CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

FOR THE PAST TWENTY years I had been involved in some form or another with the emerging development of unconventional warfare. My kids grew up and my wives left me while I went gallivanting around the globe making the world “safe for democracy” and all that. I couldn’t stand the thought of my marriage with Barbara ending like the others.

I retained my reserve commission in the U.S. Navy with the rank of full commander, but decided to resign from the CIA and take a more conventional job. Barbara remained with the Agency in long-term station at Langley while I took several GS-rated civilian government positions. Although these jobs required some travel, we still lived, more or less, a “normal” lifestyle. Little house in the suburbs, two-car garage, postage-stamp lawn.

I served stints with the Merchant Marine & Fisheries and the National Transportation Safety Board before being offered a post with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration as its worldwide activities manager for “Manned Undersea Science and Technology.” I was considered one of the nation’s foremost experts on unconventional warfare when it came to the world’s bodies of water.

One CIA-DOD research project had to be the epitome of clandestine warfare—the utilization of animals as warrior surrogates. The concept of training dolphins to assist in war had been on man’s mind for a thousand years. In water pens bigger than Olympic pools at Naval Station Key West, a top secret experiment tested the concept of training bottlenose dolphins for combat tasks.

Dolphins are extremely intelligent mammals. I often donned SCUBA to roughhouse with them in the pool. They were affectionate, intelligent animals who wanted to play endlessly.

During one test, I pretended to be drowning by relaxing my arms and floating slowly to the bottom of the pool. A female named Gloria dove to the rescue. She nosed and pushed my 225 pounds to the surface and held me above water until I indicated I was breathing again. A marvelous demonstration. I grabbed her and hugged her as we tumbled playfully across the pool.

She “kissed” me on the face.

“Sorry, ol’ gal, I’m already married.”

It was good to be working in the water again. Back during my early days with UDT-21, I volunteered for a water project at the Naval Air Development Center in Johnsville, Pennsylvania, for the National Aeronautical and Space Administration. Guinea-pig Frogs submerged ourselves in a swimming pool one degree below body temperature for eighteen hours to simulate extended weightlessness in space. At the bottom of the pool, we performed various tasks such as eating liquid food out of plastic bags, playing chess and checkers, writing notes with grease pencils on whiteboards, using underwater sign language, and even watching TV in a waterproof case. All this subsequently became part of the normal training routine for astronauts preparing for their duties in space.

That wasn’t nearly as exhilarating as this was now with dolphins. The graceful creatures had a natural sonar ability to detect intruders from the sea. We trained them to press a buzzer to sound an alarm to a sentry on shore, then intercept. Divers failed every time to get through. A three-hundred-pound dolphin made a formidable defensive tackle.

Dolphins could also tow or push through the water packages of explosives that weighed up to one hundred pounds and magnetically attach them to a target.

The project remained top secret for another half-dozen years before a disgruntled civilian scientist leaked it to the news media. It was immoral and a waste of taxpayer money, he testified before the Senate Intelligence Committee, to train dolphins to detect and attack enemy Frogmen and place electronic monitoring devices or explosives on enemy ships.

Actually, the sleek animals were first-rate night fighters.

We deployed our dolphins to Vietnam to patrol Cam Ranh Bay; one dolphin attempted to recover a nuclear weapon lost near Puerto Rico. Another entered Havana Harbor and attached an electronic device to a Soviet nuclear-powered ship to measure the ship’s efficiency. Still others tracked Soviet submarines and stole mines from Chinese waters.

My sweet Gloria attacked a Soviet Komar boat off Cuba that was chasing fleeing refugees trying to reach Florida. The explosive she carried blew off the gunboat’s stern. The refugees got away. Gloria died. I put up a marker for her on the beach at Key West.

Dolphins were another victory in the battle against the dark forces of communism. Gloria and all our other aquatic freedom fighters should have been awarded medals.

* * *

The science and art of unconventional warfare followed me like shadows, even though I had left the UW business.

Camcraft, Inc., of Marrero, Louisiana, a company that participated in the development of the Swift Boat, contracted with Washington to build a river patrol boat for use by our “Brown Water Navy” in Vietnam. Riverine Forces and SEALs along the Mekong required souped-up, heavy-duty boats for their continuing quarrel with communist guerrillas. Since I had worked on the Swift Boat, I represented the government in discussions over how these new boats, called PBRs (Patrol Boat-River), should be constructed.

I recommended my old friend and “First SEAL” Roy Boehm for the task of training Riverine Forces in use of the PBR. Boehm, now in his late forties, was about to be medically discharged from the Navy because of a knee injury acerbated by a terrorist bombing in Saigon. He was in the hospital when he received orders to report to the Naval Amphibious School at Coronado as senior instructor for a new curriculum in counterinsurgency training on inland waterways. Commander Jerry Ashcroft from Junk Force Base TF-33 in Cat Low, and Boehm’s former combat partner, commanded the new program. I flew out to greet Boehm’s arrival since the PBR was partly my creation—and since Ashcroft confided in me how Roy’s morale needed a kick in the butt.

The walls at the Special Operations Center were closing in on the craggy-faced old bos’n. He stood at the office window watching a class of Basic UDTR trainees jog past on the beach in their helmets and wet fatigues chanting a Jody call. UDT had not yet merged with SEALs, but there was talk of it happening soon.

I recognized the longing on Roy’s face. How he missed the excitement, the adrenaline flow, even the frustrations of being one of these special men. Sometimes I experienced the same yearnings.

“Instead,” Roy lamented, “I’m a teacher.”

He turned slowly away from the window to face Ashcroft and me. “Let me off the hook?” he pleaded. “I don’t belong here.”

Ashcroft straddled a chair backwards. “Boy-san, haven’t you always said someone needed to educate troops before we sent them off to become cannon fodder? You said they needed to know why they were going, where they were going, who they were fighting, what to expect when they got there, and how to fight.”

“They need a teacher to teach them, not me.”

“What the hell do you think you were doing when you were a bos’n mate on a five-inch gun in the South Pacific? How about all the years you were diving, experimenting with it, and passing that knowledge on? How about when you trained UDT Frogs? How about the SEALs? The SEALs were your creation as much as any other man’s. You trained them. You taught them. How about the Nguoi Nhai in Vietnam? Who taught them? You did. You’re a teacher, Boy-san. One of the best. Teaching is more than being able to spell ‘unconventional warfare.’ Hell, you don’t need to spell it. You lived it. Boy-san, there ain’t gonna be no walking out on this.”

I nodded agreement. “Roy, teach these guys. Teach them how to stay alive. Now get the hell out there and do your job.”

The first PBRs were of armored fiberglass, thirty-one feet in length, nine and a half feet across the beam, heavily armed with twin 50-caliber machine guns and M-60 machine guns, and an assortment of small arms. Operation Game Warden in Vietnam operated on brown waters in boats I helped design, with crews Roy Boehm trained. PBR warriors became both feared and famous as the process of war further tempered naval special warfare.