Combat Swimmer

by Robert A. Gormly

  “Damn, Tom, you’re right—here’s your ten.”

  “Mr. Gormly, you can open your eyes now,” Blais said.

  I did. I looked where the hole ought to be and saw the charge still sitting there, the fuse no longer smoking. It turned out the “charge” was only the cardboard covering of the half-block of TNT and time fuse. That was a lesson in trusting your teammates. And a little amusement for the instructors. Later on in training, Blais said he couldn’t believe I had just lain there. Others he had pulled the trick on had hauled ass. I told him I knew he wasn’t about to kill a trainee on purpose, so I hadn’t really worried at all—right! Tom and I later served together in SEAL Team Two. He was one hell of an operator in Vietnam.

  On July 2, 1964, I graduated from UDT Replacement Training. Our featured speaker was Vice Admiral John S. McCain, Commander Amphibious Forces, United States Atlantic Fleet (COMPHIBLANT), known to all in the Navy as “Mr. Sea Power.” The admiral gave a great pitch. He told us we were now part of the cutting edge of the amphibious force—the UDT—and, in a nutshell, we’d be the first to kick ass during war. We loved this—we’d gone through nearly six months of BS to get the opportunity to go to war first. The speech was short and to the point. We really liked that. All we wanted to do was get our diplomas and get to the Teams.

  In later years when I was called upon to give graduation speeches to BUDS classes, I remembered Admiral McCain’s words. I’d simply tell them they had just completed the most rigorous training in the U.S. military. Now it was time for them to go to the Teams and get ready to kick ass.

  UDT Training Class 31 was unique because of our extremely high officer-to-enlisted ratio; we had over thirty officers at the start, out of a total class of about one hundred people. Of that starting hundred, ten officers (including two Brazilians) and fifteen enlisted (including two Brazilians) graduated. Seventy-five men didn’t make it, but that’s average for basic UDT training. Some would say the high officer-to-enlisted ratio was not good, but it didn’t matter in UDT basic training because we all did the same things and shared the load equally. That’s one reason why SEAL officers and enlisted have close relationships.

  The bonds established in our training are much like the bonds formed in combat; rank is not the determining factor. In my view this closeness was one of the things responsible for the combat success of SEALs. Mutual trust and respect among all Team members are givens, and they develop in the basic training course. At first, Yale, Harvard, the Naval Academy, Penn State, and various other institutions of higher learning were represented in our group. At the end of basic training, we were all from the same place: Tom and Bernie’s Charm School.

  3

  DOMINICAN REPUBLIC: FIRST REAL MISSION

  I reported to Underwater Demolition Team 22 and was assigned to a platoon to learn the ropes. My instructor was Chief Petty Officer Everett Barrett, who gave me a clipboard with a blank sheet of paper attached. He said, “Always carry this with you, Ensign, and walk fast. The front office will think you’re busy.”

  In those days UDT-22 and UDT-21 rotated platoons with two amphibious ready groups (Navy-Marine contingency forces) in the Mediterranean and Caribbean respectively. When platoons weren’t deployed, they were getting ready to deploy. So you were either in the Mediterranean or the Caribbean or training.

  I found out that in essence, the basic UDT mission—hydrographic reconnaissance—was pretty basic stuff. So the platoons spent more time trying to learn what I would call SEAL skills, which were different and more fun.

  The Teams had a different quality back then. The enlisted men provided all of the continuity or corporate memory and much of the leadership. Once they got in a Team, they seldom left until they retired. They did a great job of instilling unit pride in the junior officers. I doubt we officers pulled our share of the load. In those days, nearly all of us were reservists. We had little concern for anything other than having the most fun possible. We did our time in the Teams and left active duty. The few regular officers who were UDT-qualified and wanted to pursue careers in the Navy had to go to sea to get promoted. After their initial tour, they could expect only one more with the Teams before they became too senior to hold any Team job. That meant the top leadership (CO/ XO) usually weren’t current on our skills. This became apparent to me when, on my first night-parachute jump with UDT-22, the CO hooked his static line to an electric cable in the plane instead of the anchor cable and almost creamed in before he managed to deploy his reserve chute. To compound matters, he blamed it all on the jumpmaster rather than accept blame for his blunder.

  I also found out that being in a peacetime UDT wasn’t nearly as exciting as I had thought it would be. We had no immediate expectations of combat. To substitute, we turned to such things as “touch” football. Using no pads, we had about the same amount of contact as in regular football—I never got banged up so bad playing regular football. Everyone who wasn’t deployed showed up at each game, cheering those of us who were playing and unmercifully harassing the other team. The games we played against local Marine units were brutal. I think every time we played them there was a fight—the Marines were just as frustrated as we were over the lack of real combat. Despite no “rumors of war,” Team morale soared during football season.

  When Dave Schaible took over the Team in October 1964, it was a bright day in my career. He was my “Sea Daddy,” one of the best leaders I ever had the good fortune to work for, and we had a strong friendship until he died in 1988.

  Dave took one look at what the Team had been doing and said, “Boys, you haven’t been spending enough time in the water.” He had this weird notion that a UDT shouldn’t be running around on land trying to be a SEAL team. But I didn’t immediately benefit from his new emphasis, because the platoon to which I was now assigned was sent to the Caribbean in March 1965. That turned out not to be a routine deployment. Instead, I had the opportunity to do my first real mission.

  The platoon commander was Lieutenant Junior Grade Gerry Yocum. Ensign Bill Bishop (fresh out of training) and I were his assistants. A country boy from Pennsylvania, Gerry taught me a lot about being a good platoon commander. Bill and I would later serve together in SEAL Team Two. He became an outstanding SEAL platoon commander and was awarded the Silver Star in Vietnam.

  Normally there were only two officers per platoon, but Dave wanted us to get as much experience as possible, so he started putting three officers in each deploying platoon. We left Little Creek in March on board the Ruchamkin, a converted World War II destroyer. The superstructure had been lengthened and heightened to allow the ship to carry an entire UDT of 100 troops.

  We sailed to Vieques Island, off Puerto Rico, in company with the rest of the Caribbean Amphibious Ready Group, and participated in a huge amphibious exercise designed, no doubt, to impress Fidel Castro. After the exercise we moved our gear ashore to begin three weeks of “fun in the sun,” i.e., twelve-hour days honing our reconnaissance and demolition skills, and long night swims practicing sneak attacks against ships anchored offshore. We’d been on Vieques three days when we received an emergency back-load—“Get back on board”—order. The ready group was to proceed, at best speed, to a position off the coast of the Dominican Republic. My platoon was to stand by for a landing or to take out U.S. citizens, depending on what Lyndon Johnson decided to do in the wake of a “communist” takeover of the Dominican government. We were going to war—or so we thought.

  The Dominican Republic crisis of 1965 has become a footnote in history. The country shares the island of Hispaniola with Haiti, which is located on the western end. The Republic had been ruled for thirty-one years by a ruthless dictator, Rafael Trujillo, who was assassinated in 1961. The country then went through a short period of political upheaval, but made changes by national elections, not by violence. In September 1963, Juan Bosch, the elected president and a former university professor reputed to be “soft on Communism,” was overthrown by a military coup, which established a junta. The j
unta leaders had many of the same economic and social problems that had bedeviled the island republic for years. In early 1965 a series of crises, which the government blamed on Bosch, caused the junta to crack down on Bosch’s supporters. The civilian head of the junta, faced with growing rioting and unable to get enough support from his military, resigned. Bosch’s supporters took control of the government the next day. Fighting ensued between various factions in the military. Members of the junta asked Lyndon Johnson for help, saying the lives of American citizens in the Dominican Republic were at risk. Johnson in turn ordered U.S. forces to go protect Americans and to escort them out of the country.

  UDTs and SEALs had done a few low-risk operations during the Cuban Missile Crisis, but not since the Korean War had the Teams seen combat. We were all apprehensive but eager. We had trained for the real thing, and we wanted a chance to do it.

  The Ruchamkin could do about twenty-three knots, and we were ahead of the rest of the force when we reached the operations area. We were ready to do a beach reconnaissance just outside the port of Haina on the southern coast, but instead, the Ruchamkin got orders to go into port, evacuate the U.S. citizens who had gathered there, take them to Puerto Rico, and return at best speed for an anticipated amphibious landing.

  Intelligence about the situation was sketchy, but we thought (correctly) that friendly forces controlled the port. The Ruchamkin’s CO decided to put part of our platoon on our Landing Craft Personnel Large (LCPL), a thirty-six-foot steel-hulled craft that was the standard UDT boat in 1965. He ordered the boat to proceed into port ahead of the ship to provide security and line handlers when the ship reached its berth.

  Both Bill and I wanted to be in charge of the line-handling party, but Gerry decided to lead it himself. We tied up on schedule, quickly loaded as many people as we could, and set sail for San Juan. The transit was a bit rough, so not only were we sailing “out of harm’s way” when we all wanted to be in on the action, but also our ship was covered with puke. We off-loaded our human cargo as fast as we could and set sail back to the Dominican Republic.

  At about 0300 we received notice that the Marine amphibious force was going to land without us first doing a hydrographic reconnaissance of the landing beach. The assault craft were to proceed to the beach single file in order to avoid mines or any other obstacles. We were really disappointed that they could do the landing without our reconnaissance, but it turned out to be a safe operation. We arrived late that morning and did a reconnaissance of the 2,000-yard-wide landing beach to ensure that any follow-on landings would have no problems. My platoon was not authorized to carry weapons, since the Marines already ashore were supposed to provide the firepower. I couldn’t understand the “no weapons” order, but at least we got the chance to do something. As it turned out, the only injuries we sustained were healthy sunburns from being in the water all day.

  The following morning, we got another mission. This one looked interesting: a day reconnaissance on a small beach just south of the main airport, east of Santo Domingo. The group planners were thinking of using the spot as an evacuation point if needed. They couldn’t tell us if the area was under friendly control, so we were to take weapons but not shoot unless shot at. They couldn’t provide a gunfire support ship, so we’d be on our own.

  Thanks to engine problems we didn’t reach the area until well after 1500, about two hours behind schedule. Our plan was to put four swimmers in the water about a thousand meters off the beach. They would swim in to take soundings and sand cores. Because I’d bitched so much about not being allowed to go on the port-entry operation, and also because I was one of the best swimmers in the platoon, Gerry let me take the team in.

  Four of us left the boat and swam slowly toward the beach. The water was warm, so we wore just swim trunks and UDT life jackets. A K-Bar knife attached to a web belt, plus fins and face masks, completed our “combat load.” We carried lead lines to check the water depth and plastic slates to record the information. Every twenty-five yards we stopped, formed up in a line, let our twenty-one-foot lead lines descend toward the bottom, and wrote the depth on our swimmer slates. Then we’d continue to the next stop point. As we got closer to the beach, the pucker factor went up. We didn’t know if there were any rebel forces waiting for us, and in those days UDT swimmers didn’t carry weapons in the water because they weren’t reliable enough after getting wet to be of any use. So except for the K-Bars, our only defense was our ability to swim fast until our boat provided fire support.

  As we approached, we swam lower and lower in the water until just the top half of our face masks was above the surface. I peered anxiously at the top of a low berm that ran along the beach, about ten yards from the water’s edge. Low scrub hid from our view anything more than fifteen yards from the water. That meant we were blind, but anyone in the scrub could easily see us, four nicely suntanned targets. Seeing no movement, I signaled to my men to move the final fifty yards to the beach so we could get vital sand samples for analysis. We slithered our way to the beach to fill our sample bottles, making only slight ripples in the blue Caribbean water.

  We were almost to the water’s edge when a movement in the bushes caught my eye. I looked closer and saw a head and a rifle bobbing up and down as a man came up the back of the berm. As his head cleared the top we made eye contact, and he yelled in surprise and disappeared. I didn’t even need to tell my men to head to sea—they had seen the soldier, too.

  Just as we cleared the surf zone—with about ten feet of water between us and the coral heads on the bottom—I saw about five men with weapons come over the berm, shouting excitedly in Spanish and pointing in our direction. They aimed their weapons at us. I’d seen enough. I signaled to my men to dive and swim seaward.

  If the soldiers started shooting, we’d be hard to hit on the surface. Underwater, the rounds wouldn’t penetrate more than a couple of feet. We’d rehearsed this emergency escape procedure many times. The average frogman in those days could hold his breath about two minutes in normal diving conditions. We weren’t in a normal situation, though, and I figured adrenaline rush and muscle effort were going to sap our oxygen as we hauled ass out of there. I wanted to gain as much distance as possible before I had to surface for a breath.

  Underwater, everything was quiet. I expected to see the bubbly tracks of bullets seeking us out, but I didn’t see anything as I kicked furiously toward our boat. When my lungs were about to explode I rose to the surface, rolled over on my back to put my mouth just above the water, and got a deep lungful of precious air. I wasn’t up there more than five seconds.

  As I rolled back on my stomach and headed for the bottom, I looked right and left. To my right, two of my men were headed back down as well. The man on my left was on his way up. I watched as he did the breathing maneuver, expecting to see bullets hitting the water around him. Since he was the last to go up, I figured he’d draw fire, the other three of us having gotten their attention. But he rolled back toward the bottom. Nothing. We’d covered about a hundred yards on our first dive, and each dive after that would be shorter as we built up an oxygen debt. I figured if we got another hundred yards out we’d be safe.

  As I neared the bottom, I heard the unmistakable whine of our boat’s engine headed in our direction. I kept kicking and had covered about seventy-five yards when my lungs started burning and my vision began to tunnel: carbon dioxide was building up in my system. This time, instead of going quickly to the surface, breathing, and heading right for the bottom, I decided to take a peek at the beach.

  Slowing my ascent just below the surface, I turned to face the beach, exhaled, tilted my head back to expose only my mouth, and slowly drifted above the surface. I gulped a breath of air and tilted my head forward so I could focus through my face mask.

  I was at the bottom of a small swell. I let myself ride up with the motion of the wave. As I reached the crest, I saw the berm appear over the top of the next swell. Not a soul was to be seen. I waited on the surface un
til each man came up and looked around. We all must have had the same idea—not surprising, given our training. I signaled the man to my left, and we swam to join the other two.

  I looked shoreward again but still didn’t see anything. Our boat was on its way at full speed, men at the .30-caliber machine guns. Others were at the gunwales with M-3 “grease guns,” .45-caliber submachine guns capable of killing anything at twenty-five meters. Obviously, the grease guns weren’t a threat to anyone on the beach, but they made the men feel better and, I must admit, I liked seeing that hardware rushing to our aid.

  Gerry was leaning over the port side, looking for us. I waved, and the boat swerved in our direction. As it got within fifty yards, the coxswain went to full reverse and turned starboard side to the beach, giving the .30-caliber weapons a clear line of fire. We dove and swam toward the boat. As I passed under it, I saw the propeller was not turning—standard procedure when divers are near.

  Surfacing just on the port side, I looked down and saw my men coming to the surface right under me. When they were all next to me, I told them to climb into the rubber boat Gerry had put over the side to help us get into the landing craft. Then I pulled myself out of the water and low-crawled in just behind Gerry.

  He was more excited than we were. He had been watching us through binoculars when he first saw the five armed men, apparently before I did. Gerry had started yelling to me, but realized there was no way I’d hear him, so he immediately ordered the boat toward the beach and told the machine-gunners to stand by to fire. Under our rules of engagement—the orders fighting men receive before going into a potential combat situation—we couldn’t fire unless fired at. As it turned out, the armed men jumped down behind the berm when they saw our boat, and Gerry never saw them come out again.

  All of us were breathing hard. We were pumped—we’d just become “combat swimmers.” With the adrenaline starting to wear off, we all realized how vulnerable swimmers are in broad daylight. I was proud of the men, and I told them so. They did exactly what they’d been trained to do. Our preplanned emergency procedures had worked. I remember thinking I never again wanted to swim to a hostile beach without some means of self-defense. Even our .38-caliber revolvers would have been better than nothing. (A revolver works fairly well after being exposed to salt water—all you have to do is make sure the barrel is clear before firing.) Later, when UDTs began doing missions in Vietnam, each swimmer was armed, usually with an M-16 rifle.