchange. From the States, I had brought some big beef sticks, no spicy flavors, to slice up and put on my rations for extra energy in the cold weather. The Coastal Rangers loved the beef sticks. I had also brought a Zippo lighter, for which one of the Coastal Rangers traded his beautiful Laplander knife. It had a wooden handle with a slightly curved blade plus a leather sheath that had two strands of rawhide string to tie it onto my pack. The Zippo lighter is more reliable in the cold than a butane lighter, but I liked the knife better.

On the last day, my partner and I applied white face paint on the parts of our faces that naturally formed shadows and gray on the prominent features: forehead, cheeks, nose, brow, and chin. All of us left our snow caves for the big op. Somewhere between one hundred and one hundred and fifty of us hooked up to the ropes behind our snowcats, which pulled us to our objective area. We skied in as far as we could, then removed our skis and backpacks inside the tree line, 300 yards away from our objective.

I put on my big clunky NATO snowshoes. The Coastal Rangers had nice small composite metal snowshoes that they could run with. Wow, you guys are way more high-tech in winter warfare than we are. For a pair of them, I traded my old Swiss Army knife and the snapped leather holder I used to carry it on my belt. It was too bulky to carry in my pocket. One of the black plastic sides of my knife had broken off, but it still had tools: saw, fish scaler with hook remover, leather punch with threader, magnifying glass, long blade, short blade, scissors, small pliers, corkscrew, toothpick, and tweezers. One would think that because Sweden is closer to Switzerland than the United States is, a Swiss Army knife would be in less demand there, but not so. The Coastal Ranger even threw in a bottle of schnapps to go with the snowshoes. He was so happy, he practically worshipped me for making the trade. Then the Coastal Ranger went and told all his buddies. They chewed him out for taking advantage of me. If he’d brought those snowshoes when I was doing winter warfare in Alaska, I would’ve traded five Swiss Army knives. When I returned to the U.S., I would buy a new one.

We patrolled forward in a wedge formation with a man in the middle and a wing on each side. Another element approached the objective area from the left flank. Shooting blanks, the left flank and our front wedge simultaneously assaulted through a mock fortification of ten buildings. Normally the basic SEAL unit is made up of a boat crew, only seven or eight men. In this company-sized assault of over a hundred soldiers, we just had to go with the flow.

The Swedish Coastal Rangers and other Northern European units such as Norway’s Navy Rangers spend more time on skis and operating in the winter environment than Americans do, giving them a distinct advantage. However, America’s technology helps level the playing field. It doesn’t matter how good you are on those skis if I can catch you in my night-vision scope from 400 yards away. Ski on that.

*   *   *

I heard that while I’d been away training in Sweden, Laura had been out until late most nights partying hard with some other SEAL wives. When I asked her about it, she said, “Oh, it was only one or two times. I just got bored.” I took her word for it because I believed her—I didn’t want to believe anything else. We went to church on Sundays, and everything seemed OK.

My son, Blake, really liked hanging out with the SEAL Team guys, and they loved him, too, especially after a particular incident when Blake was four years old. One day after work, I returned home to find Laura in the kitchen, out of her mind.

“What’s going on?” I asked.

“Little Debbie was over, and they got into Blake’s wading pool. Naked!” Little Debbie was a neighbor’s six-year-old daughter.

“Oh.”

“I called her mama and told her. She thought it was funny. You better talk to him.”

So I walked down the hall to his room.

Blake was playing Duck Hunt on the Nintendo, shooting flying ducks with his Nintendo Zapper Light Gun.

“Hey, buddy, how was your day?”

“Good,” he said.

“What’d you do today?”

“Played.”

I left him to his game and returned to Laura in the kitchen. “He’s fine. Didn’t even bring it up. Must not be such a big deal.”

“Oh, no. You have to make him talk about it. He’s probably traumatized.”

So I returned to Blake’s room. A dog on the TV monitor sniffed out the dead ducks in the grass and congratulated Blake.

I became more direct with my questioning. “Did you go swimming today?”

“Yep.”

“Well, did anyone go swimming with you?”

“Yep, Debbie went swimming with me.”

“Did you and Debbie take y’all’s clothes off while you were in the wading pool?”

“Debbie took her bathing suit off, and told me to take my bathing suit off.”

“Do you know you’re not supposed to let people see your pee-pee?”

“Yes, Mom told me not to let people see my pee-pee.”

“Well, did Debbie see your pee-pee?”

“Yep, Debbie saw my pee-pee.” He laughed.

“Did you see Debbie’s pee-pee?”

He stopped playing his game and put down the gun. There was a hint of concern in his voice. “You know what, Dad? Debbie doesn’t have a pee-pee.” He seemed to feel sorry for her. “She’s got a front-butt.”

It was all I could do to keep from laughing my head off. I called up Smudge, and he nearly busted a gut.

The next day, in the afternoon, Blake joined me in the SEAL Team Two Foxtrot Platoon Ready Room. We started talking about the front-butt story, and everyone cracked up.

Years later, one of the guys would say, “Hey, you know what? Think I’m going to head out into town tonight and try to find me a little front-butt.” My son had become a Team legend.

*   *   *

While I was at SEAL Team Two, my uncle Carroll died of a heart attack while fishing. My heart ached as I returned home for the funeral at the First Baptist Church—the same church where I had beaten the crap out of Timmy so many years earlier. Relatives, friends, and people I didn’t know packed the inside of the church. At the front, Uncle Carroll lay in his casket. He had loved me, spent time with me, and helped me grow up to be a young man. The memorial service was a blur to me—hymns, prayers, readings from the Bible, words from Brother Ron, and a eulogy. Sitting on the pew, I just physically couldn’t take it. I rose to my feet and walked outside the front door of the church. I stood on the steps and cried, shaking uncontrollably. It was the hardest I had ever cried. Someone put his arms around me and hugged me. I looked up expecting to see Brother Ron, but the man with his arms around me wasn’t Brother Ron. He was Dad. It was only our second hug. Not like the forced one before I got on the bus for college. “You know, Howard, I’m going to miss him, too. He always took the time with you because he was better at training you than I was. He had more patience. That’s why Uncle Carroll always did that with you.”

Later, I pulled myself together and followed the funeral procession to the cemetery where Uncle Carroll was laid to rest.

*   *   *

On June 6, 1990, my daughter, Rachel, was born at a civilian hospital in Virginia Beach. My mother-in-law had arrived from South Georgia. I’d been up at Fort A. P. Hill, Virginia, one of the largest live-fire ranges on the East Coast. I drove 140 miles southeast to see Laura and my baby girl. Seeing Rachel made me extremely happy. Even so, as much as I loved her, part of me was preoccupied with the Team. Maybe some SEALs can balance God, family, and the Teams. I couldn’t. The Teams were everything. After staying at the hospital for a day or two, I was gone again.

Whenever I returned home, she was Daddy’s girl. She loved to be with me, and I loved being with her. Once, when she got older, Blake pushed her off the back deck.

“Blake, go in the closet and get a belt!”

He disappeared into the closet, then emerged with my biggest leather belt.

“Son, why’d you bring the biggest belt you could find?”

He looked in my eyes. “Dad, that was a bad thing I did. So I figured I deserved to get spanked with this big belt.”

Maybe he was just playing me. Anyway, I didn’t spank him that time. Or any time after. If anything, I was too lenient with Blake. I could probably count the number of times on one hand that I’d laid him on the bed and spanked him with a belt.

I let Rachel get away with more than Blake. She was my sweetheart, and he was my buddy.

*   *   *

I continued to hear more about SEAL Team Six, the secret counterterrorist unit. Guys said that Team Six was the Team to go to. Six was the tier-one unit, recruiting only the best SEALs—like the Pro Bowl of the National Football League. They did hostage rescue and got all the money. Operators went to whatever schools they wanted. Spend thousands of dollars to go to a two-week driving academy? No problem. Want to go to Bill Rogers’s shooting academy? Again? No problem. They used top-of-the-line equipment. They got all the support—an entire helicopter squadron was dedicated to them. It was a no-brainer. I wanted to go to SEAL Team Six. As things turned out, I would go to war first.