There was a lot more training to do. We learned underwater work: how to swim long distances accurately underwater without ever breaching the surface, how to map beaches from the sea, and how to fire all kinds of demolitions, handle weapons, and conduct military patrols. A lot of my Army experience helped. And we all became good friends.
Today a lot of people claim to be SEALs or frogmen who never went through BUD/S. They say their class number is classified and they can’t tell it to you. Or that they forgot it. A BUD/S class number is part of your open military record. It isn’t classified, and anyone can know it. And you will never, ever forget the number of the class you graduated with. Those men will be with you for the rest of your life. That final day on the grinder when you have graduated BUD/S is one of the proudest days of your life. The moment when you join the ranks of the very select few who have gone before you is something that can never be forgotten.
When I graduated from BUD/S, I received my orders to report to SEAL Team One. A number of the guys went on to the different UDTs, but several of us went directly to the SEAL Teams. Now my real adventure was going to begin.
CHAPTER 6
SEAL TEAM ONE AND KILO PLATOON
Because of my previous Army Airborne status, I didn’t have to go to Fort Benning and jump school with the rest of my class. Even though it had been about three years between jumps for me, the command said my qualifications were fine. My orders were to report directly to SEAL Team One.
SEAL Team One had its headquarters building just to the south of the training compound, right next door to UDT 13. So the physical walk to SEAL Team One wasn’t very far, but it was a world away from BUD/S. There were about two hundred guys in the Team; the balance of the men were out on deployments, at schools, or on other duties.
SEAL Team One was one of only two SEAL Teams in the world then. They had been commissioned back in January 1962 at the direction of President Kennedy. They had been the first SEAL Team in direct combat in Vietnam. And they had been there a year before SEAL Team Two had come over to play in the game at their invitation. I learned a lot about the Team when I arrived and looked at all the pictures and citations around the quarterdeck. And then I checked in myself.
Once at the Team, I checked the bulletin board to try and find out what I was supposed to do next. As the newest man on board, I was automatically the bottom man on the duty rosters. Master Chief McKnight, who was the master at arms, sent me over to Rocky Cochlin for my plan of the day.
When you reported on board at a SEAL Team in those days, you were assigned to the master at arms as part of a general labor pool until you were picked up by a platoon and went through a platoon workup. You weren’t doing all the high-speed SEAL operations and training yet. Instead you were painting the walls, cleaning the heads, and doing general maintenance work for anywhere from three to six months. After the big rush of getting through BUD/S, this brought you down to earth fast.
We were also sent over to the NAB (Naval Amphibious Base) right across the street to draw prisoners. The prisoners were sailors who had been put in the brig for some infraction. We would go get a group of ten or twelve of them, bring them back over to the SEAL compound, and direct them to clean up the area and do whatever other work had to be done. As the SEAL from the master at arms, I was in charge of the detail, which meant I had to direct the prisoners and make sure none of them ran away. This kind of thing, including the painting and other jobs I did myself, was called “snuffy work” and was done by the lowest ranking guys in a unit. It made you humble, and it put you in your place. That was me, new meat.
Needless to say, the glamour of being in a SEAL Team was fading a bit as I spent yet another day painting the walls of the head. That’s where I was when Master Chief Gary Chamberlin changed my fortunes. Coming up to me as I was putting paint on the walls, he called out, “Chalker!” in that distinctive voice of his.
“Master Chief,” I answered.
“You want to be relieved of doing this?”
“What?” I asked. “Of painting?”
“Yeah,” he said. “Do you want to get out of master at arms?”
“Yes, sir!”
“Well then, tomorrow you report to me over there,” he said, indicating an office area. “You’re in Kilo Platoon.”
Believe me, that helped speed up my painting job for the rest of the day.
Master Chief Gary Chamberlin, Chambo to everyone, soon became my Sea Daddy at SEAL Team One. A Sea Daddy is somebody who acts as your mentor as you start out in the Teams. He takes you under his wing, shows you the way, keeps you in line, and teaches you how to be a SEAL. This teaching includes how the community works and what it expects of you.
A Sea Daddy is somebody you can look up to and want to be like. Chambo fit that part for me. He was a well-respected Vietnam era master chief who had a direct way of speaking to his troops, usually unprintable.
In general, Kilo Platoon was a great way to start out a SEAL career. The guys who made it up included Jerry Bolland, Neil “Nelly” Nelson, Kurt “Stinger” Feichtinger, Bobby Just, Doug Tiedemann, Doc Warner, Gene Gardner, Lieutenant Mike Steinbaugh, who was our officer, Tom Bunce, the assistant officer, Billy Almond, Timmy Farrell, and I. Most of these guys had been in Class 100 just ahead of me and had gotten back from jump school in time to form up in Kilo. But the biggest surprise came in the form of the platoon’s LPO (leading petty officer).
Checking in at Kilo as the LPO was Michael Faketty, the same gentleman I had known as Instructor Faketty back in BUD/S. There were a lot of new guys at the SEAL Team in Kilo Platoon, and most of us had been under Instructor Faketty’s gaze at one time or another. There’s a strange feeling when you find yourself working for an instructor who just a few months before was so high up over you he blocked out the sun. Faketty knew that and took us into a classroom to give us a heart-to-heart talk soon after he came on board at Kilo.
“Look,” Mike said, “I know I put you guys through training and I’m your LPO now. But I want you all to understand one thing. I had to do a job over there, and I wanted to make sure we put the right people through. Someday, like now, I knew I might have to work with them. And I know you can all do your jobs.”
That said a lot and cleared the air for us. The whole platoon became real tight, and all of us ended up being pretty good friends. Mike and I wound up as shooting partners when we broke the fourteen-man platoon down into two squads of seven men each. We were supposed to have sixteen people in two squads of eight each, but Kilo was running light at the start. Operating with Mike made us tight with each other, something I wouldn’t have dreamed of just six months earlier.
Kilo Platoon started its workup going out to Niland in the California desert for STT (SEAL Tactical Training). We were prepping our gear, doing land operations, setting up point man courses, doing a lot of shooting, and conducting a lot of different kinds of ops.
Experience in the desert was new to me as well as to a number of my Teammates. On one op, we did a hit (ambush) up at the Chocolate Mountains. Bobby Just was one of our M60 gunners. We were on these sand dunes patrolling when we ran into one of the locals. This local was a sidewinder rattlesnake moving along the sand. Bobby decided to open up on the snake with his M60, which was loaded with blanks.
Blanks don’t work too well on snakes, but they do manage to get their attention, and sidewinders can really move over the sand when they’re pissed off, as Bobby found out when that snake started chasing him. We stood there laughing while we watched the snake chase Bobby all the way to the bottom of the dune.
That wasn’t the only rattler we met while out at Niland. A guy back at the main camp had a snake from one of the earlier platoons that had been out there, a big rattler that was kept in an aquarium out near the fire area. One day this guy was going to show us how to handle the snake. He opened the top of the cage and stuck his hand in.
As soon as the snake was done biting him, we learned how to treat someone for snakebite. “Yup,” we
thought, “you’re showing us.” His arm started swelling fast, but the corpsmen started his treatment right away and he was fine.
One of the other things I learned about at Niland was a swamp cooler. Being from Ohio, my desert experience was limited to a couple of days sitting on an airstrip in Egypt during my Army tour. So I didn’t know what to make of the tank of water and wet cloths at Niland that cooled the room through evaporation. Kind of a neat little field air conditioner.
At the end of a workday, after we cleaned the weapons and gear, we had some time for ourselves. We would take one of the vehicles over to where the canals ran along right behind the campgrounds, and going upriver about a mile and a half, we would get out our inner tubes. One of the tubes had a platform in it that would hold our cooler. Then we would just float down the canal on the inner tubes, wearing our shorts and drinking beer.
At Niland, we learned to work hard and earned the right to play hard. Besides, what else were we going to do in the middle of the desert?
When our training was completed, we returned to Coronado to get ready to deploy. Our tour was going to be of Southeast Asia and the Philippines.
Before we deployed, there was a little ceremony for the junior men from Class 100 and 101 that we will all remember to our last days. The graduates of BUD/S who were with me in Kilo Platoon, and the platoon officers, chiefs, and petty officers had held our performance board while we were undergoing STT. The board passed us all, and our six-month probationary period was officially over.
At Morning Quarters for SEAL Team One, when the whole team gathers to hear the morning orders, we received our Tridents. That was one of the happiest moments of my life. Before then, we had been allowed to wear Team shirts, called “Blue and Golds,” that had a Trident printed on them. But they weren’t the same as that metal device. That was something you became very proud of within seconds of pinning it on.
There wasn’t any formal ceremony that morning. We were just in morning formation in our normal green duty uniforms, not even the blue and gold T-shirts. The rest of the Team were wearing their blue and gold T-shirts and blue shorts, so you could pick us out of the crowd easily. But standing there in front of the command, I felt like I was being gifted with one of the greatest honors that could be bestowed. The men standing around me were my Teammates, and they were welcoming me among them.
The commanding officer of SEAL Team One came up to each of us in formation, followed by our platoon officer and chief, and pinned the Tridents on our uniforms. Later, Chambo had his own way of pinning those first Tridents on us.
“Okay, missies,” he told us after Quarters was over. “Into the platoon room.” In the room, he placed our new Tridents on our chests and smacked them in solidly. A lot of men had bled for that Trident to build its reputation, and each one of us was going to do the same if only for that one moment to remind us of the men who had worn them before us.
That little weight felt good on your chest. It was the biggest, gaudiest insignia device in the Navy. And it told everyone who saw it just who you were and what you had done. You were a member of a very small, tight community of men. It had taken twenty-six weeks of unbelievable work and six months of proving yourself worthy before you could put that piece of metal on your chest. And it feels like your chest puffs out a bit to properly hold the Trident up where everyone can see it.
The traditions of the Team, those of Teamwork, dedication, and an ability to get the job done no matter what, were something that I intended to uphold to the very best of my ability. I didn’t just want to wear the Trident; it was important to me to prove that I earned it, to give something back to the Teams. And the only way to do that then was to go operational. As a young SEAL, the last thing you wanted to do was develop the habit of sitting in an administration office. That kind of thing could turn into your entire career. So I wanted out into the field.
And I got my wish. Within weeks, my platoon had deployed to the Southwest Pacific. In the Philippines, Tim Farrell, Bobby Just and I went to Jungle Survival school. It was run by the locals, the Negritos. The first thing they did was take us to the local river and kill a big lizard. They tossed the lizard into the back of the truck, and then they took us into the jungle.
We began by learning about all the different things you could make from bamboo. One of the immediately practical lessons was how to make cook stoves for rice out of big chunks of bamboo. One of the instructors then took us down to the river, pointing out the wildlife and snakes that were all over the place. There was an area where bats filled the trees. Not your little winged mouse but huge fruit bats the size of small dogs.
Little did I know it, but I was soon to meet those bats face to face. Chambo, who knew well how the school ran, had told us that he would meet us that night at a certain point and have a case of beer for us. One of the instructors agreed to let us walk up the trail and meet Chambo at the prearranged spot. The only problem was that the meeting spot was right in the middle of that area full of bats. Chambo told us to “have fun” when he gave us the beer; as soon as it got dark, I knew what he meant. I only had to walk a couple of hundred yards through that area, but the bats were flying all over the place.
I must admit that beer hit the spot, though. The lizard that had been killed earlier in the day turned out to be dinner. They skinned it, roasted it, and we ate it. It wasn’t bad; that reptile really did taste like chicken. The Negritos would only have one beer—they couldn’t handle alcohol very well and knew their limit. The rest of us stayed up drinking. None of us had ever been in the jungle before, so we had hung our hammocks around the campsite, surrounding the fire. And pretty much all of us spent the night right around that fire.
The next day we started relaxing a little more as we learned about the jungle around us. The guides showed us how we could cut certain vines and water would drain out of them, pure and clean enough to drink. What little I knew about the jungle came from watching Tarzan movies as a kid. The real thing was a lot different. When I listened for all the sounds they always had in the movies, they weren’t there. The jungle could be quiet and peaceful in its own way.
The vegetation was dense, and it gave me a good appreciation for what would be coming up. Eventually we would have to patrol though this stuff on operations. And we would have to conduct many of those patrols at night. When I was on point in a patrol, I learned that walking through the jungle wasn’t easy. You had to take your time and choose your path carefully. Chambo showed me why he carried a small pair of wire cutters on patrol. When you got all tangled up in the little vines, you could finally just cut yourself free.
After completing the three-day jungle course, we conducted some further exercises in the area. Then the platoon continued on to Korea to work with the ROK (Republic of Korea) frogmen.
The ROK frogs were disciplined, and that’s putting it mildly. Their service is of the old-school military. If you screwed up as a trooper, you didn’t necessarily get official punishment. Instead you could expect to be taken out behind the barracks and have your shortcomings discussed from the viewpoint of your NCO’s fists. But there was also respect, very strong respect, in the ranks. An NCO didn’t earn his position by just being the meanest mother on the block. He knew he had to do it better than the men, always. Leading by example was the only way to operate in the ROK military.
Our first dive with them was a simple open-circuit compass swim from one pier to an anchored landing craft some distance from shore. I was teamed with an ROK officer and their team’s chief. The chief had the compass board, so he was doing the driving.
When we got into the water, I was glad I had an experienced ROK with me. Tiedemann was having some fun with his group of guys, just holding the end of the buddy line attached to the swimmers while they swam in circles. Meanwhile we took right off and were moving along well toward the landing craft. The swim was maybe fifteen hundred meters and didn’t look to be any big deal. Then the ROK officer gave the out-of-air signal (indicating, of course,
that he was out of air and couldn’t continue to swim).
If it was possible to look determined and disgusted with a face mask on and a mouthpiece in, the ROK chief was pulling it off. When we finally broke the surface, he just cut the buddy line between him and his officer and wanted to go right back down. But we waited for the safety boat to pick up the officer. Then back down we went for the rest of the swim.
The current was worse than I thought it would be, and the swim was taking a longer time than I’d thought. As I watched the chief I saw his hand go up to his rig and turn on his reserve air. When you go on your reserve, that’s usually the end of the swim, but not for the ROK chief. He just continued on.
About five minutes later I had to hit my reserve and signaled to the chief that I was on my last air. He just pointed to show we would continue with the swim. A few minutes later we saw the shadow of the landing craft and knew we had hit our objective. But that chief ran out of air well before we hit the boat. For the last hundred yards or so, I hadn’t seen any bubbles at all. He must have been just holding his breath and pushing to complete the op.
What I found out later was that the air bottles hadn’t been fully charged before we started our swim. Only a few teams made it to the target at all. But that chief was going to set the standard, so he made it. Later he chewed his men out, and I was very glad I wasn’t on the receiving end of it.
On one night op, we were taking the Zodiac inflatable boats in on a compass course to the beach. The ROKs were navigating, and our guy was about fifty yards off the target when we finally beached. This was no biggie. You could misjudge distance over water pretty easily—that’s why we practiced doing these kinds of things. Apparently the ROK chief thought differently.
The next morning, our navigator was standing in formation with his unit. We stood there and watched the chief whack this guy in the head with a boat paddle, not once but several times. The guy was just standing there taking it, kind of grunting with each strike. Finally he fell down and the formation continued. If it had been me, I would have hit the ground on that first whack. I did hope Chambo wasn’t taking notes.
One Perfect Op Page 5