CAS. An AC-130 gunship was circling above us.
“CAS IS COMING ON STATION,” Phil literally screamed at me from two feet away.
The RPG had knocked out his hearing.
“I can hear you,” I said. “Stop screaming.”
“WHAT?” Phil said.
For the rest of the night, I could hear Phil before I saw him. Every word out of his mouth came in a scream.
We watched from the ridgeline as the AC-130’s 20mm cannon pounded the fighters. Sending the combat assault dog, which Phil had nicknamed the “hair missile,” ahead, we spent the rest of the night chasing down the remaining fighters. All of them were either mortally wounded or dead.
Phil and another assaulter chased a fighter into one of the compounds, while the rest of us started to clear a field of waist-deep grass. The AC-130 was reporting more hotspots. We launched the hair missile and he locked on to the scent of a fighter about fifty feet to my right. I could hear the fighter start screaming as the dog attacked.
Calling the dog off, the assaulters threw hand grenades into the ditch where the fighter waited to ambush us. As they moved up to clear the ditch, I started to move forward.
Even under my night vision goggles, it was difficult to see. The grass was thick and hard to walk through. Behind me, I could hear intermittent gunfire as Phil and another assaulter were in a firefight with a barricaded shooter in one of the compounds. My gun was up and I tried to use my laser to illuminate a path through the grass. I could see burnt patches ahead of me where 20mm shells had hit.
Every step was measured.
I saw a dark shadow at my feet, underneath my night vision goggles. I lifted my foot to step on it, assuming it was a log or a branch, when I heard a man gasp. I jumped back and opened fire. It scared the shit out of me.
Taking a second to confirm I didn’t actually shit myself, I got my nerves under control. I moved up to search the body. He must have been dead before I got there. The weight of my foot on his chest forced the air out of his lungs. The body was singed from the 20mm rounds. After a quick search, I found an AK-47 and a chest rack.
Back in Jalalabad, we posed for some pictures after the mission. Phil, wearing a black Under Armour skullcap, had the RPG draped over his shoulder. The picture would be a reminder of the time he cut down the enemy with their own RPG and blew out his hearing.
It was a good night’s work and a great start to a lively deployment. That night, we killed more than ten fighters and suffered no casualties. As usual, it was a combination of skill and luck. Without a doubt, the shooter in the ditch would have ambushed us, which proved the value of the combat assault dog.
Since arriving at the unit, my life had been a series of highs from great operations and then days of lows waiting for the next mission. If we weren’t deployed, we were training to deploy. We’d alternate deployments between Iraq and Afghanistan. The pace was nonstop. It didn’t matter if you were single or married with kids. Our whole world was focused on our work. It was our number one priority.
It isn’t smart for me to get too much into families for security reasons, but it is also dishonest to make you think we didn’t have them. We had wives, kids, girlfriends, ex-wives, and parents and siblings all vying for our time. We tried to be good fathers and spouses, but after years of fighting the war it was hard to be present even when we were at home.
We lived with one eye on the news, waiting for the next Captain Phillips story. When we trained, we did it in a way that was as accurate as possible. We were too busy doing our normal deployment, training, and keeping the wheels on the bus at home to think of much else.
For the most part, our families understood the lifestyle. When we’re gone eight to ten months out of the year on training or deployment, they always ended up being the last priority.
They wanted us home.
They wanted us safe.
They knew very little of what was really going on in our lives. They never experienced the satisfaction of knowing that every IED maker or al Qaeda fighter we killed made the world a little safer, or at least made life easier for the soldiers patrolling along the roads in Afghanistan. They might understand it in theory, but they were always left at home to worry.
The families waited for the men in dress uniforms to arrive at their door and deliver the news that we weren’t coming home. The SEAL community has lost a lot of great guys, and DEVGRU alone has lost more than its share. Those sacrifices have not been for nothing. The lessons we learned and the heroic actions of our brothers were not going to be in vain. We knew the risks on deployments and in training. We knew how to live with them, and we understood that we had to sacrifice to do this job. Our families, like my father who hadn’t wanted this lifestyle for me, didn’t always understand.
Just before my high school graduation in Alaska, I told my parents my plan to enlist. My parents weren’t pleased. My mother didn’t let me play with G.I. Joe or other military toys when I was younger because they were too violent. I still joke with my mother that had she let me play with action figures and get it out of my system I might not have joined the military.
Before graduation, I sat in the kitchen and talked on the phone with recruiters. At first, I think my parents thought it was a phase. But soon they realized how serious I was about joining the Navy.
My father sat me down to talk about my plans and about college.
“I just don’t want you in the military,” he finally said.
He wasn’t a pacifist by any means, but he’d grown up during Vietnam and knew how war impacted people. A lot of his friends had been drafted and hadn’t come back. He didn’t want his son to ever go to war. But I didn’t hear the concern in his voice or the nervousness about his only son putting himself in harm’s way. I just heard him tell me what I couldn’t do.
“I’m doing it,” I said. “This is what I want.”
My father never raised his voice. Instead, he reasoned with me.
“Hear me out,” he said. “If you ever listen to anything I say, will you take one piece of advice from me? Try one year of college. If you don’t like it, you don’t have to go back.”
My dad knew that I hadn’t seen much of the world growing up in a small village in Alaska. They were betting if they could talk me into going to school, I’d be exposed to so many new things that I wouldn’t pursue my dreams of becoming a SEAL.
I was accepted to a small college in southern California.
“OK, Dad,” I said. “One year.”
One year turned into four, and with my degree I considered joining the Navy as an officer. I made friends with a former SEAL in school who advised me not to join as an officer. He told me I could always become an officer later, but the enlisted route meant more time as an operator and allowed me to stay in the fight. When I enlisted after college, my father had no objections.
Like all of my teammates, I was driven to be a SEAL. And once I finished BUD/S, I was driven to be the best SEAL I could be. I wasn’t unique. There was a whole command of guys just like me. But like me, they all struggled with balance. We called it “the speeding train”; it was hard to get on, and it was hard to get off, but once you’re there you’d better hang on because you’re in for a ride.
We really had two families: the guys at work and then family and loved ones left at home. I came from a tight family in Alaska. I felt the same way about them as I did about my teammates, like Phil, Charlie, and Steve.
For a lot of guys, keeping the balance between work and family life was fleeting. Many of my teammates suffered through bitter divorces. We missed weddings, funerals, and holidays. We couldn’t tell the Navy no, but we could tell our families no. And we did, often. It was difficult to get time away. Work was always the number one priority. It took everything out of you and gave back very little.
The funny thing was, even when we were on leave before a deployment, I’d see guys at work. We came in to work on gear, work out, or just take care of last-minute issues before we deployed.
The dirty secret of it all is that everyone, including me, loved it. We wanted to get the call every time, which meant everything else in the world took a backseat.
