Inside SEAL Team Six

by Don Mann

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  Four days later al-Qaeda released a statement confirming their leader’s death and vowing revenge.

  When President Obama arrived at Fort Campbell, Kentucky, on May 5 to congratulate the team and present them with a Presidential Unit Citation, he said, “I had fifty-fifty confidence that Bin Laden was there, but I had one hundred percent confidence in you guys. You are literally the finest small-unit fighting force that has ever existed in the world.”

  I know about a dozen members of the UBL assault team, and I’m enormously proud of them. Though I understand the public’s curiosity, I see no good reason to reveal their identities, which is why I won’t say more here.

  The important thing is, SEAL Team Six had extinguished our country’s number one enemy ■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​

  Soon after the bin Laden hit, the SEALs who went to Abbottabad were back on the job, launching new missions against terrorist threats.

  The dangers the brave operators of ST-6 face routinely was tragically and dramatically underscored four months later on August 6, 2011, when seventeen SEALs (all but two were members of ST-6, but none of them had been on the mission to Abbottabad) were among thirty U.S. servicemen killed when the Chinook helicopter they were riding in was shot down during a nighttime mission in the Tangi valley along the Afghan-Pakistani border. From what I know about them, they were amazing men—in other words, typical SEALs.

  One of the SEALs who died in the crash had lost part of his left arm and suffered a collapsed lung in Iraq but felt compelled to rejoin his unit.

  Another one of the downed SEALs, Jonas Keisall, had told his mother, “If I die on a mission, I’ll die happy because I’m doing something for my country.”

  It was a devastating blow to ST-6, and the biggest one-day combat loss to U.S. troops in Afghanistan. But the promise of ST-6 lives on. Right after the accident, the remaining brave operators at Six did what they always do. They picked up their weapons and went right back into combat, fighting the only way they knew how—fiercely, skillfully, and with courage.

  Epilogue

  Mother, tell your children not to do what I have done.

  —unknown author, “The House of the Rising Sun”

  Recently, I took my wife, Dawn, to visit my hometown of Methuen, Massachusetts, for the first time. My old buddies greeted us by blasting “Born to Be Wild” from the jukebox as we entered the Plantation, a bar only a quarter mile from my childhood home and the place where my dad and his friends had gone for years to meet up, watch football, and unwind after work.

  Now it was a biker hangout with SUPPORT YOUR LOCAL HELLS ANGELS stickers everywhere, and Angels proudly displaying their colors on their leather vests and jackets.

  The leather on the stools was worn and cracked, and the floor was dirtier than I remembered. And the locals who now frequented the bar had a tough, far-away look in their eyes that said: If you look at me the wrong way, I’ll kill you.

  I was thrilled to see many of my old buddies. A lot of them still had long hair and beards. Some were wearing the same black motorcycle jackets we’d worn thirty years earlier.

  As we exchanged hugs and sat down to beers, I started to experience a strange sense of déjà vu. Or rather, a sense of what could have been.

  My old childhood buddies began regaling Dawn and me with stories of their recent adventures. Even though the storyteller shifted from one old friend to another, the themes and narratives remained the same. Many stories went something like this: A group of us got really wasted, committed some sort of stupid crime, were caught, and ended up spending time in jail.

  Some of my buddies—now in their late forties and fifties—were back living with their parents. And some of them had long police records, were in poor health, had no steady employment, and were addicted to drugs or alcohol.

  As I lo
oked into their faces, I thought: This could have been me. This is the life I was headed for.

  Thank God for the SEAL teams!

  I mean, I love my old buddies, but it was sad to see how so many of them had ended up.

  The truth is: I found a way out and they didn’t. If I hadn’t made that trip to the Navy recruiter, I could have been sitting with them on one of those bar stools—if I were even still alive. But somehow I’d managed to channel the same wild energy all of us shared into something positive and useful. I’d become a Navy SEAL and a corpsman. I proudly served my country and had the opportunity to save lives.

  I’m not saying I didn’t make mistakes. My rough beginnings, my two failed marriages, my shortcomings as a father, my failure to achieve more as a SEAL and more as an athlete: those are just the tip of the iceberg.

  But that day at the Plantation, at the same time as I was happy to see the people I’d been close to so long ago, I realized just how fortunate I’d been. First and foremost, I had had two wonderful parents who loved me and stood by me through thick and thin. And even though I was a rebellious kid, many of my parents’ values did rub off on me.

  I learned love of country from my dad. He’d been in the Navy, as had my uncles and my aunt. All of them had served proudly and with distinction during World War II. So even though I didn’t realize it as a teenager, I was following a path that they had blazed for me.