by Don Mann
During the three days it took him to negotiate Hutch’s temporary release, Lieutenant Mike R.—who had a really sick sense of humor—continued to mess with him. He told Hutch, “I have bad news. The Bolivians won’t let you out of here, and they’re planning to give you the death penalty.”
He also walked in one day and said, “Sorry, Hutch, but the boy died. You killed an eleven-year-old boy.”
When Hutch started to scream, the LT said, “I’m only kidding.”
Once the LT knew Hutch was being temporarily released, he called us together and said, “I want you guys to load the plane quickly. I’m going to pick up Hutch, then we’re going to fly out of here illegally, as fast as we can.”
I thought, That’s a pretty ballsy move.
Later that night, as we were loading the C-130, the LT drove up in a taxi with Hutch. As soon as they boarded, he ordered the pilot to fire up the engines.
We were pulling the rest of our gear up the back ramp when two platoons of Bolivian soldiers arrived and surrounded the plane, their weapons drawn.
They yelled in Spanish, “If you try to leave, we’ll shoot you.”
The LT refused to back down. Instead, he said, “Okay, guys. Open the cruise boxes and break out your weapons.”
It was going to be like the gunfight at the O.K. Corral.
We closed the ramp and taxied down the runway as all of us held our breath. Thankfully, the Bolivians (many of whom we had just trained) let us leave without firing a shot.
But when we returned to Panama, we caught hell. The commanding officer who had told us not to cause any trouble was pissed. And rightfully so.
Chapter Thirteen
El Salvador
What does not kill me, makes me stronger.
—Friedrich Nietzsche,
Twilight of the Idols
My former German teacher Shannon and I were married in 1990, and she eventually moved to Panama with me. But even though we loved each other, our marriage got off to a somewhat rocky start.
When Iraqi troops invaded Kuwait in August of 1990, President George H. W. Bush launched Operation Desert Storm to thwart Iraqi aggression. In Panama, where I was still stationed, I heard over the radio that the U.N.-authorized coalition force of thirty-four nations led by the United States was in dire need of special operators who were also medics, and I wrote to the SEAL commodore in Coronado, California, requesting orders to be assigned to the invasion. When Shannon found out, she protested strongly.
With good reason. She was pregnant with our daughter, Dawnie, who was born on March 22, 1991—which was one of the happiest days of my life.
Months before Dawnie was born, I had been sent with a group of ST-6 SEALs to help provide security to a regional drugs summit being held in the beautiful colonial city of Cartagena, Colombia. Tension was extremely high. Officials feared that Colombian drug barons would take revenge for the recent arrest of their friend and ally Manuel Noriega.
■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■ who, in the style of machismo, wore black armbands with DAS printed boldly on them and roared through the streets on trail bikes.
We were staying at the same local hotel as the presidents of Bolivia and Peru. As ST-6 SEALs, we tried to remain low-key, but the seriousness of the summit didn’t stop the presidents and their friends from partying all night with loud music; people laughing, dancing, and screaming; and naked women being thrown in the hotel pool.
President George H. W. Bush was more discreet, arriving in the morning on Air Force One. After the Boeing 747 taxied to a stop near the terminal, the president emerged and waved from the top step of the stairway. At least, I thought it was the president. But when I looked closer, I saw that the man was not the president but an almost perfect double. When he wasn’t shot at or attacked, the real president emerged from the plane and was whisked quickly to an armored limo.
Since BUD/S, the pace of my workouts hadn’t let up. In addition to doing the required daily SEAL PT, I was on a thirty-year mission to work out every day. I hadn’t missed a workout since February of 1978, and that included fifty-mile trail runs, two-hundred-mile bike rides, twenty-four-hour mountain-bike rides, and fifty-mile kayak paddles.
In the fall of ’91, I was training with four guys from SBU-26 for the Run Across the Isthmus—a fifty-two-mile run across Panama, starting at the Atlantic coast and following jungle paths and railroad beds to the Pacific Ocean. The first man who won it, in 1940, was a future World War II hero named Fay Steele.
The guys at SBU-26 weren’t as committed to training as I thought they could be. Having some idea of the toll that fifty-two miles through the heat and humidity was going to take, I invited them over to my place and warned them by saying, “This is going to be the most miserable day of your life.”
As I was talking, I felt a series of sharp pains on the right side of my abdomen that caused me to double over.
One of the SBU-26 guys asked, “Don, are you all right?”
“Yeah,” I answered. “I think I just have a slight case of food poisoning.”
A few minutes later I started feeling nauseous, and I ran to the bathroom and threw up.
Shannon said, “Don, you better not do this stupid race. You’re sick and need to see a doctor.”
I said, “I’ll be fine.”
The guys I was planning on running with that night had never run an ultramarathon. So I explained to them the importance of hydration and electrolyte replacement, bringing extra shoes, and considering race tactics.
After they left my house, Shannon saw me lying on the sofa in pain, holding my side, and she said, “I can’t believe you’re doing this!”
Not about to let a little discomfort stop me, I answered, “I’m running the race.”
She said, “If you do, I’m out of here.” Then she picked up our baby daughter, took my stepdaughter, Chonie, by the hand, and left the house. (She was gone for two days.)
We were living in Navy housing at Fort Amador, which faced the canal, with SEAL neighbors on both sides.
Now I was alone, dry-heaving green bile, and feeling like someone had thrust a rusty sword in my side. The pain was so bad that when I tried calling the hospital, my eyes couldn’t focus enough to read the numbers.
When I stumbled out of the house, a neighbor’s wife saw me and screamed, “Don, what’s the matter with you? Oh my God!”
I asked weakly, “Can you take me to the hospital?”
She and her husband helped me into the backseat of their Volkswagen Bug and sped to the nearest hospital. I was in so much pain that I fell to the floor of the car and curled up in the fetal position.
The moment the emergency room orderly opened the door, I hurled all over his shoes. Turned out that I was in the process of passing kidney stones and had to spend the night. Regretfully, I never got to run the race.
During my three years in Panama, I had a full plate of responsibilities. When I wasn’t on missions, I directed the three-week Naval Special Warfare jungle-survival course in Panama, which was held in jungles filled with crocodiles and poisonous snakes. We taught members of the Naval Special Warfare community advanced-weapons tactics; small-unit-patrol techniques; how to plan and conduct small-unit missions; how to recon an area; how to tactically cross rivers; how to make improvised tools, set traps, and fish; food and water procurement and preparation; and jungle navigation.
The course culminated in a four-day SERE exercise designed to test each student’s ability to survive alone or in small groups while in hostile territory.
The crocodiles and snakes weren’t a joke. After I left, an Army soldier who was attending the course disappeared. It’s presumed that he was eaten alive by a crocodile.
Once, when I was leading a group of trainees on a run down a jungle road, I looked back to
see how they were doing and saw a strange, whirling haze. While trying to figure out what it was, I was surrounded by a swarm of killer bees that started stinging me without mercy.
Soon all of us were jumping and screaming, looking like we were doing some kind of crazed Pygmy dance. The only way we could get away from the bees was to run a quarter of a mile and jump in the ocean. By that time, we were all covered with welts.
Another time, when I was driving down that same road, I saw an Army platoon sitting in a group. Two soldiers were huffing and puffing, and the face of one had turned white.
I stopped the jeep I was driving and asked, “Are you guys okay?”
“Yeah, we’re fine.”
I pointed to the one guy who looked liked he was having a particularly hard time and said, “He doesn’t look okay to me.”
One of the soldiers said, “He was stung by some killer bees and is allergic to bees.”
“Well, you are not fine. Where’s your medic?” I asked.
“He’s lost.”
“Then where’s your sergeant?”
“He’s with the medic.”
In the few minutes we were talking, the soldier lost consciousness. So I loaded him in my jeep, took him to a tent we had set up along a river, and administered Benadryl, epinephrine, and oxygen.
He woke up, looked at me, and asked, “Who are you?”
I didn’t tell him how lucky he was to still be alive.
In addition to directing the jungle survival course, I ran the Medical Civic Action Program (MEDCAP) throughout Central and South America. This was an extension of the same program that had been used in Vietnam in which free medical care was administered to poor peasants and intel was gathered that could be of value in planning future operations.
I ran similar events in Honduras, Bolivia, Colombia, El Salvador, Peru, and Nicaragua. First, I’d get a grant of seventy thousand dollars from an organization that managed Central and South American military aid, and I’d use it to buy medical, dental, and veterinary supplies. Then I’d recruit volunteer doctors, nurses, and medics from the different military hospitals and clinics in the United States and Panama. I’d look for dentists, OB-GYNs, and veterinarians too.
We’d strategically select a remote area filled with poor people in need of medical attention and set up field tents. We’d have a dental tent, an OB-GYN tent, an admin/registration tent, and a general sick-call tent where everyone came in to be checked.
Once we put out the word that we were going to be there, hundreds of men, women, and children streamed in, often accompanied by their farm animals. Some would walk for two or three days, then stop and bathe in a nearby river. They were proud people who wanted to look their best.
The native women were remarkable. They’d arrive dressed in their finest clothing. Some had never seen a dentist in their lives.
The people sat on the wooden dental chair, and the dentist would pull their bad teeth without using Novocain. The men and boys would cry. But the women never complained. We pulled bad teeth, rotten teeth, and teeth that looked like they might go bad. We used a fifty-gallon barrel to hold all the bad teeth. By the end of the week, it would be a quarter filled.
Meanwhile, the veterinarians and some of the medics would go into the fields and inoculate the cows, goats, and sheep.
Some of the people who attended were suffering from serious injuries that hadn’t ever been treated. I remember one girl limped in with a club foot. We managed to get her a flight to an Army hospital in Texas for treatment.
Another father and son carried in the almost lifeless body of a teenage girl. She weighed about seventy pounds and was running a 106-degree temperature; her unconscious body was hot to the touch. Upon examining her, we found that she’d had a spontaneous abortion and part of the fetus was still stuck inside her. It was infected and she had become septic. She’d probably had no more than an hour left to live when her father put her in my arms.
We worked on the girl for hours, and she survived.
I staged a number of MEDCAP programs in El Salvador. Since 1980, a civil war had been raging there between the military-led government, which was supported by the United States, and leftist rebels of the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN).
The MEDCAPs we held there turned out to be great sources of intelligence. We’d set them up in the foothills of the Sierra Madre, near FMLN strongholds. Grateful patients would tell us where the rebel camps were located and what routes they used to smuggle in weapons.
I was wearing many hats in Panama—running missions and serving as director of the jungle survival course, director of MEDCAP, and liaison to SEALs who were deployed to Panama.
I also supported many of the military operations in El Salvador. The first SEAL funeral I attended was for Lieutenant Commander Albert Schaufelberger, who had been the security chief to the American military advisers stationed in El Salvador. Schaufelberger had been waiting to pick up his friend outside Central American University when he was approached by an FMLN gunman, who shot him three times in the head. In accordance with Schaufelberger’s sealed instructions, his ashes were scattered in the Pacific from a SEAL patrol boat.
I arrived in El Salvador toward the end of the conflict. By the time the government and the FMLN rebels signed the Chapultepec Peace Accords, in January of 1992, approximately seventy-five thousand Salvadorans had died.
From my point of view, the Salvadoran conflict was unique. For one thing, the Red Cross seemed to be openly supporting the rebels. Whenever we saw a Red Cross ambulance, we knew the rebels were nearby. In the evenings, armed fighters from both sides of the conflict would frequent the same restaurants and bars. We knew who they were, and they knew us.
One night I was on a joint SEAL–Special Forces op with an experienced SF operator named Chito. The two of us were lying in long grass dressed in Salvadoran garb—Levi’s, jungle-camo tops, and ball caps. We had a wheelbarrow filled with automatic weapons and ammo that we were supposed to push for about twelve kilometers, to a rendezvous point.
While we were lying in the grass in enemy-controlled territory waiting to launch the op, Chito couldn’t keep his mouth shut. Maybe he was nervous. Maybe he had a lot on his mind.
For whatever reason, it was the beginning of a strange night.
He started to tell me that before joining the Army he’d been the lead singer in a punk rock band called Luke, Puke, and the Vomits. No kidding.
And he told me about some songs he wrote dealing with the many intense things that had happened in his life. Like the time the remains of his best friend were returned from Vietnam. Or when his girlfriend was badly injured in a motorcycle accident.
He explained the elaborate stage act he’d worked out. Before his band performed, Chito would buy sheep intestines from a butcher shop and hide them in a plastic bag that he taped under his shirt. At the end of a particularly dramatic song, he’d take out a knife and slash the bag so that it looked like he was cutting his stomach and his guts were spilling out.
I liked Chito, but he was wound tight. The more he spoke, the more agitated he got. He’d been in El Salvador for years and was frustrated. He said, “We keep pushing human rights on the Salvadoran army troops, but every morning they find the headless body of another of their fellow soldiers in the river.”
As he started to tell me about visiting his girlfriend in the hospital after her motorcycle accident, I heard something moving toward us in the pitch-black night.
“Chito, be quiet!”
We slithered through the chest-high grass and hid behind a large tree. I was on the right; he was on the left. The sound was moving closer and growing louder. We had our fingers on the triggers, safeties off. I could feel Chito about to explode.
He said, “On three, we’ll rush them!”
“No, Chito,” I said. “Let them come to us. We have cover. We’re undetected.”
He said, “No, let’s go get them.”
“No. Listen to me, Chito.”
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The noise grew louder, and the object crept closer. Our hearts were pounding. Our weapons were pointed at the noise. We were ready to fire when a big black bull emerged from the grass and stared at us.
We laughed our asses off.
A few minutes later we started moving through the high grass toward the Pacific coast again, Chito pushing the wheelbarrow.
We stopped after a bit because Chito was out of breath. I felt something at my foot and scratched it. Then I said, “Chito, let me push the wheelbarrow.”
Now I was pushing the weapons-and-ammo-loaded wheelbarrow. Even though it was past midnight, the air was hot and sticky. Both of us were sweating.
I felt something on my leg under the faded old Levi’s I was wearing.
Chito was talking, telling me about how he loved this one girl even though she had been with a lot of men. He said when he last saw her in the hospital her jaw was all wired up and she’d said, “Chito, I can’t suck your dick, but you can rub it on my lips if you’d like.”
Then I felt something near my knee and stopped to scratch it. A few minutes later, whatever it was moved to my groin.
I stopped and said, “Chito, shine the flashlight on the front of my pants.”
“Why?”
“Just do it, okay?”
I opened my pants and saw a small black snake. I stared at it; it looked back at me. Then I grabbed the damn thing and flung it as far away as I could.
Chito loved that.
An hour later, we arrived at the coast, where we met another SEAL, named Johnny. We were supposed to rendezvous with an SF medic also, but he hadn’t arrived.
So the three of us—me, Chito, and Johnny—sat on a bluff overlooking the shore waiting for the asset we were scheduled to meet. Suddenly, round things started rolling down on us from the land above. We couldn’t tell what they were or where exactly they were coming from.
Johnny and I climbed up the bluff to look.
He whispered, “Come here! Come here!” And pointed to a camouflaged hatch door in the ground.