THREE

OBSTACLE COURSE

At the end of January I got about a week to recover from survival school, then classed up in an advanced program called “C” school, where I spent the next three months learning the advanced sonar concepts that were the theoretical foundation of the “antisubmarine warfare” sonar operator’s trade before I could go on to join HS-10.

During these three months I began to get a taste of just how much complex knowledge and technical know-how I would be absorbing over my years in the military. For weeks at a stretch, we pored over material in courses with names like Electronic Warfare, Oceanography, Advanced Acoustic Analysis, and Aural Listening. Just two years earlier I’d been a teenager struggling through high school math. Now I was absorbing all kinds of advanced concepts and academic material and, oddly enough, doing so without breaking a sweat. The simple truth was, it was fascinating. It had to do with tracking things underwater—something I had no trouble relating to.

In “A” school we had learned the basics of reading submarine acoustic signatures. Now we really dove into the subject, pouring hours into studying the harmonic frequencies emitted by bodies in the water.

As you descend, the water changes temperature; however, it does not do so gradually, along a smooth continuum, but in discrete chunks, something like a layer cake. I knew this from experience, because you can feel these temperature breaks as you dive. As I now learned, these distinct temperature layers are called thermoclines. The interesting thing about these layers is that they trap sound, and consequently the way sound waves travel is dictated to some degree by the layout of thermoclines: As a sound wave hits the bottom of a thermocline (or, depending on how you’re looking at it, the top of the one below it), it spreads outward, trapped within that layer of depth.

Because of this, if you have a submarine hiding down at, say, 50 feet, you’re not necessarily going to hear it if you (or your sonar buoy) are at 30 feet. In other words, submarines can literally hide within thermoclines. If the vessel makes enough noise, it may create sufficient energy to bleed through into the next layer—but a modern submarine is so stealthy that you have to be in that thermocline to hear it. I filed this information away; a few years later I would use it to my advantage in a most unexpected circumstance.

I made it through “C” school uneventfully—with one exception.

Since I would be spending at least the next few years of my life here in San Diego, I wanted to make sure I could keep up with two of my favorite pastimes, surfing and spearfishing. While in “C” school, we had ample time off for extracurricular activities, so I went up to my mom’s place in Ventura, got a surfboard and one of my spearguns out of storage, and brought them back down with me to Coronado.

One day, coming back from class to my barracks room, I found a note saying that my room had been inspected and I needed to come to the military police HQ to pick up my speargun. Thinking nothing of it, I grabbed a jacket and headed off.

When I arrived at HQ, I was promptly arrested. The charge: possession of a deadly weapon on base. They put me in a holding cell.

I could not believe what was happening. Possession of a deadly weapon? I was a diver, for heaven’s sake. Spearfishing was what I did. Besides, I obviously wasn’t trying to hide the speargun. I couldn’t have even if I’d wanted to: It was too big to fit in my locker. I’d had it lying out in the open. Were they serious?

They were. The MPs acted like jackasses, doing their best to intimidate me and impress upon me that I had screwed up big-time, that my navy career was over.

Yeah, yeah. Bite me.

They called one of the chiefs who happened to be on duty at my school and told him what was going on. To my great relief, as soon as he showed up they remanded me into his custody. My relief soon turned to surprise: The moment the chief and I were alone together, he started laying into me. I knew enough to keep my mouth shut and just take his shit, but it seemed strange and a little silly that they were making such a big deal out of it.

The rest of the instructor staff at “C” school thought the whole thing was pretty funny, and they gave me quite a lot of crap about it, as did all my classmates. When it came time to graduate, they all got together and created a special Jacques Cousteau Award for the poor slob who got arrested for possession of a speargun. I still have that award. I never got my speargun back.

The day after graduation one of the other chiefs called me into his office. He told me he didn’t agree with the way the first chief had handled the situation. “You’re a diver and a spearfisherman, Webb,” he said. “I respect that, and I’m sorry the navy confiscated your speargun.”

“Yes, Chief” was all I said, but it felt good to have someone in a leadership position say what he did. I could understand their need to enforce the rules, but I was still angry about it. They had destroyed a perfectly good speargun.

It wasn’t the last time I’d see what seemed to me examples of good leadership and poor leadership side by side. It also wasn’t the last time I’d find myself in trouble.

In April, fresh out of “C” school, I was finally assigned to HS-10, the helicopter training squadron where I would spend the next six months learning how to function as an aircrew member and operate the systems in the back of assorted types of H-60 helicopter.

The H-60 is a broad class of U.S. military helicopters that includes the Sea Hawk, the Ocean Hawk, the famous Black Hawk, and a handful of others. At HS-10 they put us into several different kinds of simulators representing the various helicopter platforms we would soon be flying. One had a heavy sonar package; another, which we called a truck, was completely gutted out and used mainly for combat and search-and-rescue exercises.

After learning all the technology on the simulators, it was time to go out on live trainings. They put one instructor in front with the pilot and another instructor in back with the aircrewmen. Here they taught us how to operate the hoist, how to use the proper terminology to talk from the front to the back, radio etiquette, and all the different systems on the aircraft.

In mid-October, after six months at the helo training squadron, I got orders to Helicopter Anti-Submarine Squadron Six. HS-6, also known as the Indians, was my first deployment. Yes, I was still in training—but I was now part of an actual, operational helicopter command. I was in the navy fleet now.

And a helluva command it was. The squadron had an illustrious history stretching back nearly forty years. The Indians had rescued more than a dozen downed pilots in Vietnam and helped underwater demolition teams (the predecessors of SEALs) pluck moon-walking Apollo astronauts out of the ocean on splashdown, had earned a long succession of trophies and awards, and would years later go on to serve the efforts in Afghanistan and Iraq. I was excited about becoming part of HS-6. It was a damn good squadron—and I was out to make a name for myself.

Back in April, when I had first arrived at HS-10 for training, I had made another strong push to get orders to SEAL training. Once again, I’d been told I would have to wait until I got to my final duty station. Well, here I was at my final duty station, and I was determined to do a kick-ass job so I could apply for BUD/S and get the hell out of there as fast as I could.

Which turned out not to be very fast at all. In fact, I would continue serving as part of the Indians from October 1994 through the summer of 1997, encountering obstacle after obstacle in my quest, before finally getting my orders to SEAL training nearly three full years later.

*   *   *

In the spring of 1995, about six months after becoming part of the Indians, I went on a six-month deployment on the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln in the western Pacific, called a WESTPAC. An aircraft carrier normally sports a full-time crew of several thousand. When it leaves port for a WESTPAC, though, all its associated helicopter squadrons populate it and disembark with it, which brings the total onboard population up to around five thousand, and it becomes like a small city unto itself.

We had gone out before for shorter trips of up to a month. The WESTPAC was different. Now we headed out west clear across the Pacific, stopping in Hawaii, Hong Kong, Thailand, and Australia, and then on to the Persian Gulf, where we spent the next four or five months as the U.S. aircraft carrier presence there. This was something like being a cop on the beat. We weren’t necessarily engaging anyone or seeing any action, but we were the show of force, ready to be tapped for whatever need might arise.

For those of us still in training, the WESTPAC gave us the opportunity to learn everything we could ever want to know about all the systems on the different helo platforms we were using at the time. For me, though, it meant one thing: earning as many qualifications as possible so I could get to BUD/S. As great as life was in the squadron, I wanted nothing more than to get the hell out of there, the sooner the better.

At the center of BUD/S training is a monstrosity I’d heard about called the O-course, a brutally difficult setup aimed at developing superhuman endurance while inflicting maximum punishment. Later on, when I finally got the chance to face the actual O-course, it would nearly beat me. Meanwhile, I decided that if I kept facing obstacles in my path, I would treat them as my own private O-course and use them to make me stronger.

The problem with letting people know I wanted to go into SEAL training was that everyone knew about the absurd attrition rate at BUD/S, where typically some 80 percent wash out. To make matters worse, the aircrew community has a terrible reputation for sending in guys who wash out more than 90 percent of the time. This made my life pretty rough at HS-6. By this time, though, I’d figured out that when people tell you that you can’t do something, you can use it to your advantage, and every time someone else told me I was crazy and would never make it to BUD/S (let alone through BUD/S), I was determined to use it as more motivational fuel. My operational philosophy was “I’m just going to do the best job I can and get all the quals, and then they’ll let me go.”

And right now, that meant getting my tactical sensor operator (TSO) qual.

Over the course of our deployment on the USS Lincoln, I completed all the requirements I needed in order to take my TSO test. The TSO ran the show and was the senior guy in the back of the aircraft. In essence, this would mean getting my qualification for crew chief. One September day, toward the end of that WESTPAC, the time finally came for my first check ride. Pass this, and I would have that crew chief qual I needed. I was ready to go and totally psyched.

“Check ride” means exactly that: From the moment we lifted off the flight deck and flew out over the Gulf, they checked every move I made, testing me on everything—language and terminology, correct procedures and sequences, how I operated every system I touched. If you’re tracking a submarine, for example, then you’re managing the sonar and making decisions in the back. If you’re on a rescue operation to pull a downed pilot out of the drink, then the level of control intensifies. As sonar operator, once you’re in search-and-rescue mode on the scene of a recovery operation, the pilot toggles hover control over to you and you are running the show. In a sense, I had to demonstrate that I could function as a pilot, too.

The entire check ride lasted about two hours. We touched down on the flight deck, and I turned to my instructors to get their feedback.

“You did pretty well,” they said, “but you need more experience.”

I stared at them, stunned. They were flunking me.

Technically speaking, I actually had passed the minimum requirements of the check ride, and I knew it as well as they did. The instructors are given some latitude in the scoring process, though, and there were a few senior guys in the squadron who were not exactly looking out for me. In the course of our deployment, I had knocked out all the requirements so fast that it kind of freaked a few of them out, and they wanted to see me cut down to size.

I didn’t argue, but I was annoyed as hell. Now I had a negative mark on my record. In retrospect I realize that I shoulder some of the blame here: I had probably pushed too hard to take the test before being fully ready for it. Then again, if they’d already decided I wasn’t ready, why did they let me take the test?

*   *   *

A few days later an event occurred that gave me one of the most vivid experiences in my life of great leadership and terrible leadership, side by side.

We were out on nighttime maneuvers over the Persian Gulf. Our pilot that night, Lieutenant Burkitt, was the sort of officer you can’t help disliking: a slimy guy who alienated officers and enlisted men alike. Lieutenant Burkitt’s copilot, Kennedy, was a good guy and quite smart, though a little on the geeky side. Rich Fries and I both served as crewmen; Rich was senior to me. In terms of rank and experience, I was the low man on this totem pole.

It had been a long night, and in order to make it all the way back to the Lincoln, we had to stop and refuel on a nearby destroyer. The night was pretty calm, but visibility was against us, as there was absolutely no moon out, and it was damn close to pitch black out there.

A destroyer’s deck is pretty tight to land on, especially as compared to an aircraft carrier like the USS Lincoln, and even more so at night with such low visibility. Because of this it was common operating procedure to slow the helo down to 90 knots (just over 100 mph), then open the cabin door and have one of the crewman spot the deck, that is, assist the pilot with verbal commands. On this occasion, the crewman doing the spotting was me.

As the helo slowed down to under 90 knots, I passed a message over the ICS (internal communications system) that the door was coming open. The door cracked open, and I looked out to get a visual on the destroyer’s lights. For some reason, I couldn’t make anything out. I kept straining to see something and finally caught a glimpse of light—but it was at eye level, which I thought was strange. I looked down and realized that we were not where we were supposed to be. We were not slowly descending and approaching the deck. Our pilot had put us down at water level.

We were about to crash into the ocean.

“Altitude! Altitude!” I yelled. All hell broke loose. Rich immediately realized what was happening and joined in with me. I will never, in all my life, forget what happened next. Suddenly we heard Lieutenant Burkitt’s voice shrilly piercing through our yells. “What’s happening?” he screamed. “I don’t know what’s happening! Oh God, oh God!”

He kept repeating that: Oh God, oh God.

For a split second Rich and I gaped at each other in disbelief. This was our pilot. This was our aircraft commander, screaming like a frightened schoolgirl.

We were done for. I held tight onto the cabin door. By now there was a foot of seawater in the main cabin, and any second we would be swamped and overrun with ocean: the point of no return. In my mind’s eye, I could see the rotor blades sabering into the water and splintering into a thousand pieces, the helo flipping upside down and sinking into the Gulf. Everything slowed way down and a stream of contrasting thoughts tore through my mind:

So this is why we go through the helo dunker training blindfolded.

Is this is really how it’s going to end?

No—I am not going to let this jackass Burkitt kill me!

Then something happened that turned it all around in an instant. Kennedy, our copilot, somehow torqued his shit together and hauled us and that damned helo up and out of the water. It was inches short of miraculous. Hell, maybe it was miraculous.

The crew on the destroyer thought we had crashed and were goners for sure, and they were shocked and thrilled to see us suddenly popping back up on radar.

Rich immediately replaced me on the door, exactly as he should have (he was senior to me and had thousands of hours in the H-60 under his belt), and he rapidly talked Kennedy down onto the deck after a few missed approaches. Burkitt was an utter disaster the entire time, mumbling to himself like a street person with a drug habit.

Despite our reports, nobody on the destroyer believed that we had actually put the bird into the drink. Not, that is, until the maintenance chief tore the tail section apart—and seawater started pouring out. A short investigation followed, but it went nowhere. The CO of HS-6 didn’t want his career to end over this incident, and he kept things tightly under wraps.

I don’t know how he did it, but Kennedy saved all our lives that night, and he deserved a medal for it. However, that wasn’t what happened. Instead, both Burkitt and Kennedy had their helicopter aircraft commander (HAC) papers suspended. Kennedy, the guy who had saved us all with his heroism and remarkable calm under pressure, got punished right along with Burkitt, the guy who cracked apart like an eggshell and nearly guaranteed our watery demise.

I came away with from that near-disaster with a resolve never to judge a person based on appearance. Kennedy had always seemed like a smart and very competent guy, but not one I would have figured for a hero. You never know what people are capable of until you get to work with them, side by side.

I hope I get the chance to shake his hand again one day.

*   *   *

In the long run, my fast-track-to-BUD/S strategy backfired on me. I had thought that if I gave everything my best, I would prove to my superiors that I was a hard worker and they would approve my assignment to BUD/S. In fact, the opposite happened. The better I did, the more valuable I was to my superiors—and the more reluctant they were to let me go.

And when I say “they,” who I’m really talking about is Chief Bruce Clarin.

Chief Clarin was an East Coast guy who hated being out on the West Coast and among what he described as “the fruit loops.” When he looked at me and some of my buddies, all he saw was guys who spent their whole lives surfing: We were all slackers. A few guys in the shop sucked up to him. Nobody else could stand him. To this day, I am amazed that this guy made chief and was put in charge of an aircrew shop. Clarin was a walking, talking textbook illustration of how not to lead. He played favorites and rewarded people he liked, based not on any accomplishments but purely on the fact that he happened to like them. The guys he happened to like the most were also those who did the least amount of work and continually dragged down the rest of us.

In March 1996, about five months after returning from the USS Lincoln WESTPAC, I submitted my first BUD/S package, that is, my application along with all the necessary supporting documentation. It was quickly denied.

Instinctively, I knew that Clarin had screwed me. It was only months later that I would learn in full detail what had actually happened.

In order for me to get out of my AW job and get orders to BUD/S, permission needed to come from the appropriate rating detailer, the person who controls where people transfer to or work next in the navy. As it happened, our rating detailer was a man with the mind-blowingly unfortunate name of Petty Officer A. W. Dickover. (Someone, somewhere, must have seen the humor in this and assigned him the job based on his name alone.) Chief Clarin had put in a call to Petty Officer Dickover and asked him not to approve my request for orders to SEAL training.

You are probably wondering how I learned what had happened. I learned it because Clarin himself actually admitted to me what he’d done.

The truth was, I was the only third-class petty officer in the squadron who was NATOPS-qualified (Naval Air Training and Operating Procedures Standardization), which meant I could do things like give annual qualification tests or test someone who wanted to become a crew chief. After failing that first check ride, it hadn’t taken me long to test again—and pass. Now my rapid advancement came back to bite me.

“You have all these quals,” Clarin said. “Sorry, Webb, but I need you for this deployment.”

The son of a bitch. Now I would have to stay with the squadron for at least another year and do a whole other six-month WESTPAC deployment.

A few months later, in July, I applied to attend a one-week pre-SEAL selection course, held at the navy’s boot camp facility in Illinois, called Naval Station Great Lakes (or, unofficially, Great Mistakes). This is not a pass/fail kind of course, and going through it wouldn’t give me any technical qualification. Still, depending on how I did, I could come out of it with a recommendation to the real BUD/S—or without one. In a sense, it would be an informal entrance exam. If I flew through pre-BUD/S, it would boost my chances of getting orders to the real deal. And if I couldn’t make it through the week at Great Mistakes, I could forget about surviving the seven months of the genuine article.

Calling pre-BUD/S a condensed version of the real thing would be a stretch. It is designed to give you a glimpse of what the actual BUD/S training experience would be like, but only a glimpse. I knew that. Still, it was one way to demonstrate that I was serious, and hopefully I would come out of it with an endorsement.

There was a mix of guys in the program, some straight out of boot camp, some who were already regular navy, like me. One guy there cut an especially intimidating figure: a six-foot-tall, blond, Nordic-looking dude named Lars. Lars had thighs like tree trunks and could do push-ups from sunup to sunrise. He just crushed everything they threw at him. I met up with Lars again a year later when I finally made it to BUD/S and will have more to say about him at that point in the story.

I passed the program with flying colors, and they recommended me for BUD/S—but my obstacle course wasn’t over yet.

After he admitted to his duplicity in tanking my first BUD/S package, Chief Clarin and I had for the most part stayed out of each other’s way. Our mutual animosity came to a head, though, during my second WESTPAC deployment, which started in October of 1996. I had now been part of HS-6 for exactly two years, and I was determined to make it to BUD/S before another full year went by. I submitted a second BUD/S package and was pretty confident that it would go through. After all, I had done the pre-BUD/S course and come out with a strong recommendation.

However, I also knew that if I wanted to pass the entrance qualifications for BUD/S when I got back stateside, I needed to get into shape. On the aircraft carrier, it was hard to keep up high fitness standards: I couldn’t swim, I couldn’t really run (running on a steel deck is not exactly great for the joints), and getting in a full workout routine was difficult. Six months in those conditions would really set me back.

I went to Chief Clarin and told him my situation.

“Don’t worry,” he said, “I’ll send you back on early detachment [that is, guys who were flown back early to prepare the home command for the rest of the group’s return]. In fact, I’ll send you back a month early, so you can train and get in shape before you have to qualify.”

I was a little surprised and quite grateful that he would go out of his way to do this. As it turned out, he was lying through his teeth. He never had any intention of sending me back home early. He didn’t want me to go to BUD/S and was determined to prevent it, whatever that took.

A few weeks later, a friend in our squadron admin took me aside and told me I was getting railroaded (navyspeak for “screwed over”) by Chief Clarin on my upcoming evaluation.

Evaluations go a long way in making rank in the navy; they’re put into the mix with your rating test to yield a final multiple that determines whether or not you are promoted. Normally you would not have a chance to see how your peers break out during an evaluation period unless you exchange notes. Through my friend, I learned that I was being rated as low as the brand-new check-ins.

I was not about to take that lying down. If I had deserved a low eval, that would be one thing, but that was clearly not the case. I had busted my ass to get every qual I possibly could and volunteered for every shit detail to prove to my peers and superiors that I deserved a shot at BUD/S.

Here’s how the process works: After receiving your written eval and having a one-on-one debrief with whoever wrote it, you sign your name at the bottom. There is a tiny box there by the signature line that you check if you intend to submit a statement along with your eval. Hardly anyone ever marks a check in that box. I still remember the look of utter horror on Chief Clarin’s face when he saw me check the box. He knew that I knew what he was up to. He knew he had fucked up.

At the time I was taking a few college classes on the ship (they even had professors on board; as I said, an aircraft carrier is like a small city) and had just finished English 1302. I thought this would be a prime opportunity to put my writing skills to use. I prepared a formal statement, which I took great care in writing. It contained not a single whine or complaint, nothing but the facts, line item by line item.

Apparently, my statement created quite a stir. After it landed on my department head’s desk, he ran it up to the commanding officer (CO). Pretty soon I got word that Chief Clarin and I were both wanted in Commander Rosa’s office.

When I arrived, Clarin was already there. I nodded at him without a word. It was obvious that he was not too happy with the situation. Chiefs run the navy, and in the navy culture it is extremely rare for anyone to go against a chief or question his judgment or leadership, but I would be damned if I was going to roll over and take this. Maybe this came from my time on the dive boat, when I often felt I had to prove myself to all the older guys. Maybe it was an echo of the times I stood up to my dad—or maybe I got it from my dad, and it reflects the times he stood up to his father. Whatever its source, there is a stubborn streak in me that refuses to knuckle under to what seems to me a poor decision or unfair judgment.

We were both ushered into Commander Rosa’s office, where we stood for a moment while the commander continued looking down at his desk at the eval and written statement spread out in front of him. He looked up at me, then at Chief Clarin, then back at me. “Look,” he said to me, “what’s the deal here?”

“Sir,” I said, “in block 1, Professional Knowledge, I should be rated a 3.0. I’m the only guy in my shop who has these quals.”

The rating system went from 1.0, “Below standards,” to 4.0, “Greatly exceeds standards.” I had been qualified as a NATOPS instructor, and at the time I was the only third-class petty officer in the squad who had done so. It’s hard enough for a senior guy to get this qual, let alone a junior guy. I wasn’t even asking for a 4.0, just a 3.0, “Above standards.” Clarin had rated me with a 2.0, “Progressing.”

Commander Rosa looked at each of us again in turn, saying nothing, his face reddening. The chief looked like an idiot. It was clear that he had given me this poor rating purely because he didn’t like me.

The CO turned back to me and said, “Petty Officer Webb, if the chief can’t figure this out, you write your own eval.” He paused, then said, “That’s all.”

We were both free to go.

I did not leave the WESTPAC early but was kept on for the full six months. Not long after this encounter, Chief Clarin transferred out of HS-6. We did not stay in touch.

*   *   *

My experience on those two WESTPAC tours taught me another powerful lesson about leadership great and lousy.

When I had first deployed on the USS Lincoln, back in May of 1995, it didn’t take long to realize that morale on the ship was generally horrible. “This ship stinks,” I heard people say, and it was true. It was unkempt and funky. Everyone hated being there.

The strangest thing happened on the Lincoln. For a few weeks, there was a pervert running around. This guy, whoever he was, would come quietly up to the door of a female crew’s room, slip one hand inside the door, hit the lights, then run in, cop a quick feel, and run out again. It freaked us all out. This was the kind of thing you might expect on a college campus, and even there it would be creepy—but on a Navy fighting vessel?

Here is the most bizarre thing about it: They never caught him. Nobody ever knew who it was. In a way it was ridiculous, almost absurd, but it was also unnerving, not only for the women, who never knew when the guy would show up, but for the rest of us, too. In a weird way, the episode underlined that pervasive queasy sense that the place was never under tight command.

The following year, when my second WESTPAC deployment came around, I dreaded it. This time we would be stationed on the USS Kitty Hawk. This old boat was not a spanking new nuclear vessel like the Lincoln; it was a conventionally powered ship that had been around since Vietnam. When our squadron deployed onto its deck, my heart sank. I figured if the brand-new ship was such a shitty experience, then this one was going to be downright awful.

But it wasn’t. In fact, it was the opposite. The moment I was on board the Kitty Hawk I could feel the difference. It was clean. The crew was happy. Everything hummed along. This place was wired tight.

It didn’t take long to understand why. That first night I was surprised to hear the captain of the Kitty Hawk come over the PA loudspeaker, welcoming us and giving us a brief rundown of what was happening that day.

This never happened on the Lincoln. The captain of that vessel hardly ever talked to his crew. Never said a goddam word. It was weeks, months, before we ever heard his voice over that PA system, and that happened maybe twice during the entire six-month stretch.

Not on the Kitty Hawk, though. It wasn’t just the first day that the captain addressed us. He did it again the next day, and the next—and every one of the roughly 180 days we were aboard his ship.

“Good afternoon, shipmates, this is your captain,” the familiar voice would say. “This is what we’re doing, here’s where we’re going, these are the decisions we’re making.” He never revealed any details or specific plans that he shouldn’t have, but he made sure that everyone felt included in what we were doing.

The difference this made was amazing. It may have been a much older vessel, but it was spotless. Morale was consistently high.

The two experiences were like night and day, and the difference came down to a single factor: Captain Steven John Tomaszeski and the leadership he brought to the ship’s crew. That crew loved their captain because he took care of them, and they knew it. I would have ridden that boat to the gates of hell with Captain Tomaszeski, and I’m pretty sure every single person on that boat felt the same way.

This was a lesson I would see played out again and again, and it’s one I have striven to embody every day, whether it was running a covert op in Afghanistan or Iraq, reorganizing the SEAL sniper course in the States, or in business since getting out of the service. People need to be talked to and kept in the loop.

Years later I often found myself reflecting on the lesson of the two captains: the importance of talking to your people, sharing the plan with them so they know where you’re headed and the purpose behind it. It’s not rocket science. Engage your crew. Have a dialogue; let them know that you know they exist and that they’re part of what you’re all up to. Leaving people in a vacuum is no way to lead, yet it’s a mistake I’ve seen made way too many times.

*   *   *

When I got back from that second WESTPAC in April of 1997, there were orders waiting for me at North Island. I was elated. It had been more than four years since I first set foot in Orlando for boot camp, and after a seemingly endless stream of obstacles, I was finally on my way to BUD/S.

I went to the squadron office to pick up my orders and found Lieutenant Commander John Vertel there, subbing for our usual position officer. John was an excellent pilot and a great guy. We called him “Admiral.” It was great to see him.

However, it was not so great once I saw what he handed me. There were my orders to BUD/S, all right, along with another eval. I glanced through it and felt my face pale. Normally, when you transfer out to another station you’re going to get a decent eval. On this eval, they’d given me a low rating in the Professionalism category.

“Sir,” I said, “excuse me, but what is this? I’m being dinged for lack of professionalism?”

“Here’s the thing, Brandon,” he said. “You’re excellent at everything you do, but sometimes you’re too hard on some of the pilots. Everyone kind of noticed it.”

I had to stop for a second and think about that.

Was I sometimes hard on my pilots? Yes, if I was going to be brutally honest with myself. I’m somewhat aggressive by nature, and I knew I needed to learn how to tone it down a bit at times. If you’re too aggressive in the back of the helo, that can transfer to the ready room. There’s an expression in the military, “Shit rolls downhill,” and if you dump on someone, the chances are good he’ll turn around and dump on someone else.

At the same time, the pilots I was hard on deserved it; hell, they needed it. There were some solid pilots in the squad whom I respected, and I never gave them a hard time. John was one of those; another was Jim Cluxton, who ended up being the training officer of a helo squadron. It was an honor to serve with both of them. But there were also guys who were more marginal on the stick, and I did not respect them. After all, one of them had almost gotten us killed in the Persian Gulf.

Still, justified or not, I could see that my leadership style could stand some refining.

Okay, they had a point—but no one had said anything about this to me before. Wasn’t that why we had reviews, before the formal evals came out, so they could tell us where we were strong and where we needed improving?

I took a deep breath.

“Sir,” I said, “that’s great, and I acknowledge it and take it for what it is. The problem is, this is the first time I’m hearing about it, in this formal eval situation. Prior to this I was never given the opportunity to correct the deficiency. To be honest, sir, I’m happy to get the fuck out of here. I’ve worked my butt off to get these orders, and I appreciate it. I just want to get that point across.”

He nodded and sent me off with my orders. The next day he called me back into his office.

“Webb,” he said, “you’re absolutely right. Here—” and he showed me my eval. Under Professionalism, where it had read 2.0, it now read 4.0.

He nodded. “Best of luck.”

*   *   *

Even though I already had my orders to go to BUD/S, I still had to demonstrate that I could pass the Physical Screening Test, or PST, before I could check into the program. Here is a quick overview of the minimum requirements applicants are required to exceed:

•   a 500-yard (460-meter) swim, breaststroke or sidestroke, in 12.5 minutes or less (9 minutes or less is better, if you want to be seen as competitive)

•   at least 42 push-ups in 2 minutes (shooting for at least 100 to be competitive)

•   at least 50 sit-ups in 2 minutes (again, preferably 100 or more)

•   at least 6 pull-ups from a dead hang (no time limit, but you want to shoot for a dozen or more)

•   a 1.5-mile (2.4-kilometer) run in boots and pants, in under 11.5 minutes (better yet, under 9 minutes).

That Friday, I went down to the pool where the test was being held and found myself grouped up with a bunch of guys who were all going through the PST. We got down there in the pool and did our swims, then got out and hiked across the street, where we did our sequence of push-ups, sit-ups, and pull-ups. After that, they took us outside for our 1.5-mile run, with boots.

We waited around for a few minutes while they tallied up all our times, then got our results. I almost crapped in my pants. My run time was twelve minutes—thirty seconds past the absolute maximum. Thirty seconds. Not only was I not competitive, but I had actually failed the test. And not by a sliver of a margin: I had failed it badly. The memory of the devastation I felt has stayed with me ever since. I had run smack into the last and toughest obstacle in my four-year quest: myself.

It’s easy to remember the times you excelled, the tests you passed, the achievements you scored. It’s not as much fun to remember those times when you failed—even worse, those times you failed miserably—but often it’s those failures, and not the wins, that end up securing your future.

I told myself that the important thing was not to feel sorry for myself, to get my shit together. I practiced that test over and over until I knew beyond any shadow of a doubt that I had it nailed, and then I took it again. This time I passed, and it felt great. But I was still badly overestimating what kind of shape I was in.

I would find out soon enough.