The Night Osama bin Laden Was Killed
Before the sun poked above the horizon, we had moved back into the village, but we found nothing different from the day before. While we could hear the Taliban anxiously chattering on the radio about assembling a possible attack on our forces, it never happened. The sun set once more, and after a few hours, the Chinooks landed in the valley just to our south to give us a ride back to base.
The Chinooks dropped us off at the helicopter pad near the Afghan commandos’ compound. Exhausted, sweaty, smelly, achy, hungry, and thirsty, we ambled off the helicopters only to learn that we were going to have to walk the rest of the way. It was a mile and a half from the Afghan helicopter pad to our base, and most importantly, our showers and comfy beds.
The last mile and a half shouldn’t have been that big a deal. But after forty-eight hours of hiking through the Afghan mountains, it might as well have been one hundred fifty miles. When I looked at the men of my platoon, I could see in their eyes that everyone felt just like I did. But after a brief moment of self-pity, we uttered a collective, cynical “roger that” and began to hike home with stoic faces. On the surface, it was a small, relatively insignificant moment. To me, it demonstrated the unbreakable will of my platoon.
The hike started in silence, but as we got closer to our compound, our voices picked up and the jokes started to fly. There was a feeling of elation and relief as we passed through the gates to our home away from home, and quickly, the stoicism on our faces was replaced by ear-to-ear grins. We filed into our barracks building, and in unison, began stripping off our heavy gear. The collective funk aggregated in a way that no Yankee Candle could cover up, but we didn’t care. We were “home.”
I unloaded my rifle and pistol and set them inside my room. Next, I ran across the compound to remove my explosives in a safe holding area that the team maintained a distance away from where we slept.
When I went back to the barracks, I felt lighter and quicker just from offloading that relatively small amount of gear. As I sat down on a small bench in front of my room to peel off my boots, a member of my platoon shouted five incredible words, which echoed through the hallway.
“They killed Osama bin Laden!” one of my teammates yelled.
What? Did he just say what I think he said?
I had so many questions, but could it be? Not that I would have been privy to such sensitive, top secret information, but no one I had ever worked with, including the SEALs in my platoon, had ever hinted at having the slightest idea of bin Laden’s location. Even though I was in Afghanistan, I suppose that I subscribed to the same conventional wisdom as the rest of the world in 2011: Osama bin Laden was probably in Pakistan, but the trail had gone cold.
I ripped off my boots, threw the rest of my armor in a pile, and rushed toward a computer. We were fortunate to have Internet at all, but still, it was incredibly frustrating to watch the little spinning pinwheel indicating that the URL bar was still loading. As we continued to wait, it seemed like every US service member stationed in Afghanistan was typing “Osama bin Laden” into their search bars at the exact same time.
Finally, the pinwheel disappeared, and a headline from CNN appeared. It confirmed bin Laden’s death.
The members of my platoon and I were shocked upon learning that the 9/11 ringleader had been found in Abbottabad, Pakistan, which wasn’t that far from our location in Afghanistan. Sometime during the previous night, while Sarge and I had watched Taliban fighters communicating from a mountaintop with blinking lights, members of a different SEAL team had boarded Black Hawk helicopters and stormed a small compound across the border. One or more of those SEALs, we assumed, had shot and killed the man responsible for the deaths of thousands of innocent Americans.
I sat back in amazement at first, not really knowing what to make of this news. I recalled sitting in Mrs. Archer’s class as a seventeen-year-old high school senior and watching in horror on our classroom television set as the second plane hit the World Trade Center. Like so many others, I knew the rest of my life would be different after that terrible moment. Now, almost ten years later, here I was sitting in a filthy combat uniform in desolate southern Afghanistan, with my eyes once again staring at momentous news on a small screen. I felt like the last decade of my life had truly come full circle.
Deep down, I knew that the death of one man wasn’t going to solve anything substantial. I knew that I would remain deployed, along with thousands of men and women like me. I knew that there would be more terrorist plots, and that we would still be asked to disrupt them. I knew that despite our best efforts, more Americans, Afghans, Iraqis, and people of other nationalities would almost certainly die during the ongoing war on terror.
Despite these stark realizations, I still felt an overwhelming sense of triumph. I may not have been in Abbottabad for the raid on bin Laden’s compound, but I was only a few hundred miles away. Sure, I was on a different mission in a different country with a different platoon. But on that historic night, we all had the same goal as the heroes who had been on that raid. We wanted to make the world a better place. Therefore, I firmly believed that I was in the right place with the right men, doing the right thing.
ONE WEEK LATER, an abrupt knock on the door penetrated the pitch black of my small barracks room, which jerked me from a deep slumber. After a moment of confusion, I realized that the knock had occurred in real life, rather than a dream. Before I could move, the knock repeated, sounding louder and harsher. I bolted upright, moved to the door, and ripped it open, becoming temporarily blinded by the hallway’s bright lights.
My boss, the SEAL lieutenant nicknamed Fatty, was standing in my doorframe, appearing as a dark silhouette against the hall’s fluorescent light. Ignoring how close he got to me, he stepped inside, and was obviously uncomfortable.
“Brad, there’s no easy way to tell you this…” he blurted out.
Oh, no … I thought.
Fatty wouldn’t knock on my door this late unless it was bad … real bad. Had a member of my platoon been killed? Their names raced through my mind as I tried to recall the last time I had spoken to each one. Where were they? What were they doing?
I concluded that one or more of my teammates must have been dead. That was why Fatty was in my room in the middle of the night. Next, my panicked thoughts shifted to how the tragedy had occurred. Was it an IED or a shooting? I immediately felt sorry for whichever teammate had tried to desperately save one or more lives, but failed. My heart ached for the one or more military families that would receive such dreadful news, like the family of that fallen soldier we honored at Kandahar Airfield.
As is required during wartime, my mind then shifted to my duties as an EOD officer. We were now down at least one man, which would put all of our lives at even greater risk during subsequent missions. I needed to call back home to our command, and then start working on a situation report. Next, I would need to—
“Brad, it’s your father,” my boss interrupted. “I just received this notification that your dad has … um … passed away.”
He handed me a letter. To my utter disbelief, it was a notification from the Red Cross.
At my mother’s request, I was being officially informed that my father, Michael William Snyder, was dead.
My dad?
I needed to call my mom. I had to not only find out how my father had died, but what I could do to help my mother and my siblings. As a dreadful combination of panic and grief began to set in during that terrible moment, it was so frustrating to be half a world away from the people I cared about most. Then, I felt completely helpless as I wondered what I was supposed to do.
“Let me know what you need, man,” Fatty once again interrupted. “We’re here for you … anything you need.
“I’m sorry,” he said before slowly and quietly leaving the room.
While calling home and hearing my mother’s anguish was extremely painful, I kept my emotions in check. I knew that somehow, I had to temporarily disconnect myself from my father’s death. As officer in charge of a platoon of guys disarming bombs in Afghanistan, I had become accustomed to managing extraordinarily stressful situations in intense environments, especially while doing so almost every day. Tyler and Tara’s respective deaths, coupled with the humiliation of my DUI arrest, had also gotten me used to operating out of a dark place. I was accustomed to the undertow of emotion at the back of my head, but had somehow become proficient at operating around it.
I resolved to go about the next few days as though my family tragedy was merely an administrative issue to resolve. As I spoke again to my mother, and subsequently to each of my siblings, I asked if they needed me to come home. After each said “no,” it was surprisingly easy to tell them that I wasn’t coming back. I had worked so hard to go on that deployment, and my job wasn’t finished. I wasn’t ready to come home and grieve.
I knew that I belonged in Afghanistan, and that my last few months there would be as close to a having a clear, defined purpose as I would ever get. For all I knew, I was about to be kicked out of the Navy because of my DUI. Instead of being welcomed home with a ticker-tape parade, I might have been well on my way to becoming a homeless veteran.
My platoon in Afghanistan needed me. It would have been difficult for my command to find a replacement with my experience and skill set, nor did I want them to try, especially after all the chaos I had caused with my stupid decision to drive drunk.
For a while, I sat down in my room and stared blankly. My thoughts wandered from issue to issue as I tried to work through what I should do in the wake of my dad’s death.
I imagined my father in the room with me, sitting in a chair like the one I had just collapsed into. I could vividly imagine him sitting there wearing his boxy eyeglasses, worn-out golf shirt, and beat-up pair of shorts, much like the ones he used to mow the lawn in. I heard him tapping his wedding ring and the rack that held all my military gear, like he always did when he was giving me a lecture. This time, however, he wasn’t saying anything.
“What should I do, Dad?” I asked.
He didn’t answer. He just looked around the room as if he didn’t hear me.
“Dad, what should I do?” I asked again.
This time, he acknowledged my question, looked at me, and shrugged his shoulders.
I started telling my father how hard I had worked to get where I was, and how I didn’t want to give up what could be my last chance to work with such an extraordinary group of elite warriors. I probably wouldn’t be allowed to do my job much longer, and besides, what was I going to do at home, anyway? Cry at my father’s grave? I figured it would be better to grieve on my own terms.
Again, I asked my dad what to do.
My father simply sat across from me and shook his head in befuddlement. It was clear that my dad’s ghost hadn’t appeared to give me any help.
In that moment, I had a crazy feeling that’s very hard to describe. Physically, it felt sort of like falling, but in my head, a different image came to mind. My room in Afghanistan faded, and suddenly, I was a child in front of my family’s house in Florida; back on the street where I learned to ride my bike. In my imagination, I was learning to do so all over again.
At first, I struggled to pick up my bike, and struggled even more to hold it steady. I was definitely afraid of falling, but most of all, I was scared of failing. I wanted so badly to successfully ride my bike. If I could, I would officially be a big kid, and most importantly, make my dad proud of me.
Suddenly, my father’s ghost materialized behind me to give an assuring nod and smile before gripping the back of my bike’s seat. He asked if I was ready, and even though I wasn’t, I nodded anyway. My dad willed the bike forward as I felt his firm grip holding me upright. I began to pedal, faster and faster. At first I felt wobbly, but eventually, my hands and arms got the feel for the controls. I felt my dad’s grip loosen, and I looked back. There he was, trotting next to me, urging me forward with words of encouragement.
“That’s it, Brad,” my father said. “You’re riding a bike!”
I pedaled harder and began moving even faster than my dad could trot, but I had it now. Then, I gritted my teeth and pedaled as fast as I possibly could. I quickly turned my head and saw that my dad was still jogging, but slowly falling behind. After a while, I worried that he was gone, but when I had finally reached the end of the street, I realized that my father had been there all along.
His smile was beaming. As always, my dad had helped me succeed.
I didn’t quite know how to work the brakes, and suddenly, I toppled over the handlebar. When I looked up from the ground, I was unhurt, but anxiously looking around. To my anguish, my dad was nowhere to be found.
Alone in my room in Afghanistan, I realized that from that moment forward, it was all up to me. I no longer needed to do things to make my father proud. I had to accomplish everything myself. I had always wanted to be my own man, and I had often butted heads against my dad’s authority. That dynamic was now gone, and I was truly my own man.
Still, all I wanted was for my dad to give me advice or even scold me one more time. Or better yet, to congratulate me like after I dove into the water and conquered the monsters of Weeki Wachee Springs as a little boy, or when I set my personal best time in the swim meet that I didn’t even win. Most of all, though, I just wanted to hear my dad say one more time that he was proud of me, and that he loved me.
The thought of truly being my own man was deeply unsettling, but I also knew that sitting around and moping wouldn’t get me anywhere. If my dad’s ghost had talked to me in that room, I knew he would have told me to move on and focus on my mission.
Even though my chain of command said that I could go home and be with my family during a time of grief, I decided to stay in Afghanistan. I told my superiors and teammates that I was fine, and that I wanted to press forward and finish out the deployment. My commanders were probably relieved that they wouldn’t have to find a replacement, but at the same time, I knew they would keep a close eye on me.
I put the Red Cross’ notification letter about my dad’s death into a small desk drawer, and from that moment forward, acted as though I had never received it. In a strange way, I was able to set aside the fact that anything had happened and pick right up with our platoon’s normal routine.
One night while watching a TV show called Californication, however, I encountered a scene where a father tells his son that despite some difficulties in their relationship, he was proud of him and loved him very much. The scene resonated so much that I absolutely lost it and began sobbing like a little girl. Thankfully, I was alone in my barracks room, which prevented the hardened warriors in my platoon from hearing me break down.
For a few minutes, I let it all out, as a year’s worth—maybe even a few years’ worth—of emotions poured from my eyes in seemingly endless streams of tears.
I don’t recall exactly how long this lasted, but after calming down and clearing my eyes, I was able to keep my father’s death in the drawer for the rest of my deployment to Afghanistan. I still had a job to do, and the best way to honor my father was to pour every ounce of myself into making sure that my brothers in arms made it home safely.