No Hero: The Evolution of a Navy SEAL (2 page)

Army Rangers had gone out to hit a target in Jaw-e-Mekh Zareen village in Wardak Province’s Tangi Valley. The SEALs were originally offered the target but passed because
illumination from the moon was high that night and they thought it would be safer to wait for darker conditions. But when the SEALs passed, the Rangers decided to hit the target instead.

They were after a senior Taliban leader. A firefight broke out almost as soon as the Rangers landed. Taliban fighters from up and down the valley came to defend the compound. The fight raged for at least two hours before a small group of Taliban started to flee. The Rangers called the QRF for help. They feared the group that had taken off included the commander and his bodyguards, and they didn’t want to lose him.

As the helicopter—call sign Extortion Seventeen—came in to help the Rangers, an RPG from one of the Taliban fighters struck the aft rotor assembly. Ray and the guys didn’t have a chance.

Two days later, commanders in Afghanistan claimed that the fighter who had fired the rocket-propelled grenade was killed by an F-16 bomb strike.

That didn’t make it any easier.

Later, rumors about an elaborate trap started to circulate. There was talk that the Taliban had lured the SEALs to the target and shot down the helicopter in retaliation for the Osama bin Laden raid. But whatever the truth, the reality is that the downing of Extortion Seventeen was a tragedy. When the QRF is called in, it’s almost always because something went wrong. Being the QRF is dangerous. There is no element of surprise, especially when you arrive in a CH-47 Chinook, which is essentially a flying school bus. Sometimes,
there isn’t enough skill or luck in the world when it is your time.

As the details rolled in that night, I knew a bunch more teammates had lost their lives in Afghanistan. Thirty-eight service members were killed when an RPG hit Extortion Seventeen. More than a dozen were SEALs. The crash was the deadliest day of the decade-long war in Afghanistan. The sight of the flag-draped caskets on the way to the memorial services is forever etched into my mind.

Of course, Ray isn’t the only friend who was lost during my fourteen-year SEAL career. I have forty names in my cell phone contact list that I’ll never call again. There have been many more than just forty SEALs killed since September 11, but these were the forty whom I was lucky enough to have known and served with.

We’ll never relive the glory days of past deployments over a beer. No more cookouts or training trips. All forty guys are more than coworkers or friends. They are brothers. Every time I scroll through my contacts, I’ll run across a name and instantly relive a memory.

We all arrived in San Diego with the same dream. It was a bond that put a kid from the backcountry of Alaska on the same page as a surfer from California and a pig farmer from the Midwest who saw the ocean for the first time on the first day of training.

I chased that dream from high school in Alaska to BUD/S. Once I got my trident, the iconic badge SEALs wear on their uniforms, I tried to excel at every task. For me, and for many
of my teammates, being a SEAL was just the start of our dream. Being a great teammate, pushing to constantly improve, and being there for the guys to your left and right became a kind of religion for us.

I never became numb to the loss. For me it stung more and more as my career progressed. My teammates sacrificed everything for their country. They spent months away from family and loved ones, long hours suffering in the cold mountains of Afghanistan, and some, like my buddy Ray, paid the ultimate price. Not one of them thought of himself as a hero.

I was faced with a decision.

I’d spent fourteen years trying to be the best SEAL I could be. But now I either had to reenlist and stay in the Navy long enough to earn my pension—another six years—or get out and find a new challenge.

The decision weighed on me like nothing else in my life. Being a SEAL on one of the nation’s premier
..........................
teams was more than just my job. It was my identity and one of the chief ways I brought order and meaning to my life. It wasn’t like I could go overseas and run missions part-time. I knew once I left, the train was going to leave me far behind, and most of what I’d known my entire adult life would change forever.

As I wrestled with the decision, I spent nights examining my career and the events and lessons that came to define me. I ultimately decided to leave the Navy and forge a new path. In doing that, I had to reinvent myself.

The publication of the book thrust me into a world I had
never been in before, one where millions of people I had never met suddenly wanted to talk to me and hear what I had to say. Most of the people I met were supportive, but there was criticism as well. It was a new challenge, one that I couldn’t be sure my SEAL training had prepared me for.

It took me thirteen deployments in thirteen years to become the operator I was when I left the Navy. Getting off the speeding train was difficult partly because I was heading into a world where I had no idea if my skills would apply.

When people hear about SEALs, they assume we’re superheroes who jump out of airplanes and shoot bad guys. We do both those things, but those skills don’t define us. When we make mistakes, we try again and again and again until we get it right. We’re not superheroes. We’re just committed.

There is no “secret sauce,” but there is a lot of hard work, dedication, and drive.

The reality is that SEALs don’t think of themselves as special. We simply strive to do the most basic tasks extraordinarily well. One of the best leaders I know used to challenge his junior guys to be engaged and part of the team.

“At what level are you willing to participate?” he’d ask.

“All in, all the time,” was the only acceptable answer.

We’ve learned, often the hard way, how to excel. Excelling means communicating with each other, testing, leading, listening, studying, and teaching, day after day, year after year. It means not just being able to trek miles through the mountains of Afghanistan carrying sixty pounds on your back, but also letting others call you out on your mistakes. And getting
called out by your teammates is often harder than spending hours in the cold surf.

As I faced new challenges in my first year outside the Navy, I spent a lot of time going back to the lessons I learned during my SEAL career, and the moments and people whom I know I will carry with me the rest of my life. What I realized is that the important moments for me are not the moments that made headlines back home. They are the missions that have no name, in which my team was tested and learned something that made us better. They are the mistakes I made that I thankfully survived and learned from so I wouldn’t make the same mistake the next time. The most important moments are the ones that taught me what the SEAL brotherhood really means.

This book is about those moments, and the lessons from each one that define me.

Taken together, I hope these stories provide an intimate glimpse into the life and work of a SEAL and the lessons passed down to me by the teammates I served with and those who came before me.

Being a SEAL is not just a job. It is a lifelong commitment to challenge yourself, and your teammates, to exist in a constant state of evolution, examining your decisions and learning from your mistakes so that you and your team can be as effective as possible.

The lessons I learned over my career make up the legacy of the men, like Ray, we lost and all the other active and former SEALs who have dedicated their lives to this country. Many
were learned the hard way, through the sacrifice of friends. This book is dedicated to my brothers.

SEALs are taught to mentor the younger generation and to pass the lessons we’ve learned on to the newer guys. I wrote
No Hero
because that is what I plan to do.

The Right to Wear the Shirt

Purpose

It was
just a black T-shirt.

Size medium, one hundred percent cotton.

On the front was a skeleton in a wetsuit crawling over the beach. He had an M-16 in his hands and a knife on his belt. The skeleton was coming out of the surf, the dark waves crashing behind him. A SEAL trident was on the left breast of the T-shirt. The trident was the sole reason I got the T-shirt in the first place.

I remember when it came in the mail. There was no way I could get a shirt like this from a store in the Alaskan village where I grew up. I put it on as soon as I opened it, and wore it practically every day. If that shirt was clean in the morning, I was wearing it.

To everyone else, it was just a shirt I always wore. But to me, it represented my goal in life. Each time I wore it, the shirt renewed my quest to become a SEAL. I slid the shirt into my suitcase and finished packing the rest of my clothes—including a borrowed suit and dress shoes—and headed for the airstrip. I was on my way to a conference in Washington, D.C., for “future military members.” It was 1992, and to this
day I don’t know how I got invited, but it probably came from one of the many recruiters I’d talked with about being a SEAL.

The airstrip was on the outskirts of the village, and it was our only lifeline to “civilization,” if you can call any town in Alaska that. The frontier lifestyle is why people move to Alaska. If you want convenience, stay in the lower forty-eight.

I watched the bush plane clear the trees at the far end of the strip and come in for a landing. As the pilot and a newly arrived group of hunters unloaded, I hugged my parents near the small one-room building that served as the airport terminal.

The trip was a first for me. It was the first time I’d left Alaska alone. It was my first trip to Washington, D.C. But of all the firsts, I was most excited that I was going to meet my first SEAL.

Everyone in my village in Alaska knew I wanted to be a SEAL. It was something I talked about with my friends and dreamed about at night. I read every book I could find on the SEALs.

I knew nothing of SEAL Team
.....
until I read
Rogue Warrior
by Richard Marcinko. “Demo Dick” and “Shark Man of the Delta” were some of his nicknames. He operated in Vietnam and later started SEAL Team
.....
.
Rogue Warrior
tells the story of the creation of the unit. If you believe that book, every SEAL can bench-press five hundred pounds and eat glass. I wanted more than anything to prove I could too. Except for maybe eating glass.

At the time, I just thought it would be cool to be a SEAL.
I knew the training would be hard, but I was too young to really understand how hard. I certainly didn’t know all of the sacrifices I would have to make. I just wanted to be like the guys I read about, and at the time that was enough to push me forward.

I was lucky. I figured out my purpose early on. I don’t think I understood it at first, but from the moment I found out about SEALs, I knew that was my goal, because of the challenge. If you asked me then to say
why
I wanted to join, a sense of duty would be on the list, but not at the top. At the top was a need to prove to myself I could make it through the toughest training the U.S. military had to offer. Why would I want to do something that was easy? If it were easy, everybody would do it. Looking back now, I’m not sure why I had to prove myself. All I knew was after reading the history books, I decided the SEALs always stood out as the hardest and most challenging. I guess I figured if I was going to join the military, I might as well go big.

The pilot helped me stow my suitcase and I climbed aboard the plane. I waved to my parents from my cramped seat in the back as we taxied into position on the runway. My family wasn’t rich, but my parents offered to cover the airplane ticket, and two Army veterans from the village covered the remaining costs.

At the airport in Anchorage, I pulled the itinerary for the trip out and went over it again. Before the SEAL session, I’d have to endure trips to the national monuments and listen to sessions on the Army and Air Force.

But it was worth it to meet a SEAL.

I got to Washington and instantly fell into the rhythm of the conference. We went to the Pentagon, which is much cooler in the movies. It is really just an odd-shaped office building. We also saw the Lincoln and Vietnam Memorials. At the time, nothing held my interest. The vast number of names on the Vietnam Memorial took me aback, but the impact faded because I hadn’t experienced loss like I would years later in Iraq and Afghanistan. Thinking back now, I really had no idea that someday I’d look at a list of names like the wall and understand just what it means to lose close friends and teammates. Visiting the wall now, I understand the gravity. But at that time, I was just fixated on meeting the SEAL.

Everything was scheduled to the minute, and each morning as I pulled on my clothes I saw my T-shirt still neatly folded. I was saving it for the SEAL session.

The session was in the afternoon, so after the typical sandwich-and-cookie conference lunch, I hurried over to the meeting room where the SEAL was going to speak. Unfortunately, when I got to the door, they said the room was full.

The room was jammed with people, but I could still see a few chairs. I tried to reason with the woman guarding the door. She was one of the chaperones and organizers who were with us throughout the week. I could tell she wanted to let me in, but there were only a set number of seats.

She was apologetic but didn’t budge.

There was a small crowd gathering outside. The SEAL session was the hallmark of the period. Through the door, I
could see the SEAL in his uniform talking with the younger chaperones. Time was running out. I opened my itinerary, looking at the other sessions, but nothing came close. I didn’t know what to do. I’d flown more than four thousand miles to attend this session. At that moment, the whole trip was wasted. I was crushed.

Then, just before the session was about to begin, the lady at the door waved me over to her. She told me they were going to let a few more people go in and ushered me inside. It was standing-room only. I found a spot in the back and waited for the SEAL to begin.

The SEAL was wearing a green BDU camouflage uniform with a black balaclava pulled down around his neck. His pants were tucked into black-and-green jungle boots. He had longer hair than you’d expect for someone in the military. Not shaggy, but not the high-and-tight haircut favored by the Marines. He had an air of cockiness about him, a fact I realized years later. More cocky than confident, he lacked the self-awareness to know that it wasn’t cool to act cool.

His session started with the SEAL boilerplate stuff. SEALs are the Navy’s primary special operations force. The acronym SEAL comes from the unit’s ability to operate at sea, in the air, and on land. President John F. Kennedy saw a need for special operations forces to fight guerrilla wars and created the SEALs with the Army’s Special Forces. In his 1961 speech announcing plans to land a man on the moon, Kennedy also laid out plans to invest one hundred million dollars to create and train special operations forces.

Populated at first by members of the Navy’s underwater demolition teams, SEALs were deployed to Vietnam, where they worked with the CIA and set up ambushes to slow the supply lines in the Mekong Delta. SEALs earned the nickname “men with green faces” because of the camouflage face paint they often wore on missions.

I hung on each word for the hour-long presentation. He told stories about Basic Underwater Demolition/SEALs or BUD/S training. He stressed how tough it was; nothing about BUD/S was easy, from the frigid swims in the ocean to the grueling runs in the soft beach sand. His stories just made me want it more.

After the question-and-answer period, we had a short break before the next event. I ran upstairs to my hotel room to change into my black SEAL T-shirt. I wanted to get my picture taken with the SEAL. I figured if I was going to get a photo, I’d better be wearing my favorite shirt. When I got back to the room, the SEAL was still talking and taking questions.

I waited patiently for my turn.

“Hey, can I get a picture with you?” I asked, shaking his hand.

He smiled and put an arm over my shoulder. If he told me to shave my head and walk backward the rest of the week, I’d have done it. Just before one of the chaperones snapped the picture, he leaned over and whispered into my ear.

“Hey, you know you usually get your ass kicked for wearing a SEAL T-shirt when you’re not a SEAL,” he said.

I smiled and thanked him, but at that moment all I wanted to do was get the shirt off. I raced up to my hotel room and buried the shirt in the bottom of my suitcase. I never put it on again. When I got home, I put it in the back of my dresser drawer. I wasn’t a poseur. I just hadn’t had a chance to prove myself yet. The comment didn’t sting as much as it fueled my passion to actually become a SEAL. I felt like I’d cheated myself by wearing it. It was then I realized my desire to be a SEAL wasn’t an adolescent fantasy. It was the only thing in my mind that would give my life some real meaning and purpose. I wanted to earn the right to wear the shirt.

Once I realized my purpose was to be a SEAL, I never stopped trying to achieve it. Looking back, I think my parents taught me that having a purpose and living up to it was important. My parents were young when their purpose brought them to Alaska, and I knew it meant sacrifice and hardship.

My parents were missionaries. Their faith drove them to move our family from California to Alaska, far from any of the creature comforts of a city. There was nothing easy about living in a village, but that didn’t matter to my parents. Everyone was poor by suburban American standards, but really it was just a more simple life.

We lived in a two-story house one hundred yards off a river. I saw moose from my front door so often that it didn’t amaze me. There was one TV station and no radio. Our house had water and electricity, but no central heating. We used a massive iron stove in the living room to keep warm in the
winter. My father would get up in the middle of the night to make sure the fire was still going.

A huge hopper stood next to the stove. It was my job to keep it full of wood in the winter. I’d split the logs and keep the woodpile stacked on the porch. As the stack in the hopper dwindled, I’d be out on the porch getting another load. Chores for me weren’t a way to make some spending money. We never got paid. It was part of my family’s team effort to survive in Alaska.

One of my first memories of elementary school was fire building. Instead of just teaching us how to read or write, our school taught us survival skills. Each student in my third-grade class got two matches to start a survival fire using bark from trees surrounding the school. We had to build a fire big enough to stay warm during a winter day. The drill was designed to teach us the survival skills that we might need if we ever got lost or became stranded. Alaska’s wilderness can be a very dangerous place if you don’t know what you’re doing, making the walk to and from school hazardous.

My high school was one hallway with six rooms. It had about seventy kids in grades seven through twelve. My senior class was three students. I graduated as the valedictorian; just don’t ask me what my grade point average was. My interests were mostly outside the classroom.

I hunted as often as I could. When I was a teenager my father would let me take the family boat up the river for long camping and hunting trips. I wanted to be outside and active, which likely led to my goal of being a SEAL. I never wanted
to have to deal with stoplights, traffic, and wearing a suit to work every day. The thought of working in a cubicle sounded like a death sentence.

I purchased my first assault rifle at school from my history teacher. It was an AR-15, a civilian version of the military’s M-4. I’d earned the money for the rifle doing odd jobs for people in the village and working construction in the summer. Between classes, I paid my teacher seven hundred dollars, then took the rifle and locked it in my locker until the end of school. When the bell rang, I put it on the back of my snowmobile and rode home. Yes, I did ride a snowmobile to school in the winter.

Anything we couldn’t get from the land, we bought from the two stores in town, or during a semiannual trip to Anchorage to stock up. Because we lived so far from Anchorage, groceries were expensive. Milk was six dollars a gallon in the village, so my parents bought less expensive powdered milk.

The powdered milk was sold in massive tubs, too big to store on the kitchen counter. To make it easier for daily use, my mother measured out small amounts and put the powdered milk in plastic bags. She did the same thing with the tub of laundry soap and other bulk goods.

One morning, I fixed myself a big bowl of cereal. My mother was busy at the stove making pancakes for my father. The batter was bubbling up into big, fluffy pancakes as I poured the milk over my cereal.

Sitting at the table, I took a few bites, but it didn’t taste right. I stirred the cereal around and I swore I saw suds. I
started to get up to throw the bowl of cereal away, when my father stopped me.

“Eat it,” he said. “It’s just the powdered milk, and that is the way it tastes.”

I tried to protest. “It isn’t that,” I said. “It has a sour taste. It tastes like soap.”

“You just have to get used to it,” my father said.

I never liked the taste of powdered milk, but there was something wrong with this batch. I choked down the whole bowl one spoonful at a time. After a while, my taste buds died. I couldn’t taste anything but the sour, soapy flavor of the milk. My father’s pancakes showed up soon after I finished my cereal. He took one bite and spit it out.

“What is wrong with these?” he asked my mother.

My mom stopped plating a short stack of pancakes for my sister and gave the batter a quick stir. She then picked up the plastic bag and sniffed it.

“I think I might have used laundry detergent instead of powdered milk,” she said, with a sheepish smirk on her face. “No wonder the pancakes bubbled up so much.”