If the Frogman doing the SNARing doesn’t like you, he may SNARE your neck instead of your arm, which smarts as you are whipped aboard. That is an understatement.)
I knew Mac was feisty, but exactly how feisty I didn’t leam until that night. The water was thick with jellyfish, and MacDonald caught quite a few of them across his face mask.
The stings brought him to the surface, gasping, more than a few times. By the time we reached the beach he was definitely uncomfortable — I could see dozens of stings on his face and neck.
Just before we left the beach, I called, “Time out,” to one of the instructors — Mac was in pain, and I thought he needed attention.
“Go to hell you goddamn Polack.”
“Come on, man, you’ve got welts all over your face. You’re stung bad.”
“Bugger off, Marcinko.”
MacDonald staggered back into the water and we swam our thousand yards through the jellyfish again. By the time the IBS snared us he was in a mild state of shock. But he wouldn’t quit. He never stopped swimming. It was exactly the sort of tenacity the instructors looked for. Their goal was to build endurance, strength, and a feeling for working as a swim pair — the most basic “Team” portion of UDT. Both the U — underwater — and the D — demolition — would come later, if we made it through the first few weeks.
For a group of sailors I thought we used a lot of wood in training. Wood? you ask. Logs. Big logs. Long logs. Heavy logs- We ran the beaches carrying them over our heads. We vaulted over piles of them. And they were used to build the especially nasty Little Creek Amphibious Base obstacle course, which we lovingly called The Dirty Name.
The Dirty Name was a series of logs of various heights and diameters embedded in the ground. The goal was to progress from one to the next without falling or touching the ground, The logs were spaced ingeniously, so that if you could jump high enough to the next one, you found you couldn’t quite jump far enough; when you could jump far enough to achieve the next log, it seemed impossible to go as high as necessary.
For the instructors, it was a way of discovering which of us were motivated enough to summon that extra energy or adrenaline that allowed us to complete the course. For us, the motivation lay in trying to get from one log to the next without breaking our necks or tegs, or jumping short and laying ourselves open on the splintery edges of the logs.
The instructors also encouraged competition between each of the boat crews. We’d race each other in swimming relays, boat races, and land runs. Unlike SEAL platoons, which have fourteen men, Underwater Demolition Teams were composed of 20-man platoons. The reason for twenty is because that was the number of men needed to do a 1,000-yard stringline reconnaissance of a USMC-battalion-sized landing beach.
The 20-man platoon was devised when the first UDT teams were assembled at Fort Pierce, Florida, in the summer of 1943; they continued until 1983, when Frogmen were finally phased out and everyone became a SEAL.
SEALs are leaner: a SEAL platoon consists of two sevenman boat crews — each containing six enlisteds and an officer.
The reason behind this number is that one of the most basic SEAL modes of transportation, the IBS, holds seven people and their combat gear. IBSs can be dropped out of planes like rubber duckies or launched underwater from submarines, so they are convenient for surreptitious or covert operations.
Other basic forms of SEAL transportation include the STAB, or SEAL Tactical Assault Boat, which is a 28-foot fiberglass boat powered by twin 110-horsepower Mercury engines and armed with .50-caliber machine guns and other deadly goodies; Boston whalers, 16-foot craft that we found useful in SEAL Team Six; and LCMs, or 45-foot Landing Craft/Mediums — Mike boats — which could be armed with mortars and were helpful in Vietnam.
Nevertheless, the lowest common denominator of transport, the IBS, and the basic SEAL boat-crew unit, the sevenman squad, are elements that have never changed since ‘t SEALs were commissioned in 1961; they’re still in use in ’i SEAL.Team Six. Remember these numbers. You will see them again. h-
The Sunday our fifth week began — brought a perceptible change of mood around the barracks. MacDonald and I usually spent our Sundays lying out on the beach and drinking beer. But this day was different. We stayed in, watching as a couple of the guys who’d been through the course before but had dropped out for one reason or another shaved their heads, then applied red dye.
“I wonder what the hell they know that we don’t,” I said to Ken.
We found out shortly after midnight. We were rolled out of the sack by instructors blowing whistles and pounding on us with paddles, and we didn’t sleep more than two hours a night for the next six days. Welcome to Hell Week — 1 had a problem with Hell Week: I’d developed a case of the runs. In today’s Navy that would probably be enough to get me excused. Not in 1961. They stopped for nothing. The solution was speed: I discovered as they ran me up and down the beach that if I ran fast enough, the smell of what ran down my leg and into my boot got left behind for the next boat crew to enjoy.
The instructors gave us each a gift for Hell Week. Each crew was presented with an IBL–Inflatable Boat: Large— for the duration. We’d use it in our daily ‘ Round- the-Worid Cruises.“ Oh, were they fun. We’d begin with the IBLs on our heads — the short guys piling a number-ten can on their helmets so they’d bear their share of the weight — while the instructors rode inside, beating on us with a paddle for motivation. We’d run, dump the boats in a series of drainage ditches that ran through the huge base, paddle across, pick the boats up, and run some more, from Gate 5 to the Main Gate to the Mud Flats two miles away, launch the boats into the harbor, and paddle out through the ferry channel onto a course that ran parallel to the Chesapeake Bay beaches. We’d row for a while, then buck the currents shoreward, land, pick up our beloved IBLs and instructors, and run past gawking tourists, taking the beach all the way back to Little Creek— a distance of about twenty-one miles as the Frogman swims, runs, limps, and crawls. It paid to win those races, too. The first boat crew to finish got to rest before the next evolution.
The last guys in got to partake in a unique bit of fun and games called The Circus. The Circus was PT until someone quit. You could quit by turning in your red helmet, collapsing, or dying. Dying was easiest — it was the only way you wouldn’t be harassed by the instructors anymore.
The harassment was constant. If you fell asleep, they’d pour water on you. On the few occasions we went for chow at the mess hall, we’d have to leave guards with the IBLs, otherwise the instructors would deflate them (and we’d have to blow them up manually). So we’d rush in, a messy, loud, obnoxious group of filthy, grubby, foul-smelling sailors, eat without the benefit of utensils — it’s probably where the expression stuffing your face was invented — and relieve the IBL guards so they could chow down and grab a few minutes rest before the whole painful cycle started all over again.
The instructors made sure that we were always wet or cold or tired or sore. By day three my feet were a mess: cracked nails, blisters that festered because of the sand and seawater, and splinter-filled hands from vaulting logs. Even my head was sore (we were expected to wear our red steel helmets all the time — about the second day I realized why those guys had dyed their heads red). We crawled through mud, surrounded by live charges that exploded yards from us. We were subjected to live fire as we ran the obstacle courses.
And every time we thought we’d run the last leg of a fivemile or eight-mile or ten-mile run, we’d be told to pick up the IBL and go at it again. Nobody died, and nobody went to the hospital, although there were lots of sprains and banged-up knees, elbows, necks, and shoulders.
The worst day was the final day, Friday. So-Solly Day, as in “So solly, sailor.” More Round-the-World Cruises, runs, an obstacle course enlivened by the biggest live charges yet, a hard swim, then a final turn around the beach in full fatigues, steel pot, and wet kapok life jacket. I’ve got a photo taken on So-Solly Day — I must’ve learned the lesson well because I’
m right in front of the group, running alongside the instructor.
Saturday, the Commander, Amphibious Force Command, John S. McCain, came to give the roughly three dozen of us who’d survived Hell Week some encouragement. We took his words to heart. (He must have been inspirational at home, too. His son, John, now a U.S. senator from Arizona, was a POW in Hanoi from 1967 to 1973 where he proved his toughness and mettle under conditions tougher than any of those we ever suffered.)
We were an interesting group, those who made it throughWed been tempered by hardship; we were confident there was virtually no physical demand we couldn’t accomplish. The hot pain of our wounds became a warm glow of pride for not having quit. We had watched seven out of ten quit — and we had not. It was as if I’d suddenly been admitted to some exclusive club with its own secret handshake and decoder ring.
Because now, having passed the hazing and the initiation rites, I was going to Puerto Rico and St. Thomas, where I’d learn the secrets of the temple: the deepwater diving skills and demolition techniques that would make me a real Frogman.
As I looked around at those of us who’d survived, I realized something I’d carry with me for life. It was a simple truth, but a good one: never stereotype anyone. Never assume just by looking that someone is suited for anything. For example, there’s no physical prototype for a Frogman — or for a SEAL for that matter — although the stereotype is probably a big, heavily muscled guy in the Arnold Schwarzenegger mold.
I was built like a football player. But my swim buddy, Ken MacDonald, looked like a toothpick. What was true for UDT was true two decades later for the Navy’s most elite unit as well. SEAL Team Six’s Gold Dust Twins, Frank and Larry, stood only about five seven, Snake was about five ten, Indian Jew was about six feet, while Aussie Mick and Horserace were the size of large armoires. If they had anything in common at Six, it was huge chests and big arms developed after long sessions on the weight pile to achieve the immense upperbody strength we needed to climb ropes for clandestine seaborne assaults. But overall, non-Six SEALs come in all configurations. Under combat conditions, however, they are all equally deadly.
In UDT training class 26, we were all shapes and sizes, too.
And our personalities were as different as our physical types, Some of us, like moi, were loud — some might even say obnoxiously so — from time to time. If there was a bar open, you could find me there after-hours, partying until last call.
Others were quiet, introspective brooders who spent their offhours with books.
If I had to categorize those of us who made it through UDT training, I’d say the one thing that bound us al! together was that we were outsiders as opposed to ticket punchers. Some might call us social misfits, but that would be stretching the point. Sure, we were hell-raisers. We were aggressive and we liked to show it. God help the Marine or sailor who decided he’d show what a tough guy he was by taking on a Frogman, because we’d be killed before we’d let ourselves get beaten.
But beyond the aggressiveness, the showboating, the macho bullshit, we were all driven by something that pushed us further than others dared to go. We were mission oriented and would do what we had to do to achieve it. The instructors had managed to convince us — or maybe we did it to ourselves — that there was nothing we couldn’t do. The principles I teamed during Hell Week I’d use again and again over the next two and a half decades, to show the men I led there was nothing they couldn’t do. My men didn’t have to like everything they did — but they had to do it all.
We were a real wild bunch, those three dozen who made it through Hell Week. Lean and mean and confident as five-hundred-dollar hookers; precisely the sort of playful young tadpoles the U.S. taxpayers should spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to teach how to blow up almost anything.
Which is exactly what happened next.
Imagine a place where there are unlimited women, a neverending supply of aged booze and fresh lobsters, and all the deadly toys you could ever want to play with.
Heaven, right? No. This place exists: it is called St. Thomas, and it is where we Hell Week survivors were sent for ten glorious weeks of training. f We actually did train. We were taught how to navigate ‘t, underwater, using only a compass, a plumb line, and a depth ’ gauge. It takes concentration because below the surface it’s easy to get disoriented. Once, Mac and I got good and lost — we’re lucky we didn’t drown ourselves. We took an incredible amount of grief from the training officers for our little escapade, but we also learned a valuable lesson: if you screw around, you can die. That thought really hadn’t occurred to me before.
We were sent on swims from Roosevelt Roads, Puerto „Rico, to Vieques Island, seven mites to the east. (We called: Roosevelt Roads “Roosy Roads.” The “Roads” stood for “Retired On Active-Duty Sailors,” in honor of those who were lucky enough to pull permanent duty there.) The phrase Did the earth move for you? took on a whole new meaning during our stay in St. Thomas and Puerto Rico. We explored the fine art of placing bangalore torpedoes so they’d blow gaping holes in concertina-wire defense perimeters. We practiced destroying concrete pillboxes with satchel charges. We developed the knack of blasting a landing-craft channel through a reef. I discovered the joys of dynamite, nitro, and plastique and managed to keep all ten fingers attached to my hands while I did. We were instructed in the basics of AquaLung diving, and we used the German-made Draeger bub“ bleless, self-contained apparatus for the first time.
And we swam. Oh, did we swim. One of our jovial instruc? tors, a good-natured, wise-ass LT (jg) from New England;£ named Aliotti, gave us extra swims on Saturdays to keep us away from the bad influences of demon rum and,wanton women. Worse, he’d make us tow a bladderlike sea anchor while he and a date lounged on a raft and watched us struggle.
The better to make us strong and virile Frogmen, he’d say when we complained.
It didn’t take long for us to become totally comfortable in the water; we learned to deal with the unexpected (it’s a mess, for example, when you get a bloody nose fifteen fathoms down from popped sinuses. The inside of your mask fills up, and you wonder whether or not to purge the blood because there are barracudas and moray eels and sharks in the water close by. You purge anyway. And you survive). So we blew things up and we swam, and we shot -45-caliber grease guns and -38-caliber pistols — the weapons of choice for the UDT in those days — and we got tan from the sun.
But mostly we partied. We showed off our bodies by sporting water-buffalo sandals, shorts, and tight polo shirts whenever we meandered into Charlotte Amalie, the capital of St.
Thomas — which was virtually every night. Mac met a lady from New York who designed jewelry; I reconnoitered a schoolteacher from New Jersey. The four of us would hit the clubs at about nine and dance and drink rum and Coke until about one, then move on to the beach or the girls’ houses for a unique form of heterosexual PT, which could, I guess, be called “concentrated horizontal hip thmsts,” done in rapid succession. At about five we’d wake up and jog back to the sub base at the edge of Charlotte Amalie, grab a few quick breaths of pure oxygen for energy, and then go straight to calisthenics. We had to: if we missed the morning exercise, we wouldn’t get liberty at night. And God forbid that we’d miss a single nocturnal foray.
After our first taste of tropical bliss, it was back to the real world — Little Creek — where we participated in what were called Zulu 5 Oscar exercises. That was the E&E stuff — evade and escape — where we learned how to swim up to ships, attach limpet mines to their hulls, and get away undetected.
I also got adept at swimming under ferryboats during E&E.
The sailors’ role in the Z/5/0 exercise was to catch us doing the dirty deed. They hardly ever did.
In October 1961, I was assigned to UDT-21, based out of Little Creek; finally a full-fledged Frogman. To be honest I was only a junior Frogman, with no real Frogman specialties.
I hadn’t qualified as a diver yet or received jump training.
But n
one of that mattered to me. It was like living a dream.
The Navy fed me, clothed me, gave me wonderful toys to play with, and when I wasn’t swimming or blowing things up, I could go out drinking with my buddies and beat the crap out of people in bars. Not that we’d start anything, but somehow, the biggest Marines and sailors would always pick fights with us. Maybe it was our tapered uniforms with the illegal detailing sewn on the insides of the blouse cuffs. Maybe it was our attitude. We had a very aggressive attitude. That’s an understatement. Whatever the case, we seemed always to be getting into fights. Better, we always seemed to be getting into fights — and winning. It’s a great confidence builder.
Dive qualifications came first. I went back to St. Thomas for six weeks of langostino, warm water, hot women, and rum. At the end of the session I was tanned, fit, well rested, and sporting the “Big Watch/Little Pecker” stainless-steel Tudor diving watch that they gave you after you qualified.
Next came parachuting. I was detailed to Ft. Benning, Georgia, for airborne training. I went as a member of the Zoo Platoon. Zoo because it included a Rabbit (as in John Francis), a Byrd, and a Fox, and we were all party animals engaged on a constant hunt for b&aver and pussy.
Once I was qualified I discovered I hked jumping so much I began to skydive on weekends, experimenting with the thennew “flat” parachutes. At UDT, we did only static-line jumps — wearing old-fashioned, regulation 35-foot parabolic parachutes. In the trade, it is called rope jumping. I have always thought of it as the monkey-on-a-string technique.
I was fascinated by the newer, 28-foot flat chutes. At that time, they were used mainly as pilots’ emergency chutes, but I believed they had real possibilities in combat situations.
Their design made them more controllable than the 35-foot rope Jumpers. They became even more maneuverable after we’d cut a new design of holes in the chute and added extra toggle lines so we could actually steer ourselves in the air.
I also liked the idea of pulling my own rip cord instead of jumping from a static line that did all the work. That meant I could free-fall. The thought of free-falling was wonderful.
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