Warrior Soul: The Memoir of a Navy SEAL

by Pfarrer, Chuck

  Sooner or later, somebody always would.

  Nor is there much rest for the wicked. The running is all done in combat boots—a sore ankle will not get better banging six miles to and from the mess hall each day. Longer runs, called “conditioning hikes,” are pounded out on miles of soft beach sand. The most a BUD/S student will run in a day is approximately twenty miles, with most days averaging between eight and fifteen. Gangs of instructors lead and follow each run, harrying the class formation like wolves after a herd of migrating caribou.

  On a long run, the faster runners move toward the front as the lame, tired, and out of condition fall back. The formation is not allowed to straggle. On each outing, instructors separate the last 20 percent from the main body. This group is called the “goon squad,” and they are singled out for special attention. That means at least an extra half hour out on the sand, running in circles, doing push-ups, rope climbs, or carrying telephone poles out into the surf zone. The weakest and slowest are the ones who get screwed the hardest. During first phase, the goon squad contributes the majority of the helmets under the bell.

  For every student, the push-ups are uncountable. Any breach of decorum, military etiquette, or operational procedure earns the transgressor fifty push-ups. Any time a class member superior in rank to you is “dropped,” everyone in the unit does push-ups as well. When a boat-crew leader is made to do push-ups, his boat crew does them with him. When the class leader is dropped, the entire class does push-ups. It’s an effective way to teach accountability.

  It isn’t just the instructors who are sons of bitches. Another nemesis is the obstacle course. Scattered across a couple hundred yards of sand are two dozen contraptions made from telephone poles, hawser, cargo net, and barbed wire. Obstacles with names like the Belly Robber, the Dirty Name, and the Slide for Life teach balance, physical technique, and confidence to students who will later scale embassy walls, climb offshore oil rigs, and pull themselves down lines attached to submerged submarines. Each time a student runs the O-course, his completion time is expected to improve. If it does not, the student can enjoy a refreshing dip in the Pacific, a bracing roll in beach sand, and the opportunity to run the O-course one more time. Wet.

  Another first-phase pastime is boat work. The class is broken into seven-man boat crews and each is assigned to an IBS, or inflatable boat, small. Dressed in kapok life jackets, the boat crews paddle through the surf zone for hours in a series of races and long-distance paddles. Although boats are frequently swamped and run ashore by gigantic surf, and hands are rubbed raw from miles and miles of paddling, the surf zone offers some relief: It’s the only place in first phase where the instructors can’t scream in your face.

  At an Olympic-sized pool reserved for SEALs, students learn Red Cross lifesaving and drown-proofing, a technique that allows individuals to stay afloat and swim without the use of their arms and legs. In the drown-proofing practical, students are thrown in the pool, hands and feet tied together with parachute cord. They have to swim four hundred yards, retrieve a face mask from the bottom of the deep end with their teeth, then “tread water” for forty minutes—all of this while trussed up like Esther Williams in bondage.

  Between runs, swims, and surf work, first-phase students take academic classes in advanced first aid, the history of naval special warfare, communications, beach reconnaissance, and cartography. Any grade below 3.0 is considered failing. Exhausted students who fall asleep during lectures are splashed awake with a wastebasket full of seawater and have a tear-gas grenade placed in their hands. The instructor then pulls the pin, requiring the sleepy student to keep his hand tightly on the grenade, holding the safety handle down to prevent the tear gas from going off.

  The fourth week of first phase is Hell Week, which begins around midnight on Sunday and ends sometime the following Saturday. The first event is “Break Out,” a daunting affair in which students are rousted from the barracks by instructors armed with concussion grenades, artillery simulators, and M-60 machine guns. Students rush about while smoke grenades billow, machine guns are fired, and a fire hose sprays water. Explosions rip the night as a contradictory series of orders and uniforms are announced. The net result is that students begin their weeklong ordeal with every piece of equipment and every scrap of uniform wet, sandy, and scattered in heaps. The event is designed to disorient, and it does. While explosions rock the formation, the bell clangs as shell-shocked students begin to quit.

  During Hell Week, students are allowed from zero to three hours of sleep—the entire week. Events continue twenty-four hours a day for six days. Students run, swim, paddle, and generally get fucked about by three shifts of instructors who rotate in around the clock.

  The class is again broken up into boat crews, and every event, called an “evolution,” is a race. Students drag three-hundred-pound IBSs with them everywhere they go. It pays to be a winner: Boat crews who win an evolution such as the paddle around Coronado Island might be allowed a cup of coffee, chow earlier, or a twenty-minute nap on their boat. Those who finish last must do the evolution over again. Like the denizens of the goon squad, losing boat crews are hammered by the instructors.

  The boats must constantly be ready for sea, that is, be in perfect operational order. Likewise the students. The task is nearly impossible; the instructors can always find a twisted life-jacket strap or an unbuttoned pocket. Then it’s hammer time.

  The constant running, paddling, and cold-water immersions require huge amounts of energy. Students burn upward of five thousand calories a day and are fed four meals: breakfast, lunch, dinner, and a midnight meal called “mid-rats.” Students are not allowed to talk or doze off during meals. It is not unusual to watch students pass out facedown in their oatmeal. Those who face-plant are tossed out of the chow hall and into the surf zone.

  With lack of sleep come hallucinations, and tempers and judgment fray. This is part of the process. Instructors watch carefully, pressing officers to lead and boat crews to work together. Lack of organization is not tolerated.

  Each time a boat-crew member quits, his mates are left to pull his load, humping the three-hundred-pound boat through the evolutions with one fewer person. Everyone works harder to make up for the lost man, but the boat is slower, and that makes the instructors very cross. It’s easy to see how the loss of a single individual could lead to an entire crew washing out. Hell Week is an object lesson in teamwork.

  It is not unheard of for a class to lose 60 percent of its members during Hell Week alone. Very few classes come through the entire week without losing a single individual. These classes are awarded a “No Bell Prize,” and their class number is engraved on a plaque on the BUD/S quarterdeck. As I write this, that plaque has perhaps four class numbers carved into it—out of the 280 classes that have graduated.

  Of all the experiences a student will have at BUD/S, Hell Week is probably the most crucial. Students emerge with the realization that the human body is capable of ten times the output previously thought possible. There are few limits and no limitations to what a determined individual can accomplish. After Hell Week, the class is allowed to commission a T-shirt emblazoned with the logo of the Naval Special Warfare Training Command and the class number. If you can survive Hell Week, you’ll probably survive the remainder of training.

  After Hell Week injuries are feared more than the instructors. Little provision is made for the wounded, and there is no convalescent leave. Nor is the medical attention particularly fawning. Advice from the corpsmen in sick bay is usually “Take an aspirin and run on it.” More than once that advice has been given to a student with a broken leg.

  Those who survive Hell Week embark on the second phase of training, land warfare. Stopwatches tick as blindfolded students strip and reassemble a dozen varieties of pistol, assault rifle, and machine gun. Instruction in marksmanship is intense, and students learn long-distance shooting as well as quick kill, fire and maneuver, and counterambush. Hand-to-hand combat, the use of a knife, garrot
e, and sentry stalking are taught by men who have done it for real. Students study land navigation, small-unit tactics, briefing techniques, and hydrographic and land reconnaissance.

  The phase culminates with four weeks on San Clemente Island, where students learn basic and advanced demolitions and conduct a weeklong “war,” reconnoitering and interdicting a variety of targets on the island. Naturally, students train with real explosives and live ammunition.

  The final phase of training is diving. Open- and closed-circuit scuba, underwater navigation, the use of underwater mines, maritime reconnaissance, and sneak attacks are taught, as well as the operation of submarine escape trunks.

  It’s been said that becoming a SEAL is a calling rather than a vocation. That may be true. BUD/S is not so much a battle of wills but a struggle against oneself. No amount of physical training could be enough to prepare you. Whether you start training as an accomplished triathlete or a professional bowler, you will come to grips with misery. The instructors are always there to push each individual beyond maximum. The battle is always to make a cold, wet, tired, and hungry body take another step, run another mile, or climb another rung of the ladder. Quitting is easy. All you have to do is ring the bell, and the pain will stop. The test is against oneself.

  But as difficult as BUD/S is, as many students quit, as almost impossibly difficult as training is made by instructors, it is more difficult in the Teams. BUD/S is practice. SEAL operations in the real world are combat. If a student screws up in BUD/S, he has to hit the surf. If a SEAL screws up on a real-world operation, he gets turned into a pink vapor.

  BUD/S has to be difficult. It is imperative that the only men who come into the Teams are those who can be counted on: men who are superbly conditioned, adapted to adversity, and have rigorously demonstrated determination and teamwork. This does not mean BUD/S puts out a bunch of robots. Far from it. This persistence and determination BUD/S inculcates is not blind. SEALs don’t charge machine-gun nests. That’s what the Marine Corps is for. Throughout training, students are taught to fight smart; to attack the enemy where he is weakest, not where he is strongest.

  Insertion into an enemy’s backyard may involve a three-mile underwater swim, a parachute jump from an airliner, or a five-day walk across glacier and mountain. Just getting to the target can often be an adventure. Getting out of an operational area with an enraged enemy in pursuit can be a nightmare. It is vital that every operator knows he can count on the man next to him. There is no “I” in “SEAL Team.”

  BUD/S is one of the few schools in the United States military where officers and enlisted men train together; the course and curriculum are the same. In the Green Berets, there are separate officer and enlisted courses. At BUD/S, an officer is assigned to oversee each phase of training, but the principal instruction is given by enlisted men. It can reasonably be said that the enlisted men pick the officers who will eventually lead them. It’s not just the weak officers who are culled from training. The imperious, the impulsive, and the reckless will also find it impossible to graduate.

  The naval special warfare community is the smallest of all the special operations forces, and the bond between officers and enlisted is tight. Platoons and assault elements usually function on a first-name basis. At the apex of the military’s special operations outfits, the “military” is kept to a minimum.

  At the end of training, our graduation was low-key. On a warm September morning, a small group gathered on the grinder of the BUD/S compound. A band played “Anchors Away,” and we sat in folding chairs before the same podium Dick Roy had addressed us from six months earlier. There were no friends or relatives in attendance. Our names were called one by one, and we were each handed a certificate from the naval amphibious school. The certificates were definitely not suitable for framing. They stated simply that “the following individual [typed name] has completed the following course [BUD/S].” My diploma looked like it cost $1.25, but to me, it was the most precious piece of paper in the world.

  We were officially BUD/S graduates, but we were not SEALs. Not yet. Ahead of us were army airborne school at Fort Benning and months of advanced operator training in our respective SEAL Teams. We would receive hundreds of hours of additional training and serve a yearlong probationary period before earning the gold trident of a Navy SEAL.

  Until then we were FNGs: fuckin’ new guys. Good-for-nothing goldbrick class-2001 bananas. But that was fine with me. That afternoon I received orders to report to the commanding officer, SEAL Team Four, aboard the Naval Amphibious Base, Little Creek, Virginia.

  I was in the Teams, and I was loving life.

  * * *

  OPERATOR 156

  THE NIGHT WAS stupefyingly black. No stars, no moon, and a thin cold rain was pissing out of the sky, water dripping from darkness as I lay at the side of the road, my weapon on safe, listening to the night sounds, pupils cranked open to max, waiting. Above, a single canopy of trees rustled as wind stirred through it. Gusts passed now and again, fluttering leaves down on us and onto the road. I was lying maybe twenty meters back from where the two-track narrowed and turned sharply east. My squad, eight shooters, was arrayed close by, each man lying with legs spread, toes of boots touching the heels of the men to right and left, comfort and communication in the opaque night. From the west, low groans of thunder threatened a downpour. We had been in position for almost three hours. Not one man moving and none speaking, a lethal coil waiting to be sprung.

  Our ambush had been diagrammed on a chalkboard like a football play. Circles and arrows marked fields of fire, lines of advance, plans of retreat, order for movement, procedures of fire and maneuver, and designated teams to count, search, and later booby-trap the bodies of the dead. Set about a 90-degree turn in the road, two SEAL squads lay pressed into cover, forming the arms of an L. One squad was set up on the portion of road before the curve, and the second squad covered the turn and its egress. Two shooting pairs concentrated on the apex, aimed down and waiting to pour a cross fire into the enemy as they entered what we called “the box,” the kill zone. Lone men were tucked up against trees behind each squad, rear security covering the backs of the ambush parties. Two other men, trip wires, were stationed ten yards up and down the road. It would be their job to warn the others of the quarry’s approach, and then to seal the trap, cutting down anyone who tried to flee from or through the kill zone.

  All ambushes are custom jobs, and this one was planned for a jeep and a truck and the men in them. Our trap was set miles inside the enemy’s zone of control, and the countryside surrounding us was theirs—a home game for the bad guys and an away game for the good guys. Tonight’s mission was described as direct action, and its venue was what staff gumbies euphemistically call a “nonpermissive environment.” Nothing had been left to chance; our actions were scripted and the enemy’s moves anticipated. A low ditch circumscribed the outside of the turn, and this depression was likely to be the first cover the ambushed would seek once the trap was sprung. We had placed four claymore mines in the ditch. The detonator wires snaked back to electronic initiators, called “clackers,” laid by my right elbow. Tonight, for our unfortunate guests, there would be a sudden torrent of bullets, there would be a place of cover, and then a cross fire. The end would come in a fiery swarm of shrapnel. The violence would be multiphased, three-dimensional, and as perfect as we could make it.

  I lifted the night-vision goggles hung around my neck and switched them on. The NVGs rendered a pale, strangely visible darkness, an incandescent night based on green and light green instead of black. They worked by amplifying ambient light, but our place of ambush was so dark that the image was snowy and the turn in the road seemed flat. In moonlight or even starlight, the NVGs would have revealed the forest as clear as day. Tonight was darker than technology. Looking through the NVGs was like putting your nose to the tube of a 1950s vintage TV set. The images were half focused, without depth or real contrast. I looked up the road, scanning in the direction from which w
e expected company. I could see very little. The road to the north was uniformly green and silent.

  Then from the darkness came a flutter of diesel exhaust and the sounds of gears shifting. The faintest glimmer of headlights swept the road, and the noise of a big truck came closer. Fifty meters from our ambush, the truck and jeep stopped. My heart pounded as I listened to a vehicle door open and slam. The headlights angled over the turn and reflected into the softly falling rain. Hidden in the glare of the truck lights, men were talking, their silhouettes casting huge shadows into the trees above the place we waited.

  Shit. Shit. Get back into the fucking trucks.

  I watched as one man walked down the road toward us. Next to me, our M-60 gunner gently snapped the safety off his weapon. I clearly heard the sound of the lever shifting from safe to fire, a small click no louder than the patter of a raindrop. The man in the road was carrying an AK-47 slung over his shoulder; in his hand a small flashlight switched on. I lowered my head and pressed my body as deeply into the leaf cover as I could. The flashlight scanned the road surface—sharp turns and steep hills are obvious places for ambushes, and the man with the flashlight was checking the muddy roadbed for boot prints. I could feel the squad around me draw a collective breath. The flashlight beam feebly searched the turn in the road, and as it swung toward me, I placed my face down against the stock of my M-16. Human eyes, like those of animals, will give back reflected light—the classic rat eyes glowing in the darkness—and I averted my face as the beam swept over us. The light switched off, and the man trudged back toward the headlights. We had not been discovered.

  Doors slammed again. In the back of the truck was a sound like a chain rattling. We heard the big diesel and jeep grind into gear and come slowly toward us, the truck first and the jeep some ten or fifteen feet behind. Their headlights shoved light up the tunnel of trees, illuminating them brightly, and I felt the twinge of my pupils contracting, eyes wide open for hours in perfect darkness suddenly pinched by an overabundance of light.