SEAL Team Six: Memoirs of an Elite Navy SEAL Sniper (12 page)

Suddenly, the first round from the
Newport News
came in like a mini Volkswagen flying through the air. When it exploded, it threw Thornton down a 30-foot dune. Norris’s body flew over Thornton. He picked himself up and walked over to pick up Norris.

“Mike, buddy,” Norris said.

“You sonofabitch. You’re alive!”

Thornton felt a new burst of energy as he picked up Norris, put him on his shoulders, and took off running. Dang and Quon gave cover fire.

The
Newport News
’s artillery round had bought them some time, but that time was now up. Enemy rounds rained down on the SEALs again.

Thornton reached Dang and Quon’s position. “Where’s Tai?”

When Thornton went back to get Norris, the shaky Vietnamese lieutenant had disappeared into the water.

Thornton looked at the two Vietnamese SEALs. “When I yell
one,
Quon, lay down a base of fire. When I yell
two,
Dang, lay down a base of fire.
Three,
I’ll lay down a base of fire. And we’ll leapfrog back to the water.”

Shooting and retreating, as Thornton reached the water’s edge, he fell, not realizing he’d been shot through his left calf. He picked up Norris and carried him under his arm. In the water, he felt a floundering movement—he had Norris’s head under the water. Thornton got his buddy’s head above water. Norris’s life vest was tied to his leg, standard operating procedure for Team Two. So Thornton took off his own vest and put it on Norris, using it to keep both of them afloat.

Quon fluttered in the water, the right side of his hip shot off. Thornton grabbed him, and Quon hung onto Norris’s life preserver. Dang helped as they kicked out to sea. Thornton could see bullets traveling through the water. Thornton prayed,
Good Lord, don’t let any of those hit me.

Norris came to. He couldn’t see the Vietnamese officer. “Did we get everybody?” Pushing down on Thornton, immersing him, Norris rose high enough to see the Vietnamese officer, swimming far out to sea. Norris blacked out again.

After swimming well out of the enemy’s range of fire, Thornton and the two Vietnamese SEALs saw the
Newport News
—then saw it sail away, thinking the SEALs were dead.

“Swim south,” Thornton said. He put two 4" × 4" battle dressings on Norris’s head, but they couldn’t cover the whole wound. Norris was going into shock.

Another group of SEALs, manning a junk searching for their buddies, found the Vietnamese lieutenant and debriefed him. Then they found Thornton, Norris, Dang, and Quon. Thornton radioed the
Newport News
for pickup.

Once aboard the
Newport News,
Thornton carried Norris to medical. The medical team cleaned Norris up as best they could, but the doctors said, “He’s never going to make it.”

Norris was medevaced to Da Nang. From there, they flew him to the Philippines.

For Thornton’s actions, he received the Medal of Honor. It is the only time a Medal of Honor recipient has rescued a Medal of Honor recipient. Years later, Thornton would help form SEAL Team Six and serve as one of its operators.

Norris survived, proving the doctor wrong. He was transferred to the Bethesda, Maryland, Naval Hospital. Over the next few years, he underwent several major surgeries, as he had lost part of his skull and one eye. The navy retired Norris, but the only easy day was yesterday. Norris returned to his childhood dream: becoming an FBI agent. In 1979, he requested a disability waiver. FBI Director William Webster said, “If you can pass the same test as anybody else applying for this organization, I will waiver your disabilities.” Of course, Norris passed.

Later, while serving in the FBI, Norris tried to become a member of the FBI’s newly forming Hostage Rescue Team (HRT), but the FBI’s bean counters and pencil pushers didn’t want to allow a one-eyed man on the team. HRT founder Danny Coulson said, “We’ll probably have to take another Congressional Medal of Honor winner with one eye if he applies, but I’ll take the risk.” Norris became an assault team leader. After twenty years with the FBI, he retired. He was last on the runs and swims at BUD/S, and he only had one eye when he went to the FBI Academy, but Norris had fire in the gut.

Some legends are passed down to BUD/S trainees, but I wouldn’t learn about Norris until after I became a SEAL. In such a small, tight-knit community, a SEAL’s reputation, good or bad, travels fast. That reputation begins at BUD/S. Norris remained the underdog throughout his careers in the Teams and the FBI. Now I had to forge my own reputation.

*   *   *

During one of our long runs, halfway through training on the island, we ran behind a truck while music played. I actually visualized myself wearing the SEAL trident.
I’m either going home in a coffin or I’m going home wearing the trident. I’m going to make it through training.
It felt like a vision had opened up in my mind. It was the first and only time I got a runner’s high. Some guys got that runner’s high repeatedly. For me, it sucked every time I ran.

In Third Phase, Dive Phase, we learned underwater navigation and techniques for sabotaging ships. Some of my classmates had trouble with dive physics and pool competency (pool comps). I had difficulty treading water with tanks on and keeping my fingers above the water for five minutes. An instructor would yell, “Get that other finger up, Wasdin!” So I would.

*   *   *

BUD/S prepares us to believe we can accomplish the mission—and to never surrender. No SEAL has ever been held prisoner of war. The only explicit training we receive in BUD/S is to look out for each other—leave no one behind. A lot of our tactical training deals with retreats, escape, and evasion. We are taught to be mentally tough, training repeatedly until our muscles can react automatically. Looking back, I now realize that my mental toughness training started at an early age. Our planning is meticulous, which shows in our briefings. In my encounters with the army, navy, air force, and marines, I’ve only seen Delta Force brief as well as we do.

A SEAL’s belief in accomplishing the mission transcends environmental or physical obstacles that threaten to make him fail. Often we think we’re indestructible. Forever the optimists, even when we’re outnumbered and outgunned, we still tend to think we have a chance to make it out alive—and be home in time for dinner.

Nevertheless, sometimes a SEAL can’t find his way back to Mother Ocean and must make a choice between fighting to the death or surrendering. For many brave warriors, it’s better to roll the dice on surrendering in order to live to fight another day—SEALs have incredible respect for those POWs. As SEALs, though, we believe our surrender would be giving in, and giving in is never an option. I wouldn’t want to be used as some political bargaining chip against the United States. I wouldn’t want to die in a cage of starvation or have my head cut off for some video to be shown around the world on the Internet. My attitude is that if the enemy wants to kill me, they’re going to have to kill me now. We despise would-be dictators who wish to dominate us—SEALs steer the rudders of their own destinies. Our world is a meritocracy where we are free to leave at any time. Our missions are voluntary; I can’t think of a mission that wasn’t. Ours is an unwritten code: It’s better to burn out than to fade away—and with our last breaths we’ll take as many of the enemy with us as possible.

*   *   *

Laura and Blake, who was just a toddler, flew out for my graduation. Blake rang the bell for me. I told him, “Now you never have to go to BUD/S, because you’ve already rung out.” In his teenage years, he would want to become a SEAL, but I would talk him out of it. Half a dozen people in my hometown would have kids who wanted to go to BUD/S. I would talk every single one of them out of it. If I’m able to talk someone out of it, I’m just saving them time, because they really don’t want it anyway. If I can’t talk them out of it, maybe they really want it.

*   *   *

After BUD/S, we went directly to airborne training at Fort Benning, Georgia, home of the army’s airborne and infantry schools. The summer was so hot that they had to run us through the sprinklers two or three times a day to cool us off. Even so, people still fell out from heatstroke and heat exhaustion. Some of the soldiers talked as if the training were the hardest thing in the world. They thought they were becoming part of some elite fighting force. Coming from BUD/S, airborne training was a joke.

“This isn’t hard,” I said. “You’ve got women here making it through the training.” I felt like we could have done their two weeks of “intensive training” in two days.

Army regulations didn’t allow the instructors to drop anyone for more than ten push-ups. One airborne instructor was a “good old boy” who always had a wad of Red Man chewing tobacco in his mouth. We tadpoles screwed around with him wanting more push-ups.

“Give me ten, Navy,” he said.

We did ten push-ups, then stood up.

“Hell no.” He spit his tobacco. “Too damn easy.”

We dropped down and did ten more.

“Hell no. Too damn easy.”

We did ten more.

At night, we went out drinking until late. For us, airborne training was a holiday.

West Point gave its seniors a choice of what army school to attend during summer. Some of the officer candidates chose airborne school. Two or three would polish our boots if we told them BUD/S stories. I felt like a celebrity. Seems strange thinking back on it now. They were officer candidates from the army’s most prestigious school, and they were polishing my E-5 enlisted boots just so I would tell them about BUD/S. I wasn’t even a SEAL yet and had never seen combat. The West Point guys were mesmerized by our tales. Soon we had to leave our rooms for a bigger area because there were so many guys who wanted to hear us.

By the end of airborne training, we had completed five static-line “dope on a rope” jumps, meaning the parachute automatically deploys immediately after leaving the plane and there is no need to pull a ripcord. It was real, and it was fun—but now the real fun would begin.

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?”