Battle Ready: Memoir of a SEAL Warrior Medic

by Mark L. Donald

  Never again would I let my ego convince me something easily demonstrated by an expert is actually easy! Lesson learned, and with my tail between my legs, I got up and joined the other recruits at the shallow end of the pool. Unfortunately, my stunt in the pool blew my chances at honor graduate—not because I minimally qualified as a swimmer but because I knowingly deceived my drill instructors and my fellow recruits. That was simply was unacceptable by Corps standards. Although my senior drill instructor gave me no written punishment in my military record (I’m sure the humor and humiliation of the event were more than enough for everyone involved), he had to do something. Staff Sergeant Shanhurst called me into his office and explained how I couldn’t be expected to maintain Marine Corps standards of integrity if my first lesson in the Corps was that the standard doesn’t always apply. He was right: The Marine Corps is built and survives on its values. They define the Corps, and to be a part of the Green Machine I had to live by them.

  Aside from military training, boot camp is meant to be an intense life-lesson incubator. Everyone learns the basic military skills it takes to be a marine, but each individual takes away vastly different lessons. In addition to swimming, I absorbed three other extraordinary life lessons that changed the way I saw the world. First, the Marine Corps sees everyone as green. There were no rich kids, no poor kids, no black, white, or red kids. We were all Marine Corps Green, and the playing field was level for everyone, even a Mexican American kid like me. Next was what I now call the perseverance paradigm: Your success (or lack thereof) is based purely on your initiative and refusal to give up, regardless how tough the task. If you fought hard and refused to quit, if you persevered, you would succeed. Finally, I learned that smaller, aerobically fit guys had an advantage over the big muscular ones when it came to military PT. I could rip out pull-ups and clear the obstacle course in record time because my muscle mass was lean and compact. The large football players had to lift their own weight and often struggled with obtaining the maximum score for the physical fitness test. Running was second nature for smaller guys; I ran many miles as a high school athlete and enjoyed the solitude of long runs, yet most of the weight lifters struggled hauling their heavy muscle mass around the base perimeter during the three-mile timed runs. To be fair, the big guys had the advantage when carrying heavy combat gear and enjoyed cleaning up on a few of the smaller recruits during hand-to-hand combat training, especially when pitted against a wise-ass wiry guy in the pugil stick pit. Then again, I also noticed that it was much easier for two smaller recruits to drag or carry one another than it was for two of the larger ones when we simulated a wounded man. I didn’t realize it then, but I was already making observations related to the physiology of a warrior and the biomechanics of warfighting.

  The thirteen weeks of boot camp were rapidly coming to a close, and as crazy as it sounds I didn’t want to leave. The Marine Corps brought structure to my life, taught me lessons in humility, and forever changed me for the better. Now it was my job to continue on that path, and that started with four vital lessons: Never assume expertise in anything, an individual’s background doesn’t matter, perseverance pays, and the battlefield can favor the lean combatant. Staff Sergeant Sandoval’s advice had served me well since I arrived, but those four rules would become critical building blocks for my future career.

  On a sunny September day my mother proudly watched me march across the parade deck as a marine. I caught a glimpse of her through the corner of my eye as my platoon made a facing movement in front of the stands. Even from a distance I could tell she was crying as she clapped and cheered for her “mijo.” Mom may have been reluctant to send her boy off to the Corps, but when she met her grown marine, she was absolutely convinced it was the best decision he (and she) had ever made. Unfortunately, while I was away, yet another high school friend joined the ones already jailed for gang-banging or drugs, cementing her opinion that the Marine Corps was the right decision for her son.

  From the second she set foot on MCRD, she was no longer a worried mother. She had become a “Marine Corps Mom” and had the stickers on her car to prove it. Conversations with friends, family, and even strangers inevitably led to her son “the marine.” To her the Marine Corps had become something for her son the army never was for her husband: a savior. As a military spouse she quietly stood by as the army continually took her husband away from the home. While she was supportive of his career in every way, the family was separated, and in the Hispanic home, or even a half-Hispanic home like ours, leaving the nest borders on sacrilege. At the time of my enlistment, my brother was locked up and my sister was receiving psychiatric care, and the thought of her Marky leaving for the military must have been agonizing for her. Still, deep inside she realized the Corps gave her little one the best chance to make it, and graduation day confirmed her intuition. To this day she remains a passionate supporter of the United States Marine Corps, and woe unto you should you have a disparaging remark or disrespectful attitude toward “her marines.” That includes me, too.

  MOS

  All marines are riflemen, but not everyone is a grunt. Marines are assigned a military occupation specialty (MOS), which is intended to serve as their primary job in the Corps. As in all the branches of service, a marine’s MOS is based on three factors: the individual’s score on the military’s aptitude screening test, the member’s personal interests, and most importantly, the needs of the Corps. At the time of my enlistment I needed a billet that allowed me to universally serve among the infantry units, so I took a job as a radio operator.

  After boot camp, I spent a few days of downtime with my mom and sister Diana in San Bernardino, California, before checking into FROC, as the grunts called the Field Radio Operator Course at Twentynine Palms, California. Diana had relocated to the area a year earlier, and the idea of having family within driving distance was comforting to me. We hadn’t spent much time together since our move into the Heights; she’d married a local airman at a young age and moved away. This may have saved her from some of the chaos we experienced over the last few years, but it’s my belief that feelings of guilt and an overwhelming obligation to Mom had eventually brought her back home.

  “Marky, when do I have to take you to the base?” Diana asked, stirring a pot of green chili stew. Diana was always the best cook in the family, so I took full advantage while I could.

  “I need to be there no later than midnight on Sunday,” I replied, trying to sneak a taste.

  “Can I take you Saturday?” she asked while slapping my hand as it neared the top of the pot. “It’s almost two hours from here, and after Mass I need to help Julio get the shoe shop ready. It’s going to be a busy week.” Julio was her second husband, a much better fit for her.

  “Two hours? You’ve got to be kidding me. Where the heck is this place?” I asked, answering her question with a question.

  They both laughed and told me that I would be living in the middle of the Mojave Desert for the next three to four months. They knew more about my duty station than I did. We sat down to Diana’s excellent chili and enjoyed some much-needed family time, the last for several months.

  * * *

  The coursework at Twentynine Palms was uninspiring, but I worked hard and made sure I’d graduate among the top of my class so I could concentrate on what I really wanted to learn: swimming. Classes were taught a couple of miles down the road at the base’s training tank. Needless to say, there wasn’t much for a young marine to do, especially without any personal transportation, so I devoted my off-duty time to conquering one of my greatest fears, the fear of drowning.

  The outdoor pool was huge and intimidating, much larger to me than the one at MCRD, but that was a mental hurdle I had to set aside. I passed the basic swim test at boot camp, but just barely, and that wasn’t good enough. I recalled a story Coach Sparago told us about a wrestling champion who won his title by continually practicing each move that had defeated him until his weaknesses became his strengths. That was exact
ly what I wanted to do, so I marched my nonswimming self down to the training tank and inquired about lessons. An old marine who worked there greeted me and asked how well I swam. “Like a rock, sir,” I answered bluntly. After what happened the last time I wasn’t about to misrepresent my abilities.

  “How long are you going to be stationed here?” He was skeptical of my commitment.

  “I’m just here for FROC training, sir.” I could tell by his hesitancy that he didn’t want to take this on, but I wasn’t taking no for an answer. During the course of our conversation I told him about the pool, my desire to be a Reconnaissance Marine, and how Coach Sparago, my mother, and Michael taught me never to quit anything I started. In fact, I just kept talking until he finally agreed to give me lessons, if for no other reason than to shut me up.

  “Okay, marine, we’ll start tomorrow. Bring your swim trucks and a towel, and be ready to work. Hard.”

  Over the next three months I went to the pool as often as I could, and with his help I learned to swim well enough to turn my terrifying weakness into a personal strength. I succeeded by drawing on the wisdom of my family, encouragement of my coaches, and an old leatherneck willing to help a young man conquer his fears.

  4

  A HIGHER CALLING

  Every calling is great when greatly pursued.

  —OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES

  Following FROC at Twentynine Palms, I returned home and checked into Delta Company, 4th Reconnaissance Battalion. Prior to my arrival I had applied for a billet with one of the company’s four-man Reconnaissance teams and was accepted, but I still had to earn my qualifications to remain on the team. The long road to becoming a Recon Marine had just begun. The next step was to pass a rigorous assessment and selection program, followed by two months of in-house training. After several weeks of classwork and constant physical testing, I was finally given the opportunity to compete against my brother marines for the best “high-speed” schools in the military, including SERE (Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape), Army Airborne, Navy SCUBA, and, of course, Amphibious Reconnaissance, among others. I wasn’t Recon, though; not yet.

  Recon Marines worked hard and played hard and took immense pride in their training. They weren’t in it for the silver SCUBA bubble or gold parachute wings pinned to their uniforms or even the public ego stroke. They thrived on being different and doing something unique and dangerous. In a service that trumpets “Every marine is a rifleman” and then practices what it preaches, it’s easy to blend in with the rest of the Corps. Recon was a means to break free, and that’s why they volunteered for the job. They were destined for extremely dangerous missions, sneaking among a sea of enemy, hiding in miserable conditions and gathering intelligence, and doing it with little acknowledgment that the organization even existed. They knew it existed, and they acknowledged it among themselves. To a Recon Marine, that’s all that mattered. Recognition among their peers drives men to endure things others wouldn’t, and I knew I wanted to be a part of that elite and highly selective brotherhood. During the testing, assessment, and training phases, I pushed myself as if training for the city or state wrestling tournament, determined to win a slot at Recon school.

  After four months of training, I received orders to Navy SCUBA School in Panama City, Florida. Training was hard, but I was well prepared after hours and hours of swim practice at FROC and Recon Battalion. I received my SCUBA bubble on graduation day, and a day later I was issued orders to the highly coveted Amphibious Reconnaissance School (ARS).

  HEART OF A LION

  Arrival day, Amphibious Reconnaissance School. The icy wind ripped through the cracks in the concrete walls, creating a constant chill that lingered throughout the old building. I had checked in the previous day along with Erik Little, my close friend and teammate from Delta Company. We were busy prepping our gear for the first day of training while other marines streamed in from various overseas units. I sat on my steel-framed bunk, a rickety remnant from World War II, and worked feverishly on my H-harness, repositioning components and changing them back again, a never-ending task of indecisiveness. Like every other infantryman in the military, I had convinced myself that by moving a few pouches around I’d find a more efficient, and perhaps comfortable, way to carry my combat load.

  Despite my compulsive drive to finish numerous tasks before morning PT, I set aside my gear and greeted the marines still arriving from around the globe. I figured if we were going to be living together for the next few months, I should meet them now rather than later.

  As dawn broke, Gunny Russo, a rock-solid gunnery sergeant, suddenly entered the hooch and barked orders, sending the marines scrambling for the classroom next door. We had barely settled into our desks when Gunny Boyd, another broad-shouldered senior NCO, growled, “Attention on deck,” causing the room to snap to attention as Captain Bradford entered the room and stalked to the podium at the front of the room. The captain was sharp, like all marines, but carried himself with a confidence earned through years of distinguished leadership. He straightened his papers on the podium, ordered us to sit, and then jumped right in with no pretense or small talk. He told us our time at ARS was going to be hard but fair, and training evolutions would be based on a mutual respect between the students and the cadre, our instructors. He knew that many of us had already received a great deal of training prior to arriving at ARS and others had been doing the job for more than a year before earning a slot at the highly coveted school, and he acknowledged our efforts.

  He then engaged the class directly. “Can anyone tell me what it takes to be a Recon Marine?” asked the captain.

  Erik, who had never been short on words or shy about pronouncing his opinion in a crowd (which is probably why we bonded in the first damn place), yelled out in a manner that made everyone crack up, including the captain, “Being a lunatic and PT stud … ssssir!”

  In some ways he was right. Back then if an infantry marine was a first-class swimmer in exceptional physical shape and possessed the intestinal fortitude to gut through the screening process, he could be a Recon Marine.

  “Not exactly the answer I was looking for, marine. It’s having the heart of a lion, possessing the courage and bravery to accept a mission against insurmountable odds while isolated deep inside enemy forces and driving on. It’s all in here.” The captain pointed to his heart. “Not here,” he said, pointing to his flexed bicep that stretched his uniform sleeve to its limits.

  I felt a sense of pride as the captain spoke because I understood his point. With the help of many mentors and the encouragement of my brother marines, along the way, I went from using my uniform to keep me afloat and a dog-paddling breaststroke in boot camp to graduating Navy SCUBA School in a year’s time. Now, I wasn’t sure if tackling my fear of the water would be the type of bravery needed under fire, but I felt I met the captain’s definition of a Recon Marine, and it gave me a feeling that I was at the right place.

  The captain then walked over to Erik, who popped tall and stood rock still. “Now drop down, Lance Corporal, and push out a hundred. That shouldn’t be too hard … you PT stud,” the captain said with a grin. Needless to say, we all joined Erik on the floor and began knocking them out, figuring that if you’re only as strong as your weakest man, then we definitely wanted to make certain all of us had equal opportunity to develop.

  TURNING POINT

  Once again, a small, innocuous incident led to a major turning point in my career. Several weeks into ARS, I was on a routine training patrol with my platoon, practicing land navigation at night in a thick forest. As we crept along in pitch-black darkness, I stumbled on a root and cut my arm on a sharp branch. It was a relatively shallow cut but continued to bleed through the night. I sure as hell didn’t want to get med dropped for an infection, so the next morning I went to get it checked out.

  I walked into the small medical office the navy corpsman had established for “sick call,” an expression the navy uses for treating sailors and marines for minor i
njuries or ailments or evaluating them for the possibility of a serious underlying condition. The place was spotless, unlike the rest of the compound, which was flooded from the tropical storm that hit us earlier in the week. Except for the pictures on the walls you’d have a hard time differentiating it from any other medical clinic in the fleet. Instead of the typical photographs of nature scenes or health reminders, the HM1 (hospital corpsman first class) had covered the bulkheads with some of the more gung-ho Marine Corps recruiting posters and personal mementos from his time in a Force Recon company. Although his decorating style gave off an atmosphere of “suck it up—you’re a marine,” his attitude was anything but; he was a focused and empathetic medical provider.

  HM1 had given us a medical class a couple of weeks earlier, and it was clear to everyone that he knew his stuff. He captured my attention when he started with “There’s no ambulance in the bush that’s going to take you to a big white hospital, so you better listen up.” I had seen the gang and drug violence that plagued the streets of Albuquerque; I understood the seriousness of his curriculum. I also found unconventional medicine fascinating, and it wasn’t long before fascination turned into real interest.

  “What do you need, Lance Corporal?” he asked as I entered. He was wearing glasses and had a stethoscope around his neck. He looked different to me, and for a moment I thought I was in the room with someone I had never met. Strange how a few common personal items and a change of scenery can completely transform a person. Later, when I became a provider, I’d experience this same thing; I could be on the shooting range in the morning, just one of the boys with an oversized aid bag, but later in the afternoon at the medical clinic, a teammate would come in to review lab results and treat me a little differently. I suppose the lab coat threw them off.