The mascot of the Underwater Demolition Teams is a malevolent frog named Freddie. He wears a Dixie-cup sailor’s cap at a rakish angle. The stub of a stogie is chomped firmly in the corner of his mouth. He carries a lit stick of dynamite in his right hand and a mad glint in his eyes. Mud developed the same look, and most sailors found it downright unsettling.
He was perfectly cast to play Huntz Hall to my Leo Gorcey.
Then Mud, who habitually ate dessert before he ate his entree, would take a knife from someone elses tray, smear a thick layer of ice cream — flavor unimportant — on top of his Salisbury steak, add half a bottle of A.I. sauce, and begin to eat. Mud ate very quickly — and without benefit of utensilsIt was a replay of the Hell Week mess hall — except Mud and I were the only ones at the tabie who had been through Helt Week.
I would always begin my meal with peas. I ate them by sucking them through my nose. After the first couple of snorts, I’d look around and smack my lips. “Mmmmmm. Great!”
If there were no peas that day, there was usually spaghetti.
I sucked spaghetti through my nose, too, although I found if the marinara sauce was too spicy my eyes would water.
If subtlety didn’t work, we’d get gross.
“Coffee, Mr. Mud?” I’d ask.
“By all means, Mr. Geek.”
“Cream?”
“No thank you, Mr. Geek.”
“Sugar?”
“I don’t believe so.”
“Honker?” I’d clear my nose into his cup.
“Delightful.” And he’d drink it down in a gulp.
We discovered that after about three days of these performances, word would spread. By the end of the first week at sea, all Mud and I would have to do would be to walk into the mess hall, load our trays, and head for a table. It would clear before we even sat down.
When Barrett heard what Mud and I were doing, he went bonkers. “Goddammit, Marcinko,” he growled, “I can’t leave you blanking alone for five blanking minutes before you blankety-blank get your blankety-blank blanking butt in blanking trouble a-blankmg-gain.” In addition to the sore ears. Mud and I also received extra duty. That was Barren’s unique way of saying thank-you for the performances that allowed the platoon to eat together. Mud and I suffered in silence. We knew why he’d done it: if he hadn’t, he would have taken grief in the chiefs’ goat locker, so to keep the peace he reamed us out.
I got word I’d been accepted to OCS just after I left on a six-monther to the Mediterranean aboard the USS Rushmore, a WWII-vintage LSD, or Landing Ship/Dock, that had originally been buill for the Royal Navy. It was quite a farewell cruise. I had all the normal platoon work to do; reconning the beaches prior to amphibious exercises, practicing EOD demolition, and taking part in the Z/5/0 evade and escape drills that were a part of UDT-22’s ongoing training. Then there was the scut work; typing Barren’s reports and memos, servicing the equipment, and maintaining my UDT diving and parachute qualifications.
On top of everything else I began spending more and more time in Officer Country, watching how they acted, how they did their work, how they lived in their wardroom. From time to time I’d get up to the bridge, where the captain of our LSD, Captain B. B. Witham, even allowed me to drive once or twice after Barrett passed on the word I’d been accepted to Organized Chicken Shit, which is how OCS is known in the fleet. A chain-smoking New Englander, Skipper Witham made sure I was instructed in the rudiments of officerdomHe even knew enough about me to address me correctly— as Seaman Geek.
Of course, now that I was about to become an officer and a gentleman, Mr. Mud and I gave up our regular mess-deck performances entirely. It had been a great act, but even great acts have to close sometime. Besides, who wants to be called Ensign Geek?
Not that I assumed the cloak of total respectability either.
Whenever we landed at Naples for supplies, for example, I’d take the wheel of the truck we were assigned. My logic was simple: I was going to become a ship driver; driving is driving; why not get all the practice I could? Naples is a hilly city, and there are long tunnels with pedestrian sidewalks running next to the traffic lanes (only fools walked those narrow tunnel sidewalks, as Neapolitans compare with the wild men of Beirut when it comes to driving).
Now, since we had wheels, we could take the time to make one or two stops for social beverages on the way to the supply depot, which would normally put us behind schedule-1 often took it upon myself to make up the lost time by putting two wheels of the two-ton stake-bed truck up on the sidewalk and grazing the tunnel walls to pass slow-moving traffic. This technique made neither the chief, nor the eight Frogmen riding in the back nor the fleet motor pool, very happy.
Barrett tried to correct my driving style in his characteristically amiable manner, explaining to me pedantically that bleeping motherblanker trucks weren’t bleeping made for driving on side-blanking-walks.
I nodded and kept driving. “Roger, Chief, gotcha.”
Gotcha, indeed.
I “got” Barrett one last time the week before I left for OCS. We were scheduled for a parachute jump. I’d already attracted Captain Witham’s unhappy attention by pulling low — waiting until I was under a thousand feel to pull the rip cord. Witham felt more secure when he could watch us open our chutes through binoculars. The thought of a HALO (High Altitude, Low Opening) jump made him sweat. I was determined to make him lose eight pounds of water weight-
My last jump was a water jump just on the starboard side of the LSD. The masthead on an LSD is 138 feet above the deck. I told the platoon I was going to pull so low I’d be level with the masthead when the chute deployed. In fact, I told everybody I could find that I was going to come in at 138 feet — with two notable exceptions: Skipper Witham, and Ev Barrett. I even had a guy named Bob dark standing by on deck with a 16mm sound movie camera-
We went up, climbed to altitude, reached the zone, and jumped. When I saw the film later, it was wonderful. There are all these chutes opening, way high. And then there’s me, Falling. Falling. Falling.
As the camera follows me closer to the water, you can hear Barrett’s voice unmistakably clear on the sound track: “You asshole. You fucking asshole. You fucking dipshit asshole.
Pull the fucking goddamn cord. Marcinko, you motherfucking cocksucking cuntbreath shit-eating turd-iaced dipshit pencildicked pus-nuts shit-for-brains asshole geek, pull the fucking cord.
I know when to take a hint, so I pulled the cord. I’d rigged the chute for a low deployment. It flared instantly. I had time for one oscillation of opening shock, at which point I came even with the masthead, and then — splash — I hit the water.
I went under, wriggled out of my harness, and came up laughing.
Barren and B. B. Witham did not find the stunt amusing.
The skipper didn’t wait until I came aboard. “Marcinko— read my lips. You’re fucking grounded,” he called on the bullhorn.
Barrett decided I needed a new asshole, so he reamed me one on the spot.
About a week later I left for the States.
The day before I left. Chief Barren called me up to the goat locker and sat me down. He found a couple of cans of beer, opened them both, and passed one to me. “Dick,” he said, “I think you’re gonna do all right. You’re gonna make a good officer — if you don’t screw around too much, and if you take things serious.”
“Thanks, Chief. I will.”
He nodded. “I know. You’re a good boy. Hard worker.
Tough. That’s good, too. You’re gonna need all that when you go up against all them fuckin Academy pukes.“ He pulled at the beer. ”Course, the Academy pukes don’t know much about fuckin‘ pulling level with the fuckin masthead, do they?“
We both laughed.
“But there’s something…”
“You name it, Chief.”
“Look,” he said, “you’ve learned a lot of stuff now. And you’re gonna leam a lot more.”
I nodded. “Yeah?”
“So I want you to promise me something. I want your word that what you leam, you’ll pass on.”
“Sure.” I wasn’t certain what he was getting at.
“You’re wondering what the fuck I’m saying, right?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Dick, it shouldn’t matter whether you work with a guy once or whether you serve with him for years — you gotta treat him the same. You gotta help him do his job. Like I helped you — now it’s gonna be your turn to pass it on.”
He drained his beer. “I want your word.”
I looked at him. The man was absolutely serious.
“You got it. Chief.”
He nodded and cracked a half-smile. “Think of it as Barren’s First Law of the Sea — because what it is, is the Navy way, Dick.”
I was naive in those days; I believed him. No — that’s not quite true. Back then, Ev Barren’s Law was the Navy way.
Chapter 6
I breezed through OCS at Newport, Rhode Island, graduating in December 1965 as an ensign. I didn’t do well because I was smarter than the others with whom I entered, but because I’d been in the Navy for over seven years, more than three of them with the fleet, and I knew how the system worked. When the instructors — chiefs, mostly — would say, during their lectures, “You’ll see this again,” I wrote what they were saying down because I knew it would reappear on tests. I knew to do it because that’s how chiefs worked. When we had inspections, I made sure my bunk was so tight a quarter would jump a foot off the top sheet and the room was as spit polished as the soles of my shoes (I hadn’t been The Geek for nothing). When we drilled, I marched as if I were a member of the drill team. When we shot, I’d score an unending series of tens.
I realized very early on that none of the officers or chiefs who taught us, drilled us, harassed us, and inspected us could come close to giving me the kind of intimidation I’d survived during UDT Hell Week. So I did my job, took whatever they gave me to do, completed it without complaining, and cruised through OCS as if it were summer camp- The guys at fleet had been right: OCS did stand for Organized Chicken Shit.
‘Fact is, if the character played by Richard Gere in the movie An Officer and a Gentleman had been a Frogman, he’d have ended up cleaning Lou Gossett’s clock before the end of the first day. Frogmen eat drill sergeants for hors d’oeuvres. They also know how to lake harassment and still do the job without complaining.
When I was selected a section leader, then battalion commander of my OCS training class, I took Ev Barretfs Law lo heart. I helped the class runts through the physical segments of training; I showed the bookworms how weapons worked; and I taught those whose grades were low to listen for the key words you’ll see this material again before they wrote anything down. One hundred percent of my section graduated OCS. Others suffered a fair number of dropouts — one even had a suicide. At graduation, former Seaman Geek received the class leadership award along with his ensign’s bars. My wife, Kathy, pregnant with our second child, looked on proudlyAfter OCS I was assigned to a small destroyer, the Joseph K. Taussig, as a snipe, or engineering officer, whose domain was the fireroom, where the ship’s boilers are located. I was certainly the first fireroom officer aboard the Taussig who ever conducted his own hull inspections — I did my own diving— and who wore green fatigues while pawling over, under, around, and through the whole boiler and propulsion system before I signed off that any specific work had been done.
The six months aboard the Taussig were an essential transition period for me. Now, I lived in Officer Country and ate in the wardroom — but the only things really different about me were the single-bar tabs on my collar, my tan uniform, and the fact that many of the enlisted men called me Mr.
Rick — which I thought preferable to being referred to as Mr.
Dick.
Ensign or no, I still thought like an enlisted man. And that helped when it came to doing my job. I’d heard all the enlisted men’s excuses before because I’d used ‘em myself. I knew how to tell good chiefs from bad ones. I knew from the day I was commissioned I couldn’t adopt the Academy-grad leadership style, which is often detached, cool, and aloof, toward my men because I’m not a detached, cool, or aloof kind of guy. On the other hand, I wasn’t an enlisted man anymore, either, and I had lo team to lead — even if leading meant making tough choices.
So the Taussig became my laboratory. I tried to see how I could use the Navy’s system to my benefit, and where I could adapt it. Somewhat to my surprise I discovered that leading is not easy. It takes the same sort of confidence you need lo jump out of a plane to order a man to do something that may prove fatal to him — and have him carry out the order instantaneously and without question.
On a more mundane level, leadership is learning how to make a decision, and then sticking by it even though you are heckled, nagged, pleaded with, and cajoled to change your mind. The first time I canceled my crew’s shore leave because there was work still to be done on the boilers was one of the toughest decisions I’d had to make to that point in my life.
Why? Because I had been a sailor, and I knew how much a night out meant to them.
My background gave me several advantages. I came to my job with a Frogman’s physical confidence — I knew, for example, that I could fight, swim, or parachute better than any man aboard the Taussig. Not to mention the fact that I could also turn anyone who tried to take me on into a pile of chopped liver. That made my life with the crew much easier,
The fact that I came from UDT also helped me establish a good working relationship with my fellow officers. Most knew what Frogmen could do and respected me for it, even if they had no desire to follow in my fin-prints. I also got along well with Earl Numbers, the Tawsig’s skipper, and my ratings were well above average.
But there was no real future for me as a ship driver and I knew it. There were far too many Academy grads ahead of me in line. In the Navy of the sixties, the Academy fraternity was very strong. A class ring was a talisman for success — and I was bare-knuckled. There was no aircraft carrier or guidedmissile frigate on my horizon — no USS Taussig even.
Still, when I received my ensign’s bars, I’d made a commitment to the Navy. It would, I decided, become my career.
What I would do, however, was another question. Actually, that’s not quite accurate. I knew what I wanted — the question was how to achieve it.
What I wanted was to become a SEAL. I’d known about SEALs since the teams were first formed in 1962. I saw my first SEALs at Little Creek as soon as I got back from one of my first Caribbean cruises because Two’s headquarters was right across the soccer field from UDT-21. They certainly had a different took to them. First of all, they dressed sharp. They wore shiny, black Cochran jump boots, with their trousers Moused over the tops, while we Frogmen wore regular boondockers with untucked trousers. Some of the equipment Frogmen used dated back to World War II. SEALs got all the best war toys. And everything was new: new, deadly weapons; new, experimental equipment; even new, special-warfare operation techniques and strategies.
Best of all, they were always going off somewhere or other to train. Maybe it would be a month of parachuting or six weeks of jungle warfare or a session at arctic survival school — they were always on the move. Weapons schools, language schools, they were doing it all. And while I loved being a Frogman, I’d peer through the chain-link fence like a stagestruck kid on his first visit to Broadway, watching as the SEALs came and the SEALs went and vowing that somehow I, too, would someday become a SEAL. The opportunity arose because of Vietnam, when both SEAL teams underwent expansion, roughly doubling in siae.
The first American combat units arrived in Vietnam on March 8, 1965. On that day, elements of the Third Marine Regiment of the Third Marine Division landed on the beach near Da Nang. The leathernecks were greeted by a sign that read, “Welcome U.S. Marines — UDT-12.” Frogmen were among the first American military personnel to go to Vietnam.
SEALs came later. I was on
the Taussig in February 1966 when I learned that the first detachment, from SEAL Team One in San Diego, had left for Vietnam. 1 felt strongly that with the West Coast in play, SEAL Team Two wouldn’t be far behind. So I pulled every string I could to get myself reassigned there.
What worked in my favor was that I was young — twentyfive at the time — gung ho, and an experienced Frogman.
There weren’t a whole lot of officers back then who met those qualifications. It took me three months of long-distance wangling, cajoling, coaxing, and threatening, but by May I’d gotten myself detailed back to Little Creek and assigned to SEAL Team Two as a squad leader.
Driving through Gate Five in June 1966, I returned the guard’s salute and thought about the first time I’d come to Little Creek, walking through the gate with Ken MacDonald.
“Mate, you ain’t never gonna make it” is what he’d said five years before. Well, we’d both made it. He was still with UDT-22, out on a cruise somewhere in the Med.
1 drove past UDT headquarters and parked in the visitors’ lot, slipped into a dress blouse and a pressed pair of khakis, locked the car, and walked into SEAL Team Two’s quarterdeck area.
Bill and Jake, two Frogmen I’d known in the teams, were reading the bulletin board. They turned as I walked in and saluted without looking at my face. I was just another asshole wearing a bar. Then they saw who it was.
“Goddamn — Geek!”
I reached out and grabbed them. “Hey, you sons of bitches.”
Bill looked me over. “So you defected to Officer Country.”
“Food’s better. And the women’re more genteel.” We all laughed. “What’s up?” I asked.
“We Just got back from language school,” Jake said. “Two weeks of Spanish, just in case the Vietcong take over Honduras. Hey, Dick, you comin‘ over here with us or you going back to 22?”
“Here. I told ‘em I wanted to kick ass and take names and they scuttled my desk and sent me where I belong.” I pointed toward the door marked XO. “Joe D in?”
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