In times of war and uncertainty there is a special breed of warrior ready to answer our Nation’s call. A common man with uncommon desire to succeed. Forged by adversity, he stands alongside America’s finest special operations forces to serve his country, the American people, and protect their way of life. I am that man.
My Trident is a symbol of honor and heritage. Bestowed upon me by the heroes that have gone before, it embodies the trust of those I am sworn to protect. By wearing the Trident I accept the responsibility of my chosen profession and way of life. It is a privilege that I must earn every day.
My loyalty to Country and Team is beyond reproach. I humbly serve as a guardian to my fellow Americans, always ready to defend those who are unable to defend themselves. I do not advertise the nature of my work, or seek recognition for my actions. I voluntarily accept the inherent hazards of my profession, placing the welfare and security of others before my own.
I serve with honor on and off the battlefield. The ability to control my emotions and my actions, regardless of circumstance, sets me apart from other men. Uncompromising integrity is my standard. My character and honor are steadfast.
My Word is my Bond.
We expect to lead and be led. In the absence of orders I will take charge, lead my teammates and accomplish the mission. I lead by example in all situations.
I will never quit. I persevere and thrive on adversity. My Nation expects me to be physically harder and mentally stronger than my enemies. If knocked down, I will get back up, every time. I will draw on every remaining ounce of strength to protect my teammates and accomplish our mission. I am never out of the fight.
We demand discipline. We expect innovation. The lives of my teammates and the success of our mission depend on me—my technical skill, tactical proficiency, and attention to detail. My training is never complete.
We train for war and fight to win. I stand ready to bring the full spectrum of combat power to bear in order to achieve my mission and the goals established by my country. Execution of my duties will be swift and violent when required yet guided by the very principles that I serve to defend.
Brave men have fought and died building the proud tradition and feared reputation that I am bound to uphold. In the worst of conditions, the legacy of my teammates steadies my resolve and silently guides my every deed. I will not fail.
SEALs are not maniacal individuals hell-bent on self-destruction. They have hopes and dreams for themselves and their families just like each of us do. However, SEALs are acutely aware that freedom is not free. They understand better than most that everything has a price that must be paid. Like the Spartan warriors described in Steven Pressfield’s Gates of Fire, SEALs know that their “seasons are marked ... not by calendared years themselves, but by battles. Campaigns fought and comrades lost; trials of death survived. Clashes and conflicts from which time effaces all superficial recall, leaving only the fields themselves and their names, which achieve in the warrior’s memory a stature ennobled beyond all other modes of commemoration, purchased with the holy coin of blood and paid for with the lives of beloved brothers-in-arms.”
SEALs give all and ask for nothing. Their reward is coming home to their families and friends, watching them and others enjoy the freedoms they helped secure, ever vigilant that for as long as the Lord tarries, the fight is never complete.
Thank God for America’s warriors. We continue to enjoy our freedoms because of men such as these.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Deployment Work-up
The only easy day was yesterday.
—SEAL motto, quoted in Richard Schoenberg, The Only Easy Day Was Yesterday
SEAL platoons operate on a twenty-four-month cycle. Of those twenty-four months, eighteen consist of training work-up followed by a six-month deployment overseas in an operational status. The type of training work-up is dictated by three major factors: advanced individual and platoon-level skills that will be necessary for the conduct of all special operations, the anticipated methods of delivery (insertion) and extraction most likely to be used while on deployment, and the geographical area of operations.
The West Coast (odd-numbered) teams are primarily responsible for the Pacific Rim, the Far East, Africa and the Middle East, and eastern bloc regions; the East Coast (even-numbered) teams are responsible for South and Central America, the Mediterranean and Caribbean areas, Europe, and Russia. Even though the teams have primary areas of responsibility, the Global War on Terror (GWOT) dictates that each team be utilized to maximum efficiency, thereby necessitating an overlapping of geographic regions of responsibility.
In the teams SEAL operators are either on a mission or preparing for the next one. It is a constant cycle. The predeployment work-up is divided into three distinct phases: professional development (PRODEV), Unit Level Training (ULT), and Squadron Integration Training (SIT).
Professional Development (PRODEV)
PRODEV is a six-month training block in which individual SEALs attend a number of schools and courses, leading to individual qualifications and designations that, when combined with the other SEALs, allow the platoon to operate as an effective operational combat team. Depending on the operational needs of the overall team, or platoon, SEALs acquire any number of advanced skills: sniper; breaching; surreptitious entry; electronic and media exploitation; technical surveillance; high-threat protective security; advanced weapons training; advanced driving skills (rural, urban, security); advanced climbing and rope skills; advanced air operations, including high-altitude, low-opening (HALO) and high-altitude, high-opening (HAHO) parachute jumping; parachute rigging and packing; diving supervisor; range safety officer; instructor school; leadership school; foreign weapons; unmanned aerial vehicle and precision bombing operator; language school; and advanced special operations.
Unit Level Training (ULT)
ULT is the following six-month training block that follows PRODEV. It allows individual SEALs to perfect the skills they obtained during PRODEV and incorporate them into the platoon/team core mission areas: land warfare; close-quarters combat; urban warfare; maritime interdiction; combat-swimmer operations; long-range interdiction; air operations; special reconnaissance and maritime operations; and combat operations involving advanced marksmanship and heavy weapons.
The first ninety days of ULT is commonly spent on getting back to basics, such as hydrographic reconnaissance combined with underwater demolition of submerged targets. Another twenty-one days are spent on air training, including several “Duck drops” from different aircraft during both day and night. “Duck drop” is a term used to describe the practice of dropping inflatable watercraft from aircraft. Other training includes combat equipment jumps, fast-roping, rappelling, and SPIE (Special Purpose Insertion/Extraction) rig techniques.
Mission planning is conducted in the classroom, followed by intelligence gathering and reporting. This is followed by Intel Week, when a platoon will reconnoiter a local utility facility, gathering photographic and sketch data, and then compile a comprehensive report on the facility’s strengths, weaknesses, and vulnerabilities.
Mission planning is followed by the Combat Swimmer course (CSC) over the next twenty-one days. The platoon will execute over thirty dives in this course, including a full mission profile, in which SEALs are inserted by aircraft or surface vessel at a predetermined location for a thirty-mile “over-the-horizon” transit in a vehicle. This is followed by a “turtleback,” which is a surface swim in full dive gear, then a four-hour multileg dive into the enemy harbor to place limpet mines on the hulls of designated target ships, and then evasion of the antiswimmer measures put in place by the trainers.
The platoon then moves on to land warfare. Here they again start with the basics of small-unit tactics, building to a full mission profile in simulated combat situations. Here the training takes place nearly twenty-four hours a day. One of the SEALs’ favorite and most intensive training exercises is the immediate-action drill (IAD). Although IADs are cla
ssified, it is safe to say that they are so effective that they can totally mislead the enemy into believing that they are up against a whole company (one hundred men) of soldiers. Special attention is given to the use of small arms, including pistols and sniper rifles. Skills needed for sniper and countersniper operations and close-quarters battle are all emphasized.
The advanced land-warfare phase includes training in intelligence gathering; structural penetration; long-range reconnaissance and patrolling; close-quarters combat; sniper/countersniper skills; advanced driving skills; edged weapons; hand-to-hand combat; extreme environment survival; field medicine; explosives; small-unit tactics; infiltration and exfiltration; snatch-and-grab missions, and prisoner handling.
The teams responsible for areas often covered with snow conduct extreme cold-weather and winter-warfare training, usually in Alaska, Montana, New York, Norway, and Canada. This training covers mountaineering, free climbing, mountain patrolling and raiding, arctic survival and navigation, high-altitude mountaineering, camouflage, concealment and cover techniques, fire and manuvering techniques on skis and snowshoes, winter orienteering, cross-country skiing, evasion and escape, extreme cold-weather diving, snowshoeing, building snow caves and shelters, winter survival, heavy weapons management, and avalanche survival.
The teams responsible for the parts of the world covered by dense jungle and swamp conduct their training in the sweltering and treacherous jungles of Panama or Pineros Island in Puerto Rico.
Squadron Integration Training (SIT)
During the third six-month training block, six platoons, along with their supporting SEAL squadron, Special Boat Squadrons, medical teams, explosive ordnance disposal (EOD) detachment, interpreters, intelligence unit, and cryptological support team, conduct coordinated advanced training under simulated battlefield conditions. A final intense, graded certification training exercise (CERTEX) is then performed by the entire SEAL team using battlefield conditions. The purpose is to coordinate platoon operations under a task force group umbrella while using live ammuition. After successfully completing the CERTEX, the SEAL team becomes a SEAL squadron and is scheduled for deployment.
The Dangers of SEAL Training
Ensign Andy Haffele, a graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy who had recently earned his Trident, arrived at SDVT-1 in Pearl City, Hawaii, in 2003. He was slated to become the third officer in charge in Alfa Platoon, behind the platoon commander, Lieutenant George Stahl, and the assistant platoon commander, Lieutenant Michael Murphy. Murphy and Haffele quickly became good friends—as Haffele described them, “two peas in a pod.”
Approximately four months after joining Alfa Platoon, Michael and Haffele were leading their platoon in conducting live-fire immediate-action drills (IADs) on Point Man Range at Schofield Barracks. Haffele later described IAD as being “as close to actual combat as you’re going to get without being there.” IADs were necessary, according to Haffele, because “when bullets are flying for real in bad guy country, that is not the time to be involved in live fire for the first time. When it all hits the fan, you will fall back on your muscle memory. Muscle memory is developed in training. Live rounds coming out the end of your weapon are completely different than blanks. You have to train as you will fight. Live fire is necessary.”
Alfa Platoon had been conducting IADs several times a day for the previous week or so. On March 18, 2004, Alfa Platoon had divided into two squads. The second squad consisted of Chris Hall, Dan Healy, Andy Haffele, Shane Patton, Michael Murphy, and Matthew Axelson. Both squads had walked through the exercise without gunfire, and the first squad had completed the live-fire IAD. At about 2:45 PM the second squad, led by Michael, was in squad formation patrolling the assigned training area. Suddenly the range safety officer detonated an explosive charge and fired live rounds behind the squad. The squad’s rear security officer, Chris Hall, yelled, “Contact rear!” Hall, Healy, Haffele, Patton, Murphy, and Axelson, who was on point, came toward the rear to meet the threat. Murphy yelled, “Center peel!” the correct tactical manuever for the situation.
The center peel is designed with human psychology in mind. This tactical manuever is utilized by modern-day military units when a smaller group of troops needs to withdraw from an engagement with a much larger force. Generally it is a sloped or diagonal retreat from the enemy utilizing suppression fire. The diagonal motion of the manuever gives the impression of increasing numbers of soldiers joining the battle, a psychological move designed to demoralize the opposition. The slanting motion also has the benefit of keeping open the field of fire. Retreating directly backward would put the soldier too closely behind his own men, severely limiting his field of fire.
All members of the squad went into their field of fire, the target area directly in front of them. Chris Hall was the first to get his weapon firing downrange; he was followed by Dan Healy. Once Healy began firing, that was the signal for Hall to stop firing, put his weapon on safe, get up, and retreat, tapping Haffele on the shoulder as he passed. That was the signal for Haffele to begin firing. Healy then stopped firing, put his weapon on safe, got up, and retreated, tapping Shane Patton on the shoulder as he passed. That was the signal for Patton to begin firing. When Patton began firing, Haffele stopped firing, put his weapon on safe, got up, and turned to retreat. He was immediately hit by a .556 green-tip round from Murphy’s M4 and went down to the ground, unable to breathe.
Murphy was the first to get to Haffele, followed within seconds by Chris Hall. With Haffele remaining fully conscious, Michael immediately placed a trauma dressing and direct pressure over the now profusely bleeding wound in Haffele’s right upper chest. The bullet had pierced the right axillary artery, resulting in a tension pneumothorax. Marcus Luttrell, the medic, and Corpsman John Dane quickly arrived and started lifesaving treatment. Dane began inserting intravenous lines into both of Haffele’s arms while Luttrell conducted a head-to-toe emergency assessment. The fact that he might well have been dying never crossed Haffele’s mind until Commander Todd DeGhetto, the commanding officer of SDVT-1, asked for his wife’s contact number. Andy and Chrissy had only been married for seven months and lived near the base. He was loaded onto a backboard and placed in a transport truck and rushed to the helicopter landing area and the awaiting Blackhawk medevac helicopter. Luttrell ordered the pilot to head to Queen’s Medical Center, Oahu’s only Level I Trauma Center. Andy made it through five hours of surgery, fifty units of blood, and the administration of last rights, Chrissy at his side. The next twelve hours resulted in additional surgeries and an additional twenty units of blood.
Following four weeks of hospitalization, Haffele’s attention turned to the physical and occupational rehabilitation of his right arm, which was now nonfunctional. During this time Michael Murphy was a frequent visitor. On several occasions Andy and Michael had heart-to-heart conversations, with Michael expressing extreme remorse for what had happened. During the subsequent investigation by the judge advocate general, Commander DeGhetto repeatedly interviewed Michael Murphy and reported the following.
Mike was a young officer with limited experience and it is part of growing and learning, and unfortuately it had dire—almost dire consequences for Andy Haffele. Over the years there have been numerous close calls when conducting live fire exercises, that after the fact everyone looks around wipes their brow and says, “Thank God nobody got hurt.” Everything we do is high risk. Mike was learning. They were doing a closed terrain manuever. I was with the patrol at the time, maybe three or four feet away from Mike who was the squad leader on this iteration. They had a contact rear, a center peel was called, because there was no other tactical manuever you could do. Everybody goes down into their field of fire. When Andy steps down into his field of fire, there is very tall elephant grass, perhaps five or six feet tall between Mike and Andy. As the guys were center peeling back, Mike went down on his four power scope. As soon as he went down on that scope, he lost situational awareness, as Andy stood up. Being three feet away, I saw
Mike fire—I saw the muzzle flash, I looked at Andy’s chest and didn’t see any blood, I then looked in his eyes and I could tell he was hit. I told the Range Safety Officer that he had a man down and the medical safety procedures were put into action.
Ironically enough, two days before the shooting I had fired the corpsman and replaced him with Marcus Luttrell, the lone survivor. Make no mistake, Andy Haffele is alive today because of Marcus Luttrell.
After the incident, I sat down with my Command Master Chief, my Operations boss, senior leaders, my XO my executive officer, the senior guys especially in the training department that saw Mike and his abilities day in and day out. As a community, sometimes we “eat our own” in situations like this. It is easy to fire sombody, throw them by the side of the road and say you are not worthy to wear that Trident. Mike made a mistake. He lost situational awareness for a split second, but he would never, ever do that again. I made the decision, I briefed my Admiral [Maguire], he backed me up, because I told him point blank that Mike would never make that mistake again, as this was a mistake that you learn from.
Every single person I talked to recommended keeping Mike, putting him back on the horse and keeping him in ALFA Platoon. He was that good. It was not a easy decision, because I knew that a lot of people would second-guess my decision, but it was the right thing to do. We all make mistakes, and it was a mistake. Granted, it cost Andy his career, but it was a mistake. Mike took this incident to heart and he learned from that mistake. He was a smart kid.
SEAL of Honor Page 18
