In 1989, SEAL Team Six went to Panama to capture drug-dealing dictator Manuel Noriega. Noriega tried to hide out in a Catholic church, but with no way out of the country, he finally surrendered.
Grenada, the Achille Lauro, and Panama were just three of the many operations SEAL Team Six performed before I joined them.
* * *
I took my first deployment with SEAL Team Two to Machrihanish, Scotland—land of my mother’s Kirkland ancestors, who changed their name to Kirkman when they immigrated to the United States. The Scottish locals gave Smudge his nickname, taken from a famous English soccer athlete. We went with some of the guys to a tartan museum in Edinburgh, where I found that my clan had come from the Highlands.
Smudge teased me about finding my tartan. “Wow, Howard’s the Highlander.”
“Yeah, there can be only one!” I exclaimed.
From Scotland, we trained alongside or interacted with a number of foreign special operation units: the British Special Boat Service, French Commando Hubert, German Combat Swimmers (Kampfschwimmer), Swedish Coastal Rangers (Kustjägarna), Norwegian Navy Ranger Command (Marinejegerkommandoen), and others. During a harbor penetration exercise in Germany, I exchanged a case of my MREs with the rations of a Commando Hubert. His commando frogman unit had received much help in its creation from a World War II naval officer named Jacques-Yves Cousteau, whom many came to know because of his TV series about the underwater world. The French rations included bottles of wine, cheese, and pâté. It amazed me how much they liked our freeze-dried food and Maxwell House coffee—just add water. When I returned to the barracks in Scotland, nearly everyone begged me for some of my wine, cheese, and pâté.
For winter warfare training, I enjoyed over a month of fun with the Swedish Coastal Rangers, who perform long-range reconnaissance, sabotage, and assaults against enemies invading Sweden’s coast. Although all young Swedish males must serve in the military for one year, some of them attempt to become Coastal Rangers. During the Cold War, Russia was their biggest threat.
Burt, DJ, Steve, and I flew into Stockholm, the capital of Sweden. Historic churches, palaces, and castles mixed with green parks and waterways, making it a Venice of the North. Newer buildings blended ecological designs with high tech and functionalism. Our hosts put us up in a wonderful hotel. One evening, as we returned from training, a short, skinny guy with spiky hair sat in the lobby, a long-legged woman sitting on each leg and one in his lap. Who is that? Two of us walked in closer to see who it was: Rod Stewart. There’s hope for ugly guys everywhere—become a rock star.
In the morning, Burt drove us in a rental car to a ferry, which shuttled us across the water, so we could drive to the Coastal Rangers’ base, located in Berga at the Swedish Amphibious Corps, First Marine Regiment (Första Amfibieregementet, AMF1). Our first operations began in the Stockholm archipelago. With thousands of islands, it is one of the largest archipelagos in the Baltic Sea. My counterpart and I pushed off in a light, two-man, nonmetallic folding kayak to search for Soviet submarines. I wore Vuarnet sunglasses, named after the French Olympic gold medalist Alpine ski racer, to shield my eyes from the sun. We landed on islands and searched them for any human activity—a cat-and-mouse game with the Soviets. Kayaking from island to island while carrying all our equipment was cold, hard work.
After nearly a week, we loaded up with the Coastal Rangers on several charter buses. They brought bags of food on the bus. “How far are we going, again?” I asked.
“Sixty-one miles.” The Coastal Rangers spoke good English.
“Why all the food?”
“Long trip.”
Only sixty-one miles—I could do that standing on my head.
After three hours on the road, I said to another Coastal Ranger, “I thought this was only going to be sixty-one miles.”
“Yes, sixty-one miles.”
“We’ve gone over sixty-one miles.”
Another Coastal Ranger smiled. “Sixty-one Swedish miles.”
I frowned. “How far is that?”
“Oh … about three hundred and eighty American miles.”
You’ve got to be kidding me. I was glad I hadn’t offered to go on any 4-mile runs with them.
We passed a MOOSE CROSSING sign before arriving in a small snowy town called Messlingin, next to Messlingin Lake, which was frozen over. Not found on any tourist maps, Messlingin is located 134 miles southwest of Östersund in central Sweden. The four of us checked into a wooden hotel with a sloping roof and overhanging eaves that looked like a chalet. Soon the Coastal Rangers took us for a dip in an ice hole. Although optional for us, everyone jumped into the nearly frozen water. We led by example—one of the stupid SEAL Team “kick me in the nuts I can take it” traditions. Around our necks we wore a cord with an ice pick dangling off it at chest level. The wooden handle was hand-sized, and the pick was an inch long. We had to jump into the ice hole, calm down, and request permission to get out of the water. Then we could reach forward, stab the ice with the pick, and pull ourselves out. On the first try, my vocal cords didn’t even work, it was so cold—I just jumped out. During the third attempt, I calmed down and allowed my vocal cords enough time to function. My voice squeaked, “Request permission to get out.” After exiting the water, getting warm became the priority.
I thought back to winter warfare training in Alaska. Kevin and I became partners. He was a big, easygoing SEAL with dark hair and dark eyes. Trained as a hospital corpsman, he could handle most combat medical emergencies until the injured could be transported to a hospital (later, I heard he left the SEALs and became a doctor for the navy, stationed in Spain). Kevin and I skied a deception trail—skiing past the area where we would pitch our tent. Then we’d do a fishhook back to our tent. This way we could hear someone coming before they reached us. We pitched a North Face two-man tent, put our rucksacks under the front of it, and piled snow outside the entrance, so we could melt it later for drinking water, including what we’d use on our ski the next day; people actually dehydrate more in the winter because their lungs use a lot of moisture to heat up the air. We’d also add it to our freeze-dried meals. Inside the tent vestibule, we stripped off wet clothing down to our polypro underwear. We lit the MSR WhisperLite stove to make water. The heat it put out warmed up the tent fast. Kevin’s feet were huge—his overboots wouldn’t fit over his ski boots. While we waited for the snow to melt, Kevin would take off his boots, and I’d put his toes under my armpits to prevent them from getting frostbite. Other guys looked forward to getting in their tents, but not me. Every night for ten days, I warmed those damned ice cube toes under my armpits. Then I could jump into a sleeping bag on my ground pad.
Fortunately, in Sweden, only 50 yards away from the ice hole, they had a sauna—and beer.
Also in Sweden, I experienced a snowcat for the first time—an armored personnel carrier on tracks that runs on the snow. Troops can shoot at the enemy from inside. They would attach a tow rope to the back of the snowcat and tow ten or twelve soldiers on skis. Hooking a ski pole into the rope, I held onto the handle as it towed me. Many of the Coastal Rangers had grown up skiing. One of them was an Olympic athlete in the ski jump event. Of course, there were no ski slopes in South Georgia, where I grew up. I’d fall down, and the Coastal Rangers behind would try to maneuver around me. Four of them ended up going down with me. After a while, they started arguing. I couldn’t understand the words, but I knew they were fighting over who would have to ski behind me. My three Teammates and I fell down so many times, taking the Coastal Rangers down with us like dominoes, that they respectfully moved us to the tail of the rope. If we could’ve videotaped our SEALs on Ice Show for America’s Funniest Home Videos, we probably would’ve won.
Because we were there as cadre to help train the young conscripts, the conscripts treated us like officers, cleaning and waxing our skis while we ate dinner. In the evening, if we left our boots outside the door, they’d clean and polish them before the next morning. The recruits would even cle
an our weapons for us.
Another cool thing we did was learn how to make a snow cave. My Coastal Ranger counterpart stood tall and slim. He could effortlessly ski circles around me. We dug horizontally into the side of a snowdrift, up, and horizontally inward, creating a plateau for the heat to rise to while the cold air dropped to the lower level. The Coastal Ranger and I put our packs in the entrance to block the wind and kept our ice axes inside, just in case we might have to dig ourselves out. From the plateau, we shaped the roof into a dome, so it wouldn’t drip directly on us.
We took off our overboots before entering the plateau area. With only four SEALs serving as cadre, my partner seemed honored to be paired up with me. He tried to clean off my boots.
“No, it’s OK. I’ll take care of it,” I said.
He gave me a strange look. Later, he appreciated not having to be my servant.
One or two candles were sufficient to heat the cave. Outside, the temperature was −40° F. Inside, I sat on a sleeping bag wearing just my navy blue polypro long undergarments. We didn’t want to heat up the interior temperature much higher than 32 degrees, or our snow cave might unfreeze, start raining, and then collapse on top of us. The difference between the temperature outside and inside, 70 degrees, made it feel like living in the Bahamas. The interior heat softened the walls and ceilings, so we patted them until they became hard again.
After living in the same snow cave for two weeks, using it as a base to run ops from, we had patted the walls and ceilings so much that the interior space seemed on its way to becoming a snow house. The Swedes knew how to fight a war—their rations included cognac and the best hot chocolate mix I’d ever had, plus meals like pasta Bolognese with rye bread. To my amazement, my Swedish counterpart wanted to trade his rations for my MREs. Guess he got tired of the same meals all the time. We enjoyed eating each other’s food in our snow cave.
In fact, part of the fun training with foreign special ops units was the gear exchange. From the States, I had brought some big beef sticks, no spicy flavors, to slice up and put on my rations for extra energy in the cold weather. The Coastal Rangers loved the beef sticks. I had also brought a Zippo lighter, for which one of the Coastal Rangers traded his beautiful Laplander knife. It had a wooden handle with a slightly curved blade plus a leather sheath that had two strands of rawhide string to tie it onto my pack. The Zippo lighter is more reliable in the cold than a butane lighter, but I liked the knife better.
On the last day, my partner and I applied white face paint on the parts of our faces that naturally formed shadows and gray on the prominent features: forehead, cheeks, nose, brow, and chin. All of us left our snow caves for the big op. Somewhere between one hundred and one hundred and fifty of us hooked up to the ropes behind our snowcats, which pulled us to our objective area. We skied in as far as we could, then removed our skis and backpacks inside the tree line, 300 yards away from our objective.
I put on my big clunky NATO snowshoes. The Coastal Rangers had nice small composite metal snowshoes that they could run with. Wow, you guys are way more high-tech in winter warfare than we are. For a pair of them, I traded my old Swiss Army knife and the snapped leather holder I used to carry it on my belt. It was too bulky to carry in my pocket. One of the black plastic sides of my knife had broken off, but it still had tools: saw, fish scaler with hook remover, leather punch with threader, magnifying glass, long blade, short blade, scissors, small pliers, corkscrew, toothpick, and tweezers. One would think that because Sweden is closer to Switzerland than the United States is, a Swiss Army knife would be in less demand there, but not so. The Coastal Ranger even threw in a bottle of schnapps to go with the snowshoes. He was so happy, he practically worshipped me for making the trade. Then the Coastal Ranger went and told all his buddies. They chewed him out for taking advantage of me. If he’d brought those snowshoes when I was doing winter warfare in Alaska, I would’ve traded five Swiss Army knives. When I returned to the U.S., I would buy a new one.
We patrolled forward in a wedge formation with a man in the middle and a wing on each side. Another element approached the objective area from the left flank. Shooting blanks, the left flank and our front wedge simultaneously assaulted through a mock fortification of ten buildings. Normally the basic SEAL unit is made up of a boat crew, only seven or eight men. In this company-sized assault of over a hundred soldiers, we just had to go with the flow.
The Swedish Coastal Rangers and other Northern European units such as Norway’s Navy Rangers spend more time on skis and operating in the winter environment than Americans do, giving them a distinct advantage. However, America’s technology helps level the playing field. It doesn’t matter how good you are on those skis if I can catch you in my night-vision scope from 400 yards away. Ski on that.
* * *
I heard that while I’d been away training in Sweden, Laura had been out until late most nights partying hard with some other SEAL wives. When I asked her about it, she said, “Oh, it was only one or two times. I just got bored.” I took her word for it because I believed her—I didn’t want to believe anything else. We went to church on Sundays, and everything seemed OK.
My son, Blake, really liked hanging out with the SEAL Team guys, and they loved him, too, especially after a particular incident when Blake was four years old. One day after work, I returned home to find Laura in the kitchen, out of her mind.
“What’s going on?” I asked.
“Little Debbie was over, and they got into Blake’s wading pool. Naked!” Little Debbie was a neighbor’s six-year-old daughter.
“Oh.”
“I called her mama and told her. She thought it was funny. You better talk to him.”
So I walked down the hall to his room.
Blake was playing Duck Hunt on the Nintendo, shooting flying ducks with his Nintendo Zapper Light Gun.
“Hey, buddy, how was your day?”
“Good,” he said.
“What’d you do today?”
“Played.”
I left him to his game and returned to Laura in the kitchen. “He’s fine. Didn’t even bring it up. Must not be such a big deal.”
“Oh, no. You have to make him talk about it. He’s probably traumatized.”
So I returned to Blake’s room. A dog on the TV monitor sniffed out the dead ducks in the grass and congratulated Blake.
I became more direct with my questioning. “Did you go swimming today?”
“Yep.”
“Well, did anyone go swimming with you?”
“Yep, Debbie went swimming with me.”
“Did you and Debbie take y’all’s clothes off while you were in the wading pool?”
“Debbie took her bathing suit off, and told me to take my bathing suit off.”
“Do you know you’re not supposed to let people see your pee-pee?”
“Yes, Mom told me not to let people see my pee-pee.”
“Well, did Debbie see your pee-pee?”
“Yep, Debbie saw my pee-pee.” He laughed.
“Did you see Debbie’s pee-pee?”
He stopped playing his game and put down the gun. There was a hint of concern in his voice. “You know what, Dad? Debbie doesn’t have a pee-pee.” He seemed to feel sorry for her. “She’s got a front-butt.”
It was all I could do to keep from laughing my head off. I called up Smudge, and he nearly busted a gut.
The next day, in the afternoon, Blake joined me in the SEAL Team Two Foxtrot Platoon Ready Room. We started talking about the front-butt story, and everyone cracked up.
Years later, one of the guys would say, “Hey, you know what? Think I’m going to head out into town tonight and try to find me a little front-butt.” My son had become a Team legend.
* * *
While I was at SEAL Team Two, my uncle Carroll died of a heart attack while fishing. My heart ached as I returned home for the funeral at the First Baptist Church—the same church where I had beaten the crap out of Timmy so many years earlier. Re
latives, friends, and people I didn’t know packed the inside of the church. At the front, Uncle Carroll lay in his casket. He had loved me, spent time with me, and helped me grow up to be a young man. The memorial service was a blur to me—hymns, prayers, readings from the Bible, words from Brother Ron, and a eulogy. Sitting on the pew, I just physically couldn’t take it. I rose to my feet and walked outside the front door of the church. I stood on the steps and cried, shaking uncontrollably. It was the hardest I had ever cried. Someone put his arms around me and hugged me. I looked up expecting to see Brother Ron, but the man with his arms around me wasn’t Brother Ron. He was Dad. It was only our second hug. Not like the forced one before I got on the bus for college. “You know, Howard, I’m going to miss him, too. He always took the time with you because he was better at training you than I was. He had more patience. That’s why Uncle Carroll always did that with you.”
Later, I pulled myself together and followed the funeral procession to the cemetery where Uncle Carroll was laid to rest.
* * *
On June 6, 1990, my daughter, Rachel, was born at a civilian hospital in Virginia Beach. My mother-in-law had arrived from South Georgia. I’d been up at Fort A. P. Hill, Virginia, one of the largest live-fire ranges on the East Coast. I drove 140 miles southeast to see Laura and my baby girl. Seeing Rachel made me extremely happy. Even so, as much as I loved her, part of me was preoccupied with the Team. Maybe some SEALs can balance God, family, and the Teams. I couldn’t. The Teams were everything. After staying at the hospital for a day or two, I was gone again.
Whenever I returned home, she was Daddy’s girl. She loved to be with me, and I loved being with her. Once, when she got older, Blake pushed her off the back deck.
“Blake, go in the closet and get a belt!”
He disappeared into the closet, then emerged with my biggest leather belt.
SEAL Team Six: Memoirs of an Elite Navy SEAL Sniper Page 11