Among Heroes
Page 7
We needed a course, in other words, that thought like Dave Scott.
I can never hope to be as smart as Dave. But in the years since I knew him I’ve made it a practice to examine the world around me through his eyes. The Dionysus in Dave still taunts me today, daring me to look past my limits—and the Apollo in Dave is always there to help me grasp what I see there.
3
QUIET PROFESSIONAL
MATT AXELSON
“Listen up, gents. The next ninety days are going to be some of the toughest you’ve ever experienced. You’ll be put under more pressure and greater mental demands than you’ve ever been under before, and with zero tolerance given for error. . . .”
Déjà vu. I’d heard this speech before, or one much like it. Back in the summer of 2000, Glen and I had been inducted into the Naval Special Warfare sniper course with a welcoming pep talk just like this one. The world had gone through a century of change in the four years since. It was now the summer of 2004, and this time the guy giving that speech to a fresh batch of incoming sniper students was me.
“You’ll be expected to deliver at a level of perfection that will at first seem unrealistic, unfair, and unreasonable. We will push the limits of your performance to such high levels that even when you are rusty, tired, or unpracticed you will still outperform the enemy. . . .”
As I spoke, the good citizens of San Diego were going about their lives several dozen feet above our heads, heedless of our subterranean presence.
I loved this underground setting and everything it represented. For our sniper class headquarters we had recently converted a set of old World War II–style bunkers built into the landscape on the south strand of Coronado. Put your back to the Pacific and you faced a monster set of doors, big enough to drive a truck through. Enter and walk through a breezeway, pass through another set of industrial double doors, and you were in our Naval Special Warfare complex, buried underneath south San Diego. You could keep walking and travel a good quarter mile under there. We had our own classrooms and offices, even our own armory where we stored all our cameras, guns, ammunition, and other gear behind a huge combination-lock safe door inches thick, like the door to a bank vault.
Standing in that bunker always made me think about being tunneled deep in the Hindu Kush mountains, threading our way through the Zhawar Kili cave complex in Afghanistan a few months after 9/11. I always savored the irony of being in this underground warren right off the southern California beaches. This was our cave complex, where we trained the guys who cleaned out those other cave complexes on the other side of the world.
When Dave Scott died in the fall of 2002, I was already back from my tour in Afghanistan and part of a training detachment, teaching a range of specialized classes as a sort of continuing-education program for our snipers. The following summer my friend and BUD/S classmate Eric Davis and I were tasked with the responsibility of helping completely revamp and transform the entire SEAL sniper course. The day we were called into our master chief’s office and handed our new assignment still ranks as one of the greatest moments of my life. In effect, Naval Special Warfare command was putting an entire generation of snipers in our hands.
“You will come to know perfection as your new normal. And you’ll be expected to deliver at that level of perfection day after grinding day without misstep, hiccup, or fuckup. . . .”
A lot had changed since Glen and I went through the course with Mike Bearden in the pre-9/11 days. We saw the shift foreshadowed in the bombing of the USS Cole, when an “insignificant” little two-man boat had taken out a billion-dollar warship. Eleven months later the scope and force of that shift were carved into concrete when two hijacked planes were shot, like steel-jacketed rifle shells from colossal rifles, into World Trade towers one and two. A full decade after the crash of the Soviet Union, we finally realized we were no longer living in an era when nations battled head-on like gladiators, and had stepped into the age of asymmetrical warfare.
The nature of modern war changed during those first few years of the new century, and with it the role of Special Operations. In the past Spec Ops was a relatively fringe element in our arsenal, called upon for unusual assignments here and there but used mainly to support the missions carried out by our conventional forces. There was a reason for the “special” in Special Operations.
But that distinction had now been turned on its head. Now we weren’t going up against armies; we were pitted against shadowy leaders like Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri, and forces that faded into the scenery like morning mist and flowed over national boundaries like water. War itself had in effect morphed into Spec Ops warfare, and our Special Operations warriors—Navy SEALs, Army Rangers, Green Berets, Marine Force Recon, Air Force Combat Controllers/Pararescue Jumpers, and others—had gone from life as bastard stepchildren of the DOD to being the pointy tip of the spear. Which meant the demands on SEAL snipers had intensified dramatically.
Our job was to make sure the NSW sniper training stood up to the challenge and reflected the new world in which we now lived and fought.
“The men who graduated the classes before you are over in Iraq and Afghanistan right now, doing phenomenal work for the teams. They’re cutting swaths through hotbeds of insurgency, carving out safe zones for our Marine and Army brothers to get in and operate without being picked off by enemy snipers or IEDs. They are the most effective snipers the global battlefield has ever seen. . . .”
Eric and I and our handpicked instructor cadre dived into our assignment like the combat divers we were, taking the course apart and completely reworking it, bottom to top. We brought in a huge range of advances and innovations, and trained our students in how to operate in situations where they had to deploy independently, rather than in traditional shooter/spotter pairs. We also put our instructors through more rigorous training so that they were all not only excellent technicians but also consistently good teachers; and much more. It was an ambitious and sweeping overhaul, and we had a blast sinking our teeth into it.
Over the first year of this assignment Eric and I had gone through four full iterations of our transformed course—and we were getting results. We were graduating better students and graduating more of them. In the old course, a failure rate of 30 percent or more was common. (In the summer of 2000, Glen’s and my class flushed fourteen out of twenty-six starters, a loss of more than 50 percent.) Through the changes Eric and I implemented from summer 2003 through summer 2004, we had slashed that attrition down to less than 3 percent. By the time of my subterranean induction talk in June of 2004, we were graduating the highest percentage of students in the school’s history, and producing the most highly skilled snipers the American armed forces had ever seen.
“This course will push you harder than you’ve ever been pushed, for a higher level of excellence than you’ve ever achieved. Halfway through you’ll probably hate being here and wish you’d never signed up. . . .”
This was nothing like the first day of boot camp. No sullen expressions, no shuffling feet, no teenage anxieties trying their best to stay hidden under a mask of macho bluster. The two dozen men who stood before us were already highly trained professionals. These guys had survived BUD/S and gone through years of advanced SEAL training. Most had by this time been through at least one overseas deployment. Still, they were about to enter a three-month pressure cooker, and how they each responded would tell us volumes. I was watching them more closely than they probably realized.
Among the two dozen young men there, a few stood out immediately. It’s always that way. As instructors, we’d trained ourselves not to trust our first impressions 100 percent—but damn close. In the field sometimes your gut feeling is your only compass, and if you can’t act on it accurately and with precision, you might be dead before you get a second chance.
So even as I continued wrapping up my opening remarks, I was letting those first impressions sink in.
The kid standing next to him was obviously a close friend. You could see it from the way they glanced at each other now and then, sharing wordless snapshot reactions to something I’d said. The kid was slender and tall, well over six feet, short curly blond hair, thoughtful widely spaced eyes. In their brief round of introductions before my remarks began I’d learned he was from California but didn’t quite catch his name. Quiet guy.
“But I can promise you this: If you give us every ounce of your attention, every calorie of energy, every percentage point of your focus and commitment, the instructors and I will do everything in our power to make sure you do make it through.”
By the time my short talk was over I knew one thing: I would be assigning myself the loud Texan and his quiet friend as my personal students in our instructor-student mentor program. I wanted to keep my eyes on those two.
My gut told me they were quality.
• • •
The transformation of the SEAL sniper course was not just about techniques and technology. It was also a shift in how we related to our students and brought out the best they had to offer. Among the many changes we made in the course, one of the most significant had to do with the power of mentoring. Starting in 2004, we made it a regular practice to assign a specific instructor to each pair of students as their personal mentor. At a ratio of about six instructors to about twenty-four students per class, that meant every instructor typically had just two pairs of students to focus on personally.
Nothing trains a skill like the apprenticeship model, and this new system meant every student was essentially apprenticed to his own master. For us instructors, it also added a new competitive dimension to the course. Suddenly we each had a significant added motivation to make sure our students excelled: We wanted them to succeed not only for their sakes, but also because we wanted to kick one another’s asses. SEAL instructors are every bit as competitive as their students.
Beyond all that, the mentoring program made the course personal. When you are assigned to teach a class of two dozen, that’s one thing. But when you are responsible to individual students as their personal mentor, you cannot help getting emotionally invested in these men. Their success becomes your success, and their frustrations and challenges, whether or not they ever fully realize this fact, become your frustrations and challenges.
One of the first pairs of students I assigned myself to mentor was the tall Texan, whose name was Morgan Luttrell, and his friend, the kid from California, who despite his youthful energy was not a “kid” at all but twenty-seven years old, just a year younger than Luttrell (and for that matter just two years younger than me).
The quiet one’s name was Matthew Axelson, but everyone called him Axe, which I thought was ironic, because if there was anyone who did not behave like an ax, it was this dude. Luttrell, now, he could swing a string of words over his head and probably split a cord of hardwood with them. Most of the men in the course could. This is not a demographic group known for their shyness or reticence. But Matt was the last person who would think of cutting anyone down, not even in fun.
As the course got under way, it also became obvious that the other guys looked up to Matt. This surprised me at first, because he was so quiet. Typically the ones the others look up to—guys like Mike Bearden or Dave Scott—are talkers. Quiet isn’t a word you’d use to describe any of them.
Matt was different. Matt was an observer, someone who clearly liked to hover on the sidelines of group scenes and take his time getting a read on everything. He was like this, according to his family, even as a kid. Whenever he went into a new situation, he would hang back and take his time to observe before stepping in and getting involved. People sometimes got the impression that he was shy, but that wasn’t it. He just liked to get the lay of the land. He liked to think before he leaped.
Matt looked a good deal like Paul Newman and had that same affable, good-natured personality that made him impossible not to like. (He also shared Newman’s passion for cars and car racing. Matt’s ’69 Corvette was one of his most prized possessions, and his dad had a Triumph TR6 at home that the two were planning to rebuild together.) At the sniper course, Matt consistently shied away from the usual ballbusting locker room SEAL antics, and anytime someone else tried to give him any shit, he would simply decline to take the bait. Not that he couldn’t have dished it right back if he’d wanted to. Something else I learned as I got to know him: The dude could think on his feet. His mind moved like lightning, and he could analyze a shooting problem in his head in half the time it took most students.
Another reason the other guys looked up to him was that he refused to judge others or participate in any kind of bad-mouthing. If anyone started complaining or cutting down someone else in the class, Matt would either find a way to change the subject or simply say, “Hey, let’s not talk about that.” And he was liked and respected enough by the other guys that he could get away with that, and instead of giving him shit they would go ahead and change the subject. I noticed that he spoke about others only in positive terms, and never gave voice to a person’s vices or flaws—a character trait that so impressed me, I soon found myself emulating it.
Matt and Morgan reminded me of Glen and me when we first arrived at sniper school. They were new guys, as Glen and I had been, and they were obviously close friends. I soon learned that the two had gone through BUD/S together, were paired up as swim buddies in second phase, and were not just good friends but best friends. Despite being a study in contrasts, they made a great pair. Or maybe it was in part because they were a study in contrasts. Morgan grew up in Houston, a Texas boy through and through. We’re talking conservative country here. Matt hailed from Cupertino, California, the heart of Silicon Valley. Temperamentally, too, they could hardly have been more different.
They not only clicked really well together, but they were also unswerving in the way they supported each other—unlike many of the other pairs, who would start getting on each other’s nerves and barking at each other when the pressure got intense. Some guys would get pissed off and lose their cool if they lost a shoot or a stalk, and turn on their partners. When Matt or Morgan made a mistake, they’d just shrug it off and drive on with the mission. With some pairs the tensions escalated and friendships frayed as the course progressed. With Matt and Morgan, the bond grew only tighter.
Some of these students would get really frustrated when we would give them critiques, try to justify why they’d done it that way, explain what they were trying to do, or even talk us out of the critique itself. (To quote my daughter: As if.) Not Matt. With him there was no push-back; he would just listen carefully, saying nothing but, “Yeah,” or, “Got it.” He might nod, and you could see him taking mental notes. He would take it all in, then turn around and execute. You only had to tell Matt something once.
I quickly saw why Matt’s platoon mates had given him the nickname Cool Hand Luke, and it wasn’t just his resemblance to Paul Newman. It was that unshakable equanimity under pressure. People often use the phrase “quiet professional” to describe Navy SEALs and other Spec Ops warriors. I’d never met anyone who fit that phrase more perfectly than Matt. He had a level of competence that spoke louder than words.
Which goes to show that appearances can be deceiving—even the most incisive first impressions. When I first met Morgan and Matt it seemed obvious that Morgan was the leader and Matt his sidekick. Watching them in action, I gradually realized that in many ways I’d gotten it backward: It was Morgan who often took his cues from Matt. Anytime Morgan would start getting frustrated, Matt had a
way of glancing over at him without a word, just a look that said, Pipe down and just get the job done.
Matt knew my eyes were drilling holes in the backs of their heads, looking for any excuse to ratchet up the pressure even more—and he wasn’t going to give it to me.
• • •
I soon learned that just because Matt was quiet didn’t mean he was without pride. On the contrary, he had intensely high expectations for himself. For him, being a SEAL was more than an interest or pursuit. It was a deeply personal mission.
After high school Matt had enrolled in college to study political science and pursue his lifelong fascination with history. (Marcus, Morgan’s brother, who was in the same SEAL platoon as Matt, described him as a bottomless font of knowledge about every culture, country, and population group, making him “our resident academic and Trivial Pursuit king.”) After a few years at Cal State in Chico, Matt realized they couldn’t deliver the degree course he wanted and transferred to San Diego, where he roomed with his brother, Jeff, and a few other guys—one of whom happened to be a SEAL.
Matt was also keenly aware of his own family’s military history. His grandfather was career Navy and was stationed on the USS Pennsylvania at Pearl Harbor when the Japanese bombers attacked on December 7, 1941. Matt was stoked when he learned he’d been assigned to a unit stationed in Pearl City, because this meant he would be walking quite literally in his grandfather’s footsteps. His grandmother was in the service, too, as were his father and uncle, who both served in Vietnam.
After college, degree in hand, Matt decided his career would have to wait. He told his parents, “I want to give back to my country first.”