In Vietnam, SOT graduates were expected to fight Charlie and take care of wounded SEALs. Some lived and some died, and those corpsmen who survived a six-month combat deployment with an operational SEAL platoon received their Budweisers and earned the naval education code 5326, combat swimmer. Doc Jones was an SOT graduate and a freaking character even among a community of characters.
He would later prove to be one of the bravest men I have ever known. That could hardly be guessed at first look. Physically, he bore a striking resemblance to the actor Peter Falk, the guy who plays Columbo, and Doc had it down, rumpled clothes, wandering eye, and all. He was a short, compact man, and his reddish complexion and dark eyes sometimes made him look like a sturdy Portuguese fisherman. Doc was in fact a nearly full-blooded Cherokee Indian.
Initially, a few of the things Frank and I heard about Doc made us wonder about his sanity. As an SOT graduate, he had not attended jump school, but when he got back to his team stateside, he wanted to jump, so he followed a platoon out onto the drop zone and picked up a parachute. Using the ploy “Hey, could you help me buckle this,” he was assisted by his platoon mates into the parachute. No one guessed that he had no idea how to put on a parachute, and no one could have guessed that he had zero idea how to operate one once he got out of the airplane. Doc sat calmly through the jumpmaster’s briefing, then got in line and boarded the aircraft. Once inside the plane, he had his rig inspected by the jumpmaster just like everyone else. He hooked up his static line like everyone else, and then he jumped. Mercifully, the parachute gods smiled. Doc made ten water jumps and had legitimately earned his gold navy parachute wings before it was discovered that he never attended jump school. He was sent packing down to Fort Benning, and the story followed him throughout the navy.
Doc would soon have an opportunity to show off his aerial prowess. We jumped again into Fort A. P. Hill and ran live fire and demolition exercises against mobile and static targets. We jelled as an operational unit, and Doc became the growling, ass-kicking spark plug of the entire outfit. He addressed the men individually as “cock breath” and collectively as “you fucking idiots.” To Frank, Doc was deferential, calling him mostly “Boss.” As the 2IC, or second in charge, I was fair game. Doc called me “Diawi,” Vietnamese for “lieutenant,” and a bit of a jab when applied to guys like me who were in grade school during much of Vietnam. There was nothing Doc wouldn’t do, and few things he couldn’t do better and faster than men half his age. He was one of the best I ever worked with; certainly he was the bravest, and the best platoon chief I ever had. We needed him. Our work-ups were everything AOT was, and more; there were specific missions we had to train for: recons, direct action, air ops, and boat work. Doc was the driving force through it all. He would repeatedly tell me, “You know, Mr. Pfarrer, it’s not the little things that are going to kill you. It’s the fucking BIG things.”
Much of the training was out of the area, but there was the occasional weeknight and weekend at home. We worked hard and played harder. Friday nights, Frank and I would put on our working winter blue uniforms and make dramatic entrances into the Oceana officers’ club at 2300 hours, fashionably late and resplendent in our tridents and gold navy jump wings. The place would be jumping, filled to the rafters with women invited for one purpose.
At the O club you picked your poison; new wave played in one room and disco in another. We partied hard, danced, and flirted, and were as charming as possible. Lisa was slowly evaporating from my heart, and in her place there was a poisonous void. What interest I had in women was strictly transactional, and though I did my best each night to find someone to come home with me, I rarely cared what happened afterward. Sex was solace and release.
In hindsight, I can say that our job—the Teams, the secrecy, the clannishness—was gradually separating us from society. We were a group apart, and that separation would become more severe as my career progressed. I would bed any woman who let me, and I took and gave back almost nothing. I was unknowable, unlovable, and on my way to becoming fully encapsulated. Not antisocial—feral. As a potential boyfriend, I was the worst possible type: self-absorbed, smugly self-confident, and nursing a life-changing wound.
There were a few women who I remember very well. One, I can say with some embarrassment, I remember specifically for my own cruelty. Another I remember for my own credulous foolishness. I dated a navy nurse, a lieutenant commander though she was only a year older than I was. I was an O-1, and she was an O-4, a dating arrangement not encouraged in today’s action navy. Her name was Megan, and she was funny, smart, and blond, a delightful pixie of a woman. She had the most incredible freckles, and we had an absolutely torrid affair. We made love like bunnies with rabies, and over the course of a few wonderful months, Megan fell in love. I remained aloof. I deployed frequently. Sometimes I told her I was going away, and sometimes I did not. My inconsiderate behavior concerned and hurt her. She would have no idea where I’d gone or when I’d be back, and my teammates could give her no information. The end came when I got back from a three-week deployment and did not even call her. I ran into her in a parking lot on the base and said only “Hi.” I was ashamed when she broke down and cried as we spoke.
I felt sick as I drove home. I wondered what was happening to me. Why had I hurt her? Why had I let her hurt herself? I took no joy in it. She was a fine, loving person, and I was being an asshole. What was it in me that made me treat a good person this way? Some innate cruelty? Was it because Lisa had hurt me? For a guy with a psychology degree, I had a remarkable lack of insight. Too ashamed to face myself and not enough of a man to face Megan, I just moved on. I was without scruple or compunction, and apparently, now I was even without mercy. An iceberg drifting, waiting to claim another ship.
I started to go out with an athletic Virginia-born chemist named Jenny. She played semipro tennis, and I think she saw in me at first something that was dangerous and attractive. In that she may have been right, but for the wrong reasons. I was not nearly as wild as she was. Jenny was a danger junkie, and it turned out I was only a nuisance.
Through a hot summer, Jenny and I slept together several nights a week, and there were uniforms in her closets and sundresses in mine. I loved her laugh, and the little-girl way she looked when she woke up. I loved the womanly way she kissed me. I cared a lot for Jenny. I enjoyed her when we were together and looked forward to seeing her when we were apart. I was naive enough to think that the things I revealed to her, the big plans, the boyish selfishness, and the burgeoning egomania, could ever really be attractive to anyone.
Falling in love with her made me less dangerous. On the night I was preparing to tell Jenny that I loved her, she told me that she thought it was time we started seeing other people. She held me while she said this. In her dismissal of me, she was calm and polite, and her reasons were well presented and avoided direct insults. As she let me down, I remember thinking two things. I was glad that she’d spoken first, since I’d have felt even more stupid had I just told her that I loved her. My second thought was even more selfish: I remember thinking that this was probably a really bad time for this to be happening to me.
In the coming week Jenny and I were to attend a formal dining-in at the special warfare group. For me, attendance was mandatory, and before the hammer fell, Jenny had agreed to be my date. Rather than leaving me to go alone, she graciously put on an evening gown and went with me. The night was strained. We smiled though the agonizing black-tie affair—I was ner-vous and awkward, and the evening was made infinitely worse when I got drunk off my ass, drove her home, and begged her to reconsider. I asked for another chance. I asked to spend the night. On all grounds, and now with even better reasons, she declined politely. She suggested I come back Monday so we could talk. I agreed and staggered back to my car.
But I didn’t come back on Monday. I went to Panama instead.
Two days after I’d made an ass out of myself, Fifth Platoon was parachuted into the Gulf of Panama, and we established a f
orward operating base on an island in the Archipelago de las Perlas. Our mission was to again play OPFOR, opposing forces, this time in a joint American-Panamanian military exercise called Kindle Liberty. This was seven years before America would depose Manuel Noriega, and relations with the Panamanians were cordial, if a bit tense at the top. Also deployed to Las Perlas were the XO, a group from the operations office, and a scratch operational force from the cadre, including John Jaeger. We were to conduct a series of across-the-beach operations against the canal and its infrastructure. Our missions were intended to assess the response of U.S. Army and the PDF, the Panama defense forces. It would be their job to protect the canal and our job to try to break it.
Somewhere in Washington the decision was taken that our operations were to be conducted with units of the Gardia Nacional, Manuel Noriega’s personal gang of thugs. A group of ten comandos joined us in Las Perlas and were integrated into our platoons. What they learned would serve them well and do us little good. In a macabre twist of fate, our same Team, SEAL Team Four, would suffer cruelly in the coming invasion of Panama, Operation Just Cause, in December 1989. A SEAL platoon sent to Patilla Airfield to disable Noriega’s Learjet would be ambushed and sustain four killed and a number wounded. I am probably not the first person to wonder if the Gardias we trained at Las Perlas were the same men who waited for the SEALs on the runway at Patilla.
That disagreeable evening was far in the future, and to us unknowable, if not unimaginable. Not one of us on the island thought our collaboration was a good idea, but we followed orders, and the Panamanians keenly attended our planning and accompanied us as we ran successful ops against the Gatun Locks, the Summit electrical substation, key pumping facilities, and the liquid-oxygen storage tanks on Howard Air Force Base. The only operation from which they were excluded was the capture and simulated sinking of U.S.S. Spiegel Grove as she transited the canal. This operation, carried out by all SEAL Team Four elements, was the crowning evolution of the exercise. For obvious reasons, I won’t go into the nuts and bolts of a warship takedown, but my assault element operated with John Jaeger’s, and the action cemented our friendship.
A few days later, we were cooling our heels in the departure lounge at Howard Air Force Base, waiting for an airplane. Our flight was delayed twice, and finally, Senior Chief Jaeger wandered over and sat down next to me.
“Hey, Mr. Pfarrer.” He had a sly look on his face, and I knew it meant he wanted something. Probably permission for something he’d already done or would soon do anyway.
“How’s about I let the lads go across the street to the enlisted club and have a few beers, or so, before we get on the plane?”
I knew the guys would get as drunk as they could as fast as they could, and that might be a problem. The one thing guaranteeing their good behavior was the fact that no one, including me, had much money. I’d parachuted in with a fortune, fifty bucks, and I doubted all the lads together had even half that much.
“Sure, Senior Chief,” I said. “Tell ’em to keep it within the pale of acceptable human conduct.”
The guys clomped across the street. John Jaeger grinned, and for a while we sat together in an empty departure lounge.
“Hey, sir?”
“Yes, Senior Chief?”
“You got any money, or so?”
“I’ve got a little,” I said.
“How’s about you and me slide on over to the club and have a couple of cold pops? Or so.”
Now would come a major episode in my education as a junior officer. The E club was for enlisted men. Officers had their own clubs, and chief petty officers had chiefs’ clubs. Neither the senior chief nor I was supposed to drink at an enlisted club.
I sat there quietly and thought about this, and John looked at me like I was a moron. “Let’s go,” he said. He stood and removed the golden anchors from the collars of his cammies. Before I could think better of it, I stood and took off the gold bars that marked me as an ensign. I’d been in the jungle for the better part of two weeks, and I was thirsty. Without our rank devices, we were transformed instantly from an E-8 and an O-1 to a pair of E-1 no-count snuffies, slick-sleeves, military nonentities. I followed John across the street and into the dark, smoky confines of the club.
The joint was wound up. ZZ Top was playing. Pushed up against the bar was the most explosive mixture of men known to mankind. At one end were about twenty marines, recon dudes with high-and-tight haircuts; in the middle were the SEALs; and on the far end were about an equal number of Green Berets. All had played in the exercise, and the SEALs had operated against both groups. I sipped my beer like a Baptist. The insults were already flying, along with small items: rolled-up napkins, twist tops from beer bottles, and the occasional drink thrown whole. I knew it was only a matter of time until the place exploded. The senior chief and I would be doubly damned if it did. We would be dinged first for not stopping the riot from happening, and then we would be gigged for being here in the first place.
An empty shot glass bounced off the bar in front of John.
“Getting a little hairy in here, or so,” he said calmly.
I was just about to say “Let’s get the hell out of here” when John picked up the glass from the bar. He stood on his bar stool and banged the glass off his beer mug. Ding ding ding ding.
“All right, you assholes,” he bellowed, “pipe down!” The crowd quieted a little. The senior chief yelled again. “I’m telling you assholes to shut the fuck up! AT EASE!”
The bar quieted. It was a sullen, tense silence, and every eye in the place was on John, balanced on his bar stool. I wanted the world to open up and swallow me, but the senior chief was in his glory. He stepped onto the bar and walked its entire length.
“All right,” he growled. “Who’s the roughest, toughest motherfucker in the bar?”
A gigantic Green Beret stood up. This guy was six-five and looked about 250. “I am,” he said.
John looked him over. “You’re the toughest motherfucker in this bar?”
“That’s what I said, old man,” the Green Beret answered.
“Good,” John said. “You take over. I gotta take a piss.”
The place exploded in laughter, the tension broken forever. John jumped down off the bar and gave me a wink. It was an epic stunt, and one I have never had the courage to repeat. I’d just watched a master in action.
FRIDAY WAS NEW YEAR’S EVE, and I’d been operational for a year and a half. Holiday leave had been granted in two sections: Half the command received a week off at Christmas, and the other half was allowed liberty the week of New Year’s. I’d taken neither this year. I was a bachelor, and although I would have liked to see my parents back in Mississippi, I’d been able to get home for a weekend at Thanksgiving. I volunteered to take the watch on Christmas Eve and again during the New Year’s leave section. The duty was easy, and apart from the two nights I spent in the Team area, it was like another week off. I was happy to let the guys who had families spend time at home.
I’d been invited to a New Year’s party by a pilot friend who flew for the Red Wolves, an aviator with the redoubtable name of Wilbur. The bash was to be at Wilbur’s house, on the north end of Virginia Beach, a neighborhood to which I am still partial. Wilbur’s crowd was mostly airdales, and they called themselves the Fifty-eighth Street Beach Bullies. I was delighted to be invited, as I did not think a punch-up at the Casino would be the best way to start my year.
Wilbur’s place was on the sand, a ramshackle three-story 1920s vintage beach palace. The wind was blowing hard and cold off the surf when I arrived. It was crowded and warm inside. I stashed my coat, thanked the host, and somebody mixed me a very large drink. A woman I didn’t know came up, kissed me, and gave me a pointed hat that said BETTER LUCK NEXT YEAR.
Three minutes later, I ran into the woman I would later marry.
Margot Attman was blond, striking, six feet tall, and always had a wry smile crinkling the corner of her mouth. She looked vaguely lik
e Faye Dunaway. Where the movie star seemed ephemeral, Margot was athletic and direct. She had a biting wit. When I first saw her, she was standing against a door leading out to the porch, one foot on the ground, the other tucked back, almost under her thigh. Her legs were extraordinarily long. She held a drink in one hand and had her other thumbed through a belt loop, like a cowboy. Her head was down, and her blue eyes were half closed; she was listening to, or ignoring, a small, balding man telling her a joke.
Our eyes met as I walked past. I am hardly a pickup artist, but as soon as the bald man walked off, I walked over.
“Thank God,” she said. “They invited somebody tall.”
I was smitten.
We talked and danced, and her friends watched us and asked one another who I was. Margot played them, and played me as well. She told her friend Wanda that I was her stepbrother. She told someone else I was her pool boy.
She was a teacher from upstate New York, in the country between Buffalo and Niagara. Her father was the postmaster of a small town called Hamlin. She asked what I did in the navy, and I said I was an astronaut. When pressed, I admitted that I was actually only a payload specialist.
“I just work the big arm,” I said.
“Bullshit,” she said. “Wilbur says you’re a SEAL and I should keep away from you.”
“Wilbur is a dangerous man,” I said. “I’ve flown with him.”
Warrior Soul: The Memoir of a Navy SEAL Page 12