by Thom Shea
—Stephen King, Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption:
A Story from Different Seasons
Three years have passed since I dared open up all my rantings and thoughts that I had tried to share with you during my deployment into hell, not that I have dreams of all the combat and stresses from my experiences. I can still feel the elation of combat and still feel the closeness I once shared with my men. The urgency of sharing my life with you has diminished, though.
I suppose that is the way of things for warriors and human beings all over the planet. Each day in hell was so intense and lacking of my family, all I had wanted to do then was share it all. However, now that I am back home with my family, I get to feel their warmth; I get to talk with them about their day; and I get to lay next them all at night, finally getting to kiss them all as they drift to sleep.
“You are safe, and I am here to protect you.”
The days of hell are long past now. We have all moved on to our lives, to other lives. The exploits and success of the 2009 deployment for TU Trident and Bravo platoon are now legend in the SEAL Teams. New tactics for combat were developed due to many of the “things” we faced and overcame. Many weapons were created in response to what we needed to kill more enemy … that is what war is all about for the US military, in general, and the SEAL Teams in particular. It is all about training to kill the enemy and not getting killed. Too bad that truth gets miscommunicated, and bad politics back home make the truth wrong in some way. Ironically, the safe condition we create back home by killing the enemy in his own country denies and then reinforces the silly idea that “since I feel safe here, no bad guys are out there.” Let me tell you this: bad men are indeed out there wanting to do harm to you in ways you cannot dream of. Yet, powerful men who know the truth of safety, freedom, and liberty will never BE safe. We will never be free and never truly have the condition of liberty without one key element—the willingness and national embrace of training men and women to passionately eradicate those entities who would take it all from us. The US is the last best hope for the development of mankind and liberty.
Social welfare and reform without earning it is like giving all of liberty and prosperity away. Earn the things that you want and appreciate the things you have earned. Never give up your safety and ability to protect yourself to anyone … especially politicians.
Some of the men from Bravo are currently back fighting in hell, living the shit all over again. Several have gotten out and are seeking higher forms of education, and some of us are training SEALs to go back to hell and survive. Yet, we are all changed from our time together into hell.
My point man, Nike, will forever hold a special spot in my soul. He could not be killed by the enemy. Bullets would miss him as if God himself had deemed him worthy of eternal life. He laughed when the enemy shot at him as if he knew they would miss. Nike never ran from a fight, and actually ran toward the sound of gunfire as if those drum beats were magnets pulling him. I recall one operation in the mountains of hell, where he and I were in a sniper position taking a heavy volume of fire from enemy machine guns. Nike and I were bathed in the light of slayers that night. We both emptied our twenty-round magazines three times, when Nike looked over at me. As I looked over at him, rounds screamed between us, and he rolled to face me, saying, “Damn. I swallowed my Copenhagen on that one. Could you pass me your can please? I cannot hope to continue without another dip.” As I reached to find my can, he said, “Hurry, dammit. My gun simply refuses to fire until I get that dip!” I laughed and slid him the can, and he slowly opened it, pushing a pinch into his lip. At that, he stood up, shouldered his rifle, and shot the last two enemy as they were turning the corner thirty-five yards from us. As he looked down at me, he said, “You can get up now; we are done here.”
We buried Nike last month. He died on vacation in Bali, of all places.
I have moved on as well. No way am I going to Bali, I can assure you of that fact. I learned one thing that sticks with me still and drives everything I do, “Search out the thing that is in everyone … the thing that is unbreakable, or what we have called Adamantine and nurture it. Feed it and teach others to get access to it. This will make all the difference, as nothing else truly matters.
Recently, Stacy and I have decided to dig up all the old emails and my scattered writings I had either written on paper or on my computer so I could begin to read many of the lessons. I do have to admit that compiling each lesson and recalling all the stressful situations has proven to be tough.
As you read this final section, I want you to understand that your father brought back all his men from hell so that they, too, could have a family and live in this sacred land of the American Experiment of Liberty. Also, know that in spite of the fact that your father has looked death in the face and often times was very quick to yell and not seem to listen well, that I deeply love each of you.
The last week in hell was the most emotionally stressful time for us all. Echo platoon members had already flown out of country and back to the States, while we of Bravo platoon had four airlift flights cancel on us. SEAL Team One had completely taken over our rooms, and we all were living like lost cats waiting for our flight. The shift in tempo was dramatic, and sitting around watching the warriors from SEAL Team One train and plan missions without us was like watching another man kiss our collective wives.
However, our flight finally came, and the sight of hell passing under the plane as we took off was surreal. It looked so benign, even the mountains reminded me of some really great mountain biking trips I had taken while doing adventure races. Yet, I knew somewhere down there some American was fighting for his life and risking everything for someone else.
I only lasted about two hours during the flight until my heart rate slowed so much I couldn’t keep my eyes open. For God’s sake, I hope my children don’t inherit my slow heart rate of forty beats per minute when I am at rest, because yawning during a hot date or in school may not serve them well.
We arrived in Germany for a three day scheduled delay to adjust ourselves from the immediate stresses of combat to the patience needed to be a father, or husband, or as the leaders put it, a better adjusted citizen. For me, I simply wanted to sleep, eat sushi, drink wine, and maybe get a massage.
The days actually went by rather quickly. The food was perfect, and the massage was exactly what the doctor ordered. We all had to complete some silly stress paperwork so that some psych doctor could publish some doctoral paper on how hell stresses the human mind and body. He wasn’t there and his distant point won’t teach or relay anything of value.
I took four hot baths a day. For some strange reason, the hot water was better than any drug or therapy I could have gone through. I came to find out every man of Bravo did the same thing as I did: eat, sleep, take hot baths, and sleep and eat and take more hot baths.
Finally, we all took commercial flights back home and that was that. No more war. No more hell. I would never lead my platoon again in combat. I am still sad about that.
Thank you for coming and picking me up at the airport. Seeing you four waving and crying because “daddy is home” was the greatest gift a warrior can ever receive. Warriors are hard wired for hell, and that hard wiring is constructed by the hands of his wife and family. You make me who I am, and seeing you all made hell totally go away.
Autumn, thank you for learning the lyrics to Peter Gabriel’s song, “In Your Eyes.” I am not sorry I cried as you sang it to me. I know as you get older, you will read this book and become the woman you need to be.
Garrett, hugging you and feeling your arms wrap around my neck will forever be the reason I survived hell … to feel the desperate need of a son for his father. Read these lessons and become the man you were born to BE.
Chance. Your name says everything. You are Stacy’s and my chance to be a family. You were my chance to be a dad, and you are your own chance to be a man. In you lives all the strength, passion, aggression, and love I have in my
life. These lessons will serve you well.
Stacy, lying next to you that first night in bed, feeling your perfect body and kissing your lips, was totally worth all the time I risked my life in hell—to get back to you. Each word written was because of you. Each life I took was to come home to you. Every moment away was another moment I had with you in my heart, making me strong and making us stronger.
After leaving SEAL Team Seven, I took over the West Coast SEAL Sniper Program and had to apply every lesson I talked about in this book. Teaching new snipers to do impossible things with both their rifles and their own Internal Dialogues was now my responsibility, which was no easy task, let me tell you that. SEALs are the most skeptical humans on the planet, and if shit you say doesn’t make them better, they simply tell you to “go to hell.” Since I had already been in hell, no one told me to go back, well at least to my face. What the students did do was shoot impossible shots as they learned to sneak up on us like the predators they truly were.
As I conclude this final section and wait for the day I retire, I work my final job in the SEAL Teams. I work in combat research and development. Although the job is intriguing and I do get to help develop all the next generation night vision, lasers, scopes, and weapons, I long for the bullets whizzing by my head. Not a day goes by that I don’t look at all the new men going through training and wish I were covered in saltwater and sand, and out of breath. Not a day goes by that I don’t see the platoons going through training and dream of taking another group deploying to hell.
I was asked recently by my boss why I was retiring and giving up becoming a SEAL Team Command master chief. My answer must have caught him off guard:
“The time has come for me to let go and create another life. I led men in combat; I taught men to become SEALs; I trained SEALs to become snipers; and I developed two new scopes and a laser range finder. It is time, don’t you think? I have no regrets. I need to get out of the way and let the new guys have the helm.”
“Good point, Thom.”
I have led a violent, aggressive life. Every SEAL does. I was never the best SEAL, nor was I the fastest, strongest, or meanest (I know my kids think I am the meanest). I am laughing as I write this because as I look back at my career and my deployments and, I have to admit I made more mistakes than I had successes. I just never made the same mistake twice, and I never made a mistake when life and death were on the line. I suppose I was lucky in that regard. Many SEALs were far better than I at most of the things that make SEALs good.
I have seen more death than I care to remember. Many of my friends have been killed in combat, and some have died doing other things. I have also put many of our nation’s enemies in the ground or in prison. Oddly, the killing doesn’t affect me as much as the death of my friends. I was present when we laid Mike Monsoor into the ground. He had jumped on a grenade in Ramadi and saved many of his platoon mates. He had been a student of mine when I was an instructor in BUD/S training. We all took off our tridents and nailed them all into his coffin that day. I have lost track of the number of SEAL funerals I attended. Yet, the final one I will ever attend was Nike’s, my point man and lead sniper from Bravo platoon. Since he is dead now, I will tell you this: his real name is Mike Tatham. He was my buddy, and he saved my life countless times. I will not go to another funeral. I want to live long enough so that none of my friends have to go to my funeral, and I don’t want to be buried in the ground. Please take my ashes to Louisa Falls in Canada.
I ain’t dead yet, though. Until that time actually happens, I want to spend all of my energies helping my children grow and teaching them all to live the Adamantine Life that I have described in this book, Unbreakable.
I would like to recapture the thirteen lessons and tell you all why they are so important.
An Adamantine Life, or an Unbreakable Life, really means understanding the human performance. You already are performing perfectly. It already exists and has evolved, adapted, evolved, and will continue to do so, and that is the way we all function.
The Human performance has a basic structure to it. Each one will be very easily recognized. Let me lay them out for you in no particular order, although some order of value and precedence may exist. After twenty-five years of honing and mastering each one, I can say definitely that the order we put them in makes no difference.
I like to use the image of the five inverted pyramids. An inverted pyramid visually represents how a small thought or idea grows from something that did not exist at all to something later that actually exists, has a big base, and affects more than the originator.
I want you to imagine the five inverted pyramids of human performance. One will be identified as mastering of the Body. Another will be mastering of Intellect. The third will be mastering of Spirituality, and yet another is the mastery of Wealth. And finally, the mastery of Relationships. I am sure we could debate on the names and categories, yet in any and every human endeavor regarding performance, these five pyramids become the universal components. Now I want you to imagine the five pyramids are in a circle and an invisible string is connecting each pyramid to a center point, or perhaps a web.
Take a second and look briefly at how you personally grope with mastering these five pyramids. Take, for instance, your body. Notice the way it looks, what it feels like, how it performs, or doesn’t perform in some cases. I just want you to notice that. Run through that same brief noticing with the other four pyramids. With Wealth, notice what you invest in, how you spend your money, how much money you have saved up, and notice your debt. Just notice it. Notice as well your level of spiritual mastery in whatever religion you hold for yourself. Notice then the current situation we find ourselves in with becoming masters of intellectual achievements. Notice many others whom either you know or have heard about, who have attained some very serious high levels of intellect informally. Finally, identify where you are regarding relationships, which can be teams you are on, groups you participate in, and even romantic relationships.
I want you to notice you are at various levels. I ask you simply notice you have some degree of mastery in each and that those around you have other degrees of mastery.
Now I want to tell you a story of human performance. In the world of Navy SEALs, we constantly seek very high levels of performance in each category. Maybe not wealth in the aspect of becoming rich, but to a certain degree, we handle, develop and control money and material and have mastered some aspect of wealth. The actual mastery of making money and having material wealth is only one part of mastering wealth.
Yet in the other three prominent pyramids we are recognized as masters. And for the sake of this discussion, we have sought to constantly improve on relationship, physical, and intellectual abilities and performance and have achieved some very serious high levels. Right now as you read this, I can tell you that somewhere on this planet, SEALS are pushing the boundaries of those three pyramids well beyond what you would even think possible. I have seen SEALS band together as a team and overcome the most hellish conditions simply because of their mastery of relationships. I have witnessed SEALs physically achieve impossible feats because of the constant pushing of his own physical boundaries. And as you can guess, I have witnessed SEALs use their intellect and smarts to create and recall things that far surpass normal human ability.
Finally, for the sake of this conversation on the human performance in an Adamantine life, I will merely say men and women across the globe are clearly masters of spirituality—from the Yogis and the Buddhist monks, to the Catholic priests and the preachers. Many others have attained spirituality in a cave all by themselves.
We have a six-month course for our own SEAL growth called Basic Underwater Demolitions School. This is our entry point for discovering what it takes to push beyond our previous limitations and produce extraordinary results. This brings me to the point of my initial tale. We have a very high attrition rate. We only graduate 15 percent. I want to share with you the broader discussion of why that is the ca
se and how what we have found actually will have an immediate effect on you, your own life, and your performance no matter what you are up to.
In the attempt to discover the answer, we looked at improving the gear we use to get the jobs done in an efficient and productive way. We bought better shoes and chaffing guard, because your performance is dramatically affected when your legs, feet, and armpits are bleeding from chaffing.
We spent monies improving the teaching ability of the instructors and enhanced the curriculum. We bought high quality tables, chairs, computers, and screens. Our staff and facilities are now state of the art, as is our equipment.
Our latest effort was to screen our applicants more thoroughly to weed out the ones we thought would not make it prior to starting. We also spent millions on a pre-training workout program that we thought would make the men physically harder and more resistant to injury.
We implemented all these reasonable improvements that MIT, top business schools, and human performance labs had recommended.
What we found in our effort to make SEALs better was that this invisible string between the five pyramids was actually where every level of human performance starts and stops. I want you to notice that your Internal Dialogue is already and always working before, during, and after everything you do.
So, here is what we found:
None of the “stuff” we did, bought, or paid for made any significant difference to the attrition rate. We all were dumbfounded. This is also what most corporations do. This is what we all do; I think, don’t you? We spend all of our efforts trying to adjust the outside world or influences in the hope that our personal performance, and maybe our lives, improve.