SEAL Team Six: Memoirs of an Elite Navy SEAL Sniper

by Stephen Templin

  SEALs constantly work in danger, but Team Six pushed those danger levels higher. In the first years of Six’s formation, during CQC training, a Team member stumbled and accidentally squeezed the trigger, shooting Roger Cheuy in the back. Cheuy later died in the hospital due to a staph infection. “Staph” is short for “staphylococcal,” and that strain of bacteria produces toxins similar to those in food poisoning. The Team member was not only kicked out of Six but kicked out of the SEALs. In another incident, a freak CQC accident, a bullet went through one of the partitions in the kill house and entered between the joints in Rich Horn’s bullet-resistant vest, killing him. In a parachuting mishap, Gary Hershey died, too.

  Six months after my Green Team started, four or five men had failed out of thirty. Although we had some injuries, none of them were fatal. Red, Blue, and Gold made their first picks of the draft. Red Team picked me up in the first round. Just like the NFL draft. Similar to the Washington Redskins, Red Team’s logo was the American Indian—some activists may find it offensive, but we embraced the bravery and fighting skills of the Indians.

  Just because I got drafted in the first round didn’t mean I got treated better in the Team. I became an assault member just like everybody else. My boat crew was one of four. I was still the F-ing New Guy (FNG). Never mind I’d been in combat and some of them hadn’t. I would have to earn their respect.

  Now I belonged to a cover organization with an official commander, address, and secretary to answer the phone. When applying for a credit card, I couldn’t very well tell them I worked for SEAL Team Six. Instead, I gave them the information for my cover organization. I showed up to work in civilian clothes, rather than a uniform. Nobody breathed the words “SEAL Team Six” back then.

  Even after passing Green Team and gaining acceptance to Team Six, we continued to hone our shooting skills at John Shaw’s Mid-South Institute of Self-Defense Shooting in Lake Cormorant, Mississippi. He had a huge range with left-to-right, pop-up, and other targets. His kill house was top of the line. Eight of us from Red Team went there to train. On the first Friday night we were there, the eight of us went out to a strip bar across the river in Tennessee. Our designated driver was a non-SEAL radio geek assigned to the Team as support. His name was Willie, but we called him Wee Wee. He read a lot and hardly ever said more than three words. Wee Wee wouldn’t join us inside, so he waited outside in the van and read a book. The Team van was black with blacked-out windows. It had government Virginia plates and upgraded suspension. The seats were customized and carried eight people comfortably. Team Six had vehicles with armor, bullet-resistant windows, run-flat tires, police lights, and a siren behind the grille, and interior pockets for holding weapons, but this was simply a support van to haul personnel and equipment inside the United States. After we’d finished in the bar, Wee Wee drove us away in the van.

  At a stoplight, three rednecks in a jacked-up four-wheel-drive truck with dual exhausts stopped next to us. They saw short, skinny Wee Wee wearing Clark Kent glasses as he drove with his windows down partway but couldn’t see the eight of us through the blacked-out windows in back. “Hey, Yankee bastard,” yelled one of the rednecks. “Go home!” Never mind that our Virginia license plate came from a state that fought with the South during the Civil War—home of the South’s general Robert E. Lee.

  One of our guys in the back shouted, “F*** you, redneck!”

  The light turned green. Wee Wee drove forward until he came to the next red light and stopped. The rednecks stopped beside us again.

  “Hey, you little skinny bastard. You’re all mouth, aren’t you?” They thought Wee Wee had mouthed off to them.

  “Hey, hillbilly,” one of us shot back. “How do you feel knowing your father and mother were brother and sister?”

  Now the rednecks were pissed. “Pull over, you skinny bastard.” They spit tobacco out of their windows. “We’ll teach you a lesson.”

  Wee Wee now had beads of perspiration breaking out on his forehead as he pushed his glasses higher on his nose. We were holding our breath to keep from laughing our asses off and letting them know we were in the van. Someone whispered, “Wee Wee, pull over up here.”

  Wee Wee drove a couple of miles and pulled over on the side of an on-ramp heading to the interstate highway.

  The dumb rednecks followed and stopped next to us. They taunted Wee Wee to get out of the van. “What’s wrong, Yankee?” they yelled. “Did your mouth write a check your ass can’t cash?”

  We stacked on the roll-out door like we would for an entrance to assault terrorists. I had my hand on the door handle with half the guys stacked on each side of me. Three of us would exit and peel left, and three would exit and peel right. “Wee Wee, tell them to come over to the roll-out door.” Wee Wee convinced the rednecks to come to the other side of the van so they would be out of traffic.

  The rednecks walked around to our door. Just as they arrived, I ripped the door open. Like magic, the six of us appeared in a circle around the three rednecks. Their eyes looked like they were about to pop out of their skulls.

  One of the rednecks spit out his tobacco. “See. See, John. I told you. I told you one day your mouth was going to get us in trouble.”

  “Hey, dumb-ass, first of all, none of us are Yankees.” I gave them a history lesson. “Second, Virginia wasn’t a Yankee state. Third, the commanding general of the South, Robert E. Lee, was from Virginia.”

  It seemed like the rednecks were calming down when John started running his mouth again.

  So we decided to teach them a life lesson, not to prey on the apparent weakness of others. Basically, we stomped a mud hole in their asses. To drive the lesson home, one of us told them, “You guys take your pants off.”

  They looked at us strangely for a moment, but they didn’t want another beating, so they stripped down to their underwear.

  We took their keys, locked their truck doors, threw their keys into the bushes, and took their shoes and trousers. “Go down to the next exit, stop at the first 7-Eleven on the right, and you’ll find your stuff inside the bathroom.”

  The next morning, we were sitting at John Shaw’s range having coffee before starting our shooting drills when a police officer who is one of Shaw’s assistant instructors drove up and got out of his police truck. He walked up to us and spoke. We knew him well because we trained with him often and went out drinking with him, too. He was also a Harley-Davidson rider who fit in with us. “I heard the funniest story at about one thirty this morning.”

  “What’s that?” we asked innocently.

  “I get a call from the 7-Eleven that three men walked up in their undershorts. The cashier locked the door and wouldn’t let them in. The three men claimed they needed to get inside to get their clothes. When I showed up, half the police force showed up with me. And I’ll be damned, there were three men standing there in their underwear. We listened to their amazing story. Get this, a blacked-out van with Virginia plates, kind of looks like that one there”—he pointed to our van—“pulled up beside them. Suddenly, eight buff guys, kind of like you guys, surrounded them like Indians on the warpath and beat the crap out of them for no reason. So we let the three inside the 7-Eleven and searched for twenty minutes, but we didn’t find their clothes anywhere.”

  We had been laughing so hard that night that we’d forgotten to stop at the 7-Eleven. Their shoes and clothes were still in the back of the van.

  The policeman continued, “Before I left, one of the men said, ‘See, John. I told you your mouth was going to get us in trouble.’ Then, still in their underwear, two of them started punching John in front of the gas pumps. We broke them up and asked what was meant by ‘big mouth getting us in trouble,’ but they shut up.” The policeman shook his head. “Can you believe such a crazy story?”

  None of us said a thing. After an awkward moment, we stood up and began our morning drills.

  Later that afternoon, the police officer said, “If somebody’s going to be a dumb-ass, sometimes
a good ass-whooping is just what they need. Whoever those guys were in the black van might’ve saved those three men’s lives from someone who isn’t as patient with rednecks mouthing off.”

  We nodded our heads in polite agreement.

  * * *

  In spite of being the FNG, I had my eyes on the next challenge: becoming a sniper. I was an adrenaline junkie for sure. SEAL Team Six wanted us to be in our individual color teams for three years before applying to become a sniper.

  During the fall of 1992, I requested to go to sniper school. Our Red Team chief, Denny Chalker, told me, “You’re a great operator, but you haven’t been in the Team long enough. It’s an unwritten rule that we want you here three years before you go to sniper school. Besides, your boat crew leader doesn’t want to lose you.”

  Red Team only had two snipers, though, and we needed four to six. My being a hell of a shot didn’t hurt matters. A week later, Denny said, “You know what? We changed our mind—you can do it. We’re going to send you and Casanova to sniper school.”

  Although we would stay in Red Team, we would also become members of Black Team—the snipers. Casanova and I could’ve chosen from three schools. The SEALs had started their own little sniper school. The army had the Special Operations Target Interdiction Course at Fort Bragg, North Carolina. The Marine Corps had theirs at Quantico, Virginia. I knew the Marine Corps sniper school would be the biggest kick in the nuts—like a mini BUD/S Training—but their school had the longest tradition, the most prestige, and, more importantly, the best reputation in the world.

  * * *

  So I went to Marine Corps Base Quantico, which covers nearly one hundred square miles near the Potomac River in Virginia. Also located on the base are the FBI and Drug Enforcement Administration academies. Tucked away in the corner of the base next to Carlos Hathcock Highway is the Scout Sniper School, the Marine Corps’ most demanding school. Among the few accepted to the school, only around 50 percent pass.

  The ten-week course included three phases. On day one of Phase One, Marksman and Basic Fields Craft, we took the Physical Fitness Test (PFT), checked in our gear, and handed in our paperwork. Those who failed the PFT were sent home with no second chance.

  After the cadre figured out which students stayed, we took our seats inside a cinder-block building with blacked-out windows and one classroom, called the schoolhouse, and received a general briefing about the course.

  The next day, a gunny sergeant stood in front of us in the schoolhouse. He looked to be in his early forties with a marine high-and-tight haircut. He was a member of the President’s Hundred, the top one hundred civilian and military marksmen in the yearly President’s Match pistol and rifle competition. Our instructors also included combat veterans and laid-back gurus, cadre of the highest caliber.

  “A sniper has two missions,” the gunny sergeant said. “The first is to support combat operations by delivering precision fire on selected targets from concealed positions. The sniper doesn’t just go out there shooting any target—he takes out the targets that will help win the battle: officers, noncommissioned officers, scouts, crew-served weapons personnel, tank commanders, communication personnel, and other snipers. His second mission, which will take up much of the sniper’s time, is observation. Gathering information.”

  * * *

  Out on the range, Casanova and I worked together, alternating between spotter and shooter. For rifles, we had to use the Marine Corps M-40, a Remington 700 bolt-action .308 caliber (7.62 × 51 mm) heavy-barrel rifle that holds five rounds. Mounted on the rifle was a Unertl 10-power sniper scope. I would shoot first, so I made sure the scope was focused. Then I adjusted the bullet drop compensator on my scope to modify for the effect of gravity on the bullet before it reached its target 300 yards away. If I changed distances, I would have to correct my dope again.

  Casanova looked through his M-49 20-power spotting scope, mounted on a tripod. Without the tripod, the scope’s strong magnification causes the visual to shake with the slightest hand movements. Casanova used the scope to approximate wind speed, which is usually a sniper’s greatest weather challenge.

  Wind flags can be used to estimate wind speed by their angle. If a flag is at an 80-degree angle, that number is divided by the constant 4—to get 20 miles per hour. Likewise, if the flag only waves at a 40-degree angle, 40 divided by 4 equals 10 miles per hour.

  If no flag is available, the sniper can use his observation skills. A wind that is barely felt but causes smoke to drift is less than 3 miles per hour. Light winds are 3 to 5 miles per hour. Wind that constantly blows leaves around is 5 to 8 miles per hour. Dust and trash are blown at 8 to 12 miles per hour. Trees sway at 12 to 15 miles per hour.

  A sniper could also use the spotting scope method. When the sun heats the earth, the air near the surface ripples in waves. The wind causes these waves to move in its direction. To see the waves, the sniper focuses on an object near the target. Rotating the eyepiece a quarter turn counterclockwise, he focuses on the area in front of the target area, which makes the heat waves become visible. Slow wind causes big waves, while fast wind flattens them out. This method of recognizing wind speed takes practice.

  Winds blowing directly from left to right, or right to left, have the most effect on a shot. They are called full value winds. Oblique winds from left to right, or right to left, are designated as half value winds. Front to rear, or rear to front, are no value winds—having the least effect.

  Casanova gave me the wind speed: “Five miles per hour, full value, left to right.” Three-(hundred)-yard range times 5 miles per hour equals 15; 15 divided by the constant 15 equals 1. I adjusted the horizontal reticle in my scope one click to the left. If I had two windage from the right, I’d adjust two clicks to the right.

  I took my first shot at a stationary target—hit. After two more shots at stationary targets and two at moving targets, I became spotter while Casanova shot. Then we threw on our packs, grabbed our equipment, and ran back to the 500-yard line. As in the Teams, it paid to be a winner. Again, we alternated between taking five shots each at three stationary and two moving targets. Then we did the same at 600 yards. It’s tough to slow the breathing and heart rate down after running. At 700 yards, we hit three stationary targets again, but this time, the two movers would stop and go. At 800 yards, the two stop-and-go movers became bobbers, waving left to right and right to left. At 900 and 1,000 yards, the five targets remained stationary. Out of thirty-five rounds, twenty-eight had to hit the black. We lost a lot of guys on the range. They just couldn’t shoot well enough.

  After the range, we returned to the schoolhouse and cleaned our weapons before doing a field sketch exercise. The instructors took us out to an area and said, “Draw a sketch of the area from the left wood line to the water tower on the right. You’ve got thirty minutes.” We drew as many important details as we could, and drew in perspective: Nearby objects are larger than distant objects; horizontal parallel lines converge and vanish in the distance. On the bottom of the sketch, we wrote down what we saw: patrol, number of 2.5-ton trucks (deuce-and-a-halfs), et cetera. The instructors graded us for neatness, accuracy, and intelligence value. Seventy percent or higher was a passing grade. Later, we would only have fifteen minutes.

  A sniper also keeps a log to be used with the sketch, so he has a written record of information regarding key terrain, observation, cover and concealment, obstacles, and avenue of approach (summarized as KOCOA) in addition to his pictorial sketch.

  We also played Keep in Memory (KIM) games. The instructor would pull back a tarp on a table and expose ten to twelve small items: spent 9 mm cartridge, pencil flare, Ziploc bag, pen, broken pair of glasses, photograph of someone, acorn, and other items that could fit on the tabletop. In ten to fifteen seconds, we had to memorize everything. Then we went into the classroom, grabbed a piece of paper, and drew everything we had seen. Finally, we had to verbally describe what we saw. Sometimes we used scopes and binoculars to report full-sized items at
a distance. If, on a routine basis, I couldn’t remember 70 percent or more, I’d be kicked out. A basic skill of a sniper is being able to remember and report what he sees. We also had to “burn through” grass and bushes—find an observation post (OP) while grass and bushes obstructed our vision—using the vegetation to cover us from being spotted by the primary observation post.

  In Phase Two, Unknown Distance and Stalking, those of us who remained after Phase One ran ten 100-pound steel targets out to distances between 300 and 800 yards. Because we didn’t know the exact distance to the targets, we had to estimate. First-shot hits scored ten points. Second-shot hits scored eight. There were no third shots. Upon completion, Casanova and I rearranged the targets and did it again. We had to maintain a 70 percent average over the three weeks of shooting to stay in the school.

  In addition to shooting skills, sniper school also taught us about concealment. We had to make our own ghillie suits. First, we prepared our clothing: BDU tops and bottoms. Next, using high-strength thread that wouldn’t rot, such as 12-pound fishing line, we attached netting (example: a military hammock or fishing net) to the backs and elbows of our suits. Shoe Goo is even easier to use than needle and thread. Then we cut strips of burlap about 1" wide and 9" long and tied them with overhand knots onto the netting. We pulled lengthwise at the material from the end so the burlap frayed. Using a can of spray paint, we colored the burlap. Casanova and I added natural foliage from knee level or lower, which is where a sniper moves. Leaves taken from above would stand out on a sniper crawling low to the ground. We were careful not to add anything too long that might wave around like a flag. Leaves work best because they last the longest without spoiling. Grass spoils the fastest—in around four hours. Around the rifle buttstock, we wrapped an olive drab cravat and tied it off with a square knot to break up the weapon’s outline. Another cravat went around the barrel and scope, similar to wrapping an arm with a bandage. Attaching burlap straps broke up the cravat’s solid green color. Similarly, we camouflaged the M-49 scope, binoculars, and other gear.