Traveling by boat, we mitigated the risk from IED attacks, the roadside bombs that were heavily utilized by enemy fighters. But on the narrow canal, perhaps fifty yards wide, everyone on the boats was totally exposed, with nothing to hide behind and no way to take cover from any potential onslaught of enemy gunfire the insurgent fighters might unleash upon us. Our only advantage was the darkness and the element of surprise. For now, all was quiet and we observed no movement along the riverbanks. But the tension was extreme. Beyond the reeds, the city on both sides of the canal belonged to al Qaeda. Where we were going, there was nothing but block after block of a war-ravaged city that had seen almost no U.S. or coalition forces in months and was firmly controlled by a brutal and murderous insurgency loyal to al Qaeda in Iraq.
We would be the first U.S. boots on the ground in the area. Our mission was to cover the movement of the U.S. Army Soldiers of Task Force Bandit (1st Battalion, 37th Armored Regiment of the 1st Brigade, 1st Armored Division) in their heavy tanks and vehicles as they drove down the most dangerous road in the world—statistically, it accounted for more attacks from IEDs than any other road in Iraq, or anywhere else. We were the lead element, a small group launching ahead of the main effort—a force of hundreds of American Soldiers and Marines, some fifty tanks, and dozens of heavy vehicles as the spearhead to establish a small U.S. combat outpost in enemy territory. In the early morning darkness, only a few hours after we inserted from the boats, the heavily armored vehicles of the mine clearance team would slowly and meticulously pick their way along the road, identifying and disarming the bombs to clear a path for the M1A2 Abrams Tanks and M2 Bradley Fighting Vehicles. Dave’s task was a crucial one: he and his twelve Marines (including a Navy corpsman) accompanied us to control the aircraft overhead, our only means of support for several hours until the tanks could reach us, in the event we came under enemy attack—a likely scenario.
When we arrived at our preplanned insertion point, two boats quietly maneuvered toward the shoreline while the other two covered our movement with their .50-caliber heavy machine guns, M240 medium machine guns, and GAU-17 miniguns.1 We stepped off the bow of the SURC onto the muddy riverbank as quietly as possible given the ridiculously heavy load-out—each man carried his helmet, body armor, weapons, radio, and rucksack with enough water, food, ammo, and extra batteries: all essential gear for forty-eight hours of “getting after it” in the most dangerous terrain of the most dangerous city in Iraq. If we lost our air support, we’d be on our own against the onslaught of the hundreds of well-armed, combat-experienced enemy fighters who occupied this section of the city and ruled over its civilian populace in a brutal reign of terror, intimidation, and murder.
We knew they were out there—waiting, watching, and listening. After disembarking from the boats, we moved through the reeds up the slope to the shelter of a date palm grove, allowing the rest of the team room to disembark behind us. Charlie Platoon’s point man, Chris Kyle, was in the lead; I followed closely behind. We stopped for a few moments and took a knee, listening for movement as we scanned the area for threats, weapons at the ready. Nothing stirred.
As Chris and I listened for the enemy, I heard someone behind us key the intersquad radio we used to communicate with each other. But instead of a voice, I heard only the rustle of equipment and heavy breathing as the operator toiled under the load of his rucksack and combat gear. It was a “hot mic,” an accidental toggle of the radio talk button—what civilians with cell phones might call a “butt dial.” But in the field, it was more than just annoying. It prevented us from passing critical communication between the team, and the continuous noise of the radio in our ears also diminished our ability to detect enemy movement.
“Hot mic,” I said as quietly as I could, keying up my radio in an effort to talk over the accidental call. “Check your gear.”
There was no response. The hot mic continued. It was a liability and it pissed me off. But there was nothing I could do about it.
I waited for the sign that we had a full head count—meaning everyone had successfully disembarked from the boats. When it came, I gave the hand signal to patrol out. As point man, Chris moved out in the lead. He led the patrol around some smaller buildings and through a date palm grove to the edge of a road that ran perpendicular to our direction of travel. It was an open area with no trees or cover and we had to cross it. Across the road was urban terrain: dusty streets and alleyways littered with trash, and the walled compounds and houses of South-Central Ramadi. This was enemy territory. We’d come to take it back.
It was about thirty yards across the open area to the other side of the road and the buildings beyond. We called this a “danger crossing.” We’d need weapons to cover the movement of the patrol, which would be exposed and vulnerable to attack while darting across the open terrain. Once we had operators in position to cover us with their weapons, Chris and I nodded at each other and moved together across the street as quietly but as quickly as possible. Once on the far side, we took positions to cover the next element’s crossing just behind us. As soon as they reached us, Chris and I bumped forward. Suddenly, Chris held up his hand in a signal to halt the patrol. I moved up to him.
“What’s going on?” I asked in a whisper, trying to communicate while making as little noise as possible.
“My battery is out,” he answered quietly. The laser illuminator that enabled us to use our weapons in the darkness was no longer functioning on his rifle. It was a critical piece of gear: without it, Chris could not shoot accurately—his essential role as point man.
Still, we had the entire rest of the patrol behind us, almost fifty operators trying to get across the open area before the enemy was alerted to our presence.
“We can’t stop here,” I said. “Everybody behind us is exposed on the road. We’re only three hundred meters from the target buildings. Let’s push forward and you can change your batteries there.”
Chris wasn’t happy. He was at a serious disadvantage. But as the leader, I had the good of the entire team to think about.
Reluctantly, Chris resumed the patrol forward. As we moved out we followed a paved street, a narrow passage between two eight-foot-high concrete walls on either side. Somewhere beyond the danger crossing, the hot mic ceased as the culprit adjusted his gear. But by that point, I barely noticed. We were now deep in enemy territory and scanning for threats in all directions. We knew an attack could come at any moment.
Along the length of the road, in the center of the dust-filled pavement, was a shallow depression where raw sewage drained to a nearby creek. On the left side of the street, piles of trash were stacked against the wall. These trash piles were a favorite hiding place for IEDs. To keep clear, Chris wisely bumped to the right side of the street and moved along the wall, pulling the entire patrol to the right side to mitigate the threat.
Suddenly, I saw Chris freeze. Only fifteen feet ahead of me, his weapon was trained on an apparent threat. It was around the corner and beyond my field of vision, but the unspoken signal was clear: ENEMY. This was Murphy’s Law in full effect: without a functioning battery in his laser aiming system, all Chris could do was wait for me to recognize the signal and take action.
Quickly, I moved toward Chris, stepping as carefully and quietly as possible. Immediately, I saw what had stopped him—an armed insurgent fighter, kaffiyeh wrapped around his face, AK-47 rifle at the ready, an extra magazine taped alongside the first for ease in reloading. He was perhaps twenty-five yards away and walking toward us. There wasn’t a moment to lose. Though we greatly outnumbered him, if he opened up on us with his automatic rifle, this one well-armed insurgent could kill many of us, particularly in our close patrol formation. He turned his head in our direction, his rifle at the ready—
BAM! BAM! BAM! BAM! BAM!
I engaged with my M4: the first round impacted his head and the rest followed as he crumpled to the ground. Chris rushed toward him to ensure he was no longer a threat as I moved to the corner of the
wall to provide cover in the direction from which the enemy fighter had come. Where there was one, there very well could be more.
“Need a machine gunner up front,” I said, using verbal commands. Our SEAL machine gunner, Ryan Job, always eager and ready to unleash the fury, rapidly pushed forward and bumped me out of my covering position, replacing my rifle with his much more powerful and effective Mk48 machine gun.
“Let’s move,” I directed. The gunfire, though necessary, had cost us the element of surprise.
Charlie Platoon SEALs surged forward past the prostrate enemy fighter to the target buildings beyond, which we would enter and clear so they could serve as the location for the U.S. Army’s planned combat outpost. We boosted SEALs over the gate, and they opened it from the inside. The rest of us entered, rapidly clearing the buildings. Once secure, our snipers established shooting positions and machine gunners set security. Dave Berke and his Marines took station on the roof of the main building with our team.
Our snipers and machine gunners kept watchful eyes in the darkness through night-vision goggles and weapons sights as we waited several hours for the IED clearance teams to cover the half-mile distance from the main road through the city to our position. It was still dark when they arrived, white lights beaming, like something right out of a Mad Max movie. The “Buffalo”—a giant armored vehicle with a huge mechanical arm—began digging in the street near the base of the building we occupied. I peered over the side of the rooftop, three stories down, and could clearly see the cylindrical forms of large artillery projectiles, which had been scavenged by insurgents and turned into powerful and deadly IEDs, as the clearance team dug them out of the dirt.
I thought of a phrase I learned in BUD/S: “If you can see the explosive, it can see you.” If those artillery rounds detonated, giant fragments of metal would fly in all directions, ripping apart whatever they hit, including my head if I continued to peer over the rooftop. Not smart. I took cover behind the roof wall.
As the ground force commander, it was up to me to figure out our next step—where to move to best support the U.S. Army battalion once it arrived. From the rooftop, I observed a large building about three hundred meters to the south, and I pulled out my map to check it out. I talked things over with Charlie Platoon’s chief, Tony, and our key leaders.
“I like the look of that building to the south,” I said, pointing to it in the distance and then to the corresponding building number on the map. “The rooftop gives us a good position on the high ground and the walls look thick enough to protect us from bullets.”
Chris Kyle disagreed. In addition to being our point man and lead sniper, Chris had the most real-world experience of any of us in this type of “sniper overwatch” mission.
“I like that large, four-story building,” he countered, pointing out a different building in a totally new direction about 350 meters to the east. We located it on the map and identified the building number.
I was skeptical. I felt the building to the south would put us in position to best support the Army and disrupt enemy attacks and not put us in a bad spot between enemy and friendly positions. To the south, there was another U.S. Army combat outpost several hundred meters away, in a village on the outskirts of Ramadi. But beyond Chris’s recommendation to the east, there was only block after city block of enemy territory until you reached the U.S. outposts on the far eastern side of Ramadi in the volatile Malaab District. Chris felt that the majority of enemy attacks would likely come from that direction.
As the IED clearance team finished their work and opened the route in, the Task Force Bandit tanks began to arrive. Main Gun Mike Bajema and his Soldiers from Team Bulldog (Bravo Company, 1-37) were the main effort for this operation. As company commander, Mike was the first to arrive on the scene. The Task Force Bandit battalion leadership, along with Jocko, had ridden in the back of a Bradley. They pulled in just behind.
We debriefed the situation with the U.S. Army units and I turned the buildings we had cleared and occupied for the last several hours over to Main Gun Mike and his Team Bulldog Soldiers.
I still hadn’t made a decision about where we were moving next. Since I was the senior man, it was my call. I outranked Chris. Yet I knew Chris had key experience and knowledge that I didn’t have. I wasn’t a sniper. I hadn’t spent my previous deployment supporting U.S. Marine units in the Battle of Fallujah as Chris had.
While I was the leader in charge, I recognized that for my team to succeed, in order to be a good leader, I also had to be willing to follow. “Leading” didn’t mean pushing my agenda or proving I had all the answers. It was about collaborating with the rest of the team and determining how we could most effectively accomplish our mission. I deferred to Chris’s judgment.
“Alright,” I told Chris. “Let’s go with your plan and move to that building to the east.” He smiled.
Just before dawn, under cover of the last minutes of darkness, we patrolled 350 meters down the street and entered the large, four-story apartment building he’d selected. After methodically clearing the building, we put our snipers and machine gunners in place.
Chris’s recommendation proved to be the absolute right call. Over the next forty-eight hours, we disrupted scores of enemy attacks on the fledgling U.S. combat outpost and on our combined U.S. Army and Iraqi Army patrols in the vicinity. Our SEAL snipers racked up twenty-one confirmed enemy kills and several more probable kills. Virtually all the enemy activity took place to the east, with almost none to the south. Had we gone with my initial choice—had I disregarded Chris and overruled him because “I was in charge”—we would have been highly ineffective, disrupting virtually no attacks, and that might very well have cost the lives of some of our brethren: SEALs, U.S. Soldiers, and Marines.
* * *
There were many times in my Navy career when, in an effort to prove my leadership, I failed to follow. And rather than strengthen me as a leader in the eyes of the team, it undermined my leadership. In those instances, I had to work to recover and build back trust with the team.
As a brand-new platoon commander in Task Unit Bruiser, I’d gotten this wrong during an early training operation shortly after I reported to the SEAL Team. Before we deployed to Ramadi, during our training workup, we practiced our ability to board and take down ships at sea. We called this “Visit, Board, Search, and Seizure” operations.
In preparation for training runs on ships at sea, we planned several hours of rehearsals to dial in our standard operating procedures and practice our movement, tactics, and communications on a ship that was docked pierside in San Diego Harbor. It was great training in preparation for the more difficult task of boarding and clearing a ship that was under way.
With some members of Charlie and Delta Platoons pulled away for other training and qualifications, the group from Task Unit Bruiser that day was a combined element from Charlie and Delta Platoons. I was the senior man in charge, and none of my Charlie Platoon senior enlisted leaders could attend. Instead, the most senior enlisted SEAL at the training that day was a member of Delta Platoon. He was not a chief or a leading petty officer, but he did have several deployments under his belt, which made him the most experienced SEAL there. I had only one prior SEAL deployment.
We launched into movement drills, with SEALs bounding across the open deck of the ship using Cover and Move. All was going smoothly until we observed some confusion with the terminology being used to communicate among the team. Several different terms were being used. It was clear that we all needed to get on the same page.
“This was our SOP from my last platoon,” I said. “Let’s just go with that.”
I put the word out to everyone when we called the troops together to debrief the run.
The experienced SEAL petty officer from Delta Platoon disagreed.
“I think we should do it another way,” he said, pushing a different SOP that he was familiar with.
“I already put the word out,” I said. “It will be a pain t
o change. Let’s just go with my way for now.”
“I don’t like your method near as much,” he replied. “The way we did it in my last two platoons was better.”
To me, the advantages and disadvantages between the two methods were insignificant. What mattered was that we all were on the same page. And since I’d already put the word out to everyone, I figured it was easiest to just stick with that.
“Let’s just go with my method for now,” I said. “When we get back to the team, we can talk through it with Tony [Charlie Platoon chief] and the Delta Platoon chief.”
“We shouldn’t develop bad habits,” the SEAL insisted. “My method works best.”
Growing impatient, I recognized that this was a test of wills. And being a young, inexperienced platoon commander, I decided that I needed to demonstrate that I was in charge—I was the senior man.
“We’re doing it my way,” I said. “This conversation is over.”
With that, the SEAL petty officer and I got back to the training runs. Soon we wrapped up the runs and headed back to the team. But even in the immediate aftermath, I knew I hadn’t handled that situation well. It was the weakest form of leadership to win an argument through rank or position. In the Navy, we called it playing a game of “Rock, Scissors, Rank,” like the game of “Rock, Paper, Scissors,” except rank wins every time. But every leader I had seen use that form of leadership was not someone for whom I had much respect. It certainly wasn’t the leader I wanted to be, and on the ride back to the team, I was embarrassed at how I had handled the situation.
The Dichotomy of Leadership: Balancing the Challenges of Extreme Ownership to Lead and Win Page 21