by Brandon Webb
Glen,
I still can’t believe you punched out early on me, but glad to hear from the guys that you fought like a hero—no surprise there.
You should know, your efforts resulted in the rescue of over twenty Department of State personnel. They are alive today because of yours and Ty’s heroic action.
I know you hate funerals as much as I do, but the service in Winchester was humbling and inspiring. The people of Boston are amazing. I had to choke back the tears as me and the boys rolled through town and thousands of people lined the streets to honor a hero and our friend and teammate. Seeing American citizens united around a hero, if only for a brief moment, restored my faith in humanity and that there are other things more important in life than killing each other.
Your family is and was amazing. Their poise, patience, and the dignity they displayed was incredible to witness. Your mom, Barbara, stood by stoically for hours to ensure she greeted everyone who came to pay their respects. She was an inspiration to everyone who watched. Seeing your dad, his sadness and how proud he was of you, made me give him a big hug, and reminded me to work harder at patching things up with my own father.
Greg delivered one of the best talks I’ve ever heard under the most difficult of situations. What an amazing brother; I hope to get to know him better. His speech made me reflect on my own life choices and how important our relationship with friends and family are. I’m going to work harder at embracing my friends and family the way you always did.
Katie gave such an awesome toast at the wake with all the Bub lessons to live by, I smirked secretly to myself knowing that I’ve heard them all before and will never forget. “Drive it like it’s stolen!” and “Kids don’t need store-bought toys; get them outdoors!” and all the rest.
Your nephews are amazing and so well behaved. Great parents, of course. FYI, I told them I’d take them flying when they come out west. They were beaming when I described all the crazy flying adventures me and their uncle went on. I told them how you and I would fly with my own kids and take turns letting them sit on our laps to get a few minutes at the controls. I’ll do it up right and let them each have a go at the controls.
Sean has been steadfast in his support role and has handled everything thrown at him. Helping him this last week really showed me why he was such a close friend of yours. He’s solid, and I look forward to his friendship for years to come. You chose well having him execute your will, he’s solid.
We are all dedicated, as you explicitly indicated to us all, to throw you the biggest effing party we can, and to celebrate your life as well as our own. Done deal; Sean and I are on it.
Most of SEAL Team 3 Golf Platoon showed up in Boston. It was great to see how guys like Tommy B. just made stuff happen, no matter what was needed. Things just got handled like men of action handle them, no questions asked and no instructions needed—just get it done in true SEAL fashion.
One by one the Tridents were firmly pounded into the mahogany as the guys paid their respects. Mike and I handed the plank to your mom, choked back tears, and kissed her on the cheek. We both told her how much you’ll be missed by us all.
Afterward, the Team guys, Elf, Steve, Sean and others tipped a few back in your honor. In good Irish fashion we drank whiskey from Sean’s “What Jesus Wouldn’t Do” flask, hugged each other like brothers and said goodbye, each in our own way.
We are planning the yearly surf trip to Baja in your memory. We share Steve Jobs’s philosophy on religion and tolerance, but if you can arrange it, please talk to whomever and fire up a good south swell for me and the boys.
My kids will miss their Uncle Glen. I told them it’s okay to cry (we all had a good one together) and to be sad but not for too long. You wouldn’t want that. They will grow older and, like the rest of us, be better human beings for having known you.
You definitely lived up to the words of Hunter S. Thompson:
“Life should not be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well-preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside in a cloud of smoke, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming ‘Wow! What a ride!’”
When I skid in broadside in a cloud of smoke myself I’ll expect to see your smiling face handing me a cold beer.
See you on the other side, brother. You are missed by many.
—B.W.
• • •
The thing I remember most about Glen was that he was happiest around a group of his close friends—and he redefined the meaning of the phrase “close friends.” Most people go through life making friends along the way, but those friendships come and go. Not with Glen. He never let go of a friendship, ever. In his forties, he was still running around with the guys he knew when he was three.
The more I knew him, the more I realized that this wasn’t something that just happened. He worked at it. “Friendship is like a garden,” Glen told me once. “It needs attention if you want to maintain it and grow it.” And Glen was a master gardener. He had a little black book he kept with him always, with probably several thousand names and numbers in it. Anytime he was sitting at the airport in between flights, or in a hotel stopover on a long trip, he would pull out the book and start going down the list, calling all his friends just to check in, say hi, and see how they were doing.
He taught me that true friendship is sacred, and that we should nourish it to the fullest extent possible.
No wonder thousands gathered at his memorial to celebrate his life and see him off to a better place.
There’s one more thing you should know about Glen: He specifically requested in his will that in the event of his death, there be no funeral held for him. He was quite explicit about it. Instead of a memorial, he wanted us to throw “a big fucking party.” I laughed when I heard about that, and have since updated my own will to reflect the same request.
I knew we had to do the funeral anyway, for his family’s sake and for the sake of the thousands of friends who showed up. There was no getting around it. But I knew secretly that Glen would be privately cursing us all.
Still, the fact that we held a memorial didn’t mean we couldn’t also give Glen that big fucking party he wanted. And that we did.
A few days after I got back to California, a throng of hundreds gathered on the beach in Encinitas and paddled out on surfboards. In the Hawaiian tradition of honoring a fallen friend or family member, flower leis were set adrift on the ocean. After a while we all repaired to the Del Mar Thoroughbred Club, which someone had donated for our venue. And it was a good thing we had a space that big, because people showed up from all over the world.
Glen himself had put it perfectly when he and his friends sat around a table for three in a tiny Filipino bar ten years earlier, almost to the day, grappling with the news of Dave Scott’s death: “We all signed up for this. It’s part of the fucking deal. So let’s not sit here feeling sorry for him. Let’s drink up and celebrate his life.”
Among everyone who knew Glen, his death hit my children especially hard. They knew that I had lost different friends over the years—but their beloved uncle Glen? It didn’t seem possible, and they were devastated. “It’s okay to be sad,” I told them, and we sat and cried together. But I also explained that we shouldn’t feel sorry for Uncle Glen and others like him.
“Uncle Glen wouldn’t want us to feel sorry for him,” I said. “And here’s the thing: He died living life to the fullest, doing what he absolutely loved, what he was passionate about.”
How many of us can say that about our own lives?
It’s so easy to sacrifice or marginalize our dreams, often for reasons that seem so important at the time but reveal their trivial nature when we look back years later. Glen never did that.
“Life goes by in a blink,” I told my kids. “And here’s something Uncle Glen taught us—you should each live your own lives doing what you l
ove. Abandon your dreams for no one.
“That’s the best way to honor Uncle Glen. Do your best to live the way he did.”
• • •
On October 24, 2012, two of Glen’s buddies and I took off from McClellan-Palomar Airport in the late afternoon in a little Piper Archer PA-28-180 I’d borrowed for the occasion. It was a clear, sunny day. Perfect. I piloted the plane down the coast at five hundred feet with a very slight tailwind, contacted San Diego International Airport over the La Jolla Cove, and requested a class B airspace clearance. Once through class B, I called the Navy tower at North Island and asked for a San Diego Bay arrival, bridge overfly, and clearance back up the coast by the Hotel Del Coronado and Point Loma at seven hundred feet.
We could hear the frustration in the controller’s voice as he tried to brush us off. I didn’t blame him: There were air ops ongoing in the area, and this was no time or place for some yahoos out for a joyride. But we were there on serious business, and once we explained our mission, the gent in the tower immediately granted us the access we needed. After holding over the Coronado Bridge for incoming H-60 helo traffic, we were cleared for a low flyby above the SEAL compound.
“Two minutes out,” I signaled to my companions.
I pulled the throttle back gradually and put us into a slight descent to lose a few hundred feet, then trimmed and set power for a hundred feet over water right along the beach, as the main BUD/S compound came into view.
The sun was just starting to set over the distant Pacific horizon as we blazed past the obstacle course and watched a class of fresh SEAL candidates shuffling onto the asphalt grinder for some grueling evolution with their combat-seasoned SEAL instructors. A handful of students looked skyward as they jogged by, doubtless having no idea what we were doing there. All they would have seen was one lone guy propping open the door of the Piper and a slight puff of smoke disappearing behind us, as we let some of our friend’s ashes loose over this place he held so dear.
See you on the other side, Glen.
CONCLUSION
One Saturday morning in early February 2013, I arrived at a gymnasium in Orange County to spend the day with some high school kids and their coaches. We were at a tournament, hosted by Nike, for the top-ranked high school basketball teams in the nation. A few former SEAL teammates and I had been invited to participate as part of a nonprofit initiative with my Red Circle Foundation and a twelve-year-old Virginia boy named Will Thomas.
When he heard the news about Extortion 17 being shot down back in 2011, Will was upset about it. He wanted to find a way to commemorate these guys and help their families, but had no idea how or even where to start. He decided he would build his project on something he loved and knew how to do: shoot baskets. Why not ask people to donate money for every basket he sank in these fallen heroes’ honor? His father pledged a penny a basket, just to kick things off. Word spread. Within days he’d sunk twenty thousand baskets and raised fifty thousand dollars. Will decided to keep the effort going, and by early 2013 he had brought his total close to a hundred thousand dollars.
When Will and his dad invited me and the Red Circle Foundation to come out to the high school tournament and give some teamwork talks to the coaches and players there, I was more than happy to say yes.
The teams paired off and started playing their games. One by one, my two friends and I started giving talks to different groups as they cycled through the room that had been set aside for the purpose. It was a long day, and a gratifying one. These kids were very talented players. Many of them had full-ride scholarships to good colleges; a few were likely on their way to the NBA. And these weren’t just top players; they were amazing kids: well behaved, sharp, respectful. When we got to the Q&A sessions they didn’t ask the kinds of questions you expect from kids—“Was it hard to become a SEAL?” “What’s it like to be a sniper?” “Did you ever kill anyone?” “What was the longest shot you ever took?”—and instead asked thoughtful questions about how they could become better players, how to foster stronger teamwork, and what were the most important elements to becoming excellent performers. It was impressive. These were some great coaches, and they weren’t just coaching ball; they were teaching these teenagers how to become outstanding young men. For my two friends and me, it was a satisfying thing to see.
At the end of the day, after we’d given our last talk, Tony, the representative from Nike, came over to talk with me. “Hey, Brandon,” he said, “there’s one team we sponsored that didn’t get a chance to hear from you yet, because their game is running late. You guys are supposed to be on your way home already. I don’t want to impose. But they’re a great group and their coach would really appreciate the chance for them to hear from you guys. Is there any way you’d be able to come over to their locker room and talk to them for a few minutes?”
“Of course,” I said.
I walked with Tony to the gym where this group was playing and watched the end of the game, then waited while the team filed off into their locker room. I headed over there and stood outside the door for a moment. I was just about to open it and walk in when my phone buzzed. It was a text message from Melanie Luttrell, Marcus’s wife:
Terrible news
Please call Marcus ASAP
A few seconds later I got a second text, this one from a SEAL buddy in Texas.
Chris Kyle has been shot to death in Texas.
My eyes closed and I felt myself slump against the wall.
Not again. Not another one. Not Chris.
I gradually became aware of the muffled chorus of teenage voices, shouting and laughing and talking on the other side of the wall that was now holding me up. Young men in postgame locker room mode, exuberant, excited, their lives ahead of them. Waiting for me to come in and give them some inspiring words to end the day. Nobody else knew yet what had happened, not even my two SEAL buddies. How could I possibly face these kids? What could I tell them?
Someone else has got to do this, I thought. Not me.
• • •
I’d known Chris Kyle for more than a decade, but it was only in the last few years that we’d become friends as part of the small and tight-knit club of SEALs-turned-authors—which is less glamorous and a lot more problematic than it might sound. The common experiences that those of us in that group bond around have less to do with fame and media exposure and more to do with how much misunderstanding and heat we take from our own community.
There’s a widespread sense in the Spec Ops community (though somewhat less so in the SEALs) that we are supposed to keep our mouths shut about everything pertaining to our service. It’s like the first rule of Fight Club: You do not talk about Fight Club. But ever since September 11, 2001, the Naval Special Warfare (NSW) community has been propelled into the international spotlight by political grandstanding along with our own community’s leadership, who have a long history of cooperating with Hollywood directors and celebrities. I believe the proximity of Coronado to Hollywood has probably played a significant role in all the attention. (Would you rather visit Fort Bragg in North Carolina or the Naval Amphibious Base in southern California? I rest my case.)
This newfound status is a media minefield. NSW is no longer a private community, and that is a painful reality for many of the guys I know or who have an association within the SEAL fraternity. It’s a SEAL gold rush for journalists, the entertainment industry, the tactical industry, and others in a mad dash to cash in with no real regard for the community’s long-term health and welfare.
Because of that new celebrity, it’s even more crucial that SEALs examine how they conduct themselves in the public eye and on social media. An especially disturbing trend has been former operators violating the confidentiality/nondisclosure agreements associated with secret and top secret clearances. When guys cross this line they are not only breaking the law, they are also sacrificing their own integrity and hurting the community. “Will what I’m a
bout to do reflect positively on the SEAL community?” is a mantra I carry with me at all times, and a question I ask before every media appearance. It’s a question I think guys in the community need to take to heart.
I knew back in 2009 that the moment I appeared on CNN I would become a target for major criticism. I’ve been “read on” to confidential programs and it has always been crystal clear to me that these can never be discussed without approval through proper channels. I have always been 100 percent committed to keeping my integrity around protecting classified information I’ve been trusted with. Nevertheless, I knew that plenty of SEALs would peg me as selling out the Trident, some guy on an ego trip who violated the unwritten rule that Spec Ops guys stay out of the spotlight. I was prepared to deal with whatever bullshit or peer-group blowback followed, and despite the rocks that were hurled my way (yes, they came, and plenty of them), I had no regrets. I’ve never claimed to represent the entire SEAL community, but I have no problem contributing subject-matter expertise and weighing in on matters of national security and foreign policy, especially since running a media company has now become my second career. I’m incredibly proud of our veteran writing team at SOFREP.com. We’ve broken some big stories that the major media outlets couldn’t touch (or were scared to), and the guys on the site do a tremendous job of keeping independent journalism and thought alive. I still contribute to the site often myself.
Like the decision to go pulic as a television news commentator, the decision to publish a book about my experiences was a choice made with the full understanding that I would catch some hell for doing it. We’re not talking about mild, gentlemanly disapproval here. There are guys in the Spec Ops community who resent the hell out of the guys from Spec Ops—like Chris, Marcus, and me—who’ve had the audacity to publish memoirs.