American Sniper

While the Navy was testing a program using dolphins for harbor defense, they used us as targets, in a few cases without warning. The dolphins would come out and beat the shit out of us. They were trained to hit in the sides, and they could crack ribs. And if you hadn’t been warned in advance of the exercise, you didn’t know what was going on—your first reaction, or at least mine, was to think you were being attacked by sharks.

One time we were out and the dolphins were taking it to us. Getting beaten bad, I headed toward shore to dodge the bastards. Spotting some piers, I ducked underneath—I knew they wouldn’t follow me.

Safe.

All of a sudden, something clamped hard on my leg. Hard.

It was a sea lion. They were being trained to guard the piers.

I went back out into open water. I’d rather be beaten by a dolphin than eaten by a sea lion.

But sharks were, by far, the worst.

One evening, we were supposed to swim across the bay off San Diego, in the dark, and plant a limpet mine on a particular ship. Simple, standard SEAL operation.

Not every SEAL hates the water like I do. In fact, a lot of them like it so much they’ll swim around and play tricks on the others in the exercise. You might have a guy plant his mine, then sink to the bottom and wsait for the next guy to come over with his. There’s usually enough light from above that the second diver is silhouetted and easy to see. So when the victim—I mean, diver—comes to plant his mine, the first diver comes up, grabs his fin, and jerks it.

That scares the shit out of the second diver. Usually he thinks there’s a shark in the water and screws up the rest of the exercise. And his gear may need a special cleaning.

On this particular day, I was beneath the ship and had just planted my mine when something grabbed my fin.

SHARK!!!

Then I put my heart back in my chest, remembering all the stories and warnings about my brethren SEALs.

Just one of the guys messing with my head, I told myself. I turned around to flip him off.

And found myself giving the finger to a shark who’d taken a particular liking to my flipper. He had it in his jaw.

He wasn’t a huge shark, but what he lacked in size he made up for in pure orneriness. I grabbed my knife and cut off my fin—no sense keeping it now that it was all chewed up, right?

While he was munching on what remained of it, I swam up to the surface and flagged down the security boat. I grabbed onto the side and explained that they were taking me in RIGHT NOW!! because there was a SHARK!! out here, and he was one hungry mother.

During another training exercise—this one was before my first deployment—four of us were inserted on the California coast from a submarine. We came ashore in two Zodiacs, built a hide, and did some reconnaissance. When the time came, we all got in our Zodiacs and headed back out to meet the sub and go home.

Unfortunately, my officer had given the submarine the wrong grid coordinates for the rendezvous. In fact, they were so far off that there was an island between us and the sub.

Of course, we didn’t know that at the time. We just circled around, trying to make radio coms with a vessel that was too far away to hear us. At some point, either our radio got wet or the battery drained, and all hope of connection was lost.

We spent just about the entire night out on the water in the Zodiacs. Finally, as dawn approached, our fuel was nearly gone. My raft was starting to go flat. We all decided we’d just go back ashore and wait. At least we would get some sleep.

As we were coming in, a sea lion swam up, all friendly-like. Being from Texas, I had never really had much of a chance to look at sea lions, so naturally I was curious and started watching this one. He was a pretty interesting, if ugly, critter.

All of a sudden—splop—he disappeared below the surface.

The next thing I knew, he—and we—were surrounded by large, pointy fins. Apparently, a number of sharks had decided to make breakfast of him.

Sea lions are big, but there were way too many sharks to be satisfied with just him. They started circling closer and closer to the sides of my raft, which looked increasingly thin and perilously close to the water.

I glanced toward shore. It was very far off.

Holy shit, I thought. I’m going to get eaten.

My companion in the raft was a rather round fellow, at least for a SEAL.

“If we go down,” I warned him, “I’m shooting you. You’ll be something for the sharks to munch on while I swim to shore.”

He just cursed at me. I think he thought I was kidding.

I wasn’t.

Tats

We did finally make shore without getting eaten. But meanwhile, the entire Navy was looking for us. The news media started carrying the story: FOUR SEALS LOST AT SEA.

Not exactly what we wanted to be famous for.

It took a while, but a patrol plane finally spotted us and an Mk-V was dispatched to pick us up. The commander of the assault boat took care of us and got us home.

That was one of the few times when I was really glad to get aboard a boat or ship. Generally, when I’ve been out at sea I’ve been bored. Worrying about being assigned to sea duty was a big motivator during BUD/S.

Submarines are the worst. Even the largest feel cramped. The last time I was aboard one, we weren’t even allowed to work out. The gym was located on the other side of the nuclear reactor from our quarters, and we weren’t authorized to pass through the reactor area to get there.

Aircraft carriers are a hell of a lot larger, but they can be just as boring. At least they have lounges where you can play video games and there are no restrictions on getting to the gym to blow off steam.

In fact, on one occasion, we were specifically requested to go to the gym by the CO.

We were on the Kitty Hawk when they were having a problem with gangs. Apparently, some punk sailors who were gang members were causing quite a discipline problem aboard ship. The CO of the boat pulled us over and told us when the gang used the gym.

So we went down to work out, locked the door behind us, and fixed the gang problem.

During this workup, I missed a dive session because I got sick. It was as if a light went off in my head. From that point on, just about every time diving turned up on our practice schedule, I came down with a very bad disease. Or I found a sniper-training trip that just had to be taken at that point.

The rest of the guys teased me that I had better ninja smoke than anybody.

And who am I to argue?

I also got my first tattoo around this time. I wanted to honor the SEALs, and yet I didn’t feel as if I’d earned a Trident tattoo. (The official SEAL emblem had an eagle perched in an overwatch position on a trident that forms the crossbar of an anchor; a flintlock pistol sits in front of it. The insignia is known as the trident or, unofficially, a “Budweiser,” the reference being to BUD/S… or the beer, depending on who you ask.)