Modern American Snipers

by Chris Martin

  Martin got out of the military in Oct ’68, moved on, and never looked back, although he adds, “it was one of the best times of my life.” He lives back in his hometown in Iowa with his wife Rita. While he remains a tireless worker, he also finds time for his grandchildren and enjoys an enviably normal life.

  Unassuming and gregarious, relatively few people in his little town likely are even aware he’s a veteran, let alone a highly decorated veteran of MACV-SOG. A true “quiet professional,” that’s perfectly okay by him.

  * * *

  DEVGRU’s growing proficiency operating in the Afghanistan/Pakistan AO actually led to concerns that its maritime edge may have been dulled with training and operational focus so heavily directed elsewhere.

  The unit had shown the techniques honed in Afghanistan were directly applicable elsewhere. For example, in the successful rescue of American aid worker Jessica Buchanan and her Danish colleague, Poul Hagen Thisted, DEVGRU operators performed a HAHO jump into Somalia and intentionally landed several miles from the hostages’ location. Once on the ground, they stealthily crept into location and then neutralized nine startled captors within seconds and saved both captives.

  Still, the SEALs had largely been removed from sea—its counterterrorism raison d’être—for the better part of a decade. That trend was reversed somewhat due to the rising specter of international piracy, prompting some former areas of strength to be dusted off once again.

  While the rescue of Captain Richard Phillips served notice to friend and foe alike of SEAL Team Six’s continued ability to operate at sea, it was not the only maritime mission to have come along for DEVGRU in recent years.

  Taking down pirate ships also led to a renewed interest in another old SEAL favorite: the knife as a CQB weapon.

  Despite the “glamour” surrounding the use of fighting knives and their evergreen popularity in action movies, they have almost completely fallen out of favor among elite troops.

  Retired Unit sniper John “Shrek” McPhee explained that the most realistic Hollywood portrayal is the scene in Raiders of the Lost Ark where an annoyed Indiana Jones casually shoots a sword-wielding showboat: “Knife fighting is bullshit. It has zero relevance in today’s world. It takes three to five minutes for someone to bleed out and then you have an angry, dying man to deal with. Plus with all the blood, it makes it hard to hold the knife. It takes ten years of training to be good with a knife. You know how many ‘gurus’ have knife kills? Zero. The guys that do are in jail—it’s a felony.

  “Everybody in a knife fight goes to the hospital, even the winner. The SEALs think it’s important because of ego. You never bring a knife to a knife fight.”

  While that may be the case for virtually every scenario a modern-day spec ops sniper is likely to encounter, that rarest of exceptions actually took place in February 2011.

  Hollywood director Scott Adam, his wife, Jean, Phyllis Macay, and Bob Riggle had been taken hostage aboard Adam’s fifty-eight-foot yacht, off the coast of Oman.

  During the course of negotiations, the pirates unexpectedly executed their captives and fired a rocket-propelled grenade at the trailing USS Sterett.

  A Gold Squadron boarding team was immediately launched in retaliation. The DEVGRU operators quietly set foot aboard the craft and cautiously began to clear the darkened cabin, fully aware the pirates would be expecting a counter for their murderous deeds.

  Moments after the team began to flow into the room, a pirate uncoiled from the corner and leapt onto the point man’s back, knocking him to the ground. SEAL sniper Heath Robinson, who was the second man through the door, instantly understood that the angle meant a round delivered from his carbine or his pistol would have endangered not only the Somali, but the DEVGRU operator under attack as well.

  Brandon Webb—Robinson’s former platoon mate at SEAL Team Three and later his instructor at the U.S. Navy SEAL Sniper Course—explained what happened next as part of his tribute to Robinson in Among Heroes:

  Reacting faster than the speed of thought he slung his HK416, and in one smooth motion his custom Dan Winkler knife was out and slashing across the man’s throat. Swift as a shark attack and just as deadly. Seconds later the pirate was on the floor without heartbeat or brainwave, and Heath’s teammate was free and very much alive. I know, I know: you’ve seen moves like this happen in action flicks. But you have to remember: that’s the world of fantasy and make-believe. In real life it’s a split-second complex of exacting maneuvers that can go wrong in a thousand ways, and often do. Heath’s flawless execution saved his teammate’s life and left Heath with one of the few certified knife kills on record since Vietnam. (Heath’s mom still has that knife.)

  Within minutes, another pirate was killed by gunfire while the thirteen others found themselves on the other end of the captive/captor equation.

  “A big thing we teach in sniper school is bullet path and exit path,” Webb elaborated. “I have friends who have shot three guys with one bullet. If you line it up right, it can happen. At close range you have to be careful about the path of that bullet after it exits the person. He used that knife and just slit the guy’s throat. Heath just happened to be the one guy who was in the right place at the right time … or the wrong place at the wrong time.”

  It was Hollywood fiction made reality, avenging the slain director who had worked on The Dukes of Hazzard, The Bad News Bears, and, ironically, The Love Boat.

  Incidentally, Robinson’s nickname just happened to be “Hollywood.” However, that was more due to a combination of movie star good looks and ability to quote lines from his favorite flicks to lighten the mood than any John McClane or Jason Bourne-esque antics—though he certainly had executed his fair share of those as well.

  He was a bit like legendary DEVGRU sniper Homer Nearpass in that sense. And, coincidentally, as a teenager in northern Michigan, Robinson was scarred by the images he saw on CNN … images of the bodies of American heroes being paraded through the streets of Mogadishu following a massive battle that Nearpass had taken part in.

  It was that horrifying footage that inspired Robinson to carry on the family’s Naval tradition and become a SEAL so that he could play an role in preventing—or at least avenging—future transgressions of the sort.

  Dumped into the shambolic ECHO platoon at SEAL Team Three as a new guy in 2000, Robinson actively sought the mentorship of SEALs who could show him the right way to conduct his business. He found one such example in Webb, who had recently come to ECHO determined to right the ship.

  Webb recalled, “It was the fuck-up platoon of Team Three. I remember going there and it was a disaster. All the experienced guys were off on hiatuses, going to schools. Meanwhile, the new guys were sitting back and they didn’t even know how to wear their gear properly.

  “Heath came up to me saying, ‘Man, so glad to have you here. No one has mentored us properly. They are just yelling at us for being new guys.’ He was that kind of guy. He always wanted to be squared away and do a good job. And for a new guy, he was exceptionally above average.”

  A short while later, GOLF and HOTEL would take down a terrorist ship—Alpha 117—Webb in aerial overwatch and Robison on the deck as part of the boarding team that took it down. He continued his meteoric rise from there; he was quickly ushered into combat in Afghanistan as part of Task Force K-Bar, became a plank holder at SEAL Team Seven, and again found himself under Webb’s tutelage as one of the first students to graduate the revamped U.S. Navy SEAL Sniper Course.

  All the while, however, the tenacious Robinson had his sights set on reaching the pinnacle of existence for a hard-charging and squared-away SEAL—the Naval Special Warfare Development Group.

  He not only succeeded in beating the long odds (just 1 in 150 who attempt to become a SEAL ever actually make it to ST6), he also served for eight years with Gold Squadron and did so during an era marked by the most vicious, recurrent combat the unit had ever seen.

  During that span Robinson earned four Bronze Stars
(three with “V” devices for valor, the other for extraordinary heroism).

  * * *

  In early August 2011—just three months after DEVGRU Red Squadron returned the favor by invading bin Laden’s home and sending him crashing to the ground—Gold Squadron was in country and running coordinated operations with the 75th Ranger Regiment’s 2nd Battalion.

  On this particular night, the Rangers had assumed the lead in the strike force—tasked with hunting down a Taliban leader in Wardak Province’s Tangi Valley by the name of Qari Tahir.

  However, before the Ranger assault element had reached the objective, ISR tracked a small group of fighters fleeing the compound.

  After the Rangers had swept and secured the OBJ (objective), killing or detaining all of the insurgents on site, and Tahir was still nowhere to be seen, the DEVGRU troop positioned as the mission’s Immediate Reaction Force (IRF) launched in pursuit of those men who had previously bolted from the scene ahead of the assault.

  With 160th SOAR overextended, they were ferried there by a National Guard CH-47D Chinook helicopter, call sign “Extortion 17.”

  As it approached the LZ, Extortion 17 was ambushed by a volley of accurate RPG fire. At least two struck the helicopter, including one that destroyed an aft rotor blade, and it plunged in a violent spin to the rocky earth below.

  The Rangers hoofed over to the crash site. There were no survivors.

  On board had been thirty-eight men—seventeen DEVGRU operators, three USAF 24STS Air Commandos, two West Coast SEALs, three NSWDG support personnel, five Army air crewmen, seven Afghan Commandos, and an interpreter, plus a U.S. military dog.

  It was a crushing blow to the United States, still in a state of delirium following ST6’s triumph in Abbottabad. The incident represented the single biggest loss of American servicemen throughout the entirety of the Afghanistan War.

  The crash was even more shattering to DEVGRU, effectively erasing one-twelfth of the unit’s operational force in one fell swoop.

  “When you think about a helicopter crash, it’s particularly devastating,” Webb said. “The families are still grieving. It was heavy and it sucks because it’s not like these guys went down like Glen Doherty on a rooftop in Benghazi fighting back. You’re stuck in a helicopter and you get shot in the middle of the night and the next thing you know you’re all dead. That’s a pretty tough way to go.”

  Among the heroes killed on Extortion 17 was Special Warfare Operator Chief Petty Officer Heath Robinson.

  * * *

  Another name on that list that so cruelly and unfairly starts to run together simply due to its inordinate length is that of Senior Chief Petty Officer Thomas Ratzlaff.

  The antithesis of just another face in the crowd (although he could certainly be that when the situation required it), “Rat” was considered a legend among legends. Even to this day, the mere mention of the recce team leader’s name is said to silence a room of DEVGRU operators, the reverence for him is so great.

  Even as a youngster in Northwest Arkansas, all Tommy Ratzlaff wanted was to become a Navy SEAL. And he enlisted straight out of high school in 1995. However, like so many others who sign on the dotted line with the Navy dreaming of becoming one of its elite commandos, he instead ended up out in the fleet and served the next three years on a guided missile destroyer, the USS Kidd (DD 993).

  The USS Kidd was originally to be the “Kouroush,” ordered by the Shah of Iran. Plans changed for the boat—and for America’s special operations forces—following the Iranian revolution. As a result, the U.S. Navy had a new destroyer and soon would have a new counterterrorist force as well.

  Unlike so many others who end up on a ship, Rat’s ultimate ambition to become a SEAL went undiminished. In fact, those who knew him at the time claim he only became more driven to do so, and in ’98 he finally succeeded in attending, and graduating, from BUD/S.

  Once in, there was no looking back. He did a relatively short stint at SEAL Team Two before he attended Green Team in ’03 and earned his place on the “second deck.” Over the next several years of continuous combat tours—twelve in all, nine in Afghanistan and one in Iraq—Ratzlaff worked his way up from Gold Squadron assaulter to recce sniper.

  In April of 2010, Rat was set up in overwatch on a roof. He was watching over the assault element, who was arranged in a containment formation around a compound where a targeted insurgent was suspected to be hiding.

  The team called the target out. A patrolling sentry responded to that request with a burst of AK-47 fire. Almost as soon as the Taliban guard pulled the trigger, Ratzlaff put him down. He had never lost a man in overwatch and had no intention of doing so on this night either.

  The heavily fortified compound then erupted in small arms fire; the barrels of Kalashnikovs thrust out through the windows and sent a barrage of 7.62x39mm rounds at the ST6 assaulters hunkered outside.

  Ratzlaff calmly went back to work, systematically silencing the enemy gunfire. Soon, the target and his guards were no longer a concern.

  For that demonstration of battlefield acumen, Ratzlaff would receive the fourth of five Bronze Stars for valor he would ultimately be awarded.

  That was just one of countless actions for which he became a near-mythical figure inside the black SOF community. However, it’s the only one that’s leaked outside of that small, secretive group in any detail.

  In a family statement read by his nephew, Jeff Adams said, “As a Navy SEAL team member, my uncle was trained to keep a low profile and to do his job.”

  He took that vow to the grave and others have respected it ever since.

  The stories yet to be told could almost certainly overflow several volumes, including whatever remarkable feat of bravery earned him the Star of Military Valour—the highest military honor the Canadian government has bestowed in the modern era.

  That’s an exceptionally rare honor—one less than two dozen soldiers, Canadian or otherwise, have earned.

  The details of how Ratzlaff came to be awarded the Star of Military Valour are beyond sparse (“for actions in Afghanistan while supporting Canadian soldiers”), but in that sense, he stands as an ideal symbol for the dozens of extraordinarily skilled—yet virtually anonymous—men of the National Missions Force who dedicated, and ultimately gave, their lives in defense of their country.

  14

  The Tribes

  With the battle versus AQI all but extinguished, Delta Force rejoined the rotation in Afghanistan more heavily toward the end of the decade. As the pace and fury ratcheted upward, the Unit saw more of its soldiers make the ultimate sacrifice.

  Among them was one who was still a relatively new operator with just two years in the Army special mission unit. However, as is the norm in the Unit, he was not new to soldiering by any stretch.

  Before joining Delta, he already had five combat deployments to his name. And among other assignments, he had previously been a 3/75 Ranger sniper, AMU competitive shooter, 3/75 Ranger Sniper Platoon Sergeant, 1st Platoon Alpha Company 3/75 Platoon Sergeant, and NCOIC of the 3/75 Reconnaissance, Sniper, and Technical Surveillance Detachment.

  Delta Force operator Jared Van Aalst was killed in combat on August 4, 2010, in Kunduz Province, Afghanistan.

  When Jack Murphy learned of VA’s death, he was still bitter and struggled to let the old issues with his former (two-time) platoon sergeant go.

  That changed in 2012 after he was contacted by one of Van Aalst’s old friends, a former Ranger and active-duty Special Forces soldier:

  “I don’t know you, Jack, but I know all about you. Me and VA went way back and he told me all about you. He told me you were in all kinds of shit. He said you were in trouble and asked for my advice. I asked if he thought you could Ranger through it, and VA said, ‘Yeah, he can.’ I told him he knows what to do.”

  “The reality was that VA was looking over my shoulder in a big way,” a still-regretful Murphy said. “The reason why I was taken care of the way I was, was literally because of VA l
ooking over my shoulder and making sure I did not get fucked. Anyone else would have been completely fucked. And what VA did was send me back to an infantry squad and looked after me there.

  “I knew absolutely nothing about this at the time. I thought VA hated me. I thought VA hated me as much as I hated him. I only found this out after the fact and it’s something that bothers me to this day that I was never able to put this stuff behind me. VA was the bigger man in the end and I could not let this anger and animosity I had go when I should have. We weren’t at each other’s throats, but it was something where, once I was out of the Regiment and out from under his chain of command, we should have been friends. It’s something that eats at me inside to this day. But it is what it is.”

  * * *

  “One shot, one kill” has long been the sniper’s creed. And it’s one that’s been joined in the military parlance by another, similar phrase that has risen in prominence during the Global War on Terror: “One team, one fight.”

  That sentiment is a truism of particular significance at the sharpest end of special operations where missions, campaigns, task forces, and commands are “joint” by definition.

  As the overarching battle to counter global terrorist networks gained momentum, the nearly institutional feud separating the Joint Special Operations Command’s Tier 1 units—Delta Force and DEVGRU—had subsided considerably.

  September 11 and the resultant years of constant deployments and bloodshed flushed away much of the petty bickering. Besides lending renewed perspective, the attacks also changed the game for counterterrorist outfits. The old source of friction had become fiction, as both units were overloaded with more work than they could have previously imagined possible.

  Rather than be locked in competition for the make-or-break op that might crop up once during the course of an operator’s career, it was more a matter of deciding which unit would undertake the thousands of missions over here and which would undertake the thousands of missions over there.