Seal Team Six

by Howard E. Wasdin

  As I drove, I ran out of ammo in my CAR-15. I let it hang from the battle sling harnessed to me and drew the SIG SAUER 9 mm pistol from the holster on my right hip. Our convoy slowed down, and a booger-eater emerged in a doorway, aiming his AK-47 right at me. I brought my SIG SAUER across. Double tap. I’d made that double head shot over a thousand times in training. Under the present combat conditions, I rushed the shot. Miss. Adrenaline pumping at full blast, the world seemed to decelerate around me. The booger-eater pulled the trigger in slow motion. The bullet hit my right shinbone, practically blowing off my lower right leg. His bolt went back. The empty casing ejected. This guy ain’t playing around. I took an extra half second and got on my front sight. Like John Shaw says, “Smooth is fast.” Double tap. Both rounds hit him in the face. If I’d have taken that extra half second the first time, I could’ve capped his ass and saved my leg.

  Our cutvee slowed down. What the hell is wrong with our cutvee? I tried to stomp on the accelerator and couldn’t. Looking down on the floorboard, I saw a big toe pointing behind me. I didn’t even realize it was my leg twisted inward. Surely I’d be in a lot more pain if it was my leg. I tried to step on the accelerator again. My right foot flopped. Sonofabitch. That’s my leg. Reaching with my left foot, I jabbed the accelerator. Wow, this is some really serious crap. I better get on top of my game. Even though this was my second time getting shot during the battle, I still embraced my own superhuman strength. My fear meter rose to 6, but it hadn’t reached 10. I felt numbness more than pain because my nerve receptors had overloaded. Although surprised for the second time during combat, I still felt superior as a SEAL Team Six sniper—Howard Wasdin.

  I was furious with McKnight and called him on the radio. “Get us the hell out of here!”

  Finally out of the danger zone, the convoy stopped to help the people who were leaking to stop leaking, feed our weapons more ammo, and plan our next move. Casanova helped me crawl over the center console and into the passenger seat, so he could drive. The battle sling of my CAR-15 got hung up on the center console. Little Big Man wrestled with it, trying to get it clear. Whatever love he had for the M-14 and its longer range seemed to have faded. Little Big Man wanted my CAR-15.

  My shattered bone had jagged edges that could slice into an artery and cause me to bleed to death. Casanova propped my wounded leg up on the hood of the Humvee and placed my left leg next to it as a brace. The elevation would also slow the blood flow. “I’m going to get you home,” Casanova said.

  The convoy moved out, and Casanova stepped on the gas. Our cutvee ran on three flat tires. The convoy made a U-turn and turned right at the Olympic Hotel, heading toward the first crash site, Velvet Elvis. It was like the movie Groundhog Day, repeating the same actions over and over again.

  Five or ten minutes later, an enemy round shot through my left ankle. Unlike the fracture in my right shin, where my central nervous system shut off the pain, this one hurt like a bitch. My fear level rose from 6 to 7. My emotions toward the enemy rocketed off the anger scale. They had taken away my superhero powers. Suddenly, I realized I was in trouble.

  True to form, our convoy missed Velvet Elvis at the first crash site—again. Then we stopped. Guys stepped out of their vehicles and set up a perimeter. McKnight got out of his vehicle with someone, and it looked like they laid a map on the hood of their Humvee, plotting our location. It was surreal. While we’re getting shot, why not walk into the 7-Eleven and ask for directions?

  Our convoy had failed twice to navigate its way to one of the downed pilots. We had used up most of our ammunition. Wounded and dead bodies filled our vehicles. Half of the men were severely wounded, including most of the leaders. If we didn’t return to base and regroup, we might not have anyone left to launch a rescue.

  Our cutvee had more holes in it than a sponge. The side mirrors dangled from their L-brackets. As the convoy moved forward again, our cutvee hit a land mine. The ballistic blankets covering the floor saved us from fragmentation. (I would later be made an honorary member of the Kevlar Survivor’s Club.) Casanova pulled off the road, where our cutvee died. The booger-eaters descended on us. We’re about to be overrun.

  I remembered the old 1960 movie The Alamo, starring John Wayne as Davy Crockett. It was one of my favorite movies, and Davy Crockett was my favorite person in the Alamo. This must be how Davy Crockett felt before they killed him: outgunned, undermanned, without protection. Seeing his people get wiped out while the enemy continued to advance. This is it. Howard Wasdin checks out in Mogadishu, Somalia, on the afternoon of October 3, 1993. My one regret is I haven’t told the people I love that I love them enough. During my time on earth, it’s what I should’ve done more of. The first two people who came to mind were my children, Blake and Rachel. I probably only told them I loved them about six times a year. Part of the problem was that, with frequent training deployments and real-world ops, I just wasn’t around for a large part of their lives. Even though I was married, now I didn’t think of my wife, Laura. My relationship with the SEAL Team had been more important than my marriage. I wanted to tell Blake and Rachel how much I loved them.

  My fear meter peaked at 8. It never reached 10. When you hit a 10, you can’t function anymore. You succumb to the mercy of events going on around you. I wasn’t dead yet. Firing back with my SIG, I tried to keep six or seven of the booger-eaters from surrounding us. Physically, I couldn’t shoot effectively enough to kill anyone at that point. I had used up two of Casanova’s pistol magazines and was down to my last. Over the radio, I heard that the QRF were on their way to rescue us—four hours into the gunfight. Quick Reaction Force—what is their definition of “quick”?

  Our vehicle still disabled on the side of the road, I looked up to see the QRF drive past our road. Sonofabitch. We had a chance to get rescued and there they go. They are going to leave us here to die. Then the QRF stopped and backed up with a deuce-and-a-half. Thank God, at least they can see us. When they reached the road beside us, the booger-eaters took flight. The QRF stopped.

  Casanova and Little Big Man helped transfer the wounded over to their vehicles.

  A Ranger struggled to coil up a fast rope that had been dropped from a helicopter during the insertion—just doing what he’d done on training ops many times. In sensory overload, soldiers rely heavily on muscle memory, fighting the way they trained.

  Unable to walk, I stared at the Ranger in disbelief. “This is not a training operation!” I yelled. “Put the rope down, get your ass in the deuce-and-a-half, and let’s get out of here!”

  The Ranger continued trying to recover the rope, not conscious of the situation around him and not listening to verbal commands.

  I pointed my SIG SAUER at him. “I won’t kill you, but you will walk with a limp if you don’t get your ass in that truck!”

  The Ranger looked confused for a moment before dropping the fast rope. He hurried into a vehicle.

  Finally, my guys loaded me into the deuce-and-a-half. “Be careful with him,” Casanova said. “His right leg is barely hanging on.”

  We rode back to the compound unmolested by Aidid’s forces. Arriving inside the gates, we met chaos: forty to fifty American bodies laid out all over the runway with medical personnel trying to get them through triage—figuring out the nonsurvivable from the survivable, the critical from the less critical—and attending to them accordingly. A Ranger opened a Humvee tailgate—blood flowed out like water.

  Casanova and Dan Schilling carried me to the triage area.

  Still in daylight, the medics stripped off all my clothes and treated me. They left me lying naked on that runway covered with bodies. Exposed.

  Once again, death had just missed me. Like it missed when the enemy shot down the QRF helo, killing three men. Like it missed when Aidid’s militia massed to attack us at Pasha. Like it missed when mortars bombed the CIA compound I had visited the day before. Like all the other misses. I thought maybe Casanova and I could’ve made a difference if we’d been riding in
the QRF helicopter flight when the three men died. It hadn’t occurred to me that maybe I could’ve been killed. It hadn’t occurred to me that God was looking out for us. Now forty-eight years old and not as cocky, I wonder, Would I have been able to get the enemy before he got me? Maybe people would’ve been coming to my memorial ceremony.

  Before the Battle of Mogadishu, the Clinton administration’s support for our troops had sagged like a sack of turds. They had rejected or removed M-2 Bradley infantry fighting vehicles, M-1 Abrams tanks, and AC-130 Spectre gunships. The Clinton camp was more interested in maintaining political points than keeping some of America’s finest troops alive.

  During the Battle of Mogadishu, eighteen Americans were killed and eighty-four wounded. Also, one Malaysian died and seven were injured. Two Pakistanis and one Spaniard were wounded, too. In spite of only about 180 soldiers fighting against nearly 3,000 of Aidid’s militia and civilian fighters, we captured Omar Salad, Mohamed Hassan Awale, Abdi Yusef Herse, and others. Thousands of Aidid’s clan members were killed, with thousands more wounded. They’d depleted much of their ammunition. A number of the chieftains evacuated in fear of America’s inevitable counterattack. Some were ready to turn in Aidid to save themselves. Four fresh SEAL Team Six snipers from Blue Team were on their way to relieve us. Delta’s Alpha Squadron was gearing up to relieve Charlie Squadron. A new batch of Rangers was coming, too. We had broken Aidid’s back, and we wanted to finish the job.

  In spite of the gains, President Clinton saw our sacrifices as losses. Even though we could’ve finished the job of taking down Aidid and getting food to the people, Clinton turned tail and ran. He ordered all actions against Aidid stopped. Four months later, Clinton released Osman Atto, Omar Salad, Mohamed Hassan Awale, Abdi Yusef Herse, and the other prisoners. Whiskey Tango Foxtrot.

  We had spent so much time working with local Somalis to build their trust, to convince them that we would be with them in the long run. Many of these Somalis risked their lives to help us. Some endangered their families. Our former Somali guards at Pasha joined in the Battle of Mogadishu, loyal to the end. Only one of them survived. Other Somalis died on our side trying to stop Aidid. We left our Somali friends dangling in the breeze. I felt like our sacrifices had been in vain. Why did they send us if they weren’t willing to finish the job? We shouldn’t have become involved in Somalia’s civil war—this was their problem, not ours—but once we committed, we should’ve finished what we started: a lesson we are required to keep relearning over and over again.

  Somalia lost the assistance of the international community to bring peace and food to the country. Chaos and starvation spiked sharply. Aidid tried to downplay his losses, but he would never rule over a united Somalia. He died in 1996 during an internal battle against his evil genius, Osman Atto.

  14.

  From the Ashes

  The sun had disappeared when medical personnel whisked me away to the Swedish field hospital. The thought sank in that I might lose my leg. I was scared. At the hospital, a nurse gave me a shot of morphine. It didn’t take effect. Turned out I was in the 1 percent of people whose receptor for morphine doesn’t make the pain go away. The nurse gave me another shot. My leg still hurt like hell. They debrided my wounds—removing damaged, infected, and dead tissue to help me heal. Then they prepared me for transportation to Germany.

  The medical personnel loaded us onto a plane. Inside the impressive aircraft, it looked like a hospital with wings: beds, IV units, machines. A nurse walked by me.

  I reached out and grabbed her leg. “I’m hurting so bad. Can you please just give me something?”

  She looked at my medical chart. “You’ve had two shots of morphine. You can’t be feeling pain.” Then she walked away to see another patient.

  A little while later, a doctor came by and saw me.

  This was bone pain—the worst kind of pain. With a cut, the body compensates by constricting arteries to decrease blood flow to the area in order to prevent bleeding to death. With a bone injury, the body can’t compensate. My pale body shook, and sweat poured out of me as I clenched my teeth, trying to will the pain not to consume me. Calm your pulse down. Slow your breathing. Block the pain; will it away. I could do it as a kid; why isn’t it working yet? I could do it as a kid; why can’t I do it now? It was the same principle I used when I was getting my ass beat as a child: remove myself from the pain and not become physically involved. Self-preservation mode. I couldn’t stop the physical symptoms of paleness, shaking, and sweat, so I tried to control how my mind coped with the pain.

  “This man is in pain,” the doctor said.

  “No kidding. I’ve been trying to tell you all.”

  He gave me a shot of Demerol. “How’s that?”

  I felt almost instant relief. “Thank you so much.”

  The doctor spoke with the nurse. Then she came over and apologized. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I didn’t know.” She was almost in tears.

  * * *

  Will I lose my leg? We landed at the Ramstein Air Base in Germany. Air force personnel loaded us onto a bus. The air force guys were cheerful and helpful. “We heard you guys kicked ass. We’re going to take good care of you.” They pumped up our spirits.

  Upon my arrival at the army’s Landstuhl Regional Medical Center, the largest American hospital outside of the United States, the doctors took me straight to surgery.

  In the operating room, they prepped me. A nurse tried to give me a general anesthetic.

  “I don’t want to go to sleep,” I said.

  “We need to put you to sleep for the surgery,” she reasoned with me.

  “I don’t want to go to sleep. I know you’re going to take my leg off.”

  She and a male nurse tried to hold me down, but I fought them off.

  The situation was pretty intense when the surgeon came in. “What’s going on?”

  “The patient is resisting,” the nurse explained. “He won’t let us administer the general anesthetic.”

  The surgeon looked at me. “What’s the problem?”

  “I’m just afraid you’re going to take my leg if you put me to sleep. I don’t want to go to sleep. Please.”

  The surgeon told the nurse, “Give him an epidural.”

  She gave me the shot in my lower back. Used for women giving childbirth, it deadened everything in me from the waist down.

  The surgeon took my arm and looked into my eyes. “I may be the best orthopedic surgeon in the air force. I’ll save your leg.”

  He may have been BS-ing me, but he seemed sincere, and I felt reassured.

  The doctor performed surgery on me as I watched. When I realized they weren’t going to take my leg off, I fell asleep.

  Later, I awoke to pain on my right thigh. The epidural had started to wear off. The surgeon had an instrument he used to scrape grafts of skin off my thigh. He put the grafts through a machine that looked like a cheese grater, which he used to punch holes in the skin to make it bigger. Then he stapled the skin onto the site where they’d performed the surgery. Gradually, I started to feel some pain. When they did the next skin graft, I flinched.

  If it had been the Vietnam era, the doctors would’ve amputated. Due to advances in modern medicine and a great surgeon, I was able to keep my leg.

  After the surgery, they carted me to my room. The nurse hooked up an electrical pump to my bed. “If you’re in pain, just hit this button, here. You can’t overdo it, but when you’re in pain, just give yourself a dose.”

  “Cool.” I hit the button a couple of times and went to sleep.

  * * *

  Waking up, I had no concept of time. A voice cried out, “Damn, it hurts! Damn, it hurts!”

  A nurse’s voice said, “Just hold on. We’re trying to find a pump.”

  I looked over. He was the brave Ranger who’d been shot in the leg once, shoulder twice, and arm once—and still fed me ammo during the Battle of Mogadishu.

  Some time had passed, and the nurse still had
n’t brought his pump. The hospital was not quite prepared for the mass casualties they now had on their hands.

  The Ranger continued to cry out.

  I called him by name.

  He looked over at me. “Hooah, Ser’nt.” The Rangers abbreviated “Sergeant” to Ser’nt, and as a navy petty officer first class, my rank was equivalent to an army staff sergeant.

  A mop leaned against the wall near my bed. I reached over, grabbed it, and extended the handle to him. “Grab this.”

  He took hold of the mop handle.

  “Let’s pull our beds together,” I said.

  We pulled until the wheels under our beds rolled. With our beds together, I took the needle of my catheter out and stuck it in the Ranger’s catheter, then hit the button a couple of times. Having expended most of my strength, I couldn’t push the beds back apart. Both of us became sleepy.

  When the nurse returned, she went ballistic. “What happened to your beds? What’s going on? Why are you giving him that medicine? If he was allergic to that, you could’ve killed him!” She took the needle out of his catheter and put it back in mine.

  A full bird colonel must’ve heard all the commotion. He came in.

  The nurse chattered about what happened.

  The colonel looked at me. “Well, soldier, do you think you run the hospital?”

  I explained, “We were just in an intense firefight. He was hurtin’. I made him quit hurtin’. Shoot me if you want to.”

  The edges of the colonel’s lips rose in a slight smile. He took the nurse to the end of the room. “These guys are trained to take care of each other. Just let it go this time.”