On a more mundane level, leadership is learning how to make a decision, and then sticking by it even though you are heckled, nagged, pleaded with, and cajoled to change your mind. The first time I canceled my crew’s shore leave because there was work still to be done on the boilers was one of the toughest decisions I’d had to make to that point in my life. Why? Because I had been a sailor, and I knew how much a night out meant to them.
My background gave me several advantages. I came to my job with a Frogman’s physical confidence—I knew, for example, that I could fight, swim, or parachute better than any man aboard the Taussig. Not to mention the fact that I could also turn anyone who tried to take me on into a pile of chopped liver. That made my life with the crew much easier.
The fact that I came from UDT also helped me establish a good working relationship with my fellow officers. Most knew what Frogmen could do and respected me for it, even if they had no desire to follow in my fin-prints. I also got along well with Earl Numbers, the Taussig’s skipper, and my ratings were well above average.
But there was no real future for me as a ship driver and I knew it. There were far too many Academy grads ahead of me in line. In the Navy of the sixties, the Academy fraternity was very strong. A class ring was a talisman for success—and I was bare-knuckled. There was no aircraft carrier or guidedmissile frigate on my horizon—no USS Taussig, even.
Still, when I received my ensign’s bars, I’d made a commitment to the Navy. It would, I decided, become my career. What I would do, however, was another question. Actually, that’s not quite accurate. I knew what I wanted—the question was how to achieve it.
What I wanted was to become a SEAL. I’d known about SEALs since the teams were first formed in 1962. I saw my first SEALs at Little Creek as soon as I got back from one of my first Caribbean cruises because Two’s headquarters was right across the soccer field from UDT-21. They certainly had a different look to them. First of all, they dressed sharp. They wore shiny, black Cochran jump boots, with their trousers bloused over the tops, while we Frogmen wore regular boondockers with untucked trousers. Some of the equipment Frogmen used dated back to World War II. SEALs got all the best war toys. And everything was new: new, deadly weapons; new, experimental equipment; even new, special-warfare operation techniques and strategies.
Best of all, they were always going off somewhere or other to train. Maybe it would be a month of parachuting or six weeks of jungle warfare or a session at arctic survival school—they were always on the move. Weapons schools, language schools, they were doing it all. And while I loved being a Frogman, I’d peer through the chain-link fence like a stagestruck kid on his first visit to Broadway, watching as the SEALs came and the SEALs went and vowing that somehow I, too, would someday become a SEAL. The opportunity arose because of Vietnam, when both SEAL teams underwent expansion, roughly doubling in size.
The first American combat units arrived in Vietnam on March 8, 1965. On that day, elements of the Third Marine Regiment of the Third Marine Division landed on the beach near Da Nang. The leathernecks were greeted by a sign that read, “Welcome U.S. Marines—UDT-12.” Frogmen were among the first American military personnel to go to Vietnam. SEALs came later. I was on the Taussig in February 1966 when I learned that the first detachment, from SEAL Team One in San Diego, had left for Vietnam. I felt strongly that with the West Coast in play, SEAL Team Two wouldn’t be far behind. So I pulled every string I could to get myself reassigned there.
What worked in my favor was that I was young—twentyfive at the time—gung ho, and an experienced Frogman. There weren’t a whole lot of officers back then who met those qualifications. It took me three months of long-distance wangling,cajoling, coaxing, and threatening, but by May I’d gotten myself detailed back to Little Creek and assigned to SEAL Team Two as a squad leader.
Driving through Gate Five in June 1966, I returned the guard’s salute and thought about the first time I’d come to Little Creek, walking through the gate with Ken MacDonald. “Mate, you ain’t never gonna make it” is what he’d said five years before. Well, we’d both made it. He was still with UDT-22, out on a cruise somewhere in the Med.
I drove past UDT headquarters and parked in the visitors’ lot, slipped into a dress blouse and a pressed pair of khakis, locked the car, and walked into SEAL Team Two’s quarterdeck area.
Bill and Jake, two Frogmen I’d known in the teams, were reading the bulletin board. They turned as I walked in and saluted without looking at my face. I was just another asshole wearing a bar. Then they saw who it was.
“Goddamn—Geek!”
I reached out and grabbed them. “Hey, you sons of bitches.”
Bill looked me over. “So you defected to Officer Country.”
“Food’s better. And the women’re more genteel.” We all laughed. “What’s up?” I asked.
“We just got back from language school,” Jake said. “Two weeks of Spanish, just in case the Vietcong take over Honduras. Hey, Dick, you comin’ over here with us or you going back to 22?”
“Here. I told ’em I wanted to kick ass and take names and they scuttled my desk and sent me where I belong.” I pointed toward the door marked XO. “Joe D in?”
“Yup.”
“I better go get squared away. See you guys later for a beer or something.”
Bill tossed me a sharp salute. “Aye-aye, Ensign Rick.” He cracked a smile, then broke into full-faced grin. “I don’t frigging believe it. You—an officer. Finally we’ve got someone who understands us.”
I turned and headed for the executive officer’s office. In a way they were right: I did understand them, and they knew I’d be around for a while; I wasn’t one of the usual SEAL officers who had a reserve commission, did one tour, and then quit. On the other hand I could see the pitfalls of coming back to Little Creek only ten months after I’d left.
In the minds of many with whom I’d be serving I’d still be The Geek, the guy who ate peas and spaghetti through his nose. I was still the uncontrollable E-5 Frogman who had the reputation of being an animal. I was let’s-drive-the-truck-onthe-sidewalk-through-the-tunnel-in-Naples Marcinko.
I knew I’d have to change their minds. I took a deep breath and walked through the XO’s door. Joe DiMartino rose to greet me.
“Dick—welcome aboard.”
“Thanks, Joe. Good to be here.”
He gave me a firm handshake and a pat on the back. He was easily ten years older than I, and a full lieutenant. Joe had seen action in Korea, and he’d been around during the Bay of Pigs, when the CIA had used Frogmen to help train some of the Cuban maritime assets before the abortive invasion. He was one of SEAL Team Two’s “plank owners”—those sixty officers and men who had been selected to form the initial unit back in January 1962.
DiMartino looked like his name. The boot of Italy was written all over his craggy face, from olive skin and dark eyes to an aquiline nose and uneven white teeth that showed when he smiled.
His uniform was anything but formal: khaki shorts and the blue-and-gold T-shirt in which SEALs did their morning PT. “Is that the uniform of the day?”
Joe D nodded affirmatively. “Roger that. You’re overdressed, Marcinko.”
“I’ll remember tomorrow.”
“Coffee?”
“Sure.”
“Help yourself.”
I took a paper cup, filled it from an urn that sat atop a twodrawer, olive-green file cabinet, and raised it in a steaming, silent toast in Joe’s direction. “What’s up?”
“The usual bullshit. We’re halfway through a training cycle, and you’re gonna have to play some catch-up. I’m planning to send you over to Bravo Squad at Second Platoon as soon as you finish your quals.”
“Roger that. How’s the CO?”
“TNT? He’s okay, but he’s overworked. He’d like to jump and shoot, but the son of a bitch is buried under a ton of paperwork. Makes him prickly, but don’t take it personal. In fact we should get moving right now—see
him before it gets too busy. He’s got some things to say to you.”
“Let’s go.”
We walked out into the corridor. The battleship-gray walls of the low building hadn’t been painted in some time, and the floors were scuffed and dirty. But there was a good, livedin feeling about the place. Moreover, it was both informal and low-key when it came to dress regs and spit and polish, which suited me just fine.
Joe D rapped on the CO’s door. From inside came a distinct growl. “Come.”
We stepped inside and saluted. Lieutenant Commander Tom N. Tarbox lifted his short, bulky frame from behind his desk and returned the salutes. His nickname was TNT because he often became too hot to handle. He brooked no bullshit.
TNT sat me down and read me the gospel. He asked how my wife was doing. I told him she was due to have our second child within the month. He nodded and ordered me to get Kathy squared away as soon as possible because families were a drain on an officer’s time if they weren’t settled down and comfortable. I’d be assigned to work in submersible operations—diving—until I satisfied all my SEAL qualifications. I’d have to go to fire-support school, where I’d learn how to call in artillery strikes from offshore vessels. I’d be required to take language training—Spanish—and requalify in HALO—High Altitude, Low Opening—parachute work, and was that all a roger, Ensign Marcinko?
I’d have to become familiar quickly with SEAL weapons and tactics, and if I was out of shape, God help me because Tarbox demanded that his officers lead from the front, not from behind, and did I get each and every word of that, mister?
“Aye-aye, sir.”
He shook, my hand, told me he was glad to have me aboard, and kicked us out. “I’ve got too much goddamn paperwork to deal with to play nursemaid. See you later at the Officers’ Club for a beer, Ensign. Now haul ass.”
* * *
There’s a world of difference between UDT and SEALs. As a Frogman I was a conventional warrior whose operational boundary was the high-water mark of whatever beach I was sent to reconnoiter. As a SEAL, my real work only began at the high-water mark—and then it continued inland for as far as I felt comfortable. I was no longer just a Frogman, but an amphibious commando who could harass the enemy, carry out intricate ambushes that would confuse and terrorize adversaries, disrupt supply routes, snatch prisoners for interrogation, and help to train guerrillas.
In SpecWar parlance, when I became a SEAL, I became a force multiplier. The principle is simple: send me in with 6 SEALs and we will train 12 guerrillas, who will train 72 guerrillas, who will train 432, who will train 2,592—and soon you have a full-tilt resistance movement on your hands.
Another way of looking at it is that SpecWar operators like me can help a government out, or they can help a government out. It all depends on what kind of national policy you want to pursue. SEALs can’t make policy. That’s for the politicians to do. But if there is a policy that allows us to act, then we can throw ourselves into our deadly work with surprising ingenuity, passionate enthusiasm, and considerable diligence.
That’s what happened in September of 1966, when the Navy ordered a contingent from SEAL Team Two to be ready to leave for Vietnam shortly before Christmas.
I was coming back from a training session in Puerto Rico with my squad—Bravo Squad of the Second Platoon—and we’d just flown into Norfolk Naval Air Station when I saw Two’s new CO, Lieutenant Commander Bill Earley, on the tarmac.
As we came down the ladder, he waved us over. Earley, a West Coast SEAL who’d already been nicknamed Squirrelly because of his habit of constantly fidgeting his six-foot-two frame whenever he sat down, gathered six of us officers in a tight circle around him and gave us the good news.
“We’re authorized for Vietnam. Two reduced platoons—twenty-five men in all,” he shouted over the 100-decibel screams of unmuffled jet engines. “Twenty enlisteds—and five of you guys.”
I have never been the shy type. I didn’t wait for Squirrelly to finish another sentence. I grabbed him by his elbow and walked him down the ramp so I could pitch my case. He was taller than me, but I was stronger, and I had his arm and wasn’t going to let it go until he gave me the answer I wanted to hear.
To his credit, Earley didn’t laugh at me until he’d heard me out. Then he swung out of my grasp, told me I was an obnoxious son of a bitch, that I shouldn’t shit a shitter, and that the con job hadn’t worked.
When he’d finished taking all the air out of my sails, he added, “Marcinko, the reason I’m going to send you to Vietnam has nothing to do with logic, or with the pitiful excuse for begging you just performed. I want to inflict you on those poor Vietnamese bastards for two reasons. First, it’ll deprive you of pussy. That’ll make you especially mean, which will result in a high number of VC casualties, and I’ll look good as a result. Second, you’re the most junior guy here—so you’re expendable—cannon fodder—if you step on a mine or get sniped, we don’t lose much experience, and I’ll still look good. So pack your bags.”
Until that moment, I had never seriously considered kissing another man.
The weeks between September and Christmas are still a blur. The platoon leader, who also ran Alfa Squad, was an LT named Fred Kochey. He and I had about eight weeks in which to take twelve individual SEALs and make us all into a tough, effective, deadly combat unit.
My squad. Bravo, had real potential. Ron Rodger was part Indian, a strong young kid with a hell of a punch—when he hit you, it snapped. He carried the machine gun. When he hit you with that, you snapped. The utility man, Jim Finley, was the kind of guy who could go anywhere, walk into any foreign country and talk to people even though he didn’t speak a word of the language. We called him the Mayor because wherever we went, he’d be out pressing the flesh within minutes, just like a goddamn politician.
The radioman was Joe Camp, a real hustler, who doubled his salary playing poker. Bob Gallagher, the dark Irishman we called Eagle (because he was a bald, beady-eyed, competitive s.o.b.), loved to bar brawl, shoot, and generally raise hell. My kind of guy. I made him assistant squad leader and assigned him to cover our rear. Jim Watson—Patches, because he liked to sew so many school patches on his uniform he looked like a walking Navy recruiting ad—was point man. Jim was one of Seal Two’s plank owners—an original SEAL. It was right that he’d be the tip of the Bravo Squad spear. We had no medic in Bravo Squad. I told the guys that was because junior men didn’t die—only old guys, like Kochey’s antiques in Alfa, would need to be patched up.
Beneath the black humor lay reality. Indeed, my job would be to get Bravo Squad back in one piece. The key to staying alive would be team integrity. We practiced constantly, first at Camp Picket!, in Blackstone, Virginia, then at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina. The problems seemed endless. All the mundane tradecraft things I’d never thought much about now became huge tactical obstacles. How do five-and-one or tenand-two walk a trail? How do you look for booby traps? How do you use a point man—and what about rear security? Where in the squad does the radioman go? Or the machine gunner? If there’s an ambush, who’ll break right and who’ll break left?
We constantly practiced our fields of fire because there are no safety regs when you’re walking with weapons locked and loaded on jungle trails. The asshole who stumbles and shoots his buddy in the back can cause a lot of damage. The solution is for everybody to know how everybody else is carrying his gun, and what portion of the clock his weapon is responsible for. Point man, for example, can deal with a wider field of fire than fourth man, who can only shoot from two to fourthirty on the right, and from eight to ten o’clock on the left.
There were so many questions—and so little time to find the answers. What about the problem of right-handed shooters? Everybody in my squad was right-handed. That meant we all carried our weapons slung over the right shoulder pointed toward the left—so we were unprotected on one side. I decided that half of us were going to carry weapons southpaw-style.
On the plus side was our sq
uad spirit. My guys were absolute renegades—all they wanted was to take on bad odds. I could put them on a ridge and feed them ammo and they’d melt their barrels before they’d give an inch. In fact, one of the toughest problems I had to face at first was keeping them from chasing the enemy and running into an ambush. Because if these Bravo Squad sons of bitches got fired on, they wanted revenge.
(Their aggressiveness would carry on to Vietnam, where all five of my men, Rodger, Finley, Watson, Camp, and Gallagher, would win the Bronze Star or Navy Commendation Medal on our first tour. Bob Gallagher went on to complete four Vietnam tours. On his third, although he was wounded so seriously he could hardly walk, he saved his squad—brought them all, including the squad leader, whom Gallagher carried, out to safety under heavy fire. For that escapade, “Eagle” won the Navy Cross, the nation’s second-highest military decoration.)
But spirit alone doesn’t keep anybody alive. We’d have to be able to kill the enemy before he killed us. This is more difficult than it sounds. I first realized how tough it was going to be at Camp Pickett—in the dead of a fall night. I was running a night-ambush, live-fire exercise. I’d strung us out into pairs along a ridgeline of dunes, forty yards above a simulated canal. The situation was supposed to resemble the Mekong Delta, where we would be assigned. But instead of a sampan filled with VC and supplies, we’d be shooting at a six-by-eight-foot piece of plywood towed behind a jeep.
We’d set up nice and quiet—we’d learned by now how to move without upsetting leaves and branches, and we’d moved quietly into our places and dug firing positions. Our weapons were locked and loaded. We lay in pairs, waiting for the “sampan” to come by. The woods returned to normal: the only sounds we heard were the birds and the bugs.
We were in full combat gear. Green uniforms, load-bearing vests full of 30-round magazines for the M16s we carried, double canteens—everything. All I could see were problems. The green uniforms had to go. They provided no camouflage; we were always visible against the foliage. The vests had to be redesigned because they made too much noise—jinglejingle is not a good sound in the jungle-jungle. Our boots left gringo-sized footprints on the trails. Easy to follow if you were a VC looking for a Yankee to hurt. We did not want the VC walking a mile in our shoes.
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