Master Chief (33 page)

Andy had already reached down and grabbed the little serpent just aft of the stick. When he let up on the stick, the snake quickly turned his head to the left and buried his left fang in Andy’s left index finger. Andy dropped that snake like a bad habit.

“I’m bit! I’m bit!” he cried.

Lord, I’m in trouble now, I thought. Naturally, his platoon officer wasn’t pleased, and neither was I. In a matter of minutes Andy’s left forearm started swelling and was becoming increasingly painful. Consequently, Andy and the corpsman immediately headed south for the small community hospital in the little town of Westmoreland for rattlesnake antivenin—there was none. They continued south toward El Centro and its hospital, where they were told that they didn’t have any antivenin either. From there Andy and Doc drove all the way back to San Diego—160 miles from Camp Kerrey—to the Navy’s
Balboa Hospital, where they did have the antivenin on hand. Later, Andy Nelson told me that after he received the antivenin, he had a serious reaction to it. The doctors were forced to give him shots to counter its effects.

Approximately one year later, I noticed that Andy’s left index finger was still somewhat black, and I asked him how his finger was doing. He explained that the first joint had a tendency to peel two to three times a year and remained numb, but other than that, it gave him no trouble.

I laughed and said, “Because your index finger sheds two to three times a year like a snake, I’m going to start calling you ‘Snake Man’ after the famous snake-catcher extraordinaire, C. J. P. Ionides.”

However, Andy Nelson thought poorly of his new nom de guerre, and seemed to dislike me thereafter. In some ways, I suppose I really couldn’t blame him. The sidewinder only lived a year after his captivity. Bolivar II didn’t seem to like his new coastal environment, unlike my Bolivar I—boa constrictor—from Panama (see
Death in the Jungle)
.

During some of my time as a member of Cadre, I wrote and constructed live-fire combat pistol and rifle courses, using M-26 fragmentation grenades and foxholes. The courses tested individual marksmanship while rapidly moving from target to target. Both courses were timed and proved to be a lot of fun, and most important, confidence builders.

During those months, I also created, wrote, and started teaching SEAL Team 1’s first one-week, day-and-night sniper course, which included a one-day-and-one-night FTX that took place in the pass between Lion Head and Beal Well in the Chocolate Mountains. With the help of others, it took me several months of range, equipment, and lesson-plan preparation before I was ready to teach the first two-man class. The purpose of the course was to
prepare at least two members of each SEAL platoon in the basics of sniping and weapons care before their deployment overseas. Unfortunately, prior to this basic course, there had been no in-house sniper training per se in SEAL Team 1. It was rare, at that time, for anyone to be sent to the Army sniper course, and never, to the best of my knowledge, was anyone sent to the Marine Corps sniper course at Camp Pendleton.

However, before I could teach the mathematical portion of the course, my good friend Lt. Loren Decker—UDT-12’s training officer—had to give me instructions in basic trigonometry and calculus so I could competently teach uphill/downhill trajectory curves, moving and moving oblique target leads, vertical adjustments relative to wind direction, and so on.

Next, I had to overhaul each M-40A1 Sniper rifle, a Remington M-700 with 7.62×51mm caliber, heavy barrel, parkerized finish, glass-bedded with free-floating barrel. I removed the accumulated copper deposits from the bores, then I recrowned each muzzle of every barrel, reset the Redfield scope rings and mount properly on the action, had damaged Redfield 3–9X Accurange scopes repaired at the factory, cleaned scope lenses properly, and purchased one-piece cleaning rods, among other things.

The only prerequisite for the course was that both men represent the best marksmen from each platoon. Because SEAL Team 1 lacked funding—during the Carter years and prior to the Delta Force’s special funding—to acquire all of the equipment needed, I allowed both men of the second class to use my personal M-1A in competition, heavy barrel, Match rifle, which is similar to the military M-14, but semiautomatic only. For myself, the highlight of that class was when MM2 Frank Wilson fired a five-shot group of just under five inches into the center of a green silhouette at five hundred yards with issue M-118
7.62×51mm NM ammo while he lay on a limb of a desert ironwood tree. Wilson rightly decided to take that silhouette home for a souvenir. I was very proud of his fine achievement under field conditions and with minimal training.

During the Carter White House years the operational and training programs of the Department of Defense, and SEAL Team 1, were severely cut back because of a reduction in military funding. As an example, at one time, most of the Navy’s F-14s at the Miramar Naval Air Station were grounded for lack of funds for fuel and replacement parts. The imprisonment of the U.S. Embassy personnel in Tehran for over a year and the failed rescue attempt added insult to injury. Those folks paid a terrible price for indecisive and incompetent leadership. Those were dark days for the U.S. military personnel.

By March 1978, I was transferred to UDT-12 as the assistant training officer. My immediate superior was my good friend Lt. Loren E. Decker, the training officer. Lt. Comdr. Ray Smith was the XO, and Comdr. Al Winters was the CO. Lieutenant Decker had originally served as an enlisted man as a member of SEAL Team 1’s Mike Platoon with Lt. (jg) Sandy Prouty (the OIC) and ENS Roger Clapp (the AOIC). GMG2 Decker’s platoon spent most of their 1969–70 tour at the U.S. Navy’s new Sea Float located near the southern tip of South Vietnam in An Xuyen province. By September 1970, Loren had gotten out of the Navy and was attending Kearney State College in Nebraska, where he completed his bachelor’s degree in political science. After his graduation, Decker applied for the Navy’s Officer’s Candidate School and was granted a commission. ENS Decker promptly returned to SEAL Team 1 in May 1973, and was assigned to Bravo Platoon as the AOIC under Jon Wright, the platoon commander. Bravo Platoon deployed to WESTPAC in ’74 to Korea
and the Philippines. By August ’74, Lieutenant (jg) Decker was reassigned as the platoon commander of Hotel Platoon with his AOIC, ENS Paul Salerni and the platoon chief, S. Sgt. Frank Cashmore—an Australian army SAS participating in the Personnel Exchange Program. Decker’s platoon deployed to WESTPAC from August 1975 to April ’76 Upon return to CONUS, he was transferred from SEAL Team 1 to UDT-12, where he was eventually assigned as the command training officer.

Within a couple of weeks, Lieutenant Decker and I were back at the SEAL training camp six miles west of Niland, teaching one of UDT-12’s platoons about small-unit tactics and weapons. Shortly after that trip, the two of us accompanied another UDT-12 platoon to San Clemente Island for diving training and wild Spanish goat hunting during our off time. In between our arduous trips, the two of us managed to make a few free-fall jumps and dives for lobster and abalone near Point Loma.

it was during those good times while back on the Strand that I came to know a couple of ex-East Coast guys, MCPOs Hershel Davis and Roy Dean Matthews. They were two of the best natural comedians that I had ever known, especially Hershel. I had first met them during my tour with the PRU in ’69 when they were members of a SEAL Team 2 platoon operating out of My Tho, Vietnam. However, I didn’t have much of a chance to get to know either one of them before they had to leave the country quite suddenly. The reason for their untimely departure was that they had injudiciously targeted and killed a legal VCI on VC island in the My Tho River. Colonel Dao, the province chief, and his U.S. counterpart—the province senior adviser—and the Company province officer in charge raised hell about the incident to the Navy. Apparently, the VCI was a double agent and was working
for agencies/intel organizations on both sides of the fence. In that light, the SEAL 2 platoon was swiftly judged and punished by expelling Davis’s and Matthew’s platoon immediately from the Republic of South Vietnam. There’s no doubt in my mind that Roy Dean and Hershel had something to do with the death of that double-dealing, VCI pig.

Usually, during the noon hour, Lieutenant Decker and I stayed in the training office and ate our lunch together while discussing two of our favorite subjects: firearms and hunting. Loren’s wife, Melanie, always fixed him a large lunch, which was placed carefully in a brightly colored Bugs Bunny and Mickey Mouse-type metal lunch box. For some strange reason, Roy Dean was drawn to that lunch pail and started sneaking into the training office and stealing one of Decker’s two delicious sandwiches from it. Roy Dean would surreptitiously steal the sandwiches, while Lieutenant Decker and I were suffering under Senior Chief Frank Perry’s butt-bustin’ PT and run/swim/run or burnout PT on Fridays. Neither Lieutenant Decker nor I had any idea who was stealing the sandwiches until a week or so later when Roy Dean, short on discernment but long on cunning, stuck his balding head into the training office, smacked his lips with obvious satisfaction, and asked, “Mr. Decker, what is your wife’s name?”

Loren, being a bit puzzled, answered, “Melanie. Why?”

“Tell Melanie to use sweet pickles rather than those dill ones.… I hate dill pickles,” Roy Dean replied.

Decker wisely revealed no emotion and didn’t comment. After Roy Dean had left, laughing arrogantly as he walked toward the quarterdeck, Decker smiled and said, “Tomorrow I’ll have a surprise package waiting for Master Chief Roy Dean Matthews.”

For several weeks Lieutenant Decker placed a variety of sordid items inside each sandwich for Roy Dean’s in-discriminating palate. Strangely, Matthews never did catch on to Decker’s covert sandwiches and continued to unwittingly consume their contaminated contents with relish.

By the fall of ’78 Lieutenant Decker had been reassigned as NavSpecWar Group’s Air Operations officer, and I was reassigned TAD as the assistant Air Operations officer of the combined UDT/SEAL parachute loft located just behind the SEAL Team 1’s administrative spaces.

Continuing in my REMF (Rear Echelon Matriarchal Facade) responsibilities, I was tasked to aid and partake in the training of jump masters, rappel/McGuire and cast masters. I enjoyed my new assignment and especially enjoyed working for Lieutenant Decker. However, I was forced to adjust to those administrative tasks of aircraft scheduling, maintenance of filing systems, and many other mundane tasks that REMFs have to take care of.

In January and February 1979, Lieutenant Decker and I were tasked as the logistics officer and the assistant logistics officer for SpecWar units while participating in the Joint Readiness Exercise Jack Frost ’79, based out of Camp Carrol, Fort Richardson, Alaska. It was a new experience and gave me greater insight and appreciation for the admin’er types, considering that I had become one. We worked long hours, including a surprising amount of hard physical labor to support the SEAL platoons and the SpecWar Air Department; however, we did have time to get in a fair amount of cross-country skiing on Fort Richardson’s excellent ski trails.

After our return to the Silver Strand, SEAL Team 1 requested me to teach two more two-man sniper classes. Lieutenant Decker was very tolerant in allowing me to
leave the Strand and head for the bush for short periods of time. PO2 Bob Keene of UDT-12, who was an invaluable assistant, was a graduate of the U.S. Army’s sniper course. Blue-Eyed Bob was a delight to work with. As usual, both of us learned more than the students, and between the two of us, we gradually perfected the short, no cost to the government, one-week course.

During May 1979, my good friend Senior Chief Radioman John Bagos, a member of Beach Jumper Unit 1 and TAD to SpecWar’s sensor program, was at my home one evening discussing his upcoming retirement after twenty-four years of service. John was telling me that he wasn’t looking forward to retiring from the Navy, but he didn’t want to remain in it either. John was worried about his ability to make enough money as a civilian to support his wife and two small kids and make payments on his home. I could tell that John was battling with his decision to muster out within a month, and thinking that the jumps would raise his morale, I suggested to him that he come with Lieutenant Decker and me to make a couple of jumps that Friday at Rolls Farm as a going-away present. John reluctantly agreed.

May seventeenth was a beautifully clear day, with little or no wind. SEAL Team 1 had several platoons scheduled to make multiple combat equipment jumps from our CH-46 helo that morning prior to any free falls, which was SEAL team’s policy. During the first two helo loads, Lieutenant Decker and I alternated as the jump master while the other made the mandatory static-line combat equipment jump.

One of the SEAL platoons had a young corpsman who had recently graduated from the Army’s airborne school at Fort Benning, Georgia, where they had made five jumps from the large, C-141 jet aircraft. During my turn as jump master, Doc was to make his sixth jump and his
first ever from the ramp of the slow-flying helicopter. Because of the helo’s slow forward speed and downward main rotor wash, the jumpers’ parachutes were slow to open. Poor Doc dreaded that long falling sensation before his canopy deployed.

Once the CH-46 had reached 2,500 feet altitude and approached the exit point, I gave the hand signal to the assistant jump master for the jumpers to begin their two or three steps down the aircraft’s ramp, where they stepped off into space and fell rapidly out of sight toward the ground as their parachutes slowly opened. Doc, the last jumper, timidly stepped onto the downward-pitched ramp and stopped—filled with fear and anticipation.

Sympathizing with his dilemma, I yelled, “Go, Doc! Go, Doc!” knowing that he couldn’t hear me.