For a start there’s the running. And although nature endows big men with heavier, stronger leg muscles, you don’t see many 250-pound marathon runners. Neither do you see that many 250-pound mountaineers, hanging on to the rock face a thousand feet above the valley floor. They usually weigh about one hundred pounds wet through. And as for those real long-distance runners, as the crisply observant Matt puts it: “I’ve seen a praying mantis heavier than them.”
In many of the disciplines a lighter man has a distinct advantage, especially the running. And the standard race for SEALs, each and every morning along the Coronado beach, is over four miles, two down to the hotel and two back, every man timed by the instructors.
The going is difficult. If they run too far up from the tide line, the men run into deep sand, which is murder for a heavyweight runner. Too far down below the tide line, they get their boots wet, which causes the sand to stick, making each foot even heavier. And the sheer bulk of a two hundred-plus–pound body just makes it harder to carry, no matter how fit and how well tuned that heavy-boned male body may be.
The instructors know also that the heavyweight SEAL, with his massive extra strength, is a priceless asset when a platoon is on the move through enemy lands, jungle or desert, mountains or rocks. Someone must carry the heavy machine gun and the ammunition belts, and big SEALs over six foot four always get the job of packhorse. It merely goes with the territory. And there are times when that extra strength may be required in other endeavors.
Jon Keefe, however, had to draw on his last reserves of stamina and determination for these long morning runs and the SEALs’ famous obstacle course. And this was, in its way, the worst part of all because of the climbing. The course comprises high rope climbs, the sixty-foot cargo net, walls, vaults, parallel bars, barbed wire, and rope bridges.
Generally speaking it’s many times easier for a small guy than for a tall one. And a dozen times easier for light guys than for the heavy dudes. Jon fell headlong into the latter category, but luckily he never fell badly off the ropes, bridges, and walls. Somehow he hauled himself up and over, fighting his way hand over hand up the ropes, gripping with his feet, fingers, and teeth if necessary.
The instructors taught the big boys technique, especially on the cargo nets, which were the same kind they use to embark SEAL Teams onto submarines midocean.
The teachers knew how much they had to put out for these aspiring SEALs. And none of them wanted to lose the big, striving Jon, who’d been trying to be a Navy SEAL since he was about ten years old.
2
“WE’RE NAVY SEALS—AND WE NEVER SCREW IT UP!”
For each fallen man, a new piece is added to the great mosaic of the Teams—a place where courage and daring are always paramount, but where valor is the unending constant.
The word SEAL is an acronym that stands for Sea, Air, and Land. It has nothing to do with sea lions, walruses, dolphins, or any other deep-diving mammal—not that you’d notice if you ever saw a BUD/S class floundering half-drowned through the Pacific surf trying to land their upturned inflatable Zodiac boat.
Navy SEALs are expected to function in all of the earth’s elements, especially fire. They train harder than any other fighting force. Their exercises and physical routines are tougher, heavier, and more demanding.
But even though they never consider themselves a purely water-bound assault force, it is their breathtaking ability to operate in ocean, lake, or river that sets them apart. From their first steps through the BUD/S course to the end of their naval careers, they are taught that, unlike any other warriors on earth, water is always their friend, their haven, and their refuge.
And because the average human being is happier on land, the man who is capable of becoming a Navy SEAL is always a man apart. He alone, among literally thousands of applicants, has made it through—and that underwater section of the BUD/S course would frighten the living daylights out of a blue marlin.
At the start of every BUD/S course a couple of hundred students take their opening plunge into the huge swimming pool in the Coronado training facility. Almost before the ripples have died down, fifty of them will be out of there. This is the most searching test, and the instructors can detect even the slightest sign of weakness.
Kids turn up to BUD/S with no conception of the standards they will encounter. There’ll probably be twenty of them gone in the first ten minutes. That’s before it gets tough.
Matt McCabe recalls standing on the edge of the pool, talking to an instructor who was watching a student splashing and twisting to get his head up. The student was a really good guy and a friend of Matt’s, so Matt turned to the instructor and asked whether he would get another chance.
“I can’t do that,” he replied. “One day your life may be in that kid’s hands. And right here I’m seeing pure panic. We can’t risk that happening in a battlefield situation. Sorry, Matt, I liked him too, but he’s finished. Guys like that can get everyone killed.”
The “pool comp” (pool competency) section of the course needs to be, especially for Navy SEALs, a ruthless examination. And the SEAL instructors ensure that it never falls short. First of all they teach everyone how to swim more like a fish than a human, a special SEAL side-stroke that permits SEALs to make maximum speed with minimum profile and output of energy. Once instructors accept that you can make it up the length of the pool and back without choking or drowning, then they begin the serious action.
Nothing serious. They only rope your hands behind your back, tie your ankles together, and push you into fifteen feet of water, ordering you to drop to the bottom and stay there. If you show the slightest sign of anxiety or distress, you’re gone.
The rest must stay calm, hold their breath for one minute, minimum, and then bounce off the bottom back up to the surface for a gulp of air. Each candidate must repeat this exercise over a fifteen- or twenty-minute period. After that every member of the class must swim two hundred yards, still bound, wrists behind their backs, ankles roped together, writhing through the water like a school of angry porpoises.
And that’s just the start, just the prelims, to make certain you are worthwhile to proceed. It does, without fail, decimate every class, but no more than the next discipline, which involves pool comp using the breathing apparatus. And right there the pressure builds.
The instructors try everything. They harass each candidate, ripping the airline out of his mouth, tying a knot in it, watching for the strict SEAL procedures to be broken. There’s nothing dangerous—the instructors are in the water, swimming around like basking sharks, watching for a foul-up, escorting anyone in trouble to the surface.
Some get another shot. But most don’t. Because the instructors are looking for that one in a thousand human beings who is as comfortable in the water or under it as he is on land. They seek men who have no fear of drowning, men who can hide, travel, and fight within its restrictions.
They’re looking for guys who can lead through the water, dive under when necessary, and move very, very quickly through it if crisis should arrive. Such a man was Jon Keefe.
The big, amiable, deceptively smart Virginian, suddenly weightless in the one element he could dominate, hit that pool, like a ... well, like a Navy SEAL.
When they finally sorted the class out, they staged the first of the 800-meter races in which students tried out the big SEAL flippers, what they called “rocket fins,” to give them even more power. Big Jon rocketed through the water, astounding everyone, including even the veteran pool instructors.
Jon had a theory that although the fins gave you extra kick and a little more speed, they also made you more tired toward the end of the race, which was when he prepared to pounce and steam past the opposition. It was just like old times when the Tabb High faithful were up and cheering. Except no one was cheering Big Jon here at Coronado—they were gaping.
Of course, the instructors were delighted to have a swim champion among their number, and they made careful notes of his technique an
d approach.
And as the days wore on, everyone got better. The mere question of panic in the water was outlawed, and slowly the men turned into the kind of underwater operators the instructors wanted. The ranks were thinned out, and a lot of good guys had left to return to the fleet or to civilian life. But the few tigers who were left were going to become US Navy SEALs.
For all of them this would be the fulfillment of a dream. For many of them it was a lifelong dream. But no one had dreamed it for longer than Jon Keefe had.
As the reformed college dropout from Virginia continued to perform his now-renowned imitation of Mark Spitz in the Coronado pool, Matt pressed on in his quest to join the most elite force in the US Navy.
Matt had passed BUD/S Phase III before Jon arrived in Coronado. So the instructors knew how tough Matt was. They immediately dispatched him to Jump School, the SEAL parachuting course in which each new BUD/S student learns precisely how to deal with the third letter of the SEAL acronym, air. Because a major part of a SEAL’s combat skills may involve airborne insertion—parachuting into enemy territory, way behind the lines.
Matt attended freefall school close to San Diego. He was there for almost two months, having first mastered the proper techniques and protocols of the parachutist and then the basics of landing correctly and absorbing the impact. They get moving from high platforms and complete the course with dozens of fourteen thousand-foot night jumps in full gear. This is compulsory in order to progress. Matt McCabe knocked it out the first time.
Jump School includes combat parachuting, which teaches students how to drop directly into a battle zone, piloting the parachute to a specific location and then concealing it so as to avoid enemy detection.
There’s a whole section of the training devoted to Military Freefall Parachuting (MFF), especially HALO (high altitude, low opening). Flying well above the range of anti-aircraft fire or surface-to-air missiles (SAMs), SEALs deploy at enormous heights and wait many, many seconds to open the parachute so as to avoid ground radar.
The major Jump School component is HAHO (high altitude, high opening), when the SEAL cracks open the parachute thousands of feet above the ground, intending to prevent anyone from hearing the snap of the opening. This is a specialist method of covert entry into quiet, guarded terrain. It also enables the parachutist to glide for many miles and then put down in a precise spot.
At the conclusion of Jump School successful students move into another intensive course called SEAL Qualifying, six months of much more advanced training. In addition to his new stratospheric skills, Matt now had the rudiments of land navigation, accurate shooting, mountaineering, stealth, camouflage and patrolling, and weapons proficiency. They also increased everyone’s skills in tactical combat diving and underwater ship, pier, and beach attacks.
He could run a fourteen-mile race on the beach, over which he could also attack if necessary, from the surf, burrowing into “hides”(locations, usually concealed or camouflage, that provide concealment and protection from enemy fire as well as maximum fields of observation and fire), above the high-water mark, the dreaded spot where SEAL assault Teams are most vulnerable.
For days on end, in the final phase of BUD/S, they practiced fighting their way out of the water under full combat gear and weapons. And most of the instructors’ early impressions proved correct. Every man who had reached the final stage, just twenty of them, passed the BUD/S challenge.
But it was not over. Ahead of them was the long six-month journey around the SEAL schools all over the country, from Florida to Alaska, in heat and snow, learning not just how to be a combat warrior but to become a Team leader, burnishing the skills as a marksman and a sniper, perfecting their abilities in advanced shooting as well as explosives and detonation.
The training and the learning never stopped. For SEALs it never does. And for a determined character like Matt, it all represented some kind of an earthly paradise—the heavy-duty program, which would turn him into the SEAL he had always dreamed of becoming.
He was a good shot, but he needed to demonstrate expertise with not only the M-4 rifle but also the SR-25 semiautomatic sniper rifle and the bolt-action .308-caliber rifle—in fact every possible kind of weapon, including the stuff US enemies use.
As his instructor reminded them all: “One day you may have to grab some foreign bastard’s weapon and fight for your life and the lives of your teammates. You must understand thoroughly how someone else’s tenth-rate rifle works, because those precious seconds you have may mean the difference between death and survival.
“Remember, we’re SEALs. And we don’t fuck it up. EVER!”
On the day the training ended, fourteen months after Matt had arrived at Coronado, he stepped up to receive his Trident—the proudest day of his life. He shook hands with his commanding officer (CO) and promised faithfully that he would endeavor to earn it every day of his life.
And yet another section of the SEAL creed he knew so well stood starkly before him:
My loyalty to Country and Team is beyond reproach. I humbly serve as a guardian to my fellow Americans always ready to defend those who are unable to defend themselves. I do not advertise the nature of my work, nor seek recognition for my actions. I voluntarily accept the inherent hazards of my profession, placing the welfare and security of others before my own.
I serve with honor on and off the battlefield. The ability to control my emotions and my actions, regardless of circumstances, sets me apart from other men.
Uncompromising integrity is my standard. My character and honor are steadfast. My word is my bond.
No SEAL in all the forty-five years of the Teams was ever more deeply moved by those shining words than Matthew Vernon McCabe. Meanwhile Jon was slogging his way through all of the above, six months behind his future buddy. The long list of skills, which is compulsory learning for all BUD students, contrives to make every member of every Team a composite jack-of-all-trades. This is essential because even SEAL commanders cannot accurately predict battlefield losses, and at any moment, on any mission, a new man may need to take over.
The comms operator goes down ... the Team cannot just be out of communication, either with their teammates or home base command. Someone must take over. The “breacher” goes down—someone needs to grab the sledgehammer and the demolition charges.
The point man goes down, and someone must run forward to take over, and he better be expert in navigating the way to the objective. The SEAL paramedic, the guy with the medical supplies, goes down; he must have a deputy who knows precisely what he’s doing.
The number-one sniper goes down; there must be someone just as good or the mission may be doomed. Worse yet, the leader goes down; there must be a number two right there on station, and he needs to know every aspect of the operation.
The simple truth is that every SEAL needs to know everything, and the watchword of both Coronado and Virginia Beach is preparation. No Team of a dozen SEALs on any mission sets foot outside that base until every specialist has at least a two-man backup. By design, the position of Team leader is designated on a rotating roster.
No other system works. Any SEAL has the tools to lead any mission. Picking a man and grooming him as a leader to serve on many successive operations is not at all useful. What happens if he gets shot or blown up and no one else has led a mission for months? That’s simply hopeless. And certainly not the way of the Teams. They say they are a brotherhood, but what they really are is Knights of the Round Table—equal men who, in the words of their own Creed, “do not seek recognition for their work.”
They are forever one for all and all for one. As armed jacks-of-all-trades, as they say, God help the enemy. Because when the bugle sounds, these guys come out fighting, and each man can do it all.
During these long hard months Jon finally returned to his own holy ground, the wide, dusty shooting range at Camp Pendleton, where almost ten years previously he had stood in the distance with the Devil Pups. He’d never forgotten those
moments, especially the one with the instructor, when he’d promised himself he would one day return, this time wearing a Trident. He wasn’t quite there yet, but, by God, he was closing in.
Like Matt, Jon fought his way through Hell Week and completed BUD/S. Right after that he too made his way around the SEAL training schools. Aside from his remarkable skills in the pool, he could shoot dead straight, and on the mountains his great strength permitted him to overcome the handicap of his powerful physique. He was a fearless parachutist despite traveling downward at what felt like an especially high speed.
In Beach Assault his strength was a definite plus. Under full gear and weapons he came thundering out of that surf, over and over, up the beach and into the hides, hitting the sand as gently as a lotus blossom. Well...almost. But at least the entire shoreline did not shudder, as a couple of instructors had feared. Like many big, athletic men, Jon was deceptively light on his feet. That’s on land. In the water he was peerless.
Fourteen months after he entered Coronado, he had become the highly trained, skilled war-fighter the SEAL instructors had hoped he would become. They wished everyone the best and, indeed, took pride in training men to be as good as they were themselves. But Jon was an especially popular guy at Coronado, and at the parade ground ceremony, when they finally pinned his Trident on his dress whites, there was not a man in SPECWARCOM who did not wish him all the good fortune in the world.
It was late in the year 2007 when this happened, and these were serious times. The conflict in Iraq appeared not to be improving, and the weekly reports of American deaths were beginning to irritate Americans back home. Most people understood the place had to be squared away, and the Iraqis trained both to govern and to protect themselves without lapsing into some kind of tribal warfare. But American parents were becoming less and less cool about having their sons and daughters killed in some far-off desert for what they believed was someone else’s problem.
Honor and Betrayal : The Untold Story of the Navy Seals Who Captured the Butcher of Fallujah -and the Shameful Ordeal They Later Endured (9780306823091) Page 5
