So far on this patrol, our aggressive posture—combined with a little luck—proved successful, and no visible threats appeared. Our convoy rolled on through the center of downtown Ramadi, past the Marine outposts at the Ramadi Government Center and another called “OP VA”2 that stood as small bastions of hope and security in a vast sea of violence and savagery. The brave Marines who manned those outposts, from Kilo and Lima Companies of the 3rd Battalion, 8th Marine Regiment, endured frequent vicious and well-coordinated attacks from large numbers of insurgent fighters. Their heavily fortified guard posts, hidden beneath blankets of camouflage netting to protect against the threat of enemy snipers, concealed vigilant young Marines manning their weapons in a state of constant alert. We loved and admired those Marines.
We felt the same admiration and bond of brotherhood with the Soldiers of Team Bulldog—Bravo Company, Task Force 1/37—with whom we conducted scores of combat operations. Our convoy had just departed Team Bulldog’s base of operations, Combat Outpost Falcon, where “Main Gun” Mike Bajema and his Soldiers lived and worked, battling insurgents deep in the volatile neighborhood of South-Central Ramadi. The SEALs of Task Unit Bruiser’s Charlie Platoon and the Iraqi soldiers who accompanied us had spent the previous twenty-four hours on a sniper overwatch mission and a series of presence patrols in this dangerous area of Ramadi. There had been some solid “Big Mix-It-Ups”—Charlie Platoon’s term for a substantial gunfight. We had wrapped up another series of violent combat operations in the brutal Iraqi summertime heat. It was always a great day when we took out a number of enemy fighters and disrupted their attacks and freedom of movement—and when they didn’t get any of us. Though we had completed our tactical objectives in South-Central and departed COP Falcon, the combat operation wasn’t over until we made it back to base. With IED attacks against vehicles accounting for the vast majority of U.S. casualties in Iraq, our travels off base and our return home via convoy were statistically the most dangerous part of the operation.
As our Humvees continued at high speed, civilian vehicles that also shared the road pulled to the side to give us a wide berth. Though most carried civilian passengers, any one of these vehicles could have been a car bomb ready to explode in a massive, deadly blast. Our drivers maneuvered past the civilian vehicles, giving them as much distance as possible. We continued on across the bridge that spanned the Habbaniyah Canal, the demarcation line that separated downtown Ramadi from the western Ramadi neighborhood of Tameem. We were almost home.
Everyone was tired, worn out, and exhausted. The punishing summertime Iraqi heat had taken its toll, and the profuse sweating through our heavy gear for the past twenty-four-plus hours left our faces sunken with dehydration. We longed for the creature comforts that would soon be ours upon arrival at our home base: air-conditioning, showers, hot food, and the temporary reprieve from concern about immediate wounds and death.
Soon, we approached the turnoff from Route Michigan toward Ogden Gate, the back gate of the major U.S. base in the area, Camp Ramadi.
“Right turn, right turn,” came the lead navigator’s call over the radio. The vehicles slowed down on the three-hundred-yard approach to the gate. It was wise to proceed cautiously toward Ogden Gate. The Soldiers who manned the machine guns covering us couldn’t be seen, hidden behind camouflage netting draped over heavily fortified security towers. These Soldiers withstood frequent attacks from insurgent forces, regularly receiving sniper fire, machine gun, and mortar attacks. Off the pavement of Route Michigan, the entrance road to the gate was pulverized from the constant transit of heavy U.S. tanks and armored vehicles entering and exiting. Fine sand billowed into thick clouds of dust that penetrated the air inside the vehicles. The “moon dust” made it difficult to breathe and obscured our vision both inside the vehicles and outside. It prevented us from seeing the next vehicle in the convoy only a few yards in front, as well as the vehicles behind.
Our convoy came to a halt in front of the huge M88 tank recovery vehicle that served as the gate. When a sixty-eight-ton M1A2 Abrams Main Battle Tank or twenty-seven-ton Bradley Fighting Vehicle broke down, it needed a massive vehicle to tow it. The M88 was designed for just such a purpose. But here, at Ogden Gate, the M88 was used to block the path from any potential attack from the enemy’s most devastating weapon, what we called a VBIED (vehicle-borne improvised explosive device)—what civilians called a “car bomb.” We checked in with Soldiers at the main gate, gave them our call sign and total head count. Once we’d been cleared, a Soldier hopped into the big M88, fired up the engine, and, tank tracks clattering loudly, motored the behemoth out of the way so that our convoy could roll onto the base that was our home.
Once on base, the turret gunners and everyone in the vehicles could relax. Every moment outside the wire, up until the second we entered the gate, was game on. But once inside, it was purely an administrative drive across the base to the section of Camp Ramadi where we lived and worked: Sharkbase3. With the pressures of combat temporarily lifted, there was always some joking and lighthearted banter over the radio. Our route across the base took us past the vehicle graveyard, where the twisted and burned-out hulks of U.S. and Iraqi armored vehicles were dragged and deposited after an IED attack. It was a grim reminder of the dangers just outside the wire and how fortunate and blessed we were to have survived another operation, another convoy through that treacherous city.
As we made our way across Camp Ramadi and out a side gate, the road led us around to Sharkbase. We pulled our vehicles up and came to a stop in the street out front of two tin-roofed wooden buildings, our chow hall and Charlie Platoon’s planning space.
“All stop, all stop,” came the call over the radio.
Mission complete. I opened the heavy armored door to the Humvee and stepped out. After ensuring my weapons were clear and safe, I dropped them and my helmet on the desk in our platoon space and headed off to see Jocko.
His office was in the main building, a large, columned structure that had once been an ornate residence for elements of Saddam Hussein’s regime in pre–U.S. invasion Iraq. The building was now our tactical operations center. I walked through the kitchen and into the TOC, greeting our Task Unit Bruiser watch standers there—the information systems technicians and operations specialists with whom we communicated when out in harm’s way. These non-SEAL support personnel were a critical part of our team. I walked into Jocko’s office and greeted him.
“God is Frogman,” I said, a statement I uttered frequently upon our return. “We had some close calls on that one, but we got everybody back in one piece.”
I informed Jocko that all personnel and gear were accounted for and safely back on base.
“Right on,” responded Jocko with a smile. “Welcome back.”
The more we operated in Ramadi, the more I realized that despite the most careful planning and meticulous effort to mitigate risk, the chances of horrible wounds or death were very real and ever-present on all our operations. Only through divine providence did we not lose men on every operation. Because the Almighty looked out for us so often and led us through many close calls, we were convinced that God must be a SEAL—or, in reference to our forefathers in the Underwater Demolition Teams, a Frogman.
* * *
Combat is a harsh teacher, and the battlefield in Ramadi was brutal. We were constantly humbled by the dangers and immense challenges of continuous urban combat. I was the platoon commander for Charlie Platoon, and often the ground force commander—the senior leader—for many of the combat operations. When we pulled off a great success and I got a little cocky, I’d quickly find myself getting humbled once again when the enemy employed an innovative tactic we hadn’t yet anticipated or hit us in a manner for which we were unprepared. Most of all, I was continuously humbled by everything that I realized I could and should have done better: the recognition that I should have more carefully deconflicted with other U.S. forces we were supporting; made my commander’s intent even more simple, clear, and concise;
or empowered junior leaders to an even greater degree. In this battlespace, it was “be humble or get humbled.”
Jocko sat at his desk, in front of a computer screen. He was heavily engaged in combat of a different nature. He and the task unit staff handled legions of requests from our higher headquarters, answered their continuous questions, and generated mountains of paperwork at their direction. To Jocko’s credit, he largely shielded us from much of this, allowing me and the rest of Charlie Platoon, as well as our task unit brothers in Delta Platoon, to focus on our operations.
“The task group is hounding us to provide an E6 to cover down on a special assignment,” Jocko informed me.
I didn’t like the sound of that. The task group, our immediate higher headquarters located about thirty miles down the road from us in the city of Fallujah, wanted us to provide an experienced SEAL, a noncommissioned officer with the minimum rank of first class petty officer, to fill a role for them.
“What’s the assignment?” I asked.
Jocko explained that the assignment was a sensitive one, highly classified but with a substantial profile and visibility from several levels up the chain of command.
“This one is coming from the CJSOTF,” he said.
The “CJSOTF” was the Combined Joint Special Operations Task Force,4 our boss’s boss, responsible for all special operations forces in Iraq. I understood there were pressures from above on our task group to provide a body to fill the billet. I understood that this was important, but I was still concerned that it also appeared to be an attempt for higher headquarters to grab precious personnel from my platoon. My protective instincts kicked in.
It can be difficult for any leader to detach from a situation and see beyond the immediate mission of his or her team. It is a natural reflex for leaders to resist sharing resources or critical personnel because it makes their immediate job harder, even if it ultimately benefits the greater team and the strategic mission. But an important part of being a leader is to be humble enough to see beyond his or her own needs. I had learned from Jocko that humility was the most important quality in a leader. In Task Unit Bruiser, there was no room for arrogance and big egos. The importance of humility that Jocko talked about had been confirmed time and time again since we had arrived in Ramadi.
I had learned that the world did not revolve around me and my immediate team—Charlie Platoon. We were only a small part of much larger operations that were happening on a vast scale in Ramadi and the surrounding areas of Anbar Province. We were honored to support the thousands of Soldiers and Marines of the Ready First Brigade in their efforts in Ramadi.
Being humble also meant understanding that we didn’t have it all figured out. We didn’t have all the answers. It meant we must learn from other units that had been in Ramadi longer and work with them to support our chain of command and support the mission. It wasn’t about how many operations we conducted or how many bad guys we dispatched. The true measure of success in the large-scale counterinsurgency operations we supported lay in the stabilization and security of the city over the long term. We needed the humility to understand that our higher headquarters, the task group and the chain of command above us, had strategic insight that we likely did not have.
Being humble meant understanding the importance of strategic direction from our boss. It meant doing all we could to support the conventional forces we worked with, the Iraqi soldiers we trained and combat advised, and of course our chain of command. Being humble meant we put our heads down and got the job done as directed to the best of our ability.
But at the same time, there was a dichotomy to being humble: being humble didn’t mean being passive. It didn’t mean not to push back when it truly mattered. While I didn’t have the visibility or complete understanding of the strategic picture that the boss and his staff at the task group had, they also lacked understanding of how strategic direction or requirements impacted our tactical operations on the front lines. And it was up to me to push that information up the chain of command. Humility has to be balanced by knowing when to make a stand.
I had witnessed a good example of this when we’d been directed to work with Iraqi soldiers. As Jocko wrote in detail in chapter 3, “Believe,” of Extreme Ownership, upon Task Unit Bruiser’s arrival in Ramadi, the CJSOTF required us and every other U.S. special operations unit in the theater to operate “by, with, and through Iraqi security forces.” That meant working alongside poorly trained, poorly equipped, and often untrustworthy Iraqi soldiers. After much initial pushback, we thought through the reasons we were being directed to do this. After fully understanding and disseminating the why to the platoons, Task Unit Bruiser accepted this mission and took it on, despite its inherent difficulties and dangers.
But there were many other U.S. special operations units, including SEAL units, that did not. Instead of embracing the spirit of “by, with, and through” Iraqi troops, these U.S. units embraced the literal guidance to “put an Iraqi face” on U.S. operations. In some cases, that meant a single Iraqi face: many American units had only one or two Iraqi soldiers on combat operations where the assault force consisted of twenty or thirty Americans. The Iraqis stood in the back and contributed little to the missions.
To overcome this mentality and enforce the spirit of the directive, the CJSOTF further imposed a specific ratio of U.S. special operators to Iraqi soldiers (or Iraqi police) that had to be met on each operation. For every American special operator, they required that there be seven Iraqi soldiers. This seemed reasonable enough in many parts of Iraq where there were plenty of Iraqi soldiers and the threat level was far less significant. But in Ramadi, the Iraqi Army units that Task Unit Bruiser worked with were undermanned and overtasked. There simply were not enough Iraqi soldiers to go around. The limited number of Iraqi soldiers available for any one operation meant that compliance with the required ratio would allow us only two or three SEALs total on most operations. In far less hostile parts of Iraq, a combat operation with only three or four American special operators and another twelve or sixteen Iraqi soldiers could be executed without endangering the lives of the entire force. But this was Ramadi, a violent, terrorist stronghold and the epicenter of the deadly insurgency in Iraq. We didn’t have that luxury. Against a combat-experienced, well-armed, and determined enemy, the Iraqi troops didn’t count for much in a firefight. If an enemy force of twenty or thirty insurgent fighters attacked us, it was highly probable that an element made up of mostly Iraqi soldiers with only a few U.S. special operators would be overwhelmed and everyone killed. This horrific outcome was not just a theory. It had happened in Ramadi to U.S. units that were unprepared for the level of violence.
As task unit commander, Jocko understood the importance of “by, with, and through Iraqi security forces.” In fact, he directed the opposite tack from most every other SEAL and special operations unit: he required that we take Iraqi soldiers on every operation. We embraced that. But when the ratio directive was issued, I talked it over with Jocko and explained what this meant to Charlie Platoon, how the number of Iraqi troops we had available were limited and how it would endanger our SEALs and our mission.
Jocko recognized that this was a time when he must push back for the good of the mission and the safety of his men.
“We can’t comply with this directive,” Jocko told our commanding officer at the task group via a phone call. “I understand the reason for it. I can assure you that we will take as many Iraqi soldiers with us as we possibly can on every operation. But here in Ramadi, for the types of missions we are conducting, in such dangerous territory, if we comply with this ratio we will likely have one of our elements completely overrun. There is a high probability that they will all be killed.”
Our commanding officer and his staff at the task group understood. They certainly didn’t want to endanger our SEAL operators or the missions we were a part of. And because we rarely pushed back on anything and had the reputation of humbly complying with direction from senior leaders
hip, we had built trust up the chain of command. So when our task group explained the circumstances to the CJSOTF, they waived the ratio requirement for Task Unit Bruiser.
* * *
As Charlie Platoon commander, I saw the requirement to provide one of my experienced first class petty officers for another mission in much the same way. No matter how important the new tasking might be, if Charlie Platoon gave up a key leader for the duration of deployment, it would cripple our combat capability and remove crucial leadership experience.
I talked it over with my Charlie Platoon chief, Tony. We had only two men of that rank in the platoon: one was our leading petty officer, who played a vital leadership role in the platoon; the other was Chris Kyle, our lead sniper and point man, whose experience and skill were integral to the success of our sniper overwatch missions. Worse, because we often split into smaller elements led by inexperienced leaders who were out on their own, operating independently with no oversight from Tony or me, the experience of our two first class petty officers was crucial. The loss of either would not only hurt our performance on the battlefield and make us less effective, it would significantly increase the risk to our forces, which already operated in an environment of extreme danger.
The Dichotomy of Leadership: Balancing the Challenges of Extreme Ownership to Lead and Win Page 25