One Perfect Op

by Dennis Chalker

  After I exited the plane, my canopy opened, and it was down to the ground. The instructor was shouting up at someone who had a malfunction, a Mae West—where some of the suspension lines are over the top of your canopy. That kind of malfunction makes the chute look like a giant bra. That jumper was told to pull his reserve.

  I had a good canopy, but I missed the drop zone. Instead I landed over on the duck pond. But even there I was a little lucky. It was so cold that the pond had frozen, and I didn’t get wet.

  I felt some concern, a little nervousness, and maybe some fear on all my jumps at Benning and some later in my Airborne unit. It wasn’t until after I had completed ten or fifteen jumps that I started to like it.

  With the rest of our jumps done quickly to take advantage of the weather break, we were Airborne qualified. They gave us our wings the same day we shipped out to our final units. “Here’s your wings and there’s the bus” was the order of the day.

  The 101st Airborne, the Screaming Eagles, was where I had wanted to go, but the Army had a different idea. The 101st had been changed to an airmobile unit and now rode helicopters rather than jumping. My final orders were supposed to be to the 173rd over in Vietnam, but they had been badly shot up over there, and the unit was kind of in limbo. The 82nd Airborne Division was being built up at the time, and that was where I was finally sent.

  After I had spent some time in the 82nd, my intention was to volunteer for either Special Forces or the Rangers. The Rangers had been decommissioned right after Vietnam, so that door was closed. It bothered me a little that I hadn’t been able to go to a Ranger unit. That had been one of my goals. Ranger school was still going on, and the training was being offered, but only officers were being sent to the school at that time, and my chances of going looked pretty slim. So I did my Army hitch with the 82nd Airborne.

  My first overseas deployment was as part of a NATO exercise in Turkey. After a long uncomfortable flight, we landed in Turkey and traveled to our campsite. One of the first things they had us do was meet our nearby NATO partners, the British troops. We met them in the usual soldier’s place, the pub near the tent. And being young troops, it wasn’t long before the brawls started.

  In fact, we were just having a friendly boxing match, where our division Golden Gloves champ kind of danced all over the British boxer. He never had a chance.

  Now we were going to do our drops as part of the NATO exercise. Before then, the lowest drop I had ever done was eight hundred feet. When you’re too low, if your main doesn’t open you won’t have any time to cut it away and pull your reserve. In combat we could be tasked to jump from as low as four hundred feet. On this occasion, we split the difference and jumped from six hundred feet.

  Our sergeant major let us know his opinion of the upcoming jump in no uncertain terms. As far as he was concerned, the only people who would get hurt on the upcoming drop didn’t deserve to be in the unit in the first place. If we did everything we had been taught, everything would be fine.

  The drop zone in Turkey was a freshly plowed farmer’s field, and among the furrows of the turned earth were all the boulders and stones that had come up from Turkey’s rocky soil. But only one person on the drop was injured—the sergeant major broke his leg on a rock. He didn’t live that down for a long time.

  In the U.S. Airborne, the heavy equipment is dropped in before the troops. That way, the troops can hit the ground, gather their vehicles and heavy guns, and move out. The Brits do it the exact opposite. They put in the troops first and follow that drop with the equipment. The British paratrooper who was walking off the drop zone was being watched by all the high-ranking NATO brass up on a hill overlooking the drop zone. They had a clean view of the multiton tank that streamered in, its parachute never opening, and landed on that Brit.

  Once we had a deuce-and-a-half (2.5-ton) truck streamer in during an exercise. We could still eat the C-rations that were in the truck bed afterward, but the cans were pretty flat. Another time I watched an M551 Sheridan light tank plow into the ground and split in half like a melon. So I figured our technique of putting the gear in first was a fine idea.

  It was the Israeli Yom Kippur War in October 1973 that took me back overseas with the possibility of facing combat for the first time. The whole division was put on standby and finally loaded on aircraft and shipped out to an airfield in the Middle East. We stayed on that airfield for two days.

  All we did was unpack the aircraft, make a fast bivouac, and sit there in the sand, heat, and flies. Then we packed up and were flown back home. It was a frustrating first exposure to the possibility of combat.

  When the end of my service time came up, I was ready to leave the Army and try something else. Things had changed a lot in the service. The Army was struggling to get through the post-Vietnam depression and drawdown in the military. One of the things they did was increase the opportunities for women. There were going to be women in the Airborne units. But the women were not going to go through the same training.

  There was a new military phrase, “modified physical standards,” and it was not something anyone was allowed to talk about. Basically, the brass and the politicians came up with a different set of physical standards for women who wanted to go Airborne. They didn’t have to do all the same exercises and didn’t have to have the same strength as the men did. Personally, I thought that cheapened the whole thing and made an elite unit like the Airborne less than it had been earlier.

  When I finally decided to leave the Army, my commanding officer, Captain Black, made me a good offer to stay in. The possibility of a promotion to staff sergeant and an assignment to attend Ranger school were pretty good inducements. But I wanted to get out and go back to school. While in the service, I had finished my physical growth and was now six feet tall. Going to college would give me a chance to play football again. Maybe even make a professional career of it.

  CHAPTER 4

  AND NOW THE NAVY

  My post-Army plans didn’t work out the way I had hoped they would. While still in the service, I had hooked up with Markovich, a good guy from Wisconsin. We worked out every day and went on runs. Usually we ran about 2.5 miles up to the boxing arena and back to our barracks. That was our ritual, and I peaked in weight at around 210 to 215 pounds.

  So when I got out, I figured I was in good enough shape to try out for football. Applying to Kent State, I tried out and was accepted for spring training. During a practice session, I injured my knee badly. Surgery took care of the ligaments in my knee, and it also took care of my college football career.

  When the football went, so did my desire for college. I dropped out of Kent State and moved around a bit. Working as a laborer for a while, I figured I would eventually go back to school. But my goals changed.

  Instead of college, I tried my hand at a number of jobs. I worked for the railroad for about six months, driving spikes and laying rails. When I was laid off, I worked in a tire factory, but that really paled quickly.

  One job I wanted to try was game warden. I had always loved the outdoors, and working among the forests and lakes sounded pretty good to me. So in 1976, at the ripe age of twenty-two, I moved to Colorado, where one of my sisters lived. While there, I worked as a rough carpenter in construction, basically building houses for six months. The astronomical costs of college for a nonresident put an end to my plans for the University of Colorado.

  The head guy at the local National Park Service office spoke to me about my desire to become a game warden. What he told me wasn’t encouraging: positions in the field were filled. There weren’t any openings at the lower levels, and it didn’t look like there would be for the foreseeable future. Besides, they didn’t pay that well.

  While I discussed the situation with the Park Service officer, he asked me what else I might like to do. I remembered meeting several UDT frogmen while at Fort Benning. They had been going through jump school after completing BUD/S, the Basic Underwater Demolition/SEAL training course. Those guys had i
mpressed me.

  One of my uncles had been in the SeaBees during World War II, and he had spoken highly of the frogmen back then. So I told the parks officer that I was thinking of going back into the service. Specifically, I would enlist in the Navy and become a frogman. The officer told me that if I joined the Navy, made it into UDT, and completed my degree, those qualifications would jack me up to the top of the list for jobs with the National Park Service.

  My next stop was a Navy Recruiting Station, and in March 1977, I enlisted in the U.S. Navy. The general public still hadn’t recovered from the dislike of the military that developed so strongly during the Vietnam War. But I had already spent time in the service and knew it for real, rather than from listening to rumors and stories put out by people who had their own agendas and were never there.

  Boot camp was a waste of eight weeks, but it was a Navy requirement. So I spent two months learning how to march, wear bell-bottoms, swab instead of mop, and call the latrine a “head,” the floor a “deck,” stairs “ladders,” doors “hatches,” and walls “bulkheads.”

  Our training company commander was Chief Beard, a Navy Diver who recognized my experience and helped keep me going through boot. Chief Beard made me the RCPO (recruit chief petty officer) and master-at-arms, kind of the company sheriff. I was getting a bit out of shape because the physical demands of boot camp weren’t much, and although I was a little anemic—I always have been—the Navy had taken my vitamins away. Again Chief Beard came to my assistance.

  The chief ran me through PT in his office at night after taps had been played. He gave me one-a-day vitamins with iron and chatted with me about the Navy and the Teams while I worked out. He had a lot of respect for the UDTs and the SEALs. They were hard chargers who worked together and didn’t take any shot from outsiders. And they were really dedicated to the jobs they did and the missions they performed. It was a very tight community that didn’t welcome outsiders. If you wanted to be one of them, you had to dig down deep in yourself to bring out everything you had. That’s why he had me in his office doing PT. He told me that he never had the desire it took to get through BUD/S training but that he would help me make it.

  Chief Beard had enjoyed what he had done during his Navy career, and being at boot camp was his “twilight cruise.” The chief would retire from this his last duty station. He was a man I had a lot of respect for.

  What I will never forget from boot camp was going down for my screening test to get into BUD/S. The SEAL and UDT training programs were volunteer only. That had been true from their earliest days in World War II. And after volunteering you had to pass these tests in order to qualify. So I went to the screening test and met Master Chief Tommy Hatchet.

  Master Chief Hatchet may have been “only” six foot four, but he went sideways a whole bunch too. He was the biggest man I had ever met, and there couldn’t have been more than a couple of ounces of fat on him anywhere. His thighs were twice the size of my body, his biceps were bigger than my thighs, and one of his hands could hold my whole face. If this is what it took to be a frogman, I was in real trouble.

  The Team guys I had met in jump school had all been in great shape and had all been around six two or so. But SEALs and frogs came in all sizes, and few were as big as Chief Hatchet. There were about a hundred recruits trying out then, so the room was fairly full. But Master Chief Hatchet had his own way of emptying the room fast.

  “Okay, all you recruits are here to take the BUD/S screening test,” he said. “I want you to know one thing. First of all, you’re going to have to get in the pool. You’re going to have to do a combat stroke.” He stopped. No one said anything.

  “You will use a sidestroke or breaststroke, but it will be a combat stroke. I don’t have any time to waste. We’re going to take this test now.”

  “Master Chief,” came a voice.

  “What do you need, recruit?”

  “What’s a sidestroke?”

  “Get your bags and get the hell out of here.”

  That let everyone know that the right thing to do was whatever the master chief told us. Then he talked about doing the PT test and running in our boondockers (heavy boots). He had the dive motivators with him, several of whom were wearing Tridents. These were Team guys, but they weren’t built to quite the same scale as the master chief.

  Standing at the side of the pool was the master chief with his clipboard in his hand. “Go” was all he said. As the bunch of us were swimming along, I noticed that several of the recruits were changing to a freestyle stroke. I wondered what was going on. For myself, I switched from the breaststroke to the sidestroke, but that was about it.

  The dive motivators were cheering the recruits on, including the ones who were freestyling. “Go, man, go!” they were shouting. As soon as those freestyling swimmers got to the other end of the pool, they were tagged by Master Chief Hatchet. “Get your gear and get out of here,” was all he said. By the time the swim test was over, only about ten of us were left who had completed the swim properly and within time.

  Hatchet passed out some more terse instructions. “Okay, jump in the shower, you have two minutes. Then meet me outside.”

  Two minutes were hardly enough time to dry off, but that didn’t matter. Not getting Chief Hatchet upset at us in any way was important to the few of us left, very important. When we got outside, it was time for the PT portion of the test. I had no trouble with any of the push-ups, sit-ups, or pull-ups. But some of the others didn’t fare as well. There were only three of us left to take the running test.

  Now one of the few things I had never done in high school was track. But I started figuring out the number of laps we had to do and how fast we had to do each one, so I could pace myself. We had maybe a minute and a half for each turn around the track. The guy next to me had run a lot of track in school, and he told me just to follow him. When we were told to start, that runner took off like a deer.

  At the beginning, I took off just as fast as our trackman. But then I realized what I was doing and slowed back to my planned pace. The third runner did the same, but he fell farther and farther behind me. The trackman did real well, but only for about two laps. Then he pooped out and couldn’t keep going. I just kept going and I made the time, just barely. And the other guy made it too. The track runner? He was puking on the gravel for a while. It must have been the heavy boondockers dragging on his feet that did him in.

  Then Master Chief Hatchet called us into his office. “You’re going to sign these papers,” he told us, and we did. “Now I want you to understand this right up front. These papers are no guarantee that you’re going to make it through training. This doesn’t mean you are going to be a SEAL or that you are a SEAL. It just gives you the opportunity to get in the program and gives you your chance.”

  “Chalker,” he said, turning to me. “When you come up on your two weeks’ duty, I want you to come down here so you can run.”

  “Yes, Master Chief,” I said, and that was that.

  A few weeks later, I was just about done with boot camp and I was pulling duty at the base. Every day, I went down to Master Chief Hatchet’s office and ran with him and Chief Hall. Hall wasn’t in the Teams, to the best of my knowledge, but he was in the Navy diving community. I ran every day, and then they had me run classes of recruits in training. So I kept going and got better at what I had to do.

  When it was time for me to leave boot camp, I had to go down to the detailer’s office along with everyone else. The detailer gave you your orders and sent you on to wherever you were going. As I waited in the detailer’s office, I was excited. The Navy school I had chosen was Boatswain’s Mate. It was a short school, and soon I would be able to go on to the Teams. Then that detailer came in and dropped a bomb on me.

  “We’re going to put you through a two-week Boatswain’s Mate school. I know you’re supposed to go on to BUD/S, but to make sure you have an appreciation for the Navy, we’re first going to send you to the USS Guam for a year and a half.
Then you’ll have a chance to try out for BUD/S again.”

  My Army service had already given me an honorable discharge. I already had an appreciation for the service. I told that chief to wait a minute. I hadn’t come into the Navy to sail on a tin can. I had seven uncles who had done that during World War II. What I was there for was one thing, and that was to take a shot at BUD/S. If I didn’t make it, then I would honor my contract and do whatever the Navy wanted.

  But that chief didn’t want to hear any part of it. I was going to the Guam, and there wasn’t anything I could say to change his mind.

  I asked him if I could have a moment to myself, and he said I could leave. Sprinting from the building, I ran to Master Chief Hatchet’s office. Luckily he was there. “What do you want, Chalker,” he growled. That was really the only way I had ever heard him speak.

  “I’m being told that I’m going to Boatswain’s Mate school but then they’re sending me to the Guam.”

  “Get in my car” was all he said.

  We drove over to the detailer’s office, and Master Chief Hatchet walked right into that chief’s office, not even knocking on the door. “Hey, Chief,” Hatchet said.

  “Yes, Master Chief.”

  “Two weeks’ Boatswain’s Mate school and then he’s going over to BUD/S.”

  “You got it, Master Chief.”

  “Chalker, come here,” Master Chief Hatchet said, leaving the room.

  When I stepped into the hallway, those huge hands just wrapped around my neck and picked me up off the floor.

  “I want you to know that I’m retiring soon,” Hatchet said to me in a soft, quiet, deadly voice. “If you have any notion of quitting training, I will make it my personal business to hunt you down and kill you with my bare hands for making me come up here.”

  That was probably my first outside incentive not to drop out of BUD/S. Off I went to Boatswain’s Mate school, and every night after class I ran and did PT to get ready. Boatswain’s Mate was a good school. It was probably the most general school in the Navy; you learned a little bit of everything and what everyone else in the fleet had to do. A boatswain’s mate was the most all-around and rounded-off sailor in the Navy. In the old days of wind sails, if the captain of a ship went down, it was the chief boatswain’s mate who would take charge of the ship. He was the master of the machinery that kept the Navy afloat; and if that’s not an important job, I don’t know what is.