I shook his hand and then gave him a hug. “Via con huevos,” I said.
“You’re a dope,” he said. “Get out of there as soon as you can.”
Escape proved impossible. The head shed got even, pronto. Instead of allowing me to assume command of the Fifth, they disbanded the platoon. We were suddenly all orphans, off the line operationally and out of the training pipeline as well. The new operations officer, Mad Dog Walker, took pity on us. The Fifth was broken up, but Mad Dog took pains to make our exile bearable. Five or six of the guys, including Dave, Doug, Cheese, and Rudi, went with me into the cadre. Doc was diverted to medical. The rest were scattered to departments, ordnance, engineering, intel, diving, and first lieutenant. It could have been worse. All of the lads except Sandy had received decorations and commendations in Lebanon, and these had been forwarded by the Sixth Fleet staff. The medals and commendations had been awarded by COMSIXTHFLEET, Admiral Martin, and were to be presented by the commanding officer, SEAL Team Four.
You know, the guy I had just pissed off.
The medals sat in the captain’s safe for six months. It wasn’t just the fruit salad that the guys wanted; the lads had earned valuable advancement points for the decorations they’d received in combat service. They wouldn’t get the points until they got the medals. The points made the difference in promotions, and promotions meant money. But the medals sat. The battle between Fifth Platoon and the front office might sound great in the retelling, but in truth, our bosses were fighting a lot of paper battles. They probably didn’t even have it in for us, particularly. Some of what happened was the result of spite, but much of it was due to simple bureaucratic inertia.
I was pissed about what was being done to the lads, and I was pissed about what they’d done to Frank. But the bullshit at the Team, I realized, was just bullshit. I knew also that I’d brought it on by firing back with the 1149. I had opened an engagement against a superior force with no plan of continued attack and no way to retreat. I was screwed. I took it as best I could. Doc took it better. “Don’t sweat the petty stuff,” he’d say. “Pet the sweaty stuff!”
We took what pleasure we could in not being shelled every day. The Fifth hung together as much as we could, but the departments and our assignments kept us all going in different directions. I tried to keep an eye on the lads. They all drank harder than ever, and so did I. While we were gone, the Casino had been bulldozed, which might have been a good thing.
Sleep, for me, was an almost impossible thing to come by, and when it did come, it gave no peace. The week after Christmas I moved into Margot’s bungalow on the beach. It was an amazement to me to wake in a bed, and it was a delight to feel her sleeping warm and sweet next to me. I was glad not to be alone.
In 1984 post-traumatic stress disorder had not yet widely entered the lexicon, but I was familiar with the concept of survivor’s guilt from school. I was a textbook case. I asked myself often, like every marine and sailor who served in Lebanon, “Why did I live when so many good men died?” Finally, I accepted the fact that I had lived, in part, because I was merely lucky. I was lucky I was not at the BLT that morning. And lucky I hadn’t been killed on the corniche, or in the Shouf, or in half a dozen sniper fights, or on the causeway. I consoled myself by thinking that I had helped keep sixteen men alive.
There were things that I struggled to put aside; oddly, others did not trouble me at all. I do not know exactly what this says about me, but I felt no grief for the people we killed. Their faces do not haunt me and never have. Some I remember as motionless lumps facedown in the street, legs crossed oddly, hands open, and weapons lying where they had fallen. I remember returning days later to one place we had contact, to find the bodies swollen and black with sun. In the street, trash blew around the corpses. I felt as little then as I feel now. I did not care that they were dead, and it seemed fitting to think that no one on earth had bothered to even drag them from the road. Others I can still see, turned in surprise, strobed as they tumbled back in muzzle blast, men who a second before had intended the same fate for me.
I was aware then, and am aware now, that I took human life. This will sound flippant, perhaps even nonchalantly cruel, but there are some people who need to go to hell and stay there. I watched a gang of PLO thugs drag a wounded Phalangist behind a truck until he was a bloody bundle of rags. I found the bodies of executed Palestinians, hands bound, left in the rubble for dogs to eat. I saw Druze gunners deliberately shell a hospital full of women and children. Whose side do you get on? Whose atrocity do you excuse, and whose do you come down on with a B-52?
After nearly seven months in that place, they all became alike to me—all of them off-the-rack assholes, all of them equal in my abiding and ice-cold loathing. I did not call them “ragheads” or any of the other nasty names I heard. For me, it was not necessary to dehumanize the enemy. I did not hate them, but I did not pity them, and I did not grant them mercy. The people who fought against us in Beirut made a sport of killing the blameless, and they hid behind the innocent. Some had done their best to kill us, but we killed them instead. Again, I told myself, I bore no guilt. I would do my best not to let Lebanon drag me into darkness.
I told myself these things. I told them to Margot, and I said them so well that I fooled everyone. Including myself. Lebanon would not defeat me, but it would stay with me forever, rattling after me like a tin can tied to a dog’s tail. I spoke of it to no one, and those of us who went through it rarely spoke of it to one another. I came to think of Beirut as a burden, a thing too rotten and heartbreaking to be shared with anyone. The hurt was in the knowing. How could I really tell someone what it was like? And why in God’s name would I want them to know?
The SEAL code said simply to swallow it, to get on with life. So I did my best to bury it. The journey into sunlight was going to be a long one, a complicated set of marches and retreats. I would continue to feel survivor’s guilt, deep in a place I could not check or reconcile, and I would feel it for a long time. As a result, I set about pushing myself, hard. I would push myself relentlessly for years to come. Peace would find me eventually, and it would come from a struggle and a victory that were far off and unknowable for me while I served.
In the meantime, I congratulated myself on staying sane.
I WAS BACK IN OPERATIONS, this time as training officer, and I took the job very seriously. I enjoyed it. John Jaeger, perennial as poison sumac, was still the leading chief of the Training Department, and A. P. Hill and Camp Pickett became our joint domains. There was still advanced operator training to be served up to arriving BUD/S graduates, and the more complicated evolutions of predeployment training for platoons preparing to go overseas. It was a pipeline job, routine though not mundane, and it appeared that the prospect of a platoon command was evaporating before my eyes. I started looking for another place to go, someplace I could operate for real. That place was SEAL Team Six.
SEAL Team Six had been commissioned amid great secrecy in 1981. Six was the navy component of a special joint command, and its mission was the worst-kept secret in the community. SEAL Six was the navy’s equivalent of Delta Force—a hand-picked counterterrorism outfit with a global AO. The mission of Six was easily guessed at, but not much else about the command was general knowledge.
Six was formed by Dick Marcinko, then the operations officer of SEAL Team Two. Dick Marcinko is nothing if not a wheeler-dealer, and in a short time he parlayed seventeen guys assigned to a maritime intercept outfit into an invisible empire. Marcinko built SEAL Team Six from the ground up, gathering the best operators, weapons, and equipment; clawing out a budget; and pulling every string he could to get his nascent command attached to the new joint command. The wire diagram was a short one. The commander of the joint special command reported directly to the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff. America’s failure at Desert One had shown how unprepared the country was for the evolving terrorist threat; that threat was global, and 70 percent of the earth’s surface is water. Delt
a’s maritime capability at the time was nonexistent; Marcinko and Mob Six rushed in to fill the void.
Weakness was vulnerability, not just for Americans at home and abroad but for politicians. The debacle at Desert One had brought down the Carter presidency. Congress got the message, and the money started flowing. Two new operational units, SEAL Six and Special Forces Operational Detachment Delta, were to have nearly unlimited funding, manpower, and most important, a mandate. Dick Marcinko was positioned brilliantly.
The outbuilding in the SEAL Two backyard was soon abandoned for a brand-new million-dollar compound on a different base. The move was as symbolic as it was necessary. Marcinko succeeded in concocting a black program outside of the administrative and operational control of NAVSPECWARGRU-2. The unit, like Delta, was on constant war footing. Within a few hours the entire team could deploy and fight anywhere in the world. SEAL Team Six was, and is, on the highest alert level of any unit in the U.S. military.
Six made a point of attracting and keeping the best operators. It was separate, secretive, and clannish. People went over there and dropped out of sight. No one talked about the place, least of all the men stationed there. The silence added to the mystique.
In creating his kingdom, Marcinko had made enemies on all sides. The other teams resented Six’s unlimited budget and the cherry-picking of their best operators. Not that Six did much recruitment. To get into the command, it was necessary to have a personal interview with Marcinko, and word was put out that only operators with several deployments and spotless operational records need apply. After a successful interview, a candidate’s name would go into a pool, and orders would be cut to the command if and when the need was determined. Marcinko was almost as famous as Admiral Rickover for his antics during interviews. Front-running candidates were often rejected and shit birds taken. To the “regular” teams, there seemed no rhyme or reason as to who would be inducted and who would not. As with every other decision at SEAL Six, Marcinko was the guy making the calls. Six had become his personal fiefdom.
For a while. The knives were out for Marcinko, and by early 1983 he was overwhelmed. With no friends in the community, he was relieved of command and replaced by Captain Bob Gormly, an experienced, capable officer. Gormly inherited a can of worms. Marcinko fought his transfer in every possible way, calling in what favors he had with the joint command, admirals, and generals, and stirring up a pile of shit. In an act that endeared him to no one, Marcinko split for Europe on the day Bob Gormly assumed command, a slap in the face that made Gormly’s taking over all the more difficult. Six had a growing reputation as a wild-card, shoot-from-the-hip outfit. Bob Gormly single-handedly set out to make the unit live up to its operational mandate.
To interview for Six, I had to submit a special-request chit through the chain of command, and I knew it was likely to be denied by the head shed just on general principle. Spending most of my days at A. P. Hill or Camp Pickett, I was hardly the golden boy of SEAL Team Four. One afternoon I grabbed a helo back to Little Creek. I was lucky to find the skipper and XO out of the area. I took my opportunity and struck. Mad Dog Walker approved my request to interview over at Six, and I was scheduled the next day.
I put on a clean uniform and drove to a naval station in southeastern Virginia. When I was confirmed for my interview, I was given directions from the front gate of the base: right turns, left turns, and mileage. I was not given a building number or an address. I drove to a remote corner of the base, rounded a curve, and was confronted by a serious razor-wire fence. A trim-looking guard stepped from a booth. Hanging around his neck was an MP-5 machine pistol. He checked my ID against a list, the gate rolled open, and I was admitted.
In the admin office I was fingerprinted and photographed, and I signed several security agreements. I was then escorted to a medium-sized room off the Operations Department. Behind a desk was a man with dark hair and a full mustache. He could have passed for an older Tom Selleck. There were five or six big dudes scattered on a couch and a couple of chairs. They all had shoulder-length hair.
“Sit,” the man behind the desk said. He pointed to a straight-back chair in front of the desk. There were no introductions. I assumed the guy behind the desk was Captain Gormly, but I had no idea what he looked like. I had also heard stories that he put other people behind the desk and let them play skipper during interviews. I sat.
“Do you know who I am?” The man behind the desk swung his feet up on the blotter.
“Since you have your feet on the desk, I assume you’re the skipper.”
The mouth under the mustache smiled a little. I was prepared to get torn into, and it started pretty much right away. The smile disappeared, and Gormly’s eyes narrowed.
“You’re at Four?”
“Yes sir.”
“How do you get along with Skippy?” someone behind me asked. I didn’t turn around and kept my eyes on Captain Gormly.
“If I wasn’t getting along with him, I wouldn’t mention it here,” I said.
“Why are you wearing a combat-action ribbon?” Captain Gormly asked.
“Beirut.”
“Who were you there with?”
“Frank Giffland.”
“What did you do over there?”
I briefly mentioned a few operations. While I was in Beirut, Bob Gormly had led SEAL Team Six in Grenada. They had rescued Governor Schoone and conducted the radio-station operation, an op that was already becoming a legend within the community. I was peppered with a mess of questions and given an opportunity to ask some. As I quizzed my potential employers, I saw some looks get passed. I was expected to be assertive even though I was surrounded. Finally, Captain Gormly closed the folder on his desk.
“That’s enough,” he said. I stood, nodded, and turned for the door. As I opened it, one of the guys on the couch unfolded his arms.
“You drink?” he asked.
“I’ve been known to.”
“You ever go to the Raven?” he asked.
The Raven was SEAL Team Six’s bar. It wasn’t off limits to the other Teams, but they’d staked it out, and it was almost like their sovereign territory.
“I haven’t been lately,” I answered.
Someone else leaned forward. “Why not?”
“I heard it went gay,” I said.
No one said anything. The lights buzzed. I walked out, convinced I’d blown it. A few weeks passed, and then I heard that my name had been placed in the pool. A few more weeks passed, and I heard nothing else.
Don’t call us, kid. We’ll call you.
* * *
A SEA CRUISE
IN MARCH MARGOT AND I ELOPED. We were married in a civil ceremony in Elizabeth City, North Carolina, and the vows were witnessed by the couple in line behind us. An old justice of the peace read the words. He had a glass eye that pointed west during the entire service. We didn’t have a honeymoon, and I am embarrassed now to relate how utilitarian our ceremony was. There were no bridesmaids or flowers, and no one threw rice. I’d become something of an antiromantic, not the kind of man who knew how important such observances can be, not because they are ritual but because they show mutual commitment. I am not proud to say I would prove an inconstant husband. But Margot and I made each other laugh, I protected her, and she was there for me. Ultimately, that would not prove enough, but as spring came to the Tidewater, we were happy together.
We moved into a little brick duplex off Fifty-eighth Street on Virginia Beach. It wasn’t much, but it was clean and comfortable, and I could walk to the beach to surf. My post-Beirut feelings were still a bit jagged, and I am not sure I loved Margot as much as I needed her. Since returning from Lebanon, I had felt a very strong need for stability. She loved me, and I did try to give back what emotion was in me. At the time we were together, I was too stressed out and one-dimensional to see much beyond my own wants.
My sleep patterns were a constant torment to Margot. Much of the cadre’s work was at night, and in the field I lived like a vamp
ire. Back home, I was tired enough to be in bed early, ten-thirty or so on weeknights, but I would often lie awake until three or four in the morning, tossing and thrashing about in bed. I’d be out the door at six A.M. for work, and this thin bit of sleep often caught up with me. On Friday afternoons I would come home exhausted and crash hard. Instead of resting on the weekends, I partied like a rock star. I have an Irishman’s capacity for drink, and it was not unusual for me to engage and defeat a fifth of rum or bourbon each on Friday and Saturday night. The word “hangover” was not in the operational manual. Early Saturday I would usually surf, trying to be in the water at dawn, and Sundays I ran fourteen miles in Seashore State Park. A machine operated like that cannot last forever, but it would be years before I’d live any differently.
I did my best to settle into a reasonable domesticity. Margot was a bit of a bohemian, and perhaps even a scandal for a sixth-grade teacher. We rounded up the accoutrements of domestic arrangement: pots, pans, utensils, dishes, and eventually furniture. The little place on Fifty-eighth Street soon became a home. Margot wanted a puppy, and soon we had a canine unit named Bob, a purebred smooth-coated English fox terrier, a willful, athletic, headstrong, and foolishly brave piece of dog flesh. Fox terriers, or “smoothies,” as they’re called, are the only type of dog I have ever owned. It was the breed I always had as a child, and my family’s last fox terrier, Happy, perished after picking a fight with an alligator on a South Florida golf course. Fox terriers aren’t for everybody. Bob was more of a furry crocodile than a house pet, but he was, in a menacing sort of way, kinda cute. Margot, as she always did, graciously adapted.
It was not long after Margot and I were married that Bubba Nederlander deserted. One Monday he was not at quarters, and when I sent Dave to check, he found a short note saying simply that Bubba had had enough and was going home. Lebanon had put the zap on him, as it had on all of us, but Bubba was too uncomplicated and plain-hearted to bear up. It had not helped that when the platoon was disbanded, Bubba was fobbed off to engineering, where he did little more than flush out outboard motors and work for a chief who was one of Skip’s darlings.
Warrior Soul: The Memoir of a Navy SEAL Page 31