Sea Stories

by William H. Mcraven

  “You cannot do this! You are pirates!”

  I walked to the center of the pilothouse and confronted the master. “Sir, I am a United States naval officer. In accordance with United Nations Resolution 661 you are directed to stop this vessel and be searched.” I motioned to the Marine translator, who repeated the words in Arabic.

  “I speak English,” the master said, spittle flying off his lips.

  “You have one minute to stop this vessel or I will stop it for you,” I remarked quietly.

  “You cannot stop my ship that quickly. It will destroy the engines.”

  “I can. And I will.”

  The red phone on the ship’s console rang with a piercing clang. Picking the phone up, the master’s eyes widened, and he looked at me and yelled, “You have killed one of my men!” The other Iraqis in the pilothouse began screaming at the Marines.

  “If you don’t cooperate,” I cautioned, “more men will die. You now have thirty seconds to stop your ship.” Turning to Stallings, I whispered, “Find out what the hell happened.”

  Stallings nodded and walked to the bridge wing to make comms with the second element.

  Belowdecks the second element had moved from the outer hull of the ship into the vessel’s interior. Making their way down five levels, they entered the engine room, which was hot and steamy, the floor slippery with condensation. The element walked along the steel gratings to the engine control room. Hiding behind the giant machinery, a dozen Iraqis watched as the Marines approached the ship’s control center.

  Walking point, First Sergeant Jones scanned the engine room. The crewmen, peeking around the corners of the immense boilers, seemed to be waiting for something. As Jones stepped forward to enter the control room, an axe-wielding Iraqi leapt from behind a three-foot steam pipe. Jones spun around, leveled his weapon to fire, and then, in an incredible moment of restraint, swung the butt of his CAR-15, catching the crewman on the jaw and sending him sprawling unconscious to the metal floor. Immediately the other Marines fanned out and took up security positions. In the air-conditioned control room an Iraqi who witnessed the action thought his fellow crewman was dead and called the bridge.

  Stallings motioned me to the bridge wing. “Sir, no one’s dead, but one of their crewmen is going to have a bad headache.”

  I returned to the master, who was visibly shaken from the news. I decided to let him think the worst. Dictating the tempo of this confrontation was important. Right now I had the upper hand, and it was important to maintain it.

  “My men are in the engine room ready to shut down your vessel. So either you can bring it to a stop now or I will. Your choice.”

  The master grunted, looked around the pilothouse at his senior officers, and then gave the helmsman the order to bring the vessel to all stop.

  “It will take some time for the ship to be dead in the water.”

  “It will take exactly thirteen minutes,” I noted. “If the vessel isn’t DIW in thirteen minutes, then I will force it into reverse to stop the forward motion.”

  I had his attention now.

  “Master, I will need your ship’s manifest and passenger information. I assume you have it locked in your stateroom cabin. Please go with my Marine and bring it to me.”

  The master looked at Captain Stallings, whose six-foot-four-inch frame would be intimidating under any circumstances, but when you cover it with camouflage and give it a weapon it takes on a whole different level of fear. Stallings grabbed the master by the elbow and directed him to the passageway leading to the cabin. I motioned to another Marine to buddy up and follow Stallings and the master.

  After a few minutes the ship began to slow markedly. I’m not sure it was really thirteen minutes, but in short order the vessel was dead in the water. From inside the bridge, I could see that we were surrounded by warships: the Brewton, the Ogden, and in the distance the Okinawa.

  My radio squelched and I could hear Stallings on the other end.

  “Sir, we’re having some difficulty down here. The master is playing games. Says he can’t open the safe. Forgot the combination.” Before I could answer I heard a voice over the radio yell, “Look out!” The radio went silent.

  “Stallings? Stallings? Can you hear me?” Nothing. The Marines on the bridge monitoring the radio heard the commotion as well. Pointing at the two Marines outside on the bridge wing, I said, “Go down to the master’s cabin and find out what’s going on.”

  “Raven. This is Wildcat.”

  “Roger, Tony. What’s going on down there?”

  “Nothing, sir. Everything’s fine now. The master has decided to open the safe. We should be up in a few minutes.”

  The two Marines on the bridge wing looked at me and I nodded for them to stay put. A few minutes later the door to the pilothouse opened and in walked Stallings. Behind him came a flex-cuffed and bruised master. There was a large welt over his left eye, and his lip was swollen and bleeding slightly.

  I looked at Stallings. He shrugged his shoulders and with a look of complete astonishment said softly, “Sir, the son of a bitch jumped me. I tried to push him off, but he came at me again. He’s built like Jabba the Hutt. Finally I just popped him a couple of times and he stopped fighting.”

  Glancing over at the master, I could see him smiling beneath his bulging lip. His fellow Iraqis were happy. Their captain had resisted the Americans and he had the scars to show for it. I began to hear reports over the net of similar confrontations around the ship. The last thing I wanted was to kill or injure a merchant seaman, but without reinforcements, we were not going to be able to control the ship and contain the large number of crewmen.

  I approached the master. “Sir, please request your crew to cooperate. If they fail to do so, they may be injured or killed.”

  Standing by the ship’s public address system, the first mate grabbed the microphone and yelled in Arabic, “Resist, resist! Do not let them take the ship!”

  The Marine point man ripped the mic away from the first mate.

  “Asshole!” the mate yelled.

  On deck now I could see the crewmen grabbing crowbars, brooms, anything that made a weapon. I was losing control and needed to regain the upper hand. Walking out on the bridge wing, I squeezed the push-to-talk button and called the SEAL reserve force.

  “X-ray Two Zero, this is Raven Zero One.”

  “Roger, Raven Zero One. Two Zero.”

  “Two Zero. Insert the Quick Reaction Force and link up with assault element.”

  “Roger, Zero One. On final now.”

  Within two minutes the fourteen-man SEAL element, under the command of Lieutenant Dave Kauffman, was on the ship and corralling the belligerent crewmen. It took another hour or so and several fisticuffs before we finally policed up all the Iraqi sailors and detained them in the crew’s lounge. After ninety minutes on the Amuriyah, the ship was secure without any major injuries to either the Americans or the Iraqis. A Law Enforcement Detachment (LEDET) consisting of a Coast Guard officer and several other naval officers from the U.S. task force boarded the ship and began a thorough search of the cargo. Six hours later, I extracted the Marines and the SEALs and we returned to the Ogden. A few hours after that the Amuriyah was cleared to proceed to Iraq. Nothing unusual was ever found, but considering the size of the massive tanker, it’s conceivable that “something” was carefully hidden in the ship’s hold.

  The Amuriyah returned to Iraq. On January 17, the United States and its allies began Operation Desert Storm. During the opening days of the war, intelligence revealed that Saddam was preparing to create an ecological disaster by filling Iraqi ships with oil and then sinking them in the Arabian Gulf. One of those ships was the Amuriyah. On January 23, an A-6 from the carrier USS Midway dropped two five-hundred-pound bombs into the hull of the Amuriyah, sinking her off the coast of Bubiyan Island, well before she could take on any oil.

  During Desert Storm, PHIBRONFIVE and the 13th MEU would go on to liberate a number of small Gulf islands
seized by the Iraqis, participate in the amphibious deception operation, and secure the Kuwaiti island of Failaka, detaining over twelve hundred Iraqi soldiers. It had taken me fifteen years since SEAL training, but I had finally gotten to serve my country in a meaningful way.

  As terrible as it sounds, every SEAL longs for a worthy fight, a battle of convictions, and an honorable war. War challenges your manhood. It reaffirms your courage. It sets you apart from the timid souls and the bench sitters. It builds unbreakable bonds among your fellow warriors. It gives your life meaning. Over time, I would get more than my fair share of war. Men would be lost. Innocents would be killed. Families would be forever changed. But somehow, inexplicably, war would never lose its allure. To the warrior, peace has no memories, no milestones, no adventures, no heroic deaths, no gut-wrenching sorrow, no jubilation, no remorse, no repentance, and no salvation. Peace was meant for some people, but probably not for me.

  Ten months after I left San Diego I returned home and was met by Georgeann, Bill, John, and my new daughter, Kelly Marie. A few weeks later I visited my father in San Antonio. He hugged me tightly, told me how proud he was of me and that he hoped I would never have to go to war again. But twelve years later I would return to Iraq to help finish the job of defeating Saddam Hussein.

  CHAPTER NINE

  SECOND CHANCES

  MORRO BAY, CALIFORNIA

  February 1995

  Second chances. They are noble intentions that come with expectations and obligations. They can heal or they can cut. They can result in an uplifting hymn or a Greek tragedy. The outcome of second chances is never preordained. Some people will make the most of them and the giver of the chance will be proud, and some will squander them and the world will say, “I told you so.” Giving second chances can be risky.

  “Guilty.”

  At my words, Lieutenant Jeremy Carter, dressed in his summer white uniform, seemed crushed by the decision. He was a young SEAL who had a good career behind him and a lot of potential for promotion. Now his career was finished.

  As the commanding officer of SEAL Team Three, I had reviewed the charges against him and found that he had violated article 133, conduct unbecoming an officer, and article 92, failure to obey a lawful order. He had been caught driving under the influence and evading a police officer, and I knew that I had to hold him accountable for his actions. He was a SEAL officer and we had high standards for conduct.

  After everyone left my office, my command master chief, a seasoned Vietnam veteran named Billy Hill, returned to talk with me.

  “You were a little hard on him, sir.”

  “I know, Billy, but I can’t bust the enlisted guys for a DUI and then not hold the officers accountable as well.”

  “Yes sir, but the enlisted guys can survive a bust. The officer’s career is over.”

  Billy was right, but in my mind the expectations were higher for officers and therefore their performance needed to be higher as well.

  “Maybe you should give him another chance.”

  I just nodded.

  Commanding a SEAL Team was the best job in the Navy, but the proverbial Sword of Damocles always hung precariously over your head. Every day you had to choose between being a hard disciplinarian, making the tough decisions necessary for running a SEAL Team, and being compassionate when someone made a mistake, looking beyond their failure to an alternate future—a future where they excelled and made a positive difference in the lives of your sailors. Of all people, I knew the value of a second chance.

  Since graduating from training, I had done just about everything expected of a SEAL officer. I had served two tours with our SEAL Delivery Vehicles, commanded a SEAL platoon in South America, deployed to Desert Shield and Desert Storm as a SEAL Task Unit commander, and worked in the Pentagon, overseas in the Philippines, and on various SEAL staffs. I was married with three wonderful kids. But not everything in my career had gone perfectly. In 1983, while serving as a squadron commander at our elite East Coast SEAL Team, I was fired. Relieved of my command. It was a jarring, confidence-crushing, hard-to-swallow moment, and I seriously considered leaving the Navy. There seemed little chance of being promoted after losing my job. But, as she would do several times in my career, when I stumbled or circumstances turned against me, Georgeann reminded me that I had never quit at anything in my life—and now was not the time to start. Fortunately, several senior officers still saw potential in me. They gave me another opportunity, and over the years that followed the firing, I tried to redeem myself, proving to the doubters that I was good enough to lead a SEAL Team.

  The master chief changed the subject.

  “Sir, are you going up to Morro Bay to watch Echo Platoon’s final pre-deployment exercise?”

  SEAL Team Three’s Echo Platoon was scheduled to deploy to the western Pacific in about forty-five days, and this was their last training exercise before leaving. As usual, the scenario called for an over-the-beach infiltration by the platoon. The fourteen-man SEAL element would depart from Morro Bay, in central California, aboard two thirty-three-foot Rigid Hull Inflatable Boats (RHIBs). They would transit about thirty miles up the coast to a point off the beach where we had constructed a simulated target. From there, the platoon would swim through the surf, hit the target, swim back through the surf, rendezvous with the RHIBs, and return to Morro Bay. Standard stuff.

  “I’m scheduled to be down in Tampa next week to brief the SOCOM operations officer, but I think I’ll stop by the exercise for a day and see how things are going.”

  The master chief had other commitments and couldn’t make the trip, but the following week, as planned, I drove up the coast to Morro Bay and linked up with Echo Platoon as they were planning a final day of rehearsals.

  Morro Bay is as picturesque a coastal town as there is in California. The entrance to the bay passes by a huge rock formation, appropriately called Morro Rock, and then snakes around, first to the north and then to the south, opening up into a placid harbor where hundreds of yachts of all sizes find refuge. For most of the year the surf rolls gently over the beach in perfect waves, making the coastline a favorite spot for surfers. But during the winter months, that same surf builds to enormous heights, and when funneled by the breakwaters off Morro Rock, they can reach fifty feet.

  Driving into town around sunset, I could see ten-foot waves rolling off the beach, a result of a storm system centered about a hundred miles to the west. However, the funnel effect of Morro Rock and the breakwater was creating a more dangerous situation with a series of plunging twenty-five- to thirty-foot waves right at the entrance to the harbor.

  We had set up our command center at the local Coast Guard station, and as I pulled up to the entrance, Master Chief “Tip” Ammen came out to meet me. The master chief was in charge of the SEAL Team Three training cell and was responsible for the conduct of the exercise. Ammen was older and more experienced than most of the senior enlisted at the command. He was always upbeat, with a good sense of humor and an unflappable personality.

  “The platoon is briefing now, sir. Do you want to sit in on that or take a quick break?” Ammen asked.

  “I’m ready, Tip, let’s go hear what they have to say.”

  The master chief ushered me into the conference room and I sat at the head of a long felt-covered table. On the wall were pictures of Coast Guard cutters, rescue helicopters, and citations for Coast Guard heroism on the Pacific coast. The Coast Guard certainly earned their pay on this dangerous stretch of shoreline.

  The entire platoon was in attendance. The platoon commander, a Naval Academy graduate, was heading his second SEAL platoon, and having watched them for the past six months, the experienced leadership showed in the discipline of the men and the professionalism of their planning.

  Seated along the walls around the room, the members of the platoon were dressed in a mixture of sweats and camouflage utilities. They had been in the bay most of the day, and with the water temperature in the low fifties, many of the men were s
till red-eyed and shivering from the cold.

  The platoon commander did a quick recap of the brief for the following day’s events. “Sir, we will be conducting our final daylight rehearsals.” He pointed to the nautical chart tacked to the wall. “There is a small island inside the protected jetty of the harbor. While there is no surf to contend with, I think it’s a good place for us to do our contact drills.”

  I looked at the chart, and the patch of sand that passed for an island was in sight of the entrance, but well beyond the booming breakers.

  “As you know, sir, the waves at the entrance of the harbor are too large to get past right now. My guess is we may be delayed a couple of days before the waves settle down enough for the boat guys to get through.”

  “Have we talked to the boat officer-in-charge?” I asked.

  “Yes sir. Lieutenant Jones said he is going to take the RHIBs out into the bay tomorrow to see what it looks like at the edge of the surf zone.”

  The chief petty officer of the platoon piped up. “The Coasties warned the boat guys not to get too close to the surf. They showed Lieutenant Jones an old picture of a fifty-foot wave crushing some large pleasure boat.” The chief smiled. “That seemed to get Lieutenant Jones’s attention.”

  The platoon commander continued. “I’m going to let the guys get a good night’s sleep tonight, so we won’t begin the rehearsals until about 0800. Once we complete the daylight drills we will break for lunch, prep our gear, and then start our evening rehearsals as soon as the sun goes down.”

  The platoon commander finished summarizing the brief and we broke for chow. In the mess hall I spent time chatting with the young SEALs. It was the best part of the job. Being a commanding officer was like being the coach of a football team. You knew all the players, their strengths and their weaknesses. Some were quarterbacks, some linemen, and some safeties. Some loved the two-minute drill, the pressure to make a tough decision when the game was on the line. Some were grinders: No matter what you threw at them, they just kept coming at you. Some were risk takers, always trying to jump the route. But all of them loved to play the game, to be where the action was. But beneath the pads, and the helmets, and the bright lights, they were just men, and men made mistakes, they needed guidance. My job was always to find the balance between letting them play hard and keeping them between the lines.