We’d been in that war for four years, through countless hairy situations, and no SEAL had ever died. It had looked like the action in Ramadi, and all Iraq, was starting to wind down, and now we’d been hit terribly hard.
We thought we would be shut down, even though our deployment still had a couple of months to run. We all knew the politics—my first two commanders had been ultra-cautious pussies, who got ahead because of it. So we were afraid that the war was over for us.
Plus, we were seven men short, cut nearly in half. Marc was dead. Brad and Ryan were out because of their wounds. Four guys had gone home to escort Marc’s body home.
A week after losing our guys, the CO came around to talk to us. We gathered in the chow hall at Shark Base and listened as he talked. It wasn’t a long speech.
“It’s up to you,” he said. “If you want to take it easy now, I understand. But if you want to go out, you have my blessing.”
“Fuck yeah,” we all said. “We want to go out.”
I sure did.
Half of a platoon joined us from a quieter area to help fill us out. We also got some guys who had graduated training but hadn’t been assigned to a platoon yet. Real new guys. The idea was to give them a little exposure to the war, a little taste of what they were getting into before they trained up for the main event. We were pretty careful with them—we didn’t allow them to go out on ops.
Being SEALs, they were chomping at the bit, but we held them back, treating them like gofers at first:
We did have to haze them, of course. This one poor fella, we shaved his head and his eyebrows, then spray-glued the hair back on his face.
While we were in the middle of that, another new guy walked into the outer room.
“You don’t want to go in there,” warned one of our officers.
The new guy peeked in and saw his buddy getting pummeled.
“I gotta.”
“You don’t want to go in there,” repeated the officer. “It’s not going to end well.”
“I have to. He’s my buddy.”
“Your funeral,” said the officer, or words to that effect.
New guy number two ran into the room. We respected the fact that he was coming to his friend’s rescue, and showered him with affection. Then we shaved him, too, taped them together, and stood them in the corner.
Just for a few minutes.
We also hazed a new-guy officer. He got about what everyone got, but didn’t take it too well.
He didn’t like the idea of being mishandled by some dirty enlisted men.
Rank is a funny concept in the Teams. It’s not disrespected exactly, but it’s clearly not the full measure of the man.
In BUD/S, officers and enlisted are all treated the same: like shit. Once you make it through and join the Teams, you’re a new guy. Again, all new guys are treated the same: like shit.
Most officers take it fairly well, though obviously there are exceptions. The truth is, the Teams are run by the senior enlisted. A guy who’s a chief has twelve to sixteen years of experience. An officer joining a platoon has far less, not just in SEALs but in the Navy as well. Most of the time he just doesn’t know shit. Even an OIC might have only four or five years’ experience.
That’s the way the system works. If he’s lucky, an officer might get as many as three platoons; after that, he’s promoted to task unit commander (or something similar) and no longer works directly in the field. Even to get there, much of what he’s done has been admin work and things like de-confliction (making sure a unit doesn’t get fired on by another one). Those are important tasks, but they’re not quite the same as hands-on combat. When it comes to door-kicking or setting up a sniper hide, the officer’s experience generally doesn’t run too deep.
There are exceptions, of course. I worked with some great officers with good experience, but as a general rule, an officer’s knowledge of down-and-dirty combat is just nowhere near the same as the guy with many years of combat under his belt. I used to tease LT that when we did a DA, he would be in the stack, ready to go in, not with a rifle but his tactical computer.
Hazing helps remind everybody where the experience lies—and who you better look to when the shit hits the fan. It also shows the people who have been around a little bit what to expect from the new guys. Compare and contrast: who do you want on your back, the guy who ran in to save his buddy or the officer who shed tears because he was being mistreated by some dirty enlisted men?
Hazing humbles all the new guys, reminding them that they don’t know shit yet. In the case of an officer, that dose of humility can go a long way.
I’ve had good officers. But all the great ones were humble.
Back in the Mix
We worked back into things slowly, starting with brief overwatches with the Army. Our missions would last for an overnight or two in Injun country. A tank got hit by an IED, and we went out and pulled security on it until it could be recovered. The work was a little lighter, easier than it had been. We didn’t go as far from the COPs, which meant that we didn’t draw as much fire.
With our heads back in the game, we started to extend. We went deeper into Ramadi. We never actually went to the house where Marc had been shot, but we were back in that area.
Our attitude was, we’re going out there and we’re getting the guys who did this back. We’re going to make them pay for what they did to us.
We were at a house one day, and after taking down some insurgents who’d been trying to plant IEDs, we came under fire ourselves. Whoever was shooting at us had something heavier than an AK— maybe a Dragunov (the Russian-made sniper rifle), because the bullets flew through the walls of the house.
I was up on the roof, trying to figure out where the gunfire was coming from. Suddenly, I heard the heavy whoop of Apache helicopters approaching. I watched as they circled placidly for a second, then tipped and fell into a coordinated attack dive.
In our direction.
“VS panels!” someone shouted.
That might have been me. All I know is, we hustled out every VS or recognition panel we had, trying to show the pilots we were friendly. (VS panels are bright orange pieces of cloth, hung or laid out by friendly forces.) Fortunately, they figured it out and broke off at the last moment.
Our com guy had been talking to the Army helos just before the attack and gave them our location. But, apparently, their maps were labeled differently than ours, and when they saw men on the roof with guns, they drew the wrong conclusions.
We worked with Apaches quite a bit in Ramadi. The aircraft were valuable, not just for their guns and rockets but also for their ability to scout around the area. It’s not always clear in a city where gunfire is coming from; having a set of eyes above you, and being able to talk to the people who own those eyes, can help you figure things out.
(The Apaches had different ROEs than we did. These especially came into play when firing Hellfire missiles, which could only be used against crew-served weapons at the time. This was part of the strategy for limiting the
