Inside SEAL Team Six

by Don Mann

  All we heard was the grind of the engine and rushing water as we were tossed around.

  I yelled, “Slow down.”

  The officer in front responded, “Quiet back there.”

  I told the SEALs who were with me to unbuckle their web gear and hold their weapons away from their heads in case the vehicle had to stop abruptly or went off the road.

  Minutes later the ambulance fishtailed around a turn that had no shoulder or guardrail.

  We heard the ■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​ (■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​) guy up front shout, “Cut it! Cut it sharp!”

  Then our officer shouted, “Here we go!”

  The ■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​ shot off the road and flipped over onto its right, so that the guys on the opposite bench fell on us. It felt like we were flying, and then we hit the water hard. We were all severely jolted, and then we felt the ■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​ start to sink.

  The guys in back with me remained calm. I thought, At least it’s not filling up with water. Almost as soon as I had that thought, water started pouring in the back. It filled up quickly. The eight of us positioned ourselves so that we could hold our mouths above the waterline and breathe. We tried pushing open the back door but were hindered by the strong current in the canal.

  Luckily for us, the driver and SAS guy up front had been thrown from the vehicle. The SAS swam around and tried to pull the back door open while we pushed. After a couple of tense minutes we managed to pry the door open and swim out.

  But we couldn’t find the driver. Thinking that he was trapped underneath the ambulance, I dove to find him, but he wasn’t there.

  Turned out he had suffered a head injury and had been carried with the current about a half a mile down the canal. We found him sitting on the bank wondering what had happened.

  We trained hard and sometimes partied hard. One night after a long seventy-mile hike in the heat, three of us were sitting outside against some CONEX ammo boxes. One of the SEALs, a big, muscular guy who I’ll call Ed, was drunk. He had a deathly fear of snakes.

  It didn’t help that the area was full of rattlesnakes. The third SEAL, Tommy—who went on to become the command master at ST-6—killed and cut the head off a large rattlesnake, then threw it in Ed’s lap. Ed jumped to his feet and started doing this herky-jerky dance as he screamed bloody murder. His movements apparently scared a big, black rat; it came running out from behind the CONEX boxes and started charging right at Ed.

  “Holy Mary, Mother of God!” he screamed.

  Tommy coolly raised his .45 and shot the rat dead in its tracks.

  A couple days later, we were out on patrol again, resting on some rocks, when a large rattlesnake slithered past us. Everyone was so exhausted, including Ed, that no one moved a muscle.

  Snakes seemed to be a constant nuisance. Another time during jungle-warfare training in the Philippines, a Marine who was working with us went missing in the jungle for a couple of days. His body was finally found and brought into camp, where a pathologist performed an autopsy to ascertain the cause of death. He found two fang marks four inches apart; they had penetrated four inches through the Marine’s skull.

  He’d apparently been struck by a king cobra when he stood up to take a piss.

  We could be working anywhere on the planet at any given time. One month we’d be slogging through the jungles of Thailand. A month later, we’d be shivering our way through winter-warfare training in Alaska.

  It was around this time that me and three other SEALs were selected to go on the ■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​ which was so sensitive that it was never even mentioned in our records.

  Our platoon also trained for months for a highly sensitive op (that is still classified) that was supposed to take place behind the Iron Curtain. To our great disappointment, we never deployed.

  In the winter of ’84, seven of us were selected to perform a winter-warfare op in Korea, which involved getting intel from someone who had contact with a North Korean defector. We jumped from an aircraft at night into the freezing water, but we didn’t have room on the boat for all our winter gear.

  By the time we climbed into our Zodiac and started motoring through the rough sea to shore, our hands and feet were numb, our clothes and gear were frozen, and we were all suffering from hypothermia.

  Thankfully we warmed up a little as we climbed into the mountains. The rocky landscape was covered with frozen snow and ice.

  We slept outside huddled together on beds of sticks that we’d gathered to keep our bodies off the frozen ground. One night my feet slipped off the sticks, which caused me to suffer frostbite in both feet.

  But still we made it through three days of humping over the mountains until we reached our target, and got the intel. Mission success!

  Unfortunately, the frostbite stayed with me, and to this day I experience pain and numbness every time my feet get cold.

  Despite the occasional discomfort, I loved the pace, constant movement, interesting places we visited, and the characters we met.

  There was no one more colorful than Ray Bosco, who taught us hand-to-hand combat in the Philippines. He was a big tough ex-con who had a gym in Subic City; the gym had a bar upstairs and we all gathered there at night.

  Once two robbers attacked him at the bar—one armed with a gun, the other with a knife—and Ray, who was unarmed, killed both of them with his bare hands.

  He told us that if we ever had any trouble, we should come to him.

  I’d gotten away from the kind of trouble I’d had as a kid, but occasionally it still found me. Around this time, I bought my wife, Kim, a new custom-built high-end bike for her birthday. When I was away with my platoon in Guam for a month, our house was broken into and the bike stolen.

  I went to the kids who were on the streets riding bikes and I said, “If you ever see my wife’s bike, I’ll give you a hundred-dollar reward.”

  They were back in half an hour and said, “The guy who runs the booth down the street where he sells jewelry has your bike. But he painted it bright orange.”

  I filled my wallet with money, went to his booth, and bought a little piece of jewelry. Behind the vendor was an old bike leaning against a building. I asked him if he was selling it. He gave me a price. I could tell right away that it wasn’t my wife’s.

  “Do you have anything lighter?” I asked him. “I’m in a bike race next weekend and am looking for a lightweight bike.”

  He said he did but didn’t want to sell it. My initial instinct was to grab the vendor by his throat, pull him into the open doorway behind him, and beat the hell out of him. But I decided against it because the bike wasn’t even there.

  So I paid the kids their reward and I went to Ray Bosco.

  Ray, who liked breaking people’s legs, said, “I’ll kill that motherfucker.”

  I said, “Ray, I don’t want you to kill him. I just want my wife’s bike back.”

  “In that case,” he said, “let’s call the police.”

  Ray and a Filipino cop picked me up and drove up me to the jewelry booth, where I identified the crook. They grabbed him, threw him in the back of the cop’s jeep, then dropped me off at the police station. Ten minutes later they were back with my wife’s bike, which had indeed been painted bright orange.

  I thanked Ray and the policeman. But that night as I was getting ready to go to bed, three other Filipino cops knocked on my door and arrested me. They accused me of stealing the vendor’s bike and beating him up, which was absurd.

  But they refused to drop the charges against me until I dropped the charges I had filed against the jewelry seller. Faced with the prospect of spending the night in a Filipino jail, I relented.

  A short time after I told Ray what had
happened, my wife’s bike reappeared and the jewelry seller was gone. I didn’t ask.

  When we finished our seven-month deployment in the Philippines and returned to Coronado, ■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​ of SEAL Team Six, would soon be arriving to interview guys who were interested in joining the team.

  I figured that everyone would jump at the chance to go to ST-6, but a lot of guys didn’t, for one reason or another.

  On the designated afternoon, I was escorted into a room where Commander Gormly and four intimidating plank owners (founding members) from ST-6 were sitting. They started going through my records and firing questions.

  I felt I was ready, because I’d been giving ST-1 everything I had. Not only was I rated the top corpsman at the command and the top performer in my platoon, I was also very gung ho about joining ST-6.

  The guy interviewed before me was a big, tough biker named Rocky. When Gormly asked him if he’d even seen combat, Rocky said he’d answered, “I see it every weekend at the bars in Imperial Beach.”

  Rocky wasn’t chosen, but I was. I had been waiting for this day, and it was here.

  My captain protested. “You’re not taking Doc Mann, are you?”

  Gormly responded, “We can take anyone we want.”

  Chapter Eight

  ■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​

  Train as you fight, fight as you train.

  —SEAL team motto

  ■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​

  ■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​

  When I arrived at ST-6, based in Dam Neck, Virginia, in November of 1985, ■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​ And they weren’t happy.

  The Boeing 727 flight from Athens to Rome had been hijacked by two Hezbollah Shiite terrorists armed with pistols and grenades and redirected to Beirut, Lebanon. In a bid to force airport officials to refuel the plane, the terrorists grabbed twenty-four-year-old U.S. Navy diver Robert Dean Stethem from his seat, pushed him toward the cockpit door, bound him with rope, then proceeded to torture and then beat him beyond recognition. When a battered, bleeding Stethem refused to plead to the tower through a transmitter to send a fuel truck, one of the hijackers shot him in the head and dumped his body on the tarmac.

  What’s not generally known is that a SEAL Team Six operator had the hijacker in his sights but was never given the order to shoot. Other ST-6■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​

  The standoff ended two weeks later when the remaining passengers were set free in exchange for the release of over seven hundred Shiite prisoners in Israel.

  Both of Stethem’s brothers became Navy SEALs.

  Later, when the pilot of Flight 847 was asked for his impression of Robert Stethem, he answered, “He was the bravest man I’ve ever seen in my life.” Stethem was posthumously awarded a Bronze Star for bravery, and the Navy’s thirteenth Aegis destroyer was christened the USS Stethem and commissioned in 1995.

  Soon after the TWA Flight 847 hijacking, ST-6 prepared to raid the Achille Lauro, an Italian cruise ship that had been commandeered by four heavily armed Palestine Liberation Front terrorists off the coast of Egypt on October 7, 1985. While President Reagan was considering whether to disable the ship or launch a full-scale rescue op, the terrorists murdered an elderly Jewish passenger named Leon Klinghoffer and tossed his body overboard.

  After two days of negotiation, the h
ijackers agreed to abandon the liner in exchange for safe conduct to Tunisia. But President Reagan was determined to bring them to justice, and he ordered F-14 Tomcats to intercept the Egyptian airliner the hijackers were traveling on and then direct it to the U.S. Naval Air Station Sigonella, in Sicily. SEAL Team Six waited there to take the hijackers into custody, but Italian authorities insisted on arresting the terrorists themselves.

  When I reached ST-6 ■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​ ST-6 ■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​