Seal Team Six

by Howard E. Wasdin

  7.

  Desert Storm

  With Iraq’s economy failing, President Saddam Hussein blamed Kuwait, invading the country on August 2, 1990, and taking Western hostages. The UN condemned the invasion, demanded a withdrawal, placed economic sanctions on Iraq, and formed a blockade. However, Hussein seemed poised to invade Saudi Arabia next.

  On August 7, Operation Desert Shield began. U.S. aircraft carriers and other ships entered the Persian Gulf. Our troops were sent to Saudi Arabia. The UN gave Iraq an ultimatum to leave Kuwait by January 15, 1991, or be forcefully removed. We formed a coalition of thirty-four countries, with financial contributions from Germany and Japan.

  * * *

  My platoon readied our equipment and deployed to Machrihanish, Scotland. As we learned that Desert Shield was about to become Desert Storm, we flew to Sigonella, Sicily. Our Naval Air Station was located on the NATO base, serving as a hub to the Mediterranean. There we waited for our ship to arrive.

  While waiting, I often went off base to eat at a nearby restaurant. Their manicotti was particularly delicious. One evening, I asked the waitress how to cook it. She disappeared into the kitchen, then came out and told me. After I’d eaten there a few more times and asked how to cook the dishes each time, she said, “You and chef talk.” She escorted me back to the kitchen. I realized a family was running the place. The chef and I drank Chianti while he showed me how to do prep work and, after a number of visits, taught me how to cook Sicilian—homemade meatballs, sausages, baked ziti, and manicotti. He seemed pleased that I had taken an interest in assisting with the cooking. The most important part of cooking Italian is the sauce, which can take a couple of days to make. First, chop up the peppers, onions, garlic, tomatoes, and mushrooms. Then sauté them. Cook some herbs to a boil in tomato sauce, then put the heat on low and add the vegetables. Add wine. This would take a full day. Make meatballs and sausages while the sauce is slow cooking. Then add the meat to the sauce. Wake up in the middle of the night to put it in the refrigerator. Then take it out to eat the next day. Even now, I still cook Sicilian. My wife and I often invite friends and neighbors over to enjoy the same food and atmosphere I enjoyed while in Sicily. Occasionally I’ll be outside walking the dog when a neighbor asks me, “Hey, Howard, when are you going to cook some Italian again?”

  After several weeks had passed, I came back from the restaurant one evening and stopped by the air tower to watch some TV. On CNN, they showed the first shots of Desert Storm. I sprinted to the Explosives Ordnance Disposal locker where my platoon slept in sleeping bags and woke them up. “Hey, the war has started.”

  Everybody jumped up, ready to get busy. Then we realized, What the hell are we getting all excited for? We haven’t been told what to do yet. So I grabbed a sleeping bag and slept.

  The next morning, we found out we were going to the John F. Kennedy, the same aircraft carrier where I’d done Search and Rescue. When the ship arrived from the Mediterranean Sea, it seemed to take forever to get all our equipment loaded: cases of 84 mm one-shot light antitank rockets (AT-4s), claymores, ammunition … We didn’t know what specific missions we’d be tasked with, so we took everything.

  The John F. Kennedy was 1,052 feet long and 192 feet tall from the waterline to the top of the mast. It could sail at 34 knots (1 knot equals roughly 1.15 miles per hour) carrying more than five thousand personnel. In addition to more than eighty aircraft, it was armed with two Guided Missile Launching System Mark-29 launchers for Sea Sparrow missiles, two Phalanx close-in weapon systems for attacking incoming missiles, and two Rolling Airframe Missile launchers that fire infrared homing surface-to-air missiles.

  I saw a lot of my old buddies on board. Even some of the same pilots remained. John F. Kennedy sailed through the Suez Canal to the Red Sea, heading for the Persian Gulf. Most ships didn’t have quarters for a SEAL contingent. We slept and held meetings wherever we could find a space. Fortunately, we had a great rapport with the ship personnel. Whenever the ship’s crew saw us coming through the passageway wearing our camouflage uniforms and SEAL tridents, they said, “Make a hole, SEAL coming through.” It felt like being a celebrity. We tried to treat them with respect, too.

  At first no one approached us when we were in the chow hall. After a while, people started to join us. They asked us about BUD/S and other things. In the huge hangar bay, we did our physical training every morning. Some of the ship’s personnel showed up and joined us.

  We didn’t follow the Dick Marcinko Charm School of arrogance and alienating people. Marcinko created SEAL Team Six, served time in jail for defrauding the government, wrote his autobiography, entitled Rogue Warrior, and made a video game. Although I respect that he created Team Six, Marcinko gave us a black eye by disrespecting people who weren’t SEALs—and by disrespecting SEALs who weren’t part of his clique. I was on a flight once with a pilot who was amazed at our behavior in comparison with the loud, obnoxious, gun-waving attitude of Marcinko’s SEALs. Even worse, Marcinko cheated the government out of money, putting Team Six under a dark cloud of suspicion. He had been imprisoned for conspiring with a civilian contractor to overcharge the government for explosives and pocketing the money. For years, we had to overcome that legacy. Especially at SEAL Team Six, subsequent commanders worked hard to clean up the crap stains Marcinko left behind.

  On the John F. Kennedy, we were visitors in someone else’s home. They were the ones in charge. They were the ones who took care of it—making our stay as good or as bad as they wanted. If the ship sprang a leak, we depended on the ship’s personnel to plug the hole. We treated the crew well, and they treated us like royalty.

  I’m not saying we had to kiss everyone’s butts, but we were all on the same team. The non-SEALs took the same navy oath as the SEALs to “defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic.” Treat people like crap who are in the same military and eventually it will come back and bite you in the butt. If I saw Marcinko on the street, I would respect him for creating SEAL Team Six, but if he said anything to me about how everything used to be better when he was commanding officer, I’d tell him, “Go play your video game and blow some more smoke up your own ass.”

  * * *

  For over a week, pilots from our ship took off loaded up with bombs, leaving us behind to watch their payloads explode on CNN. Then we stood by as the pilots came back without their bombs. We had trained and trained for this moment. Especially in winter warfare, we skied in and set up a beacon to let the pilot in the aircraft see our location. Then we would “paint” the target with a laser, letting the bomb know where to go. We’re missing out. Wearing Ray-Ban aviator sunglasses, I stood on the outer deck of the aircraft carrier feeling a breeze and looking across the shimmering calm ocean toward Iraq. I could see the USS San Jacinto (CG-56), a cruiser loaded with Tomahawk missiles. The USS America (CV-66) and USS Philippine Sea (CG-58) also sailed in our battle group. I was all dressed up with nowhere to go. My platoon and I weren’t the only ones. Although General Norman Schwarzkopf had utilized British special ops, the Special Air Service (SAS), at the beginning of the war, he didn’t utilize American special ops. He clearly favored American conventional forces over American unconventional units like the SEALs or Delta. It sucked.

  On a side note, although the SEALs had specifically rehearsed to protect the oil wells in Kuwait, Schwarzkopf didn’t use us. Later, as Coalition military forces drove the Iraqi military out of Kuwait, Saddam’s troops conducted a scorched earth policy, destroying everything they could—including setting fire to over six hundred of Kuwait’s oil wells. Kuwait lost five to six million barrels of oil each day. Unburned oil formed hundreds of oil lakes, contaminating forty million tons of earth. Sand mixed with oil created “tarcrete,” covering 5 percent of Kuwait. Putting out the fires cost Kuwait $1.5 billion. They burned for more than eight months, polluting the ground and air. Many Kuwaitis and Coalition troops developed respiratory difficulties. The thick billows of black smoke fille
d the Persian Gulf and surrounding areas. Wind blew the smoke to the eastern Arabian Peninsula. For days, the smoky skies and black rain saturated nearby countries. The environmental and human suffering caused by the fires continues to be felt to this day. If it hadn’t been for Schwarzkopf’s underestimating their ability to light fires, the belief among the Team guys was that, we could’ve eliminated many of the booger-eaters before they reached the six hundred oil wells, lessening the suffering.

  One evening, we were awakened around midnight to muster in one of the jet fighter wing’s ready rooms. Intel told us that a cargo ship disguised under an Egyptian flag was laying mines in the Red Sea. Our mission would be to take the ship down. SEAL Team Six did this kind of mission with Black Hawk helicopters and state-of-the-art gear. As Team Two SEALs, we’d have to make do with the bumblebee-looking SH-3 Sea King helicopters and our wits.

  We started our mission planning. How many helicopters? Who’s going to be in what bird? Who’s going to be in what seat? Which helicopter will hover over the ship first? Which helo is second? How will we set up sniper positions? Escape and evasion plans if we have to bail? Meanwhile we continued to get new intelligence, and the aircraft carrier moved us closer to striking position.

  The ship’s whistle blew—lunchtime. We ate, not knowing when we’d have a chance to eat again. Then we went to the intelligence center to update our intel and check out blueprints of the cargo ship we’d take down. How many decks? How many rooms? How many crew members? The amount of intel and planning that goes into a mission is mind-boggling.

  As the air rep, I prepared the portable wire ladders (caving ladders) for climbing back up to the helicopter if we needed to, fast ropes, and other air-related gear. I attached a ninety-foot braided nylon rope to a clevis pin on a bar bolted to the interior roof of the SH-3 Sea King, a twin-engine antisubmarine-warfare helicopter. Not designed with our type of work in mind, the helo would later be replaced by the SH-60 Sea Hawk, the maritime version of the Black Hawk. SEAL Team Six had the Black Hawks, but we blue-water SEALs had to make do with what was available. I placed the coiled rope inside near the helo door.

  We divided up other responsibilities. Serving as lead member of the prisoner handling team, I had to carry an additional ten pairs of flexicuffs in my backpack, in addition to the standard two pairs for the prisoners, and plan where to put prisoners as we took down the ship.

  We geared up, wearing black BDUs. On our feet, we wore Adidas GSG9 assault boots. They’re soft on the bottom and grip well, like wearing a tennis shoe with ankle support. You can get them wet and fins slip on easy over the tops. To this day, that’s my favorite boot. Black balaclavas covered our heads, and paint covered our exposed skin. For our hands, we customized our green aviator gloves by dying them black, then cutting off two of the fingers on the right-hand glove: the trigger finger down to the second knuckle and the thumb down to the first knuckle. With the fingers cut out, it became easier to squeeze the trigger, change magazines, pull the pins on flashbangs, etc. Casio watches on our wrists kept time. On my belt, in the small of my back, sat a gas mask. During Desert Storm, everyone prepared for gas or biological weapons; Hussein was reported to still have chemical weapons that he wouldn’t hesitate to use. I also took along two or three flashbangs.

  I carried the Heckler and Koch MP-5 submachine gun with a SIG SAUER 9 mm on my right hip. I kept a thirty-round magazine in the MP-5. Some guys like to carry two magazines in the weapon, but our experience was that the double magazine limited our maneuverability, and it’s hard to do a magazine change. I carried three magazines on my left thigh and an extra three in my backpack. We test-fired our weapons off the fantail, on the back of the ship.

  Although we had sixteen guys in our platoon, one would remain as a sniper in each of the two circling helicopters. That left only fourteen of us to take down the entire ship—two more helos with seven assaulters in each. Mine would be the lead helicopter.

  The helicopter crew members were familiar faces—I’d served with their squadron, SH-7, during my earlier navy days as a SAR swimmer. As ropemaster, I sat inside the helo door in the middle of the coil of the rope with my left hand on the part leading up to the hoist mount sticking out of the helo. When we became airborne, I felt the outside wind try to pull the rope away from me. I closed my eyes and took a rest.

  “Fifteen minutes.” The air crewman’s voice came into my headset, relaying information from the pilot.

  I opened my eyes and relayed the message to my Teammates. “Fifteen minutes!” Then I closed my eyes again.

  “Ten minutes.”

  I was used to the routine.

  “Five minutes.”

  Getting close now.

  “Three minutes.”

  We had approached the ship from the rear, slowing from 100 knots to 50 knots.

  “One minute.”

  Flaring the helo’s nose up at an angle, the pilot put on the brakes. As we leveled out to a hover over the ship, I had enough daylight left to see the deck. We were in position. I kicked the 90-foot rope out the door and called, “Rope!” It hit the fantail on an area too small to land a helicopter.

  “Go!” Wearing thick wool inserts in my gloves, I grabbed the rope and slid down it like a fireman’s pole. With more than 100 pounds of gear on my back, I had to grip the rope tight to prevent myself from splattering onto the deck. Of course, with six guys behind me waiting in the helicopter, one big hovering target, I didn’t want to descend too slowly, either. My gloves literally smoked on the way down. Fortunately, I landed safely.

  Unfortunately, our pilot had a hard time holding his position over the ship in rough seas with darkness falling and gusts of wind blowing. To add to the difficulty, the pilots weren’t used to hovering over a target while a 200-pound man and his 100 pounds of gear come off the rope—causing the helo to suddenly gain altitude. The pilot would have to compensate by lowering the helo for each man who dismounted the rope. We had practiced with the pilots earlier, but it was still a tricky maneuver. Without the pilot’s compensation, the first operator would slide off the rope with three feet of rope on the deck, the second guy with only a foot, and the third guy with the rope off the deck—it wouldn’t take long before some poor bastard dropped ten feet through the air with nothing to hold on to, the metal deck giving a lot less cushion than dirt. Even for the more experienced Black Hawk pilots, it’s a tricky maneuver. The helicopter pulled away. Crap. There I was, in the middle of a war, in the middle of the Red Sea, on a strange enemy ship by myself. I felt naked. If this goes really bad, I can fight my way through it. If this goes really, really bad—Mother Ocean is right there. Kick, stroke, and glide. The helicopter had to circle around, reestablish visual, make another approach, and hover again. It probably only took two minutes, but it felt like two hours.

  I scanned the area with the muzzle of my MP-5 while my platoon fast-roped down. Once we were all together, we set our perimeter. Mark, who was our team leader, and DJ, our communications (coms) guy, took a group to the wheelhouse for command and control. Two shooters went to after steering to disable the ship—making it dead in the water. My team went to the cabins to get the crew.

  Inside the ship, we approached the first cabin. You’re soft until you’re hard. Stay quiet for as long as possible. If I’d heard a shot or a flashbang, I’d be thinking, Aw, crap. Here we go. From then on out I’d be hard. Kick in every door and flashbang every room. Manhandle everyone. Violence of action turns up exponentially. We try to match the level of violence to the level required for the situation. No more, no less.

  I opened the door, and four of us slipped in quietly while two stayed behind in the hallway to cover our rear. Speed is key, as is moving together. Two of us cleared left and two cleared right. The two crew members inside froze. We dominated the area. They couldn’t speak English, but we knew some Arabic: Down.

  They assumed the position.

  Another SEAL and I stood next to the wall covering while two SEALs said, “Moving.�
��

  “Move,” I answered, controlling the room.

  They cuffed the two crew members on the deck.

  I shouted, requesting to know if the hall outside was secure for us to come out. “Coming out?”

  “Come out,” came a reply from the hall.

  We took our prisoners out into the hallway and moved on to the next door. Most rooms averaged two crew members. Some rooms were empty.

  In one room, we went in and cuffed the crew. I said, “Coming out?”

  “No,” the two shooters in the hall replied.

  The four of us stayed put with our two prisoners—waiting. I could hear arguing in the hall.

  “Wasdin,” one of the guys in the hall called.

  I stepped into the hallway and saw a crew member standing in a T-intersection at the end of the hall. In his hand was a fire extinguisher. One of our shooters was about to cap him for noncompliance.

  “What’s going on?” I asked.

  “This guy won’t listen,” the shooter said.

  Maybe he thinks we’re sabotaging the ship. “Down,” I said in Arabic.

  The crew member spoke Arabic. “No.”

  I looked in his eyes. He seemed confused, not like he was being hostile for the sake of being hostile. Thinking it was simple miscommunication, I lowered my MP-5 submachine gun a little.

  He lunged at me with his fire extinguisher.

  Damn.

  I sidestepped just as the fire extinguisher glanced off the side of my head. Back then, we weren’t wearing assault helmets. If I hadn’t sidestepped, the blow would’ve caught me straight in the face.

  Wow. He almost killed me with a fire extinguisher. How would that look? Try to be nice and get taken out with a fire extinguisher. I was furious. I caught him sideways and buried the muzzle of my MP-5 under his right ear, pushed him back, then gave him a butt stroke for good measure.

  One of Mr. Fire Extinguisher’s buddies, a skinny little man, put up his hands as if to take me on.