No Hero: The Evolution of a Navy SEAL

by Mark Owen

  “Why did we do this?” Walt finally asked. “These tactics aren’t working. I can’t believe I humped around the side of a mountain and we didn’t even get the guy.”

  Finally, Steve chimed in about not getting approval to use the AC-130.

  “What is the point of having Spectre on target if they can’t shoot?” Steve said. “Was there any question these assholes were bad?”

  Steve already knew the answer.

  There was no question the squirters were bad. But, under the rules of engagement, we had to see the guns. And while the drones tracked the fighters, it wasn’t clear if they were armed. I didn’t have any doubt. Neither did my teammates. But we weren’t the ones giving approval.

  “These guys got away because of the way we planned the target,” Steve finally said. “Our guys were smoked and these two knuckleheads should have been captured or smoke checked.”

  The Taliban learned from the mujahedeen’s fight against the Soviets. They picked areas to hide that were difficult to reach, except by helicopter. We often had no choice but to fly to the Y.

  “Guys, we made the decision to land on the Y because of the terrain surrounding the target,” the troop chief said. “We knew the risks going in that there was a chance the enemy could spook and haul ass.”

  It was becoming hard for us to justify ever landing on the Y because as soon as the fighters heard you coming, which was a few minutes before you actually landed, they started squirting or hauling ass away from the target. The only way it worked was when we could get containment on the target and block all the escape routes. If you aren’t on the ground ahead of the helicopters, all bets are off. You’re going to spend the night chasing squirters.

  We preferred to patrol into targets. It allowed us to keep the element of surprise and set up around the target to keep fighters from fleeing when the shooting started. I looked over at the recce team leader. His team planned the routes and set up snipers on target.

  “The routes into that specific valley are very limited, and the patrol would have been hard as hell, if we could even keep our timeline at that,” the recce team leader said.

  It would have taken us six hours to walk up the valley and over the mountain peaks. The recce guys weren’t sure we could make the timeline. Especially with the number of assaulters we needed to bring on the target. We had to take the Afghan commandos, our partner force, and two members from the conventional Army unit responsible for the valley.

  There was no doubt in anybody’s mind that neither the Afghan commandos nor the Army guys could have made the patrol. Let alone on the faster timeline that we would need in order to reach the target in time.

  Each year, since the beginning of the war, the rules of engagement had changed to match the political winds. At the time of this mission, partnering with the Afghans was the order of the day. A mission once reserved for the Special Forces was now getting farmed out to every unit from paratroopers to regular SEAL teams. We were being required to bring along Afghan commandos who couldn’t speak English and wouldn’t last two minutes in BUD/S. The Afghan commandos, on paper, were Afghanistan’s answer to our counterterror units. But in reality, the troops were only a slight upgrade from the regular Afghan soldiers running around the country.

  We also had to bring along a herd of other stragglers or enablers, like “battle space owners,” or BSOs, so they could witness the operation. These were American military soldiers stationed near the target. If the elders from the village came down to the nearest base to complain and accuse us of killing innocent farmers, the Army guys would be able to say they witnessed everything and defuse the situation.

  It made doing our simple things even harder. On several occasions because of weight restrictions on the helicopters, we bumped SEALs off the helicopter and the mission just to make room for an Afghan commando or a conventional Army BSO.

  “These BSOs and Afghan commandos just aren’t useful at all,” I said. “Is there any way we can talk to the higher-ups and explain to them how limiting they are to our mission?”

  The troop chief almost laughed.

  “You’ve been here long enough to know that this is what we’re stuck with,” he said. “This is the hand we’ve been dealt and we have to play it.”

  I shook my head and took a drink of my coffee. I did know the answer, but it felt good to say it. At least if we threw it on the table, the team could debate it or at least know dumping everyone who wasn’t a SEAL from the mission was considered.

  The AAR was spinning. If we tried to patrol in with our entire gaggle of people, we knew we wouldn’t make it. If we used helicopters and landed on the Y, we knew we’d spook the fighters and they’d leave. The troop chief finally jumped in and got us back on track. Nobody was specifically to blame in this AAR other than ourselves. No one person ordered us to land on the Y. We were all more pissed at the limitations of the rules of engagement, or ROE, as well as the fact that our target got away. As we went round and round, people began getting louder and louder and more and more intense. Pretty soon the whole AAR was breaking down and there were more emotions than cold hard facts or new ideas.

  “Look, guys, we have rules,” the troop chief said. “We didn’t write them, but we have to follow them. The key here is that we’ve discussed everything that happened right and everything that happened wrong. We take on board every single lesson we’ve learned and we don’t make the same mistakes twice.”

  I looked around the room, and some of the guys were nodding. I agreed with the troop chief. We couldn’t go back in time and fix anything.

  “The fact of the matter is we have to find a better way to hit these compounds,” the troop chief said. “These guys knew what they were doing. They ran when they heard the helicopters. Everybody needs to reflect on that fact for a minute. Stop pointing fingers at your teammates or at the rules of engagement and start focusing on the big picture. We took a swing and it didn’t work. Let’s figure out a better way next time.”

  The AAR got the issues out in the open and forced us to think outside of the box and communicate. We still needed to find a way to do an offset infil with all the extra people we were required to take on a mission.

  In the end, the AAR eliminated any infighting. Everyone had a chance to say their piece and air any concerns. It allowed us all to openly communicate. Frustrations were aired in that room and hopefully in that room only. Nobody carried on later because we all knew that this was the place and setting to let our voices be heard. Just the chance to communicate, with no sugarcoating, with no rank, and with complete openness and honestly, was what we needed to correct both big and small problems.

  I remember a particularly uncomfortable and very personal AAR after I became a team leader. It was in Afghanistan and it was shortly after Phil, my old team leader, was shot in the leg. We were in the middle of the deployment, so I wasn’t expecting to take over the team leader responsibilities until the following deployment. I was still getting used to having the added responsibility. Since I was a new team leader, I didn’t want to screw anything up. I knew my troop chief would be watching me closely. Luckily my entire eight-man team was more talented than I was and made being a first-time team leader much easier.

  The target, as usual, was a Taliban commander or facilitator. We’d tracked him to a bed-down location in a village near the Pakistan border. After we raided the compound and captured him, our troop chief put out the word to prepare for exfil.

  We all have our standard kit—weapons, night vision, body armor—plus we had additional gear like ladders and sledgehammers to breach doors. Every member of the team is assigned extra gear. I carried a set of bolt cutters on my back. I don’t know how many times someone would use them and set them down instead of returning the bolt cutters to me. This happened routinely with all the extra equipment that we would carry on a mission. When it came time to leave the target, I wouldn’t have all of t
he equipment that I was responsible for.

  Everybody was getting ready to leave. It was night and pitch-black and I wanted to make sure that everybody had their stuff. We were lining up to patrol back to the landing zone, and I got on the radio net monitored by my whole team and called Jake, call sign Alpha Eight.

  Jake had the ladder for our team, and I wanted to make sure he didn’t forget it. But I used a frequency that everyone could hear.

  “Alpha Eight, this is Alpha One,” I said.

  “Alpha One, this is Eight, go ahead,” he said.

  “Hey, you got your ladder?” I said.

  “Roger that,” he replied almost immediately.

  From there, I double-checked that I had a good head count for my team, then called the troop chief.

  “Echo Twelve, Alpha One. Alpha is ready to exfil.”

  Each team leader quickly checked in with the same, but none of them went to the extent of asking their individual guys if they had their extra gear.

  “Roger, recce take us out,” the troop chief said.

  Back at the base we immediately dropped our gear and sat down for the AAR. As we ended the exfil portion of our AAR, Jake raised his hand.

  “Hey, just curious why you had to get on the radio and remind me about my ladder?”

  “What do you mean?” I said.

  “Well, it’s my gear, it’s my responsibility,” Jake said. “I’ve never forgotten it before.”

  At first I was a bit taken back. I really didn’t know what to say. I was the team leader and I had the right to ask him anything I wanted. I could have gotten on the radio and asked him his shoe size or if he brushed his teeth that morning. But then it clicked. Instantly, I felt like an ass.

  “Good point,” I said.

  I sat there in front of the whole team, feeling like an asshole. I was so concerned about my team doing things correctly that I wasn’t paying attention to my own behavior. I’d become the team leader that I’d always hated, the micromanager. Sure, in the back of my mind I’d rationalized asking him about the ladder because it was a big piece of equipment that I wanted to make sure we didn’t forget on target. But what I didn’t do was trust my guy to be responsible for his own gear. Phil was always really good at letting us do our own thing. He trusted us to do our jobs and spoke up only when he had to correct you. I knew I had fucked up if Phil had to come talk to me. Otherwise, we were expected to know what we had to do. I’d wasted my breath and energy asking Jake about the ladder. Now I had to answer for my mistake during the AAR.

  “Did I remind you to bring your bolt cutters or even your gun tonight?” Jake asked me.

  “No,” I said.

  “Well, the ladder is my gear, it’s my responsibility, so I’ve got it.”

  Of course he knew what gear to carry. The way I’d asked sounded like I didn’t trust my teammates, and we all understood the importance of trust.

  “My mistake,” I said. “Good copy, roger that. I’m an ass and I get what you’re saying. It won’t happen again.”

  I was never mad at Jake. I was embarrassed and mad at myself.

  All the credit goes to Jake. He knew that the AAR was the perfect time to bring up my error. Had Jake not been honest enough to communicate with me directly, I probably would have done the same thing the very next mission and it would have become habit.

  Both the ladder AAR and the one after the mission when we lost the Taliban commander served the purpose.

  The day after the failed mission to capture the Taliban commander, we were out on a new target. There wasn’t time to dwell on the past. We all blocked out the last mission because we had to go back into harm’s way, as a team, without second-guessing the men to our left and right.

  But a month later, the troop chief came back to us with the same target.

  “You guys want to take another swing at these guys?” the troop chief asked.

  “Yeah,” I said. “Of course.”

  I was in the operation center with Steve. The troop chief was there with the recce team leader. On the flat screen were satellite photos of the target compounds and the valley.

  “He’s back at home,” the troop chief said, pointing to one of the compounds in the cluster. “Intel has him corralled to the exact same compound we hit before. He is there with a couple of buddies.”

  I looked at the compound and then looked at the valley as a whole. I wanted another shot. I’d let the first mission go and tried not to focus on the shithead getting away, but I wasn’t about to let him pass through our fingers again.

  “Your team has primary,” the troop chief said to me.

  My team could pick what we wanted to do on target.

  “I want to walk in,” I said.

  I loved the harder stuff. If there was more of a challenge, I ate it up. The harder the mission, the more I liked it. But I also knew the obstacles we faced on this target. The AAR had shown us the problems with our first plan. We had to find a way to keep the element of surprise or it wasn’t worth taking another swing at capturing or killing this guy.

  I looked at the recce team leader. He had a smile on his face.

  “I found a route,” the recce team leader said. “But we can’t do it with a big patrol.”

  “I agree. The last thing we need is that huge gaggle snaking its way through the mountains,” I said. “There is no way we’d make it.”

  We’d learned a valuable lesson the last time. I thought back to the AAR and why we took the helicopters the first time.

  “What about the commandos and battle space owners?” I asked. “Any way to get them in a different way?”

  We talked for an hour and finally came up with a plan that fit with the rules of engagement. My team of SEALs, combined with our recce guys, an Air Force Pararescue Jumper (PJ) and our troop chief would take a helicopter to a nearby valley and patrol to the target. Once we had containment set around the network of compounds, we would radio back. The other teams plus the battle space owner and Afghan commandos would come in by helicopter and land on the Y. We’d already be in place to handle any squirters and to commence the assault as soon as the helos touched down. We finally had a work-around. It had been developed during the AAR.

  We briefed the plan to the entire troop and grabbed our gear, and my team headed for the helicopters. We left hours before the main body and started to patrol. It was hot and we weren’t a kilometer into the patrol before my shirt was soaked with sweat. There was little moon, and if I hadn’t had my night vision it would have been impossible to see. For hours we walked up and down the hills.

  The patrol was long but uneventful. I kept my focus, hoping all this hard work was going to pay off. The last thing I wanted was to let these fuckers get away again. We’d come up with a great plan and were now putting in the work to make it happen.

  We finally crested the last hill and I could see the maze of compounds below. I checked my watch. We were on time. We quickly moved down and set up on the different alleys leading out of the small group of compounds. From the satellite images, we’d figured there were a couple of avenues out of the compound network. We split into teams of two and set up on each one.

  We moved silently down the hill. I kept my rifle at the ready as we got close to the walls. I was with another SEAL, my swim buddy, and we took a knee and waited. Overhead, ISR was keeping track of the compounds. There were no reports of movers. When all the teams were in place, I heard the troop chief come over the radio.

  “Birds are inbound,” the troop chief said. “Two minutes.”

  I looked at my watch. I could already hear the faint thud of the rotors as the helicopters flew up the valley toward the compounds. I wiped the sweat off my face with my sleeve. If the fighters were indeed in the compound, I expected them to start running for it any minute.

  Seconds later I heard the drone pilot over the radio
.

  “We’ve got two movers leaving the target compound and heading east,” the drone pilot said.

  That was all that I wanted to hear. We were set up to the east and ready and waiting for them.

  I knew from the satellite images they were headed down a long alley that split the cluster of six compounds in half. It was the same route they used the first time we hit the compounds. At the end of the alley, Bert, who was one of my newer guys, and an Air Force PJ were set up.

  “Coming your way, Alpha Four,” I said over the radio.

  “Roger,” Bert said.

  The rotors were loud now as the helicopter was landing on the western side of the compounds. I could just make them out in the cloud of dust. The radio crackled with reports as my teammates and the Afghan commandos fanned out and started moving toward the compounds.

  Seconds later, I heard the crack of suppressed rifle fire as Bert and the pararescueman opened up. The fighters—carrying AK-47s—got only a few steps out of the alley before running into Bert. The fighters were in a dead sprint. They looked up just as they cleared the alley and saw Bert and the PJ. The fighters tried to skid to a stop and raise their rifles in a weak-ass attempt to get some shots off. Before they even had a chance to level their AK-47s, Bert and the PJ fired multiple rounds into each fighter. They went down in a heap at the mouth of the alley.

  “Two EKIA,” Bert radioed.

  Both fighters were killed in action. I felt instant gratification. We’d gotten them. We’d missed on the first try but didn’t get discouraged. We’d talked through the failed mission—focused on what went right and what went wrong—and then found a new way to attack the target.

  You don’t often get a second chance in combat. We never counted on taking another swing at these guys, but we knew that the lessons learned from the first mission would help future missions.

  The AAR served its purpose, and because of it, the two Taliban commanders would never be a threat again. We had figured out how to work around the requirements placed on us while still operating within the rules of engagement. This mission and the lessons learned had been pretty straightforward. However, many AARs and the lessons learned in them aren’t so simple. Sometimes people die because we haven’t clearly communicated and learned from our mistakes.