Combat Swimmer

by Robert A. Gormly

  Four good SEALs drowned, and one of the two pickup boats capsized, apparently also because of the squall. I was devastated. I blamed myself (and still do) because I hadn’t done something to prevent it. We searched for hours but couldn’t find the missing men. When it was time to start the insertion to the airfield, I had to tell Lieutenant “Pat,” the assault team leader, to stop looking and go. A larger air search began the next morning and continued during daylight for three more days. Though they located the capsized boat the next day, they never found my men. And in the aftermath I learned of the Marines’ decision that we wouldn’t be doing a reconnaissance at Perles. The additional shooters need never have left Norfolk.

  Pat, some of his men, and the Air Force combat-control team departed the destroyer for Salines airfield in the one good boat. Encountering a ship with a spotlight, they assumed it was one of the two patrol craft in the Grenadan “Navy” and took evasive action, which slowed them down. (Later, we learned that it hadn’t been a patrol boat at all but a U.S. Navy ship conducting electronic intelligence. Because of secrecy, the Joint Headquarters wasn’t informed of its presence.)

  Pat’s boat started taking on water. It was getting late and Pat rightly judged that he couldn’t get to the airfield in the dark. He didn’t want to run the risk of being spotted and giving away the larger operation, so he decided to return to the destroyer. They had time to do the operation the next night and still get the information back well prior to H-hour. Meanwhile, since SOP called for operating the whalers in pairs, we dropped a second one to him the next day.

  At this point I still wasn’t concerned about the Salines mission. I figured that with two boats, unreliable though they were turning out to be, Pat would get the combat-control team to the target. But then the first boat, being towed behind the destroyer because it had no way of lifting the Whaler on board, capsized in the heavy seas. So that night, instead of two boats, the men were back to one. Wary of what they still thought was a patrol boat operating near their target area, Pat had the destroyer move to the south side of the island. They launched, and Pat decided to go to a small island just off the south side of the airfield. There he planned to load his personnel into a rubber boat for the short transit to the airfield. But again they encountered heavy weather; the Whaler took on water, flooding one of the engines, and the Air Force lieutenant colonel decided it was in no condition to proceed. Pat, being a good SEAL and at home in the water, felt they could continue but the lieutenant colonel was adamant. They finally returned to the destroyer.

  At 0500 on October 25 the rangers parachuted into Salines. It turned out that they would have had to jump anyway, because the Cuban “engineers” had blocked the runway with a bulldozer, but that didn’t lessen the embarrassment and depression I felt. We hadn’t completed the mission, and we’d lost four good men in the process. The damn boats weren’t capable of doing what we needed to get done—they weren’t seaworthy.

  Meanwhile, back at the command center, confusion continued to reign. While attending a meeting at CINCLANT, the commanding general had met a U.S. State Department representative who showed him a three-week-old hour-by-hour plan for taking the island. Approved by the White House, it assigned target priorities different from those we had established. I fought off the target changes, but I didn’t win on another issue.

  The commanding general called me aside to tell me the State Department representative would be in the command center within the hour and I had to meet with him.

  “Why?”

  “Because he’s going with you to the governor general’s house,” the CG replied.

  I protested vigorously. The general told me to figure it out and walked away. He’d made the same argument at higher headquarters earlier, to no avail; the White House-approved plan called for our State Department to hold the governor general’s hand to make sure his radio broadcast said all the right things.

  When I met him later, the State Department representative offered me some interesting information: that the Cuban “engineers” on the island wouldn’t be a problem, because their government had informally agreed to keep its people in their barracks during our incursion. (In other words, the Cubans knew we were coming.) I asked how he could be so sure of their cooperation. He said, “Don’t worry about it,” or something like that.

  As we were finalizing our plans, the commanding general told the Army component commander and me he was very concerned about all the last-minute changes, and asked if we wanted him to request a twenty-four-hour delay in the operation. The colonel and I agreed: No way. Any delay would only give higher headquarters more time to make more changes. The troops were ready, but if I had to go another twenty-four hours without sleep I wouldn’t be.

  Still depressed over our lost guys, I had to keep reminding myself that my troops were depending on me and that I was one of the few people in the command who had seen combat. I decided I needed to talk to the troops, so at about 1800 I took a helo to the remote site, twenty miles from the command center, where they were in isolation planning their missions.

  I got them in a briefing room and saw before me a sea of anxious but determined faces. They were ready. I don’t remember exactly what I told them. I gave them what information I had about the missing men; I was still expecting them to turn up, because the wet-suit tops they’d worn for the jump would protect them against hypothermia. I told my men we had to go on, and I went over the rules of engagement. They were to shoot only if shot at or threatened, and they were to give Grenadan troops a chance to surrender before firing, because the higher-ups were trying to avoid hurting any islanders. Even though we had been told not to expect resistance, I told the troops to be ready.

  I do remember thinking I wasn’t worried about my guys—they were among the best in the world at picking the right target and shooting accurately. I think I mumbled something about how everyone is scared their first time in combat and not to worry, they’d do fine. A couple of years later, one of the men who was there told me he remembered everything I said that night and that it inspired him. When I looked at him as if to say, “Don’t b.s. me,” he protested, “No, really, you said just the right things for the time.” I’m still not sure about this.

  By this time I had managed to round up the third assault team, which had been training in California. The SEALs in Six had trained hard for three years and now they wanted part of the action. So I did my best to ensure that all of our shooters had a role. Since I was going to the governor general’s mansion to establish my command post, I sent Pete Stevens with the reserve team to establish an alternate CP at the airfield after the rangers had secured it. I didn’t think we’d really need a reserve force at the airfield, but I felt much more comfortable having them, and that proved to be a good decision.

  At 2100 on October 24, the assault teams bound for the governor general’s mansion and Radio Grenada, and I with my small command element, boarded a C-5 aircraft along with our UH-60 Blackhawk helicopters. We were settled in for the flight, and the plane had begun to taxi, when suddenly there was pounding on the fuselage. The Air Force load master opened the side door, and there was one of our men, Larry Barrett, running alongside with his rucksack. A couple of the guys grabbed his gear and pulled him aboard, and the plane kept rolling. Larry had been in an independent training course when one of the guys called to tell him he’d better get back to the Team without telling him why. When Larry got on the plane, he had no idea where we were going. He only knew he wasn’t going to miss out.

  I was exhausted. As soon as the C-5’s wheels cleared the ground, I drifted off to sleep, thinking, “Here we go again.” At 0330, we landed at a commercial airport near Grenada. We were more than an hour behind schedule, so as soon as the C-5 touched the ground, the Army helo guys were in the well deck undoing the shackles that held the helos in place. Some bureaucratic flight crew member started yelling at them to keep their seats “until the plane has finished taxiing and the captain has turned off the seat belt sign.
” Duke Leonard, the assault team leader for the governor-general mission, told him to sit down or he’d shoot him. The man sat.

  The helo guys figured they needed an hour to get the Blackhawks ready to fly, but it turned out longer. We took off for Grenada just after 0500.

  The eighty-minute flight to Grenada was uneventful but terribly uncomfortable. We had only three Blackhawks available for our missions. I had dedicated two for our primary target, the governor general, and the other for the radio station. We had to get all our troops plus the State Department weenie into the three birds. Then another change came up.

  At the staging island, we’d been met by two men with a portable broadcast radio. The State Department guy told me they were part of his team and had to go with him to the governor general’s mansion. The broadcast radio was so the governor general could start transmitting as soon as we seized his residence, instead of waiting till we reached Radio Grenada. Of course, that was the first I’d been told of this part of the plan. I decided two more people wouldn’t matter, and that was how I ended up with fourteen combat-loaded SEALs, my radioman, and three State Department people in my helo.

  Fifty minutes after leaving the staging island, we were over on the eastern end of Grenada. By now it was daylight, I could see the Marines ensconced at their airfield waving at us as we passed. We waved back. As we flew down the south side of Grenada, islanders on the ground continued to wave at us. It seemed they were glad to see the Americans. We made our way west, keeping the main mountain chain between us and our targets, then turned north and crested the mountains. The helo with the radio-station assault team, under the command of Lieutenant Kim Erskine, broke off and headed for their target.

  As soon as we had crossed the mountains the friendly Grenadans disappeared. We began taking ground fire. The air seemed to be filled with aircraft and tracers. We were just east of our airfield when I spotted a firefight going on between the Rangers and the islanders. I remember thinking what a difference the mountains made. But I didn’t have much time for reflection—rounds zinged by and slapped into the Hawk.

  Looking down at the heavy canopy and steep terrain, I thought we’d have a hell of a time finding the mansion, yet somehow the crew managed. I have to admit I didn’t see the place until they flared the bird to begin the insertion.

  I had decided to go to the governor general’s mansion because his recapture was the “political” key to the operation. But to take the State Department officers I had to change my insertion plan. Originally, we’d planned to have the Hawks drop us at the front and rear of the mansion, using our special rappelling technique. I go in at the rear, with the group securing the grounds, while Duke’s group, at the front of the mansion, would rescue the governor general. But rappelling down a ninety-foot rope in the dark with forty pounds of gear on your back was not something I could allow the State Department people to try. To get them on the ground safely, we would have to land one of the helos or get it low enough so they could jump. One of Duke’s guys, Bobby Lewis, volunteered to go in with a chain saw to cut down two trees at the front of the mansion to give us room to land, or at least hover low.

  I wanted Duke to have enough people to overcome any resistance he might encounter as he assaulted the house, so I took the State Department guys with me in the bird going to the rear of the mansion. After dropping off our assault team we’d fly the Blackhawk to the front. By then Bobby would have cut down the trees; if he hadn’t finished, we would hover till he did.

  When our helo flared at about seventy-five feet, my guys bolted down the rope and were gone. I leaned out to help the crewman pull the rope back in so it didn’t get sucked up into the rotating blades and turn the helo into a rock.

  We began to take heavy fire from the top of the hill, just above our eye level as we looked out. I couldn’t hear any gunfire—the high-pitched whine of the helo in hover and the whopping of the blades as they spun just over the treetops drowned out all other noise—but I could hear the rounds slapping the helo. Just as I got the rope into the Hawk, I glimpsed some large muzzle flashes through the trees at the top of the hill, too bright to have come from small arms.

  Just as I registered “Antiaircraft weapon,” the Hawk was pushed horizontally through the air, away from the hill. It shuddered and tilted left. The pilot yelled that the copilot was hit and the helo lurched out of control and started falling downhill, toward the mansion.

  For a few seconds all was chaos. I was pressed into the left door of the bird—if it hadn’t been closed, I would have fallen out—and all I could see was sky as we picked up speed. We almost inverted, but somehow the pilot managed to regain control and keep flying. As the helo came upright I fell on the floor. My radioman’s eyes were saucers, but otherwise he looked okay. The State Department guys were on the floor next to me, also okay. I took inventory of my own parts and determined that I hadn’t been hit either. In the few seconds it took me to do all this, the helo screamed sideways past the mansion and down the hill toward the harbor. I saw trees and buildings flash past. I remember thinking we were going in, and I only hoped we made it as far as the water.

  By this time, the helo crew chief was half in the front seat, trying to stem the copilot’s bleeding. I yelled to my radioman and the State Department guys to prepare for a crash and started unlacing my boots, thinking we were going to be swimming—at best. A peaceful calm developed within me. I’d survived two “controlled” crashes in Vietnam, but this bird was out of control and badly shot up.

  The ground rushed past the door—then, as we broke over the pier area, I saw muzzle flashes: we were still taking heavy fire, this time from the harbor. Just before it seemed we would hit the water, the pilot leveled the bird. Scant feet above the water we hurtled out of the bay, tracers zinging past and into us until we cleared the harbor.

  The crew chief was still giving first aid to the copilot, who was in shock and losing a lot of blood from a massive wound in his thigh. I thought a round had severed his femoral artery and I told the crew chief to get a tourniquet on immediately. The pilot said he wasn’t sure how long he could keep us flying. We knew the operation’s flagship, Guam, had hospital facilities, but could the pilot keep the Hawk in the air long enough for us to find it? To compound our trouble there was a mist in the air at sea, so visibility was poor.

  The pilot cleared the harbor, started a slow climb, and turned east, toward where we figured Guam would be. After what seemed like an eternity, I saw a few destroyers below us. The Hawk was still jerking and pitching, and the pilot kept yelling he didn’t know how long he could keep us in the air. I’m not a helo pilot, but I’d flown in enough of them to know the sounds of a good one. This one wasn’t making any good sounds. We kept flying east, seeing more and more gray shapes in the water. Through the morning mist we finally spotted a large gray shape that looked like the Guam. As we headed in, a helo took off and another approached. Our pilot radioed Guam and we received permission to land immediately.

  Our helo came out of the sky like a wounded bird. The pilot was fighting the controls, and the Hawk kept trying to heel to the left as Guam’s deck came rapidly toward us. There was nothing I could do to help and I just figured we were going to crash. The bird’s tail was swinging back and forth as we fell toward the flight deck. I yelled for those of us in the back to brace for landing. Somehow, the pilot managed to slam us into the deck hard but not too hard. We bounced once and came to rest, the blades whopping furiously and the engine screaming.

  I jumped out immediately and helped pull the copilot out of his seat as ship’s corpsmen converged on us. He was still bleeding heavily and I didn’t think he was going to make it. Then I headed for the flag bridge—I had men on the ground and I had to talk to them. When I hit the flag bridge, I encountered Lieutenant Colonel Digger O’Dell, the Joint Headquarters liaison officer on the task force staff. I left my radioman and told him to establish contact with our guys on Digger’s SATCOM.

  I ran into the Army brigadie
r general who was the deputy task force commander, and gave him a quick brief. After listening intently he asked if I had managed to deliver the letter to the governor general.

  “What letter?”

  He said it was their understanding that I had a letter for the governor general to read over the air, welcoming us to his island. I told him that was the first I’d heard of any letter and that I had three State Department guys he could talk to, but that I’d really like to start arranging transport back to the mansion and my men. He agreed to get me the first flyable helo.

  Digger took me aside and explained the situation as he knew it—basically, a mess. All but two of the Joint Headquarters Hawks were out of commission. The ship was trying to save the one I came in on, but it didn’t look good—the deck crew had had to turn a fire hose into the intake to get the bird shut down, and Guam’s captain was considering pushing it over the side to make room for incoming casualties. (They wound up not doing so, and a later count came up with forty-eight holes in the helo, including one round in the gearbox. I don’t know how it kept flying.) And, Digger told me, a Hawk had just come in with Army casualties from the prison attack. Things had not gone well for them either. The team leader had taken a round in the chest and was in bad shape. Ground fire had been so heavy they couldn’t land, and the colonel had ordered them out.