This kind of op, a fast-moving water-oriented mission, was exactly what the SEALs were intended for. For us, the mission resulted in little exposure. The friendlies on land had a much harder time of it, having to move the targets to the pickup site and maintain a watch against being compromised. Once the mission was completed, their relief was probably much greater than ours.
Of course, when I got home, I couldn’t tell Kitty anything about what had happened. The earlier excuse about using the baby carrier for a gag didn’t hold up very well when she saw the painted, cut-up remainder. The first thing she said after my return was, “Who’s paying for it?”
“The Navy will,” I told her.
The funds for a baby carrier expended during a mission never did come through. But I couldn’t have picked a better operation to be my last combat op.
CHAPTER 31
TO GIVE SOMETHING BACK
After my last operation, it was time to make some decisions about my career. I was selected for promotion to master chief, but that meant I would have to leave the command where I had spent so much of my SEAL career. I was made a big offer: the position of command master chief, the highest-ranking NCO of a unit, at the Special Warfare Training Command. My career in the Teams had come full circle. I would be returning to the place where it had begun over a dozen years earlier.
I had started as an individual who was eager to learn and to excel. Like so many others, I had stepped forward to undergo the greatest challenge offered by the U.S. military, to become a Navy SEAL. The challenges never stopped coming, and I welcomed each one of them so that I could become a better operator, have a better chance of surviving the rigors of a career that’s unlike any other on the planet, and remain one of the elite, one of the best.
There hadn’t been a challenge or a task that came along that I didn’t eventually feel comfortable with in the Teams. As the command master chief of the training command, I was giving something back to the community that had given me such a good run during my Navy career.
I almost had to give them everything I had even before I got there. On our driving trip from the East to the West Coast, Kitty and I took our new baby daughter, Tess, with us. Kacy we left with her grandparents in Ohio. As we approached California, Kitty became very ill. By the time we got to San Diego, she had a full-blown case of pneumonia, two different types at the same time. Immediate hospitalization saved her. It was a near thing for several weeks, but she pulled through. Now we had a chance for a somewhat more normal family life in Southern California.
Even though I was now in charge of the staff at BUD/S, the students and the instructors still had a lot to teach me. Some of the lessons were good and some bad. Others were just funny. But my experience in the Teams meant a lot. The students looked up to me, and I could motivate them because of that. The instructors knew where I was coming from and what I wanted to do.
It was the Team credo that I most wanted to make these young students understand: Teamwork makes the Teams. Some of them grasped it right away. Even lower-ranked enlisted men could find it in themselves to speak up; improve their partner, boat crew member, or even class; help them put out that extra amount that most of them never knew they had. Others never did understand the Team ideal.
In one class, I had one hell of a time with a few of the leaders. In the Teams, our officers work alongside the men, getting right down and dirty with the lowliest enlisted man. This is important. SEAL officers have to lead, not just tell you what to do. My commanding officers hadn’t always operated with me in the field; that wasn’t their job. But they could have. Each man coming into Six had to go through our Green training. They had to be fully qualified to operate. If not, how could they be certain of what we could do?
In this class I had several officers who had been in the Army before coming into the Navy and BUD/S. They had the attitude that the officers were better than the enlisted men—an attitude I had seen more than once in my lifetime. But that wasn’t how the Teams worked.
I took these two young leaders into my office and spoke to them in reasonable privacy. Without mincing words, I told them that they were both maggots, if not lower than maggots. At least maggots helped clean up garbage; these two were garbage.
As nobodies, didn’t they understand the meaning of the word Team? There was no I in the words SEAL Team. And who the hell were they to think they were above our traditions, which had served us well for fifty years? Far better men than they had gone though our training and proved its worth on a hundred battlefields.
In my opinion, it was the enlisted community that could make or break an officer. If the enlisted men didn’t have respect for you, if they didn’t think you could do the job—not just order it done—they wouldn’t follow you. That could make OER (Officer’s Efficiency Report) look very bad, and his career prospects look even worse.
They may have gotten the message. They graduated from BUD/S and became Teammates.
But there were other classes with leaders I could work with well. To help with the motivation of a class, I would try to inject some humor where I could. There was one class where I had a lot of help getting the humor passed along.
There was an ensign, or enswine as we would say, named Pease. Today I understand he’s a good officer and a credit to the Teams. But the thing I liked about him then centered on a personal quirk.
While I was running his class through PT, I would look over at Ensign Pease and he would be smiling. No matter how hard I worked the class, he would be smiling. The son of a bitch just kept smiling. Finally I put the class through flutter kicks, where they were flat on their backs and kicking their straight legs up and down. Having them stop kicking and hold their legs six inches off the ground, a very strained position, I walked over to Ensign Pease.
As the class held the position, barely, I jumped in Pease’s face. “Enswine,” I shouted, “what in the fuck are you smiling at? Are you smiling at me?”
“Hoo, yah, Master Chief!”
“Do you think I’m pretty?”
“Oh no, Master Chief.”
“Oh, so you’re saying I’m ugly?”
“Oh no, Master Chief.”
“Then you’re telling me I’m cute? What are you, Enswine? Are you gay?”
By this time the instructors are in the back of the class biting their lips to keep from laughing. Even the class, in its uncomfortable position, is chuckling a bit. And Ensign Pease is trying to keep up his end of the conversation without saying the wrong thing. Which was an impossible task right then. But he was still smiling.
“Wipe that god-damned smirk off your face,” I told him.
And he couldn’t. It was like his little smile was a permanent part of his expression. During runs, I would go right up to him and get in his face: “Pease, I see you’re still smiling. What are you smiling at?”
Even during Hell Week, Ensign Pease was smiling. Late in the week the smile was a little lopsided, but it was still there. Even when he was dingy, and going through the chow line trying to motivate his people, Pease had his smile on. And that grin got the biggest when he graduated with his class.
There was always an interesting day at the training command. Days could easily be the most interesting during Hell Week. Students and instructors never ceased to amaze me. The students could come up with the most ingenious ways of trying to outwit the instructors, and the instructors worked just as hard to nail the students.
Joe Hawes was one of my first phase instructors, and we became very good friends. Joe is a very noticeable man, being large even for a SEAL. Shoulders roughly the size of bowling balls, huge arms, and an even larger chest to support all this are topped with an intelligent mind, quick wit, and a ready grin. Fear of Instructor Hawes’s wrath could reduce a trainee to a puddle on the ground. But Hawes was never one to let the chance for a good joke go by. And you could hear his laugh all through the compound.
If a student wanted to DOR (drop on request), he had a set chain of command to go through.
The situation had changed a bit from the earlier days at DUD/S. Students now had a chance to change their minds and go back to training when they DORed for the first time. This was both a cost-saving measure for the Navy (it cost us a lot to put a student through BUD/S, even just the first few months) and a way to keep a possibly good SEALs from making a mistake. Sometimes students just had what we called a “brain fart” and DORed. After a little reflection, they wanted to continue with the program.
To DOR, a student first went to the instructor, then to the phase chief above him, and several others along the line including a number of officers. There was also a short chain, where the student would be brought to the master chief for a fast talk. It sometimes just took a bit of a shaking up or a motivational word to get these kids back on the trail. But there were exceptions.
Joe had to send this one student down to me. There was no question in his mind that I needed to speak to this man, and he wanted to be in attendance. With Instructor Hawes behind him, the young man walked up to where I was sitting back in my chair, drinking a good cup of Navy coffee.
“What’s the problem?” I asked the student in a fairly gruff tone.
“I want to DOR, Master Chief Chalker.”
“Why do you want to DOR?” I asked as I took a sip of my coffee.
“I’m just not a morning person, Master Chief.”
Joe wasn’t in the way as my mouthful of coffee sprayed across the room. He was leaning against the wall laughing.
“What?” I shouted at the kid.
“I’m not a morning person.”
“You’re not a morning person? Then why in the fuck did you volunteer for this program?”
“Well,” he said kind of abashedly, “I didn’t know you got up at four and five in the morning.”
“And what do you think is going to happen to you out in the fleet?”
“Well, I think I’ll get to sleep in a little bit. I won’t have to work so hard out there.”
“Well, let me tell you something. You’ll probably be getting up at four and five o’clock in the morning to swab the deck on a ship. You’re going to be haze gray and under way. Now what do you want to do?”
“I’m just not a morning person. . . .”
“What do you want to do?”
“I want to DOR.”
“Fine. Instructor Hawes, take charge of this man.”
Joe has this great little-boy bit he does when he’s going to mess with someone. “Come on, come on,” he told the student as he waved him out of my office. And with a big grin on his face, he walked that student through the chain for a DOR, enjoying every moment of it. Just about everyone had the same reaction I did. Although they may not have been drinking coffee at the time.
Looking back on it, I suppose it could be considered a logical reason for quitting BUD/S. But it had to be the weirdest excuse I had ever heard.
CHAPTER 32
MEET THE KIDS AND MEET THE MAN
The command had asked me to be the master chief in part because of my career. The students could see me as a SEAL who had “been there and done that.” There weren’t as many combat veterans in the Teams then as there had been when I went through training. When you had a man who had seen what the training did in the real world, that could give some of the students the extra push that would help them over the hump. Sometimes, though, any reputation I had wasn’t what the students remembered.
When one class managed to piss me off a bit, I told them to be on the grinder standing on the fins (painted swim fins spaced out on the ground) at 0700 hours on Saturday morning. They were to be in starched uniforms and their green helmets, ready for an inspection.
I had screwed up a little bit too, though. I had promised my two girls I would take them to Sea World that Saturday. They are very important to me, so I was going to combine the two trips, stopping off for my students first.
My five-year-old, Tess, was growing up into a bright young girl, intelligent, precocious, and not afraid of anything. Kacy was eleven and a little more reserved. But both of them were looking forward to the Sea World trip and to seeing what Daddy did at work.
I had told the watch what would be happening that morning. When I showed up with my girls in tow, it was 0745 hours. The students had been standing on the grinder for forty-five minutes when I walked in wearing civilian clothes.
The class snapped to attention when I entered the grinder. While I slowly walked to the podium against the wall opposite the doors, I barked “Drop!” With that command, the students would immediately drop to the ground and assume the starting push-up position, what was also called the “front leaning rest.”
The drop command could be followed with “Push them out!” That meant the students did a set of twenty push-ups, counting their cadence loudly. With the push-ups completed, the students would shout a “Hoo yah!” for whoever had ordered them to drop. In my case, they shouted, “Hoo yah, Master Chief Chalker!”
With a snapped “Recover” command from me, they had to scramble to their feet and quickly resume the attitude of attention. They cannot move after completing the push-ups or being ordered to drop until they are told to recover. As I made the students rise and fall rapidly a number of times, my girls were walking along behind me watching the situation with wide-eyed wonder.
Approaching the podium, I brought the girls up with me. To warm up the class a bit, I had them drop and then recover rapidly about twelve times in a row as I walked that short distance. That exercise can get your blood flowing.
Just as I approached the podium, I had them drop. They froze in position. Once on the podium, I put Kacy to my right and Tess to my left. “Get your god-damned heads up when I’m talking!” I growled.
Tilting their heads back, the class strained to look at me as I started to chew on them a bit.
“I want you guys to know one thing,” I called out. “Today is Saturday. I was supposed to take my two daughters to Sea World today. But since you guys messed up, I had to bring them in here. So here’s what I want you guys to do.
“First of all, you took liberty from my wife. So I want you to punch them out for Miss Kitty.”
So they quickly knocked out twenty push-ups, shouting out “Hoo yah, Miss Kitty!” when they finished.
Then I gave them the Recover command. When they were back on their feet, I made them drop again. “Now I want you to knock them out for my eldest daughter here, Miss Kacy.”
Push-ups again, then a “Hoo yah, Miss Kacy.”
“Recover! Drop! Now you will push them out for my youngest daughter, Miss Tess.”
Push-ups and a loud, “Hoo yah, Miss Tess!”
“Recover.”
Now I started to talk to them about what they had done and what was happening to them. As I went into why they had been standing there since 0700, a small voice to my side spoke up. “Drop,” Tess said.
And the class immediately dropped into the position.
Then Kacy went, “Recover.”
And the class snapped to their feet.
This went on about three times while I stood there with my mouth hanging open. But woe betide the student who didn’t snap to when the order was spoken. In spite of their work, some of the students were beginning to grin a little bit. They were enjoying the situation. But they weren’t going to be allowed to show it very much.
“Woah, woah, girls, stop,” I said as they completed another set of commands. Now I was having to work hard not to burst out laughing. I made the students hit the surf zone and then return. With an order to clean up the grinder, I told them they would then be on liberty. And I took my family to Sea World for the day.
After that morning, when Kitty came by to pick me up after work, the girls were often with her. Tess always wanted to come in and get her daddy. The watch knew who she was and pushed the button to unlock the door. Tess got a charge out of that. Then she would run down to my office, looking for me.
“Dad, Dad, Mom’s here!”
“Okay
, just a moment, Tess.”
Then while I was finishing up, Tess would go to the door and peer out at the compound. “What are you doing, Tess?” I asked.
“I want to play with the green helmets again.”
A couple of instructors who knew the story thought the situation was funny. If any students had screwed up right about then, I’m sure they would have been gathered up for Tess to play with.
Politics were never something that particularly interested me. I paid attention to what was going on with the leadership of the country, but I had a job to do that kept me busy, so I couldn’t be bothered with what went on in Washington unless it looked like the Teams were going to be sent somewhere again.
The majority of my SEAL career was spent under the Reagan administration. With his desire to build up the U.S. military during the 1980s, and his recognition of the importance of Special Operations Forces, Ronald Reagan probably affected my professional life more than any other U.S. president. I liked the man. He got the job done. He didn’t sit back and play games. If you were going to do something against the United States, he was coming after you.
President Bush had served in the Military himself and knew what it meant to be on the sharp end. As a Navy pilot in World War II, he had been shot down over the Pacific. He didn’t seem to be one who would use the U.S. Military frivolously. I had met President Bush both when he was president and when he was vice president. Both times I was reasonably impressed.
But I didn’t have any direct involvement with a sitting U.S. president until the Clinton administration. Every time a U.S. president came down to the San Diego/Coronado area, they liked to go on a run with Navy SEALs in attendance. This happened about every year or so, and each U.S. president had done the run. President Clinton wasn’t any different. In fact, he was probably more than usually gung-ho about having SEALs around him during his jog.
One Perfect Op Page 28
