What most people do not realize is that SEALs spend a lot more time training than they do on deployment. There are years of training before the first time a SEAL embarks on a mission, and months of training between deployments. It never ends. Sometimes the training is pretty much what you expect it to be: a lot of time hiking and camping in the wilderness, or jumping out of airplanes, or becoming proficient with a certain type of weaponry.
You know, exactly the kind of stuff you dreamed about doing when you were going through BUD/S. The crazy, fun stuff.
But other times, the training is not at all what you expect. Sometimes it’s quieter, more cerebral. Sometimes there are opportunities that you never imagined would come your way, and if you keep your mind open, they can change your life.
By 2006, I was solidly entrenched as a member of SEAL Team 4, stationed in Virginia. I loved everything about the job; it was my entire life, and I threw myself into it with every ounce of energy I possessed. As laid-back as I might have been while growing up in Texas, I was driven and focused when it came to my career as a SEAL. I knew almost from the minute I completed BUD/S that one day I wanted to be part of the navy’s most elite team.
Just being part of the SEALs was great, but everyone knew that SEAL Team (redacted) was the best of the best: an elite counterinsurgency and fighting unit that drew the most challenging missions around the globe. Just as not everyone who joins the navy wants to be a SEAL, not every SEAL dreams of making it to Team (redacted). But many do, and I was certainly one of them. I knew it would be a long journey through an ever-narrowing funnel, but I did everything I could to make myself a strong candidate by going to the right training schools, getting certified in multiple areas, and, most important of all, by doing the best job I could possibly do while I was on SEAL Team 4. The most critical factor in being selected to try out was a recommendation from your current team leaders, troop chief, and master chief, so I knew I had to have a stellar reputation. I wanted to hunt down the baddest of the bad guys in the world’s hot spots, and it was no secret that you’d have the best chance to do that if you were on SEAL Team (redacted).
I knew what my future would look like.
Or at least I thought I did.
In 2006, while on a training exercise in the mountains of Kentucky, I was exposed to a relatively new program within Naval Special Warfare, and while it didn’t change my career plans, it did open my eyes to the possibility that there might be roles within the SEALS that I did not even realize existed. I’d been to South America by this point. I’d spent several months on deployment with Seal Team 4, primarily doing security work in Iraq. It was, for the most part, a quiet deployment, with only a handful of operations, and I was eager to see more action. For now, though, the days and months were filled with training exercises as we waited for the next deployment.
We were doing some urban-warfare training, and in between the excursions, we were invited to take part in a unique demonstration. Unbeknownst to me, the military had recently begun incorporating working dogs into special operations, and they wanted to give us—the guys who would be on the front lines—a sneak preview.
Now, I had a vague notion that dogs were used in law enforcement and some aspects of the military, but I knew almost nothing about military working dogs and even less about how they might be employed in Special Operations. I did, however, love dogs. My mom owned some little dogs, while my dad and I had some big dogs—rottweilers and pit bulls rescued from shelters or just picked up as strays in the street. I’d never done an ounce of training with any of our family dogs—most of them were boisterous, goofy, and prone to getting out of the house and wreaking havoc. But they were harmless enough. We raised them with lots of love, took good care of them, and generally got the same in return. I never expected more from any of my dogs than a good game of fetch and someone to curl up beside me when I was watching TV. That was enough.
What I saw on this day opened my eyes to other possibilities.
It was a short demonstration, just two men and a dog. But what a dog it was! The handler explained that the dog was a Belgian Malinois. I’d never even heard of the breed, but it looked like a German shepherd, only slightly smaller and leaner, and more muscular. The Malinois, the handler explained, was extremely smart and athletic and had been successfully utilized by law enforcement agencies and some aspects of the military for years; more recently, it had been integrated into Special Operations.
“Let me tell you a little bit about this guy and what he can do,” the handler said.
There were probably sixty of us in attendance—roughly thirty members of SEAL Team 4, and thirty support people. We all stood around, sort of marveling at the dog’s physical strength and beauty, but unsure what to expect, and certainly unconvinced of how he might be of much use to us on deployment. I’m not saying we were skeptical or negative in any way—curious might be a better word. In my time as a SEAL, I was open to the idea of using any tool that could make my job easier and safer; I think most guys felt that way. Arrogance and narrow-mindedness will not only make a mission more difficult, they’re liable to get you killed. Why not entertain all possibilities?
The handler told us all about the Malinois’s incredible sense of smell, how he could detect an explosive odor better than any man-made technology currently available. Obviously, there were any number of ways in which this skill could be utilized: sniffing out roadside bombs in Iraq before they had a chance to kill a Humvee full of American soldiers; detecting an improvised explosive device (IED) that might be hidden near the perimeter of a compound in the mountains of Afghanistan. The dog’s ability to track scents could also be used to ferret out bad guys hidden within the compound’s walls. Or, as we were about to discover, to run down “squirters” (insurgents fleeing from a building or other target) in a manner that was at once brutal and efficient.
There were actually two handlers. One of them put on a bite suit—basically a heavily padded outfit that covered his torso and extremities, but not his face—and began walking away from the dog and the other handler. He moved a little like the Michelin Man, wobbling awkwardly from side to side because of the bite suit. Meanwhile, the other handler kept a firm grip on the harness of the Malinois. The dog clearly knew what was happening. He did not strain or pull against the handler’s grip, but his body was tight, his eyes fixed on the target moving slowly away from him. I noticed the Malinois shifting his weight subtly, bouncing lightly on his paws. Like a racehorse in the starting gate, he was eager to run and simply waiting for the command.
The man in the bite suit kept walking, walking, walking across an open field, until he was perhaps fifty meters away. He stopped and turned to face the other handler and the dog. Then he waved his hands and began running. Well, shuffling, really, but still, he had a head start roughly equivalent to half the length of a football field. How quickly could the Malinois make up the distance? And what would happen when he reached his target?
The answers to both questions came soon enough. The handler released the dog and shouted a word I did not recognize. Instantly, as if shot out of a gun, the Malinois burst into a dead sprint. An audible gasp went up from the crowd, the sound of appreciation and wonder. I had some fairly strong and athletic dogs when I was a kid, but I had never seen anything like this. The Malinois, seventy-five pounds of muscle, looked more like a greyhound, skimming across the ground so effortlessly that he seemed almost to be flying. I figured it would take him maybe a half minute to catch the fleeing Michelin Man, but it took less than a fraction of that. The dog devoured the distance between them in what felt like a heartbeat, finishing with an explosive pounce that brought the target to the ground like a wide receiver getting blindsided by a free safety.
As the man fell, the dog attached himself with his teeth, wrapping his muzzle around the man’s arm and hanging on with an intensity and fierceness I had never seen. And remember—I had owned pit bulls and rottweilers! There were more gasps from the crowd, followed by laughter, and then some shouts of approval and respect. It was like watching one of those nature videos where a cheetah runs down a gazelle, or a shark launches itself into a sea lion. Although there was no blood, it was still impressively violent. The dog was less than half the size of the man, but completely and utterly in control of the situation. As the guy writhed on the ground, yelping and flailing his arms in a futile attempt to discourage his attacker, the other handler jogged across the field, a big smile on his face.
I found it interesting that the Malinois was so precise in his attack. He could have bitten the man’s neck or face, but instead he simply held tight to the arm with a viselike grip. There was, in fact, no attempt to bite any other part of the target. It was like the dog understood his job: to track down the runner, bring him to the ground, and restrain him until the other handler arrived. And this he did with stunning effectiveness. As the other handler arrived at the scene of the attack and put a firm hand on the dog’s harness, the dog at first maintained his bite. But when the handler shouted again—issuing another command I could not understand—the Malinois loosened his grip. The handler then easily pulled him off the target, giving the Michelin Man time and space to climb to his feet. As he did so, we all broke into spontaneous applause.
And that was about it. The handler in charge of the demonstration thanked us for our time and reiterated that this was not merely a project in development but an inevitability: military working dogs had been integrated into the highest levels of Special Operations, including the Navy SEALs, and soon enough we’d find ourselves on deployment with them. I suppose it’s possible that a few guys were skeptical. After all, things do not happen quickly in the navy. And maybe there were some people who, despite what they had just witnessed, simply didn’t see the value of bringing a dog out on a mission. I saw the Malinois for what it was: a weapon. And an impressive one, at that.
Still, I never imagined that the fledgling canine program would have much of an impact on me personally. At the time, I was focused on being a shooter. An operator. A SEAL. There wasn’t room in my head to fantasize about all the ways a dog might one day work itself into my life. That would happen much later.
In late 2006, I deployed for a second time to Iraq with SEAL Team 4. A generally accepted prerequisite for screening for Team (redacted) is to have two deployments under your belt. This makes sense; you get more responsibility with each deployment, which helps you build a résumé—and gives the navy a better opportunity to assess the capabilities of each applicant and to narrow the pool through evaluations and recommendations of superiors. Basically, what you are told is this: “Don’t even think about asking to join SEAL Team (redacted) until you’ve been around a couple of years.”
I was not that patient.
In fact, I started asking about the screening process early in my second deployment. I knew it wouldn’t happen at that point, but I wanted to make sure that my career goals were clear and that my interest was conveyed right up the chain of command. I figured everyone would appreciate my honesty and enthusiasm; this turned out not to be the case.
As with everything in the military, protocol must be followed. I had taken the first step in the application process by signing a simple form expressing my interest. It wasn’t a big deal, since a lot of guys had expressed interest. Most of them knew enough to just sign the form and let it go—do their job and hope for the best. I signed the form and then made a habit of following up with verbal requests.
“When can I screen? I’m ready.”
“Shut up and relax, Cheese [my nickname]. We’ll let you know.”
This continued throughout my second trip to Iraq, which was roughly twice as long as the first deployment (six months instead of three months), and significantly more intense. Baghdad was the scene of heavy urban fighting in those days, and had been since the Siege of Sadr City had begun some two years earlier. This particular deployment put us in the heart of the action at the beginning of a massive U.S. surge, ordered by President George W. Bush during Operation Iraqi Freedom, that sent an estimated twenty thousand additional troops into Iraq, ostensibly to help the Iraqi government stabilize a wildly unstable region and to protect locals against insurgents.
Baghdad at that time was one of the most dangerous places on the planet—a steaming cesspool of terrorists and heavily armed insurgents who were often indistinguishable from the people we were trying to protect. It was, for me, an eye-opening job. But it was precisely where I wanted to be. From the first time we barreled through Sadr City, evading roadside IEDs and often with guns blazing, I knew I was right where I belonged. I never questioned the logic or politics of our work; I had a job to do, and I did it to the best of my ability. I’m not the first person to say this, but I’ll say it again: when you are a solider, on the ground, in the middle of a battle, you fight not just for your country, or even primarily for your country, but for the brothers on your right and on your left. There were times, in both Iraq and Afghanistan, when the ever-changing rules of engagement made our jobs more difficult, if not downright confounding, but we did the best we could.
In Baghdad, in late 2006 and early 2007, we had a lot of latitude when it came to general combat and removing high-value targets. And I felt like a sponge; every day, I was learning new tactics and doing a job that I felt was important. I was saving lives. Sometimes, in the process, I took lives. That’s just the way it worked. I can’t remember the first time I killed someone; I’m not even sure I realized it at the time. The fighting in Baghdad was often chaotic and frantic and a lot less personal than it would be in Afghanistan. We’d be driving through Sadr City, taking sniper fire, and we’d sometimes spray an entire building in response. These were not precise, strategic attacks; they were an appropriately heavy-handed response to deadly force, and I’m sure that opposition forces were obliterated as a result. I didn’t lose a minute’s sleep over it.
Nor did I anguish over the more intimate encounters that resulted in death. The fact is, that was the role of Special Operations: not just to support ground troops in battle—although we did that—but to locate and eliminate targets that were deemed by U.S. intelligence to be of significant importance, as well a threat to Iraqi civilians and American troops. Targets is a clean and benign term. Sounds like it could be an office building or a facility for manufacturing weapons. Sometimes that’s exactly what it was. More often than not, though, in the context of Special Operations, the term target referred to a person or a group of people.
Bad guys.
We’d get our intelligence and go after the target. This usually meant going door to door, sometimes breeching a locked or fortified building, interviewing locals to determine whether they were friendly or helping the insurgents. Sometimes the night would end quietly, with no engagement. Sometimes it would result in close-quarters combat. Sometimes it went smoothly, with only a few shots being fired, all from our side. The end result, more often than not, was the elimination of a target.
Other times, new and unanticipated targets presented themselves suddenly in the heat of battle or during the course of a strategic operation. In other words, one target sometimes led to another. These were the most challenging circumstances, for they required not only technical skill and combat acumen but the ability to think on your feet … and the confidence to make decisions that might have large and lasting ramifications.
And deadly consequences.
There was, for example, a day early in my second deployment with Team 4, when I found myself on the roof of a building in Baghdad, surveying the scene on the roof of a second building across the street. This was typically the way we worked: one group of operators would enter a building, while one or two snipers, often accompanied by a translator or an Iraqi soldier (one of the “good guys”) would hold down security from another vantage point. In Iraq, the fighting was such that any building might not only be occupied by insurgents but rigged with explosives or overseen by snipers. It was imperative that we had another set of eyes, or multiple sets of eyes, on activity outside the building to ensure the safety of our guys.
At first, everything was pretty quiet, until the Iraqi soldier called my name. I walked over to another part of the roof.
“There,” he said, pointing to a man in street clothes on the other building, hustling around the roof.
“What do you think?” I asked.
The Iraqi shook his head. “No good.”
I fell to my stomach, flipped open the tripod on my MK-12, a highly reliable semiautomatic sniper rifle loaded with a 5.56 mm cartridge, and peered through the scope. And then I watched. I followed his movements for the next minute or two as he scurried about the roof of the building. At one point, he took out a cell phone—usually, although not always, a bad sign—and began talking to someone. He put the phone away, moved around the roof some more. He went to the edge of the roof and stared at the street below for a few seconds and then backed away.
By any reasonable definition, his behavior was suspect. By the standards of urban warfare in Baghdad, his behavior practically screamed, “Trouble!” I had buddies in that building. My job was to protect them so that they could safely complete their mission. Intelligence had told us the building was occupied by insurgents, and now, on the roof of that building, was a young man in street clothes, talking on a cell phone and nervously surveying the landscape below. He seemed unusually skittish—moving around anxiously, hopping over small rooftop walls, peering over the side of the building and then retreating to a sheltered spot, and talking on his phone.
Among the tactics utilized by insurgents in Baghdad at that time was a relatively low-tech assault in which hand grenades were lobbed from rooftops into passing Humvees occupied by U.S. soldiers. It was simple … and brutally effective. I didn’t know if the guy had a stash of grenades at his disposal; from my vantage point, even with a high-powered scope, it was difficult to tell. For all I knew, he might have had a box of grenades hidden out of sight.
Anything was possible.
I continued to watch and wait, all the while keeping the guy directly in my crosshairs. I thought about the various ways in which the scenario could unfold. If I shot the guy, and he turned out to be nothing more than a harmless civilian, there would be serious repercussions. Morally speaking, of course, I did not want to kill an innocent civilian. Legally, I’d face some serious shit, and there would be blowback for the entire unit. It’s one thing when a civilian is killed because he or she is in the wrong place at the wrong time—near the site of an explosion, for example. That is tragic, but it is unfortunately sometimes a consequence of war. And it is more readily explainable, if not necessarily acceptable.
These things are not always black and white, and occasionally mistakes are made in the chaos of combat. But SEALs are trained in such a way as to minimize such occurrences; moreover, the intelligence we received was usually rock solid, which helped tremendously. Still, there were many times when difficult decisions were left up to the individual, who had to use his head and his experience, as well as his instinct, to make the right choice.
I was still young and raw; nevertheless, this was my call. There was no one to ask for advice. I had been trained to make precisely this type of decision and to live with the consequences.
I squeezed the trigger. There was a slight hesitation as the bullet whistled through a couple of hundred meters of air. The man on the building across the street dropped to the roof.
This was one of my first kills—or, at least, one of the first that I was sure of. There were no exultations, no celebration or anything like that. In the moment after he fell, I mainly felt relief that a threat to my teammates had been eliminated. But I’d be lying if I didn’t admit that a tiny part of me worried that I’d made a mistake.
As it happened, I’d made the right call. The guy on the roof was precisely the target we had sought. He’d heard our unit approaching and, with no way to get out of the building, had rushed to the roof. Did I have to shoot him? Maybe, maybe not. But if the alternative to taking him out was the possibility that he might throw a grenade at one of my buddies, then I’m at peace with the decision.
As a bonus, at a morning briefing a couple of days later, one of the battalion commanders informed us that the guy I’d killed had been responsible for the deaths of several American soldiers; they’d been after him for a while.
“Thank you,” he said. “From everyone. Nice job, son.”
I felt pretty good about that outcome, and it helped instill the confidence to make tough calls throughout my time as a SEAL. On balance, as I look back on it, I feel worse and lose more sleep over the shots I didn’t take than the ones I did take.
I actually loved being a Navy SEAL on deployment. I found it to be exciting and highly challenging work—exactly what I had spent the previous several years training to do. There was no moral ambiguity for me, nor for any of the SEALs with whom I worked as far as I could tell. We were the good guys, they were the bad guys. Simple as that. The guy I shot? Given half a chance, he’d have done the same to me.
Killing is part of the contract for a SEAL; a big part, in fact. I never had any problem with that. We were always careful to minimize the risk to civilians or other friendlies. The elimination of a murderer—and that is precisely the way I viewed our targets, as people who killed freely and indiscriminately (terrorists, in short)—caused me not a second of unrest; not while I was on deployment, and not when I came home.
It was the battles lost, large and small, that broke my heart. It was the friends who gave their lives. That’s the stuff that affected me the most, and it stayed with me a long time.
SEALs are very good at what they do. They are generally better trained than the enemy, better equipped, and more committed to the outcome. They win more than they lose, even when outnumbered. But the truth of war—including Special Operations—is that sometimes you take casualties, and no amount of preparation or training can prevent it from happening. My introduction to this reality came during my second deployment, when we lost a good friend of mine, Special Warfare Operator Second Class Joseph C. Schwedler.
I’d known Clarkie (his middle name was Clark, and most everyone referred to him as Clarkie) since BUD/S. We were both part of Class 246. Clarkie had grown up in Crystal Falls, Michigan, and went on to attend Michigan State before enlisting in the navy. Like a lot of us, he knew from the moment he signed up that he wanted to be a SEAL. He was a former high school football and basketball player—tough and athletic with a great sense of humor and unwavering good spirits. He wasn’t a thrill-seeker. He was a patriot who believed in service. He was just the kind of positive person you wanted to be around, especially when going through the misery of BUD/S.
Clarkie and I were both assigned to SEAL Team 4, in Virginia, and although we were assigned to different platoons, in different parts of the country, when we got to Iraq, we remained good friends. He was just a solid, loyal guy, extremely competent and committed. But shit happens, and it can happen to anyone.
Like the rest of us on SEAL Team 4, Clarkie was coming up on the end of his second deployment to Iraq in early April 2007, when a coalition helicopter was shot down by terrorists near Fallujah, where Clarkie’s platoon was stationed. Shortly thereafter, intelligence led to a raid on a home occupied by insurgents suspected of being involved in the attack. There was nothing unique about the raid, and I guess that merely underscores the danger of the job. As often happened in Iraq, the team encountered resistance, including a shooter who had barricaded himself behind a locked door. The door was breeched, entry was made, and during the encounter, the shooter managed to squeeze off a few rounds, at least one of which hit Clarkie. He died almost immediately.
Clarkie’s death, which occurred, coincidentally, on the same day as my father’s birthday, hit me hard, both because of our friendship and brotherhood as members of SEAL Team 4 and because it was a reminder of the fragility of life. We weren’t invincible. Despite all our training and preparation—despite the technology and intelligence that supported us—we weren’t infallible. The job was dangerous and potentially deadly. But Clarkie’s death did nothing to dissuade my ambition. If anything, his passing provoked within me an even greater commitment to the cause. I’m not saying I wanted to avenge his death or anything like that; we were all a little more pragmatic and professional than that. We knew the risks of the job and accepted them without complaint. So while I was deeply saddened by the passing of my friend, I was not discouraged. If anything, I wanted more than ever to be in the thick of the fight. I wanted access to the missions that had the highest chance of providing lasting change.
I wanted to be part of SEAL Team (redacted).
Throughout my second deployment, I continued to be a pain in the ass on this particular subject. Eventually, I was told in no uncertain terms that what I considered to be persistence was viewed as annoyance.
“If you don’t knock it off, Cheese, you’re going to eliminate yourself from consideration.”
That’s the last thing I wanted, so I toned it down to an acceptable level, while still making it clear that I was interested. When our deployment ended in May, we returned to Virginia. I had started to get the impression that the odds were against me screening, not because of my performance but because I was one of the younger guys on a team that had a bunch of highly capable candidates. There simply wasn’t room for everyone. After all, it wasn’t wise to deplete the ranks of one team. Someone had to stay behind and help train the newer guys. There was a pecking order, and while it was based partly on ability and performance, it was also based on age and experience. Despite having two deployments under my belt, I remained one of the younger guys on SEAL Team 4. I understood, and I wasn’t going to make a big deal out of it. If I had to wait, I would wait. I figured eventually my time would come.
Fortunately, it came almost immediately.