During my reconnaissance period I asked Two’s operations officer, Rich Kuhn, to be my XO. Kuhn was a rock-hard, sixfoot-tall lieutenant who’d served two tours in Vietnam as an ensign. The dark-haired 27-year-old—who sported a Buddy Holly spit curl—had subsequently done an exchange tour with the famed British Special Boat Squadron. This was the seagoing version of SAS, and their exercises were tougher than anything we’d ever done at SEALs. The overseas duty had widened Rich’s horizons just as my attachè tour had expanded my own. He’d gotten more than a taste for port from the Brits—he’d been forged on their unique anvil. He came back even more solid, dependable, and imaginative than when he had left. The Brits also passed on to him their penchant for organization. Indeed, Rich was now a superb manager, an absolute requirement for a good XO. Best of all, he could do all of the above things in a passable cockney accent.
Although I’d never worked with Rich, he struck me as the sort of man I wanted as my number two: he was honest, reliable, and battle tested. He had a terrific sense of humor—the man was a larger, more sophisticated version of Gordy Boyce. Moreover, his instincts were good: he could predict how I’d react and be right much of the time. And he had the sort of understated, tough personality I wanted my officers to project. I invited him out for a beer and put the question to him. Kuhn, the fool, gave me a thumbs-up.
Change of command was on a Friday morning. I gave everybody the weekend off and ordered Rich to have the officers assembled in my cabin at 0900 on Monday morning. Early Monday, I jumped in the SEAL Two CO’s jeep, drove the six blocks to COMNAVSPECWARGRU TWO—Navyspeak for COMmander, NAVy SPECial WARfare GRoUp TWO—and paid a courtesy call on Admiral Greene. I showed up in full uniform, fresh crew-cut with the close-cropped sides we called white walls, and muscles bulging from my hourlong workout.
I gave the admiral my respects, then told him that while I’d signed for the command, I hadn’t signed for the equipment because it wasn’t up to my standards. Therefore, I reported, I was about to conduct a full-scale inventory of SEAL Two. As long as I was doing one, I continued, what about the Spec War chief of staff. Captain Cravener, performing a full administrative inspection at the same time.
Admiral Greene cracked a wry smile. “That’s going to mean a lot of work—for SEAL Two and for my staff.”
“Yes, sir.” A complete inventory meant that every nut and bolt, every bullet and firing pin, every Aqua-Lung and Emerson breathing apparatus was going to be enumerated, along with every index card, paper clip, and notepad. By the time we finished, we’d know how many goddamn staples SEAL Team Two owned.
The administrative inspection would force us to defend our training methods, our war plans, and our budgets. Every facet of SEAL Two’s operational and organizational procedures would be gone over with the proverbial fine-tooth comb.
“I gather you think it’s justified to spend the time and effort, Dick.”
“Sir, there hasn’t been an admin inspection in more than six years. Our mission has changed since Vietnam. It’s time we looked at how we do business.”
He nodded. “And you say you haven’t signed for the equipment?”
“Admiral, my guess is that a lot of what we have was brought back from Vietnam in bad shape. The inventory may say we’ve got our full complement—but I’d give five to one odds that most of it doesn’t work very well. Thing is, if I sign for it, it’s mine, whether it works or not.”
The admiral looked intently at me. “Gotcha,” he finally said. He rapped on the desk as a sign I was dismissed. “Keep me posted, Dick. And tell the chief of staff I concur about the admin inspection.”
“Thank you, sir.”
I walked out of NAVSPECWARGRU TWO HO half an hour later leaving the chief of staff and most of the staff openmouthed. Who was that spit-and-polish, bull-necked, white-walled asshole anyway? Marcinko? Impossible.
Rich Kuhn had the SEAL Two officers waiting in my cabin, sprawled on the floor because there were only four chairs. Most wore the blue-and-gold T-shirts and tan shorts that were uniform of the day for SEALs. That was about to change. Rich, who’d had a premonition, had worn his uniform. Lucky for him.
I walked in. Rich called out, “Tenn-hutt!” They straggled to their feet. Somebody said, “Hey, Sharkman—” but I cut him off with a cold stare.
“Gentlemen,” I said, “I have just briefed the admiral, and I have volunteered us for an administrative inspection and a full inventory.”
“What the—?”
“Furthermore, this place is a shithouse,” I said. “I’ve spent the past month poking around, and I can tell you gentlemen that there is very little that I like around here.” I put both hands on my desk. “I don’t like the fucking equipment. I don’t like the fucking staffing. I don’t like the fucking training. I don’t like the fucking war plans.” I swept the room with my eyes. “I don’t like fucking anything.”
My voice got louder, deeper, and more insistent—the Barrett in me taking over. “From now on you’re going to do something else besides jock it with the troops. You are going to fucking learn to lead. You are going to learn how to write fucking papers. You are going to learn how to write fucking messages. You’re going to learn how to write fucking plans.”
I turned to Rich. “XO?”
He snapped to attention in the best British style. “Sir?”
“You will call the Officers’ Club and have them reserve a table for sixteen five days a week for lunch. Twelve-thirty to fourteen hundred. All officers will be expected to join the CO for lunch daily. There will be unit fucking integrity.”
“Yes, sir.”
Silence. Their faces were like stone. Two of the ensigns had their mouths open a full two inches.
I cut them all dead. “And from now on you can clean up your own offices—and I mean clean. I want the windows washed inside and out. I want the floors scrubbed—by you, gentlemen, not by some E-2 flunkie.”
They became invisible. I turned to Rich again. “XO—”
“Yes, sir?”
“You will pass the word. There will be no beards. There will be no mustaches. Haircuts are back in style. Starch is back in style.”
“Yes, sir.”
“XO—”
“Sir?”
“You will pass the word. Call the post exchange and tell them there’s going to be a run on calling cards and ceremonial swords. All officers will have fucking calling cards. All officers will have fucking swords.”
I turned to my officers again. Their ashen faces looked as if they’d been mud-sucked. “Gentlemen,” I said. “You will learn common fucking courtesy and protocol.” I paused for effect. “Because as of today, gentlemen, you are all fucking back in the fucking Navy.”
I swung back to Rich. “I think that’s enough for right now, XO,” I said sweetly. “I’ll want all hands assembled at thirteen hundred. You may dismiss.”
I walked out of the room and never looked back. This was fun.
Of course they tested me. Facial hair was first. The guy with the best-looking beard came to visit me in my office and refused to shave it. It was Eddie Mugs. He was no stranger. We’d had three Med cruises together in UDT-22 aboard the USS Rushmore. Like me, he was one of Everett E. Barrett’s boys. He’d watched me suck peas through my nose as part of the Mr. Mud and Mr. Geek mess-deck vaudeville act. We’d been through scrapes in Barcelona. We’d chased whores in Rome. We’d gotten drunk in Athens. The night I’d driven the truck through the tunnels in Naples scraping the walls as I passed other cars, he’d been in the back, screaming and yelling like an Indian as Chief Barren blankety-blank-blankblanked at me at one hundred decibels.
He was Mugs, a big-fisted, round-faced son of a bitch, and I was Geek, a hands-on bar-brawler, and we’d been asshole buddies since Christ was a mess cook.
Rich Kuhn showed him in. He saluted. I returned it.
I sat behind my desk, a mug of steaming coffee in front of me, just like a real naval officer. “At ease.”
He
clasped his hands behind his back and spread his feet. There was an awkward moment of silence.
I sipped at my coffee and looked evenly at him, remembering a lot of good times. I guess he was doing the same. “Mugs?”
“Mr. Rick.”
“You wanted to see me.”
He nodded. “Sir—about my beard. I want to keep it. It’s—”
I cut him off. “Look, Mugs, I have nothing against beards. The Navy says a sailor can have one. But on SEALs they’re a safety hazard. If you have a full beard and wear a face mask, there’s a good chance it won’t hold a seal. That’s dangerous. Maybe other COs didn’t give a rat’s ass about that, but I do. And as long as you’re taking hair off, you might as well take all of it off—so the mustache goes, too.” I cracked a slight smile. “That way I can see if you’re giving me any lip.”
“Yes, sir, I understand how you feel. But it’s still Navy rules that we can have ’em. Until the rule changes, sir, I’m keeping the beard.”
“You can keep it, Mugs. But not in SEAL Team Two.” I sipped my coffee. “You’re out of here.”
He looked at me, as stunned as if I’d shot him.
“You have made your choice, Mugs, and I have made mine. Your peers set you up. They—and you—thought there was no way in hell I’d screw with you.”
My voice turned hard. “Problem is, there’s no way in hell that anybody’s screwing with me.”
Tears began to well in the corner of his eyes. “Sir—”
“That’s final, Mugs. You’re history. Take two days. Figure out where you want to go, and I’ll do all I can to make sure you get what you want.”
His jaw hung open but he couldn’t say a word. My own face had turned to impassive stone. “I’m sorry—we could have used you around here,” I told him. “But now you can go and tell the boys out there—‘Don’t mess with the CO because he’ll mud-suck you like you’ve never been mudsucked before.’
“Dismissed.” I saluted, then swiveled my chair toward the pile of paperwork that sat on the credenza behind my desk as Mugs wheeled and left. I didn’t want him looking back to see that the decision had been as hard on me as it was on him.
There were SEALs who thought I was too tough on the men during my tenure. But they weren’t from SEAL Two. The SEALs at Two liked being challenged—I know so because I had an extraordinarily high retention rate during the time I served as CO—more than 80 percent of the enlisted men stayed with me.
One basic problem I saw with SEAL Two was that too many junior officers were detailed to administrative work instead of being sent into the field. You don’t lead warriors from behind a desk. I needed to find Two a talented admin puke—a young officer to hold the fort while we warriors went out to play.
It wouldn’t be especially easy. SEALs had a hard time getting along with non-Spec War types, and admin pukes came and went with the speed of office temporaries. But I had an idea. The SEAL officer detailer, Dick Lyons, was an old friend of mine. We’d gone through OCS together. He’d become a ship driver while I threw myself out of planes and sucked mud in the Delta. Now he was in Washington driving a desk. Being the able administrator he was, he’d know where I could find fresh bodies. I gave him a call.
“Yeah, I got a warm one for ya. Dick,”
“I’ll bet you do, you malevolent mick. Who is he?”
“Name’s Tom Williams, a JG.”
“Stats?”
“He’s a reserve officer—completed flight training but he didn’t have the stats to get an assigned seat in a squadron, so they bumped him. He was sent to a SOSUS unit in Bermuda—one of those tracking stations for the underwater sensors we deploy against Soviet subs. He was diddled there, too, because he was junior-junior to three ambitious schmucks who didn’t want competition and decided to give him a screwing on his fitrep to get rid of him. Now—although he doesn’t know it yet—the Navy’s about to throw him out on his ass.”
“Jesus.”
“It’s a tough deal. He ain’t a bad kid. Lots of potential, but no one to take advantage of it.”
“Wanna bet?”
Lyons laughed. It was a big, warm, boisterous Irishman’s laugh that got people’s attention in saloons and brought the women around. “You’d be doing me a favor. I need to stash
him someplace for six months so the system forgets about him and he stays in service.”
“Send him to me, Lyons. Send him to Father Marcinko’s Home for Recalcitrant Boys. I promise I will educate the child.”
“You’ll give him a goddamn postgrad degree,” Lyons roared. “Just keep him in one piece, okay?”
Lieutenant (j.g.) Thomas R. Williams arrived a few days later. He was a short, slightly built officer whose shy demeanor gave him the appearance of a Central Casting accountant. He checked in, got himself a room at BOQ—Bachelor Officers’ Quarters—and showed up for work, looking more than a little insecure.
I watched him get buffeted around the quarterdeck by the SEAL officers. We tend to be confident sons of bitches, and the sight of this poor schlemiel trying to make headway in the face of blatant hazing made me cringe. But Williams had guts—instinctively he stood his ground. The kid also had heart. What he needed was to learn some assertiveness. And he had to start working out. The role of the 97-pound weakling is not a fun part to play when you’re assigned to a SEAL team.
Although Tom was married at the time, he was taking this assignment as a single because it was only temporary (or so he thought). So Kathy-Ann and I invited him to dinner one night about a week after he’d arrived. She fed him a fair amount of beer, pasta, a big green salad, and ice cream, and then withdrew as I grabbed two more brews from the fridge and motioned Tom to follow me into the den.
I dropped onto the couch. He took the beer and sat, can balanced on his knee, in an armchair.
I raised the can in his direction. “Welcome to Little Creek.”
“Thanks.” He took a swallow. “It’s a nice change from Bermuda.”
“Dick Lyons thought you’d like it here for a while.”
He nodded. “I do—so far.”
“Guys giving you a tough time?”
He shrugged. “Not so bad.”
“Then they’re not trying very hard.” I drained my beer and put the can on a Time magazine that sat on the coffee table. “Tom, I’m about to give you a no-shitter.”
He looked at me with the eyes of a puppy about to be put to sleep. He’d been through this before—when he’d been cut from flight school, and when he’d been screwed at SOSUS. His face told me he thought I was going to can him. He swallowed hard. “Whatever you say, sir.”
“The Navy’s about to survey you out.”
He flushed bright red. “What?”
“You’re dead meat, kid. They think you can’t cut it.”
“That’s—” He slammed his beer, inadvertently knocking it onto the rug. “Oh, shit, sir—I’m real sorry—”
I grabbed a dish towel from the kitchen, snatched two more beers, went back, and wiped the rug down. “Don’t worry about it. Here.”
He took the beer out of my hand and chugged it. “Goddammit.” He slammed the empty can on the table. I got him another cold one, and he started working on it. Now his face had gone livid. “Goddammit to hell.”
“What?”
“God damn the Navy. Screw the Navy anyway.”
“Listen to me, Tom, you’re a reserve officer. Take yes for an answer. Go home, make money. Get out of this bullshit rat race.”
He shook his head. “No way.”
Interesting: the kid’s jaw had a firm line when he set it. He had grit. “Okay, so what do you want to do?”
“I want to stay in the goddamn Navy.” He paused. “Assholes.” He looked at me and laughed in spite of himself. “Fuck me—I’m the asshole.”
“Okay, young Tom Williams, fuck you very much.” I swallowed the rest of my beer, grabbed two more, opened them, gave him one, then sat down nose to nose. “Dick Lyons says you’re a go
od kid. I like what I see. What do you say we screw the Navy a little bit?”
His eyes lit up. “Sounds good to me.”
“Here’s the drill. I need a kick-ass admin officer, and you’ve been recruited. You do the job and I’ll protect you. The Team will protect you.”
“You got it.”
“Not so fast. There’s more. You take PT with the Team. You get yourself in shape. You go to BUD/S.”
“Jesus—”
“You get qualified as a SEAL officer.”
“But—”
“I don’t want to hear but, Tom. SEAL Two is a family, and I want you to be part of it, not some distant fucking relative. That means you gotta pass the initiation—meaning BUD/S. So get yourself lean and mean. Work with me, and I’ll work with you. And then we’ll go back and we find those sorry motherfucking cocksucking pencil-dicked shit-for-brains pus-nuts goatfucker assholes who screwed with you, and we ream them new sphincters.”
The kid laughed my kind of laugh. He stuck his hand out, spit on it, and offered it to me. “Deal, Skipper.”
I did the same.
He took me seriously—and we took him seriously, too. The “qualified” wardroom hazed him unmercifully. But at my order they practiced Barrett’s First Law of the Sea. They showed him the tricks of the trade and brought him along one step at a time through diving and demolition basics, parachuting, and unconventional warfare tactics. Tom worked out with the troops every morning, pushing his body farther than he ever thought it could be pushed. He did it all—the runs, the swims, the rope climbs, the target practice.
After six months, he was ready, and we sent him off to BUD/S. He made it through easily, and we welcomed him home in October 1975, pinning the Budweiser on his tunic just about a year after he came aboard.
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