After completing BUD/S and SEAL Qualification Training in early 1991, I was assigned to SEAL Team 3, a West Coast team. Even-numbered teams are stationed on the East Coast in Virginia, and odd number teams are based in San Diego, California. I liked California and was happy to stick around.
Back in the 1990s, everyone had a six-month probationary period before your fellow teammates would recommend that you receive your Warfare insignia. Only then would your SEAL team commander issue you your Trident. There was so much crazy hazing back when I went through the process; nowadays, what we did to each other would be considered assault. The Navy has cracked down on hazing, but it still happens in the teams. It’s all in good nature and humor. They are meant to be rites of passage to affirm that you are accepted and trusted. We could always pick out the guys who wouldn’t be around long, and they were not hazed.
We were finishing up some dive training in Washington State when the guys decided to initiate me into the club. They stripped me totally naked, duct-taped me so that I couldn’t move, then spray-painted me black everywhere except my face. Yes, they even spray-painted my groin, which burned. As if that wasn’t enough, they then dipped me in the forty-degree Puget Sound. These were my friends. Apparently, I passed the initiation rite, because when we arrived back in San Diego, the platoon officially recommended me to the commander to earn my Trident and I officially became a Navy SEAL.
The SEAL teams are full of traditions, and one of them is the “punching in” ceremony. The Navy SEAL Trident is worn on the left side of your chest above all other devices. There were six or seven of us coming onto Team 3. The Trident is a big device and is attached to the uniform with three needle-like prongs that fasten on the opposite side, much like a lapel pin. The commander welcomed me to the Navy SEAL community and placed the Trident in my hand. After he did the same to the others, the team guys lined up, and the first guy took your Trident and placed it on your chest, then pounded it into your body with his closed fist. The Trident’s three prongs were then dug into your flesh.
Everyone on the team took their turn pounding our newly issued Tridents into our chests, one after the other. The commander was the last guy to pound in my Trident. He had a big grin on his face as he approached. He pulled the Trident out of my body and straightened it out like he was fixing a bent nail; then he placed it on my chest and slowly pushed it back in. Damn! That hurt way more than having it punched in.
Before we bury one of our own, SEALs remove their Tridents from their uniforms and pound them into their fallen brother’s wooden casket. We are a close community—and you never, ever leave your swim buddy.
My new skipper was a surfer—my job was to provide him with the official base surf report every morning at 0730. PT normally started at 0730 and ended at 0930. Our morning workouts consisted of body-weight exercises, swim-run-swim sessions on the beach, and/or a few laps through the O-course (obstacle course). My first attempt at the O-course in BUD/S took me forever. The O-course consisted of a series of obstacles that included jumping from stump to stump, climbing and sliding down ropes, climbing elevated obstacles and walls, and crossing rope bridges. When I arrived at Team 3, I could knock it out in a little over six minutes. On Wednesdays we had individual PT, which meant surfing or volleyball. On mornings when the surf was favorable, the skipper would send me out to check the surf report, and if it looked favorable, he would cancel our regular morning PT and all us surfers, including the skipper, would go ride waves for a few hours. The other guys would be on their own and do individual training.
The skipper was the first of three Irish American commanders that I had while with Team 3. Different nationalities are known for their specialties: the Swiss have cheese and neutrality. The Irish have thick dark beer, strong whiskey, and fighters. The Irish are well represented in the SEAL teams.
The skipper was a badass. He would give all the young guys a run for their money on the O-course; he would beat guys half his age, and he could surf. The commander also knew how to stay close to the guys he led. He would be right beside us in the surf; in most cases, he was in front of us leading PT or any other kick-in-the-nuts training exercise. He had an incredible memory and knew all of our names, our wives’ names, and our kids’ names. You could tell he loved us and was proud of us. He led by example, kept us focused, and did his best to protect us from ourselves.
I did a good deal of diving with Team 3. Diving is like entering a different universe, one where all the rules of dry land—like gravity, breathing air, and normal atmospheric pressures—don’t apply. Diving is like traveling in outer space, so much so that NASA uses a pool simulator to train astronauts. You are in another world when you are underwater. Unless you came equipped with gills to separate O2 from H2O, you will need to learn how to breathe underwater.
Once you have mastered this task, then you need to learn how not to kill yourself from diving too deep and coming up too fast, which can cause decompression sickness (DCS), otherwise known as “the bends” or “Caisson’s disease.” Most dive-related ailments are caused by abrupt changes in pressure. The Navy created Dive Tables that give divers parameters as to what depths and dive times are more or less safe.
Dave, one of our senior guys, was a dive master and an under-the-sea guru. He was fifty-three years old when I met him—a total stud, strong as a bull, all muscle and 1 percent body fat. Dave was built like a Greek god. He had so little body fat that you could watch his muscle fibers and veins working under his skin. The Navy had a body fat formula and wanted to kick him out because he didn’t meet a random body fat percentage ratio or some other nonsensical requirement. We sent them a picture of Dave shirtless and they reenlisted him.
Dave was everyone’s dive mentor; he was so comfortable and confident in the water, he was like a damn merman. One day, he failed to return from a solo recreational ocean dive and we went out looking for him. We found him three days later still wearing all of his dive gear, clutching his attack board, regulator still clenched in his teeth. He had passed away from a massive heart attack. Diving is dangerous business. Dave’s death was calibrating; he was our “indestructible” role model. He was also human and mortal. That realization meant that I had to recognize my own mortality and accept the possibility of dying on the job.
There are so many hazards in the water and so many things that can go wrong during a dive. One ping from a ship’s sonar can blow off a diver’s mask and knock him unconscious. Ship water intakes and discharges can wreak havoc on a dive plan. One night, my dive buddy and I were doing a training dive in San Diego Bay when I decided to come up and have a peek. We broke the surface and saw a tugboat headed straight for us. A tug’s propeller extends straight down under the boat. We flipped back under and swam like crazy to the bottom of the bay just in time for the prop to pass over us. I could feel the whirling blades of the propeller pass directly above me.
I was always more concerned about being hit by a ship than I was of being eaten by a shark while diving. It’s not true that all Navy SEALs love the water; we had plenty of guys who hated it, but they put their disdain and fear aside and did it anyway because it was part of the job. I still consider diving the most dangerous task in the SEAL teams.
One of the most stressful training exercises I experienced was swimming against dolphins. The Navy uses dolphins to detect combat swimmers in open water and bays—they find the swimmers, ram them with a rubber cone attached to their snout, and then push the divers to the surface. They’re basically three-hundred-fifty-pound swimming guard dogs.
For the training exercise, my swim buddy and I used a closed-circuit diving apparatus. We had to get all the way across the San Diego Bay without being dolphin-detected. Suddenly, out of nowhere, I got rammed by what felt like a small car. It hit me hard in the ribs and pushed me up to the surface. That damned dolphin would not leave me alone—he kept poking me with his nose cone and he looked like he was having fun. Those big “fish” pack a punch; it really did hurt. We got detected and had to do it over again.
The Navy aired a recruiting commercial that showed all sorts of cool stuff—guys flying off aircraft carriers, working the periscope in a submarine, scuba diving—and at the end of the spot, a man’s voice said, “The Navy: it’s not just a job, it’s an adventure.”
In my case, it was actually true.
My peacetime deployments took me around the globe, across Asia and the Middle East: Egypt, Kuwait, Japan, Korea, Guam, and points beyond and in between, conducting joint country-to-country training. On my deployment to Bahrain, we patrolled the Persian Gulf, enforcing oil embargos. We would board oil tankers that were in violation of various infractions—most of the time, the infraction was that they didn’t identify themselves because their radio didn’t work. We would catch tankers bearing the Iranian flag filled with embargoed Iraqi oil; there were all sorts of shenanigans going on.
The first few times we boarded a tanker were exciting, running across decks and cutting our way through steel hatches with torches, but after a few months it became routine. We were more like water cops than SEALs. And you’d think those massive tankers would be stacked with crew, but they usually only had a handful of guys. I think the most I ever counted was ten. The Navy eventually created Visit Board Search and Seizure (VBSS) teams with its fleet sailors to execute lower-level noncompliance issues.
Years later some folks figured out that these tankers were shockingly easy prey because of their small crews and lack of protection. Modern-day pirates had started seizing and ransoming oil tankers and commercial boats. When it was reported that a tanker had been hijacked off the coast of Somalia and its American crew was taken hostage, a team of my fellow SEALs was called in to take care of the problem. They successfully neutralized the hostage takers and rescued the American hostage. The event was recounted in the film Captain Phillips, starring Tom Hanks. Nowadays, you’ll find retired team guys sailing on tankers around the world, providing security against pirates.
On most deployments, I would bring my surfboard and explore the local surf scene during my free time. I especially enjoyed my deployment to the Philippines, where I could grab my board and hitch a Jeep ride to the coast. The Jeeps would always break down, though, so the trips took a while. But once I got to the coast, I would find a boat to take me to an outlying island where everyone surfed. The surfing was sweet—clear blue water, long waves, easy breaks. There wasn’t much out there, but every now and then someone would catch a big tuna, and we would all eat sushi and drink beers after a full day on the waves.
The Philippines was one of the most fun deployments I went on as a SEAL; it’s also where I had my most terrifying dive experience, quite possibly one of the scariest events of my life. Every dive happens in pairs, with one driver and one navigator. I was the navigator on this training dive; my driver was a senior guy, Logan Hardgrave, who had a wealth of experience. I’d learned from Dave’s death that just because a guy is experienced doesn’t mean he’s invincible or infallible. When we are underwater on the move, navigating by compass and time, we refer to this mode of submerged travel as “flying,” because it is very much like flying a plane.
It was nighttime, pitch dark. Logan and I were swimming in black water. We were on our way to our target—a ship docked in one of the Philippines’ million harbors. We were flying through the black cold Pacific with zero visibility. When we arrived on the assumed target, we found nothing. We felt around for a while, hoping to bump into our target, but nothing. I was sure we were off the mark. We needed to surface to take a peek. When we got to the surface, there was no surface: we banged our heads against a steel pier, and we were stuck under it.
I had been in some very tight spots before, but I had never experienced claustrophobia until that moment. We were surrounded by 360 degrees of blackness; we were lost, sucking up our O2; and if we didn’t regain our bearings fast, we’d circle under the pier until we ran out of air. I was scared, and really pissed off at my driver: we were a team, but it was his job to get us on the target. But there was no way to talk to each other and we couldn’t see each other, so hand signals were useless. I suspected he was panicking too. I attempted to relax while I checked off each one of the emergency procedures. During periods of high stress, our autonomic nervous system takes over and our fight-or-flight response kicks in. I had to control, more like override, my body’s automatic physiological response to extreme fear. I had to control my breathing, heart rate, and thoughts that were creating the fear. I had to put aside the concern of my possible death and work through the process of getting out from under the pier. This episode and others like it have helped to build my resiliency portfolio. They placed me at my physical or psychological limit and induced so much stress that I literally had to sink or swim. Successful navigating of these high-stress situations builds resiliency, a strong sense of self-reliance, and the skills and confidence to meet and overcome the next test.
It took us thirty minutes, but we eventually found the end of the pier by following seams and were able to surface. We returned to base, calmed down for a bit, then yelled at each other.
Just another test.