Master Chief (31 page)

At the end of the day we were given free rooms at the local Holiday Inn, and the Golden Seals hockey team paid for our meals. Naturally, being totally depraved and full of vinegar, we headed for the inn’s lounge and partook of the refreshments that were justifiably—in our deceived hearts—utilized to replenish our body liquids and heal our tired feet. Before the evening was over, the band usually invited us up on the stage to sing, “Old MacDonald Had a Farm.” Loving the limelight, we sang with vigor and acted out our satire with animation for the chicken, the turkey, the dog, the cat, the pig, the ram, and the bull. During our presentation, the crowd became hysterical and fell to the deck as if having fits similar to a bunch of Holy Rollers. Once the audience had recovered, they threw substantial amounts of money upon the stage in appreciation of our humorous presentation and, more important, for the Easter Seal Society drive. In our own unpolished way, we collected several hundred dollars for crippled children and adults.

My highlight of the trip was when we stumbled into retired Admiral E. R. Zumwalt while running through
Concord on March seventh. Admiral Zumwalt had given a speech and was running for office against Senator Byrd of West Virginia at that time. Unfortunately, he didn’t receive enough votes to replace Senator Byrd. It was a great privilege for all of us, however, to finally have the opportunity to shake his hand and to get a group picture with him. During Admiral Zumwalt’s stay as the Commander Naval Forces Vietnam, he had protected SEAL platoons from being misused and needlessly sacrificed by conventional U.S. forces. On May 29, 1974, Admiral Zumwalt, while the CNO (Chief of Naval Operations) said, “I would take one SEAL one hundredfold over any Marine or soldier.” I hope we’ll always be able to live up to Admiral Zumwalt’s statement, I thought.

Another enjoyable portion of the trip for me was when we ran across the San Francisco Bridge. It was a thrill; the view was spectacular. We also had fun on the Seal-A-Thon when ordering breakfast. Once the busy waitress came over to our loud and boisterous table to take our breakfast orders, I would usually get in the first lick by saying, “Give me a settin’ of eggs [half a dozen eggs], a side of hog meat [a pound of bacon], and a side order of whippoorwill peas [a large bowl of grits].” Not surprisingly, as the waitress moved around the table, the orders were besmirsched with provincial rhetoric.

The best joke I heard during the tour went as follows:

“The Self-Righteous Cultic Temple had just received a new preacher. Because the previous pastor had gotten too open about his lust of the flesh, lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, he got caught in a homosexual and monetary scandal. The attendance had naturally been low and the tithing nonexistent. In desperation, the new pastor had decided to visit a few of the temple member’s households every morning to introduce himself and to encourage the delinquents to support and attend temple services that
Sunday morning so that they would receive a special gift of unknown tongues from a spirit.

“When he had reached the first house, he knocked on the door several times before a gray-haired, ugly old lady came to the door with her hair in rollers, no makeup, dressed in a threadbare housecoat and floppies. As soon as she saw him, she threw her arms around herself and exclaimed, ‘Oh! Conway Twitty!’

“The preacher serenely replied, ‘No, ma’am. I’m your new pastor. I’m Pastor Jones from the temple. I encourage you and your family to attend our temple services Sunday and receive a gift of unknown tongues from a spirit.’

“The preacher soon went to another temple member’s home and knocked on the door. He knew someone was home because he could hear his favorite soap opera ‘Days of Our Lives’ on the TV set. In a couple of minutes a short, fat, middle-aged, flat-faced brunette with unkempt hair, clad in her pajamas opened the door, rubbed her bloodshot eyes, took one look and cried, ‘You’re Conway Twitty!’

“As usual, the preacher was imperturbable and replied, ’No, ma’am. I’m your new pastor. I’m Pastor Jones from the temple. I just wanted to stop by and encourage you and your family to come to the temple services this Sunday morning for a gift of unknown tongues from a spirit.’

“The preacher continued doggedly on to the third visitation and was soon knocking on another door. No one answered, but he thought he could hear the shower running so he tried ringing the doorbell. Finally the door opened and there stood an absolutely gorgeous blonde holding her bath towel over the front of her bulging breasts with both hands. As soon as she saw the preacher, she threw her hands around the preacher’s neck, dropping her towel and screaming, ‘You’re Conway Twitty!’

“The preacher calmly cleared his throat and said with a
low voice, ‘Hello, darlin’. Good to see ya. It’s been a long time.’ ”

During May and June I was back at EOD School, Indian Head, Maryland, going through refresher for several weeks. All EOD technicians were required to attend refreshers at least once every three years. During the refresher I met BMC Dutch Miller, one of the most humorous and quick-witted old-timers that I had ever come across. We became fast friends for the remainder of my Navy career.

During July all SEAL Team 1 platoons, including most of the admin’ers, spent one week utilizing one of the Air Force’s Combat Talon C-130s for airborne operations. As was peculiar to the SpecWar system, we jumped with tactical combat equipment day and night throughout the week and into a variety of tactical situations. The exercise was similar to a marathon FTX. In those days I loved to take risks. I wasn’t afraid to take calculated chances. And then I broke my leg.

On July sixteenth, during an unusually wet night, I was standing in the door of the C-130 waiting for the green light to flash on. There was nothing but absolute blackness before me. I knew it was still raining outside because some of the moisture was blown into my face, sending chills running up and down my spine. The drop zone party’s lights were not visible from the air. The aircraft’s computer, however, had been programmed with the DZ’s eight-digit coordinates. Finally the light turned green and I exited the door into the black night. I wasn’t sure what altitude we had jumped from because Combat Talon had a habit of dropping us at three hundred feet or lower on occasion. Suddenly the DZ crew (HMC Terry Bryant) turned SEAL Team 1’s ambulance headlights on. It was good that he had—otherwise I would have certainly smashed into the ambulance. I grabbed the right toggle,
made a hard right turn and easily avoided the vehicle. Unfortunately, I hit the ground very hard and a loud pop came from my lower right leg. To say the least, it hurt like hell. Doc must have heard my cursing and soon saw me holding my leg while rocking back and forth on my butt in pain. Doc Bryant came over to me and asked, “Are you okay?”

Looking up at Doc with disgust (at myself), I smarted off and replied, “Naaaaa, I always grunt, groan, and cuss like this, you shithead. Help me get my right boot off while we still can.”

By that time Lieutenant Loren Decker came over to see what was going on. “Is everything all right?”

Doc chuckled and said, “Yessir. Everything is fine. Smitty only broke his leg. All he needs is a couple of aspirin and an ice-cold beer.”

“Where have I heard that before?” I mumbled to myself. Sure enough, my good friend Doc handed me an ice-cold beer after they helped me into the back of the ambulance. No placebos for me, I thought as I shivered from the cool, damp night. While Doc drove the ambulance over incredibly rough terrain, he managed to hit a huge pothole, throwing me up into the air and crashing down onto the floor, banging my right leg against the side of the seating area and spilling beer all over my head, face, and chest. Some days you eat the bear and some days the bear eats you, I thought as I crawled back up on the padded seating area.

Doc yelled back and asked, “Are you all right back there?”

“Yeah, hand me another beer, you spilled the last one,” I replied while trying to maintain my sense of humor.

Because we were the last of the jumpers for that night, Doc and Lieutenant Decker soon had me back on the Strand and over to the NAB’s (Naval Amphibious Base)
dispensary. Once I got into the well-lighted building, I noticed that my right foot hung at a strange angle from my leg. At least the bone hadn’t stuck through the skin, I thought. One of the best XOs that SEAL team ever had, Lt. Comdr. Paul D. Plumb, came by for a few minutes to see how I was doing. He looked at my crooked leg, shook his head, and left. The X ray soon confirmed that my fibula was indeed broken and would have to be screwed together. Speaking of getting screwed, the doctor told me to go home and to report to the Naval Hospital at Balboa the following morning. That was easier said than done. I had a devil of a time driving my standard-shift pickup home with that broken leg, and a worse time while I was attempting to take a bath. The next morning my leg was so swollen that I couldn’t drive. I had to call Doc Bryant to send one of the guys to my house to take me to the hospital.

Once the doctors got me into the operating room, they gave me a spinal, screwed my lower fibula together with two stainless-steel screws, and put a full-length cast on my right leg. A couple of hours later I was rolled into a large dorm filled with Navy and Marine personnel. After the spinal began to wear off, my lower leg caused me great pain. It was the most intense pain that I had ever endured. I eventually had to get rough with the nurse to get something done. Finally, I was taken into a small room where a hospital corpsman sawed off the cast and carefully constructed another one. The corpsman told me that the young and inexperienced doctors hadn’t allowed for any swelling—hence the extreme pain.

During the next two months, our SpecWar doctor put me in the recompression chamber on oxygen for thirty minutes at sixty feet three times a week to speed the healing. Two months later the cast was finally removed and I was able to begin the early phases of specialized exercising at Balboa. Within another couple of months I was
back to running four miles a day. Until I broke my leg, I had arrogantly assumed that I was infallible as an operator. It was good to be humbled.

By November, I was assigned to Bravo Platoon as the platoon chief. In December, I was tasked to attend a special demolition course at the Harvey Point Defense Testing Activity near Hertford, North Carolina. A dozen or so of SEAL 1 and 2 personnel attended. I missed getting to see Big John T. by only a few days. The course was one of the most interesting that I had ever attended. The instructors were incredibly experienced, highly motivated, and a delight to study under.

The FTX phase was the most exciting that I had ever participated in. Chief R. R. Schamberger and I were assigned to blow up a large three-thousand-gallon tank of diesel. (Schamberger and two others were later to disappear on a stormy night during a water combat equipment jump a few miles off the island of Grenada. Their bodies were never recovered.) Carrying carefully calculated and prepared incendiary charges, the two of us successfully avoided the security forces, placed the dual-primed, multiple charges at the fuel level, pulled the fuse lighters, set the timers, and departed the area in well under a minute. The best part of the mission was watching the tank explode into a huge fireball. Saboteurs get all of the fun while EOD technicians have all of the work. It’s good to be cross-trained—when you get tired of one profession, the other can be a breath of fresh air.

On February 8, 1977, Bravo Platoon was riding aboard a Combat Talon C-130 on a nonstop flight to Subic Bay. Our mission was to jump into Green Beach and destroy an enemy target. It was a very long three-day ride. Because the C-130 was refueled in the air, we were required to suit up with our parachutes in case there was a snafu. In an emergency, we were to run off the loading ramp ASAP
and rendezvous in the water for eventual rescue. Fortunately for everyone, there were no hitches. On the night of the tenth we prepared to make our combat (training) equipment jump into Green Beach. HT1 Terrie McCullah and I were the jump master and assistant jump master. Terrie would lead the 1st Squad out the port door while I would lead the 2nd Squad out the starboard door.

The aircraft’s computer had been programmed with the eight-digit coordinates of the DZ, and Combat Talon’s goal was to test the accuracy of the computer and, more important, U.S. charts by dropping us without the guidance of a jump master. I had previously jumped into Green Beach, had traveled over much of the area, and was aware of the many dangerous ground obstacles. I told Terrie that I expected casualties and worse if the spot let us out over the boulder-strewn river bottom with its high banks. Terrie and I both knew that the drop zone would have at least a fire marking its center and had agreed that if the aircraft’s green lights flashed on too early or too late, we would preempt the spot and jump at our own discretion.

At approximately 0230 hours both squads of Bravo Platoon were hooked up and waiting anxiously for the green lights to flash on. It had been a long and boring eight-thousand-mile trip. The night was moonless and dark. We had started across the Subic Bay and were rapidly approaching Green Beach, located at the foot of a mountain range. As I stood in the door, I strained to look ahead of the aircraft and watched intently for the DZ fire to appear in the blackness as we flew along at 130 knots. As soon as I spotted the DZ fire, I was able to judge the accuracy of the computer’s spot. Amazingly, the approach to the DZ light was right on. Still unknown was whether the green light would flash on just prior to our flying over the center of the DZ. I needn’t have worried.
Just when I was about to exit and lead 2nd Squad out of the aircraft, the green light flashed on. In a matter of seconds all fourteen of us had exited the C-130 at an altitude of three hundred feet. As soon as my canopy opened, I dropped my equipment bag and hit the ground hard. The only reason I didn’t break my leg again was that I had worn a pair of French jump boots, one of the best investments that I had ever made. Maybe I’m getting a little smarter after all, I thought.

As luck would have it, MM2 Frank Wilson landed on the edge of the twenty-foot river bank. After landing in the midst of a few brushy trees, he started crawling out from underneath the canopy when one of his hands reached out into space. He carefully got out of his parachute harness and crawled in the opposite direction into the pitch-black night. Once Frank found his red-lensed penlite, he managed to get his weapon and gear and reported for head count: