Battle Ready: Memoir of a SEAL Warrior Medic

by Mark L. Donald

  Neither of our fathers could make it to the ceremony due to health concerns. Dad’s memory was so bad he probably wouldn’t remember it anyway. Korrina’s father, “Piv,” was a Korean War veteran with the Marine Corps; his memory was sharp as a tack, but his physical health at the time was poor, and it hurt us both when he was unable to travel.

  “From what Mom tells me, Tabetha watched after her more than she did Tabetha,” I said as Korrina dusted off my shiny dress shoes. The rest of the night, the kids were kept occupied by their grandmothers, who spoiled them with attention while Korrina and I talked about the busy day ahead. We ran through the schedule and planned for every contingency, including morning bathroom usage. There were only two bathrooms between our adjoining suites, and no matter how hard we tried we’d probably be running late. So I picked up the phone and arranged for a driver to get us there on time, and Korrina wrote down the number of two backup car companies just in case, ever the efficient naval officer.

  * * *

  The car dropped us off at the Metro entrance, and we walked slowly toward the large ornate doors. In the distance I could see two escorts waiting for us to ensure we made it to Secretary Donald Winter’s office on time. It was obvious Mom’s dawdling with her cane was beginning to worry them, so the young sailor grabbed a wheelchair and hurried it out to her.

  “Thank you, that’s very nice, but why would I need that?” Mom asked in her naturally kind voice. “I still have two good legs to get me there. Let’s save that for someone who needs it more than me.”

  He smiled and started to answer. “Ma’am, I can assure you we have plenty—”

  “Petty Officer,” I said quietly, interrupting him so he wouldn’t waste any more time trying to coax Mom into the chair, “only the Lord our God and the pope have any powers of persuasion over her, and even the pope’s is limited.”

  “I understand, sir,” he said, sighing and looking at me as if he dealt with the same problem with his mother. Fortunately his counterpart was a savvy female marine who saw a solution to the problem.

  “Ma’am,” she whispered, bending down to mom’s ear, “my feet are really tired, and I can take a motor cart, but only if you go with me.”

  “Oh, let’s do that, we don’t need you hurting,” Mom said as she patted the gunny’s hand, comforting her.

  The cart dropped us off at the private corridor to the secretary’s office. The hallway was pristine and lined with portraits of the past secretaries and other historic memorabilia. About halfway down the hall I saw Secretary Winter, Deputy Undersecretary Marshall Billingslea, and TJ waiting for us. Mom didn’t know any of them, but it didn’t matter, she jumped right in and told them how the navy needs to get more comfortable dress shoes for its troops. Her declaration confused the men, but you couldn’t tell by looking at any of them. They smiled and promised to get right on it.

  Secretary Winter walked everyone into his office and graciously spoke about the history of the position and the artifacts that filled the room. For nearly thirty minutes he sat with us and answered every question asked, from Mom’s concerns about the war to my stepson’s query about Theodore Roosevelt’s standing desk. He then walked us across the hall to the conference room where the ceremony was going to take place.

  We entered the room and found Mark, Marc, TJ, and the colonel, as well as a few members of my team, who were speaking quietly among themselves. Additionally, there were nearly two dozen senior military officers, including some of the navy’s top admirals, all decked out in dress blues. I tried to distance myself mentally from the ceremony, but seeing everyone here, especially my teammates, brought it all back. I put on a smile but felt a profound sadness inside, brought on by the memories of Chief and Chris and the others I was unable to save. To the rest of the room, I seemed calm and at peace, yet my family could sense the conflict raging inside me, especially Mom and Korrina. Mom reached for my hand and patted it the same way as she did when I was young. Only now my conscience was trying to rectify a burning self-disappointment, and she could read it plain as day.

  “It will be OK, mijo. Just remember God gives you the most strength when you’re at your weakest point.” I had serious questions about my faith and hadn’t told Mom about them. Right then certainly wasn’t the time. Regardless of my belief or lack thereof, Mom’s resilience and wisdom were unquestionable, so I concentrated on her words and not the doubts I was feeling inside.

  As the ceremony progressed, I was able to keep it together until the citation for the Navy Cross was read and the medal was pinned to my chest. It was then tears welled up in my eyes and a bitter, cold sorrow gripped my heart. I tried focusing on a spot on the back wall while I said a few words about the team and, most importantly, those who made the ultimate sacrifice that day. I could feel the empathetic gazes of my wife and mother as I stood there speaking to the crowd. Together they gave me the strength to get through the ceremony.

  At the conclusion, Mom pulled me aside and looked at me the same way she did staff Sergeant Sandoval nearly twenty years earlier. “Marky, a few nights ago you explained to me what you feel these medals represent,” she said as she pointed to the medals on my chest with her open palm. “Now I’m going to tell you what they really mean.” She paused just long enough to grab my hand and raise it between us. “They mean when you’re in the public eye, your actions will mean more than ever before, and if what you’re doing doesn’t make the mothers of America proud you’re doing it wrong.”

  Once again the honest simplicity of her words foretold what I had to do. “I’ll try, Mom, I’ll try,” I said as I hugged her, a few tears running down my face.

  “I know you will, mijo. And when those who don’t understand begin throwing stones, the Lord will be there to help you heal, even if you turn away from him.”

  * * *

  Following the awards ceremony, I took several days off to spend some time with the family, most importantly Mom. Throughout my career, I traveled to Albuquerque to visit my daughter and stayed with Mom while there. I always kept our conversations limited to family and friends and never discussed business. I also avoided talk of my visits to the psych, or how I was questioning the idea of one omnipotent God having control over our world yet sitting idly as we tried to destroy ourselves. I held information back from her because she couldn’t possibly understand the horrors of battle, but in reality I was taking the easy way out. Mom was, and still is, someone I dread to debate. She wasn’t a quick-witted intellectual or loudmouth know-it-all that steamrolled the opposition in attempt to hide the truth, and she certainly wasn’t the cowardly type that went around spreading rumors, too timid to face people with whom they disagreed. She was simply a tiny Mexican mother filled with forgiveness and love, whose generosity rivaled Mother Teresa’s. I had nothing to fear and everything to gain by speaking with her, but maybe that’s why I avoided the conversation until now. Maybe I was afraid of what I might hear, the brutal truth delivered with a mother’s love.

  “Mom, I don’t know how to tell you this, so I’ll just say it right out in the open. I believe I’ve lost my faith in God.” I spoke in a tone reminiscent of my youth, hoping it would ease the blow for both of us.

  “No, Marky, you’re just questioning what you don’t understand. All of us do that at some point in our lives, but you haven’t lost your faith, mijo,” she said with confidence.

  “I don’t know, Mom. I’ve been thinking a lot about God, religion, the war, and none of it makes any sense to me anymore.”

  “Marky, not everything needs to make sense for you to believe it. It didn’t make sense for me to stay with your father, but it was the right thing to do.” I hung my head in shame, recalling how I pushed her toward a divorce when I was in high school and things were at their worst. Had she listened, Dad would have ended up living a lonely life as a forgotten man.

  “Mijo, don’t get caught up with what your mind tells you. It’s what’s in our hearts that drives us. Believe in good and good things will h
appen, that’s all the Lord is saying. That’s all faith is, mijo.” She took my hand as she spoke, giving me a sense of comfort. Mom always had a way of making everything in life seem so simple. Perhaps that’s why I had such anxiety about having the conversation with her. We sat quietly together, mother and son. She gave me the time to process her words.

  I thought back on SEAL training. Certain trainees developed the mental tenacity required to weather life’s storms, and it all came down to one word: faith. I remember listening to POWs recount the horrible conditions and torture they endured in the prison camps in Vietnam, and how they echoed the same words I heard from Holocaust survivors. Faith, they all had faith. I was beginning to realize my tower of strength was built on a foundation of faith in a higher power, and a belief in mankind wasn’t strong enough to hold it together. I had seen too many atrocities in war to believe in the inherent goodness of man. There were certainly good men, but without a resilient foundation the bricks came tumbling down. How could faith in a benevolent God be any different, and why would a God encumber me with more responsibility instead of providing me with relief?

  “Mom, ‘faith’ is much easier said than done,” I said, trying to mentally shed the burden I carried inside the moment the secretary pinned the award to my chest.

  “I know, mijo, but sometimes added burden is relief.” I looked at her as if she were crazy. “You know, my father built our home with his hands, but it didn’t start off so easy. The first time he tried, the foundation was weak, but he kept shoring it up. To the rest of us everything looked fine, but when he began to add more and more weight, it all came tumbling down. We all thought he’d be angry, but he just smiled and started all over again, and continued until he built the house that still stands today. Sometimes we have to lose everything in order to realize what we really have. It’s time to rebuild, mijo. Just remember, if you do the right things for the right reasons, the right people will know it, and the people you try to reach will have better lives because of it. I have faith in you, and eventually you’ll find your way. That’s why God gave you that cross to bear, not the navy. His son bore a cross, too, you know.” I sat there with a tear in my eye as she kissed me on the forehead, then stood and shuffled into the other room to check on her grandkids. I never had a chance to ask my grandmother about Mom’s story before the Lord called her to his side, but it didn’t matter. God was speaking through Mom, and I was listening.

  24

  TRIDENT

  In the end we are all separate: Our stories, no matter how similar, come to a fork and diverge. We are drawn to each other because of our similarities, but it is our differences we must learn to respect.

  —JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE

  Soon after I checked on board the Pentagon, Korrina was transferred from San Diego to a Naval Special Warfare billet on the East Coast. Pleased with the first-rate care she provided, the special warfare community tried to change the miles between us from a couple of thousand to only a couple of hundred. While she shared a large office with another PA, complete with its own refrigerator and coffee mess, I found myself sitting in one of the thousands of tiny cubicles that make up the Pentagon. There I addressed a litany of medical concerns that various support programs for spec ops were encountering. It didn’t take long before establishing a few protocols, and placing the right medical providers at certain commands began to lighten my workload. Of course, just when everything seemed to be on course, I’d get a call with another fire to put out. This time it hit close to home.

  It seems a navy chief at the Office of Naval Intelligence was having difficulty readjusting to home life after a yearlong deployment in Iraq. Mike Wade was part of a program called “Trident” that provided direct intel support to deployed SEAL Teams. While he wasn’t a SEAL, he’d accompanied the assault team on numerous high-profile missions. After spending nearly an hour on the phone with his chain of command I learned Mike had worked as a firefighter and was one of the emergency responders at the Pentagon on 9/11. “That alone can carry a heavy burden,” I said over the phone to John Jacobs, the programs operations officer. “But you’re telling me he didn’t have any problems prior to his going downrange?”

  “No, he was good to go, a real workaholic. In fact, he was doing such a bang-up job they asked him to pull a back-to-back.” That meant staying in country for an additional six-month tour in support of the incoming task force. “Doc, all I can say is when Mike returned from Ramadi he was a different man.”

  “In what way?” I asked, already knowing the answer but wanting to confirm my suspicions.

  “Well, he’d only been back for a short period of time when we noticed everything seemed to irritate him and things weren’t getting done. He’d always been a lead-by-example sort of guy, but now all the problems in his life were always someone else’s fault. He just wasn’t himself.” John paused for a few seconds to answer someone who walked into the office. “After a night of heavy drinking and downing a crapload of sleep meds, he decided to place a few late-night threatening calls to the skipper. Thankfully, the police found him in one piece the next morning.”

  Since Trident didn’t have a medical representative assigned to them, I agreed to act as their liaison until we had time to address it. “John, I’ll get with the psych department at the hospital and get back with you, but I won’t be able to tell you too much other than if he’s okay. Patient confidentially limits medical information to only the commanding officer.”

  “Yeah I get it, but we’re not wanting any more than that, Doc. We’re just concerned about our shipmate.”

  “Thanks for understanding. You’ll be hearing from me soon.”

  After a quick visit with Mike and his psychiatrist, I stopped by the radiology suite to get the MRI of my brain that Dr. Garsha had ordered, hoping to isolate my headaches. Turns out he’d been appointed head of Undersea Medicine right there in Washington, D.C., so I couldn’t think of a better neurologist for me than my old mentor and friend. As I lay on the cold table, the technician placed the coil around my head and guided me into the tubelike tunnel. How ironic; here I was, helping Mike deal with his combat stress when I was under care for the same condition from another provider. My mind wandered between the similarities and differences between Mike and me as I tried to ignore both the ringing in my ears and the pounding of my heartbeat the earplugs accentuated during the procedure. By the time it was over I felt worse than when I started but hoped we’d have some answers. In the meantime I needed to get back to John and a man that most folks simply knew as the Bullfrog.

  * * *

  Captain Peter Wikul was Naval Special Warfare’s “Bullfrog,” a title reserved for the longest-serving Navy SEAL on active duty. He’d already served thirty-three years before receiving orders to ONI on what would turn out to be his last assignment. He arrived in Washington, D.C., soon after the war began with instructions to coordinate with naval intelligence for increased support to Naval Special Warfare. His plan was a simple concept: create a new multidisciplinary intelligence officer whose skill set mimicked the skill set of a SEAL, at least in principle. Instead of training up a sailor in diving, parachuting, weapons, demolitions, et cetera, he wanted to take a general intelligence officer and layer on discipline after discipline of intelligence analysis, outfit him or her with all the latest digital analytic tools, and then send that person forward to the battlefield. His rationale was “If I can only get one or two of my people on the battlefield, they damn well better be able to do it all.” Mike was one of his best.

  We met for coffee at a McDonald’s not far from the Pentagon with a mutual friend and colleague. “Bullfrog, thanks for meeting with me. Even though I’ll be visiting your office on Monday I thought it best to update you on how Chief ’s doing,” I said as we walked to a table in the back corner.

  “Thanks, Doc. Chief Wade is one of my top performers, with extensive experience assisting unconventional warriors in counterinsurgency operations. He may not be a SEAL, but he’s c
ertainly seen his fair share of battles.”

  Our conversation might have started out about Mike but quickly shifted to the effects multiple deployments were having on the force, then transitioned to how his concept for a new type of intelligence officer had proven so successful that it had been selected to become one of the four pillars of intelligence support ONI offered to the fleet. I was intrigued with what Bullfrog had been able to accomplish. They were in need of SEALs to assist in standing up the command, he said. I couldn’t help but ask if he’d have room for a fellow frogman to join him at his new digs.

  “Absolutely, I could definitely use you, but I don’t want to steal you away from where you’re at now. Those guys and I go back a ways.”

  “You go back a ways with half the navy, Bullfrog,” I said with a wink.

  He laughed, then said, “How about you let me speak to them first and see what I could do. As long as you think you’ll be able to handle both jobs from my location, I don’t see too much of a problem.”

  * * *

  Captain Wikul pulled the necessary strings to transfer my desk from the basement of the Pentagon to the Office of Naval Intelligence to assist in the development of a fledgling navy command. The move into Bullfrog’s Trident program was good for me both mentally and emotionally, and I definitely needed the support and flexibility the larger boat crew offered.

  Not long after Korrina arrived on the East Coast she was told she’d be deploying to Iraq with the next task force. Although I knew her departure date months ahead of time, shamefully I didn’t pay too much attention to it until it was only weeks away. Soon our roles would be reversed and I would be the one staying at home while she went off to war. Luckily the kids wouldn’t be affected too much. Tabetha still lived with her mother in New Mexico, and with the travel my job entailed, we all felt better if Korrina’s son, Cody, stayed with his father in Wisconsin.