Once I felt comfortable with our situation, I walked back to vehicle four to check the condition of the wounded SEAL. I had never had one of my men wounded before; I had never even been shot at before, nor had anyone else in the platoon. But I wasn’t panicked. I knew my corpsman would quickly assess the wounded SEAL and begin treatment. I also knew that the 28th Combat Support Hospital (CSH) was less than ten minutes away and we could be there quickly if needed, just as we had briefed in our contingency planning.
Luckily, it was not needed. The wound was minor—miraculous, but minor. A single bullet, which must have been a ricochet with greatly reduced power, had hit the SEAL in the head, penetrating the skin but not puncturing his skull. Instead, it had traveled in an arc around his head in between the skin and the skull. The corpsman checked the entry wound, traced it to the bullet, literally pushed the bullet along the track of the wound until it arrived at the entry point, and then simply squeezed the wound as the bullet popped out. No problem.
Just as we were resolving that situation and the corpsman was telling me that we should take him to the CSH as a precaution, I heard a report over the radio.
“We are taking fire!” someone said on our platoon intersquad radio net.
I took a knee behind the Humvee, as did the rest of the guys.
We listened and looked around to try to figure out exactly what was happening. I thought I heard a couple snaps of rounds. But I couldn’t tell for sure.
At that point confusion set in. I saw that my guys were looking in different directions. Moving from spot to spot for no reason. Pointing weapons and lasers in every direction. Taking cover behind all sides of the Humvees. Everyone was trying to do something, but it looked as though they weren’t sure what they should be doing. This, of course, was my fault. I was the leader. I needed to give some direction. But at this point, even I was unsure what direction to give. So I resorted to a technique I had learned from one of my old platoon commanders: when in doubt, ask. There is no shame in it—especially when compared with the shame of making a bad decision because you were too egotistical to ask a question.
“Where is the contact?” I shouted.
“Across the river!” someone shouted back. That was good. I now had something to work with. But only one person sounded off when that reply came back, which was not the way SEALs operate. In the SEAL Teams, when someone gives a verbal command, everyone repeats that command to ensure that everyone gets the word. But since “across the river” wasn’t one of our standard verbal commands—or in the standard format we use to pass information—no one repeated it. This meant that not everyone knew where the contact was. As a result, there was still confusion and a lack of action with the platoon. A few SEALs had dismounted from the Humvees and taken up positions around them; other men, including the drivers and gunners, remained inside the vehicles.
I had to clear up the confusion, and fast. We had parked beyond the wall of HESCO barriers, and most of the Humvees and the men were exposed to the river and the incoming enemy fire. I needed to get them both, the vehicles and men, behind the HESCO barriers—and I needed to do it quickly. In my mind, for a split second, I struggled to come up with a plan to make that happen. More important, I needed a method to communicate that plan over the radio so everyone would hear it. A long explanation of what was happening would be too complicated for people to pass verbally. I wasn’t sure what to do.
Then I realized this was a scenario we had all seen before in training. The training scenarios had been while on foot patrol, in a totally different capacity, but the same procedure could be utilized here—something everyone in the SEAL platoon knew. So I decided to use the same verbal commands that directed our standard operating procedures when we were on foot.
Based on the Humvees’ direction of travel, the contact was on our right. So I made the call.
“CONTACT RIGHT!” I yelled. Because this was a standard call everyone was used to hearing and repeating, everyone repeated it. Now everyone knew where the threat was.
Next, I yelled, “ON LINE!” to get everyone’s guns facing the threat. Once again, this was a standard call, and everyone repeated it as they executed the action of taking aim across the river. Within seconds, every SEAL was in position, with weapons trained on the threat across the river.
Finally, I called, “SHIFT RIGHT!”—the command to begin to move to the right, based on the direction of the contact, which would move us back behind the cover of the HESCO barriers.
“SHIFT RIGHT!” the platoon members repeated. Immediately, the vehicles and men began moving methodically back behind the cover of the HESCO barriers. In less than a minute, everyone was behind the protection of the HESCO barriers and the contact was over.
It hadn’t been much. The incoming rounds were minimal and ineffective. We took no more casualties and none of the Humvees were hit. It was no big deal. The only reason I remember it at all is that it was my first time receiving enemy fire. But I had learned something very important: the power of disciplined standard operating procedures. I had always been told of their importance, especially by the Vietnam-era SEALs. Now, I had experienced it firsthand.
But discipline could be taken too far. While I now fully understood why disciplined standard operating procedures were important, it hadn’t yet dawned on me that they could be imposed with too much discipline—too much rigidity.
As task unit commander of Bruiser, I learned that lesson. We were out in the rugged desert terrain of Southern California’s Imperial Valley for our first major block of training: land warfare. In land warfare, we learned to shoot, move, and communicate as a team, to close with and destroy the enemy, to Cover and Move, and to utilize our organic firepower to overcome enemy attacks. Land warfare is the foundational training that all other SEAL skills are built upon. But not only was this block of training fundamental, it was also the most physically arduous. It involved long foot patrols across rough desert terrain, carrying heavy loads. During immediate action drills (IADs)—predetermined and heavily rehearsed maneuver reactions that SEALs execute under enemy attack—individual SEALs, performing their role in a dynamic, coordinated scheme of maneuver, have to get up, get down, sprint, crawl, roll, jump, and dive over and over and over again. The maneuvers are physically exhausting. On top of this, the platoon and task unit leaders must also think. They have to assess the terrain, identify the location of enemy fire (in training situations, the position of reactive targets during live-fire drills or the location of opposing force role-players during blank-fire drills). Leaders must quickly analyze whether to assault the enemy positions or retreat—can the opposing force be overcome or should the SEALs break contact and depart the area? Once a decision is made between fight or flight, the SEAL leader then makes a tactical call, which indicates the scheme of maneuver the SEALs will execute, much like a quarterback calling a play in a huddle. Only this isn’t a huddle on a football field. This is a battlefield with lives at stake (a danger even on the training battlefield during live-fire exercises).
Once the call is made, the team passes the word and executes the maneuver. The maneuvers themselves are fairly mechanical—and they have to be. With live-fire training there are real bullets flying everywhere, and if a SEAL moves beyond his designated area, he could easily be killed by friendly fire. Because of this danger, the standard procedures are closely monitored by the SEAL training instructor cadre and strictly enforced. Failure to follow procedures is reprimanded with written safety violations. Any more than two or three safety violations will likely result in a Trident Review Board and possible loss of the SEAL designator.
During land warfare training, the initial days of IADs are very rudimentary. The squads and platoons maneuver in simple, clearly defined, and premeditated movements on open, flat, even terrain. The first iterations are done without firing weapons, so communication is clear and easily understood. The maneuvers are elemental; the leaders do not take terrain into account and simply move the pieces around a board. It
is fairly simple and straightforward, allowing the SEALs to understand the standard operating procedures, which include their individual movements and how those movements fit into the overall scheme of maneuver. As soon as the “dry,” non-shooting IADs are solidified, the SEAL squads and platoons graduate to live-fire maneuvers. This adds a layer of challenge, as now the SEALs must listen for verbal commands over the sound of actual machine gun and rifle fire and pass those commands to the rest of the platoon. It doesn’t take long to adapt; with the flat terrain, the maneuvers are fairly easy to execute.
That all changes when the training cadre moves the platoons out of the flatlands and into the real terrain of the desert: knolls, ravines, rock outcroppings, dry riverbeds, shrubs, bushes, and other common features of the semi-arid desert. Now, the leaders inside the platoon have to actually think—and lead. The terrain, when read, understood, and utilized correctly, provides an unmatched advantage on the battlefield. Elevated ridgelines offer superior shooting positions; rocks provide cover; ravines or depressions in the terrain furnish exits that allow the platoon to escape from an enemy attack while protected from hostile fire. Once a terrain feature is identified and a plan created, the challenge is then to convey the plan to the rest of the team through verbal and visual signals, both of which become obscured by the noise, dust, and terrain itself.
In Task Unit Bruiser, Delta Platoon initially had some trouble during their IADs. Once the contact started (the simulated attack initiated), the platoon got bogged down. Calls weren’t being made. They would remain in position too long, expending ammunition, without advancing or retreating from the enemy. This was bad. As a general rule, it was “flank or be flanked.” Either you maneuvered on the enemy or the enemy would maneuver on you. Stagnation on the battlefield will get you killed, and stagnating seemed to be Delta Platoon’s reaction to each simulated enemy contact.
As the task unit commander, I was responsible for the platoon’s performance. After noticing the issue, I made a point to observe the Delta Platoon commander, Seth Stone, during Delta’s IAD runs. Seth was a relatively inexperienced officer. Like Leif, he had done a tour on a ship in the U.S. Navy surface fleet before receiving orders to BUD/S, eventually going through the SEAL basic training program with Leif. They were both from the U.S. Naval Academy, both from Texas, both fans of Johnny Cash and Metallica, extremely hard workers, and very close friends. I was lucky to have them as my platoon commanders.
That being said, the fact remained that they were both inexperienced. Both had graduated from BUD/S only two years prior to being assigned as platoon commanders in Task Unit Bruiser, and each had completed only one pre-deployment workup cycle and one deployment to Iraq, where they spent most of their time not in the field running combat operations but in a tactical operations center, supporting missions in the field from inside the wire. I couldn’t expect them to be expert tacticians based on their previous experience. I had to teach them.
Seth required some help, so I began to shadow him closely during his IAD runs. It was easy to shadow him—easier than it should have been. Seth was following the standard operating procedures without exception of any kind. Every move he was supposed to make, he made. When it was his turn to stand and move, he stood and moved to the next designated location. When it was his turn to lie down and return fire, he got down into the prone position and returned fire—like a robot. He was executing the SOPs to a tee, without any deviation or thought, and it was fouling him up.
As a leader, you must make it part of your job to see what is coming next, to observe. By observing, leaders can understand the surroundings and the terrain, they can identify enemy positions and observe the locations of their own troops. Once leaders observe all this, they can then make a call.
As I observed Seth, it became clear that his mistake was following the standard procedures too closely. If, as the leader, you move and position yourself exactly as the procedure requires, you might not end up in the best spot to actually see what is happening. You might end up in a depression or behind a shrub or a rock, which inhibits your vision, or around a corner out of sight from the rest of the platoon. As a leader, you might end up in a spot where your gunfire is providing critical cover fire for other members of the team, so instead of leading and directing the team, you’re shooting. All of these are problematic.
What Seth didn’t realize was that the standard operating procedures were general guidelines, not strict rules to be followed. In Seth’s mind, the procedures were rigid, and while they certainly were rigid enough to ensure safety, he didn’t realize that they were also extremely flexible.
Of course, some parts of the procedures were not flexible at all. For instance, individuals could not move laterally downrange of other shooters or they would cut off other team members’ field of fire—or even worse, enter their field of fire and be hit by their bullets. But when behind the line of fire, individuals had the freedom to move around quite liberally, especially the leaders. Leaders could move left or right behind the firing line to observe the location of men and pass the word. They could push back even farther behind the firing line to look for exits. Leaders could even grab other shooters to replace themselves in the firing line, allowing the leader to get up, move around, and look for advantageous terrain features. More important, not only could a leader do these things, a leader must do them. To not move around, observe, and analyze, in order to make the best decisions possible, was to fail as a leader and fail the team.
On the next IAD iteration, I told Seth I would stay by him and tell him where to move. We rolled out in patrol formation, toward the area where the targets would pop up for the platoon to engage. I stuck by Seth, walking beside him but on the opposite side of his field of fire so I would not interfere with his duties. Delta Platoon patrolled down a ravine with rock and dirt embankments on both sides. This was only a training exercise. But the high-risk live-fire drills in sweltering desert temperatures that induced sweat and fatigue, the SEAL instructor cadre critiquing every move, the suspense of targets that popped up suddenly from unseen positions, and the pressure to make good calls all ensured that tensions were extremely high.
Finally, the automated targets popped up ahead of us and we heard the pop-pop-pop of the simulated gunfire they made. Seth hit the ground and started engaging the targets, as did Delta Platoon’s point man, J. P. Dinnell, just in front of Seth. J.P. was an outstanding, young SEAL operator, powerful in build and Default: Aggressive to the core. J.P. was something special. Just twenty-two years old, he was a natural leader and always ready to step up and take charge, which he would do many times during the Battle of Ramadi. He was also extraordinarily brave—a fact that would become very clear in combat. During one serious firefight in the Malaab District of eastern Ramadi, he risked his life without hesitation, running into an open street under withering enemy fire to save a U.S. Marine gunnery sergeant who had been wounded, for which J.P. was awarded the Silver Star Medal. But for now, in this training scenario, J. P. immediately opened up with his machine gun to suppress the “enemy” attack. The rest of the platoon dropped into their respective fields of fire, alternating left and right through the whole patrol.
“CONTACT FRONT!” Seth shouted, alerting everyone that the enemy targets were in front of the patrol. Man by man, the rest of the platoon repeated the call, and shouts of “CONTACT FRONT!” rippled down the line of men.
I watched Seth. He knew that they were in a channelized area, the ravine, and with limited firepower up front and maneuverability restricted by the walls of the ravine, he made the call.
“CENTER PEEL!” he yelled. This was the right call and really the only option in this situation. The rest of the platoon anticipated the call and quickly passed the word down the line.
“CENTER PEEL!”
With that call, Delta Platoon began the carefully coordinated drill of Cover and Move. As some SEALs put down heavy suppressive fire, other SEALs got up and bounded back, away from the enemy contact. Everythi
ng was going well—until it was Seth’s turn to move.
Seth made his way down the ravine past everyone else in the platoon, finally reaching the position where, on paper, he was technically supposed to be, as dictated by the standard operating procedures. Once there, he took a knee facing the ravine wall. I watched him as he stared at the wall of rocks and dirt just feet in front of him.
“What can you see from there?” I asked.
“Not much,” he said, shaking his head.
“How can you figure out where to lead your platoon if you can’t see anything?” I asked him pointedly.
Seth was quiet for a moment.
“I have no idea,” he admitted.
“Well then, move,” I told him.
Now he was really confused.
“Move?” Seth asked. The SOPs dictated where he was supposed to take up position, and in his mind he had followed them—in his mind, he didn’t have the ability to bend the rules. But those rules had left him staring at a ravine wall, unable to see anything that was happening. If he couldn’t see what was happening, he couldn’t lead. So I told him to break that procedure.
“Yes. Move,” I told him.
“But what about the SOPs?” Seth asked.
Seth was concerned that his movement outside the norm would disrupt the flow of the maneuver. What Seth didn’t understand yet was that SOPs weren’t meant to be completely unalterable, especially for the leader. So I quickly explained it to him.
“As long as you keep within visual distance of the last man,” I told him, “you can move around so you can see what the hell is going on—and figure out where to move next. You’re the leader! You have to find an exit.”
The Dichotomy of Leadership: Balancing the Challenges of Extreme Ownership to Lead and Win Page 17