Damn Few

by Rorke Denver

  “Raising the flag,” he announced to the assembly, “is a very special duty. I need an assistant to join me today.”

  He looked out at the students.

  “Me, me, me!” the kids shouted, their hands shooting up. It seemed like everyone wanted this job.

  “Let me review the troops,” Mr. Barry said, sounding even more serious than he usually did. “I have to see who makes muster.”

  He walked up and down the ranks of students, stopping several times before moving along. Then he stopped next to me. “To raise Old Glory,” he said, “it should be another man in uniform.”

  He and I marched to the front of the assembly. We raised the flag and saluted together. He took a medal off his uniform and pinned it on my chest before I returned to stand with my class.

  That alone didn’t quiet the bullies completely. But it gave me a much-needed shot of confidence, and I was never afraid to wear my Scout uniform again.

  Over the years, my mom dated some great guys and some real colorful characters. My dad was my biggest adult-male influence, but I’ve always felt I was the product of many fathers. My mom’s boyfriends and my various coaches definitely influenced me as well. From them, my brother and I learned some of our very best lessons about how to be—and how not to be—a man. Thinking back, I can barely imagine how hard it must have been for the mom of two overactive boys to be working, attending grad school, and keeping a love life going, too.

  Russ was a 250-pound, retired-Marine tough guy who worked as a deputy sheriff. It was Russ who taught me how to look a man in the eye and give a firm, confident handshake. He was big on that sort of thing. He gave Nate and me military-style crew cuts. We hated that. He was always trying to pit us against one another. He must have gone home scratching his head because, try as he might, he could not split us apart. He certainly wasn’t the most paternal guy. But he did like competing, and he definitely liked to win. So when my mom told him about the trouble I was still having with the school bullies, he decided to teach my brother and me some basic boxing moves. “Just in case,” he said. We thought that was fun. When Russ heard a special Career Day was being held at my school, he really sprang into action. Other kids’ parents would be telling the students what it was like being a doctor or a lawyer or a computer executive. My mother’s burly boyfriend said he’d come and show the kids what boxers do.

  I don’t imagine Mr. Barry was too charmed by Russ’s kind offer. Really, how many Bullis-Purissima students would be pursuing boxing careers? But there was big Russ arriving at school with a duffle bag of Everlast boxing gloves and a large, shiny bell. He set up a temporary ring on the playground, where he gave a quick talk on the boxing basics—hooks, jabs, crosses, and uppercuts—before the practical demonstration began.

  “We will fight one-minute rounds,” Russ announced. “Winner stays in the ring.”

  He just so happened to pick me for the first bout. He paired me up with Ernie, one of my least favorite bullies. Several other parents who were there for Career Day wandered out to watch. I will never forget the excitement I felt as Russ clanged the opening bell.

  I went at Ernie fearlessly. Pow! Pow! Pow! At his chest. At the side of his head. Straight into his face. Yes, training in advance can be a huge advantage, a lesson I am happy I learned so young. I wasn’t quite ready for the Golden Gloves finals. But I was Mike Tyson compared to my bewildered classmate. Within fifteen seconds, the bully-boy’s nose was bleeding, and soon he quit the fight. I then proceeded to beat, bloody, or bruise—sometimes all three—the next four boys I was paired against. One by one, they left the ring demoralized. The only bummer was that the last kid I fought, Ishmael, was someone I actually liked. I had to make it look like I was pounding him while making sure I didn’t hurt him at all. It was a special day for me, and I did not take any grief from any of my classmates from that point on.

  Sports kept serving me like that, helping to build my confidence and my sense of identity. On the court, on the field, or in the pool, I always felt comfortable and naturally in charge. In the years to come, I don’t think I played on any athletic team without being chosen captain. That’s where I got my first tastes of being a leader. I liked that role, I learned, and many people did not. I might have sat in the back of the room in math class and hoped the teacher didn’t call on me, but I never hung back on the field. I wanted to be the lead guy. I wanted to have the ball when the game was on the line. I liked taking the final shot when everything was riding on my shoulders. That’s a lot of responsibility. Most people worry that everyone will be mad at them if they fail. I just felt comfortable in that position, and I grabbed it every chance I got.

  “Just shoot,” I remember my dad telling me on the basketball court one day. “You won’t win the game by not shooting. Someone needs to put the ball into the net. Someone needs to take the shot.”

  Without even knowing it, I was setting myself up to be an officer in the Navy and a commander in the SEALs.

  It wasn’t until I got to Los Altos High School that I began to find my place in the crowd. Our school had lots of cliques, as many high schools do. The brainiacs. The cool kids. The stoners. I got along with most groups. But I found my footing in sports, even though I wasn’t exactly a stereotypical jock. I got physically stronger in my freshman year. I started playing water polo and really enjoyed it. I grew my hair long, my own personal rebellion against Big Russ’s junior-Marine fantasies. I wore corduroy pants with sandals. I liked vintage pullover and colorful T-shirts. We didn’t do our shopping at high-end Nordstrom like the wealthier kids. But I had my California casual attitude, and I never liked seeing other kids get picked on.

  Water polo is a tough, physical sport, kind of like wrestling for a couple of hours in the deep end of a pool with hardly any breaks. It takes a lot of stamina to be good at water polo. Freshman year, the coach asked if I wanted to play for the varsity squad. I talked to my dad and a couple of other people and decided, “No, I’ll play JV instead.” To this day I’ve regretted that decision. The varsity team was much stronger, and I think I could have held my own with the big guys. Always I pushed myself harder than anyone else on the team. That was a huge advantage over my peers. The voice of my dad was inside my head: “You can do this. Just give it your all.”

  During practice, I would never lose a sprint late in a workout. Everyone else would be exhausted, and I’d just push some more. It was basically a test of who had the most guts. When I was a senior, it was known that you were not going to keep up with Denver at the end of a workout. Then one day, we were running pool-long sprints. It was the varsity and the junior varsity together. On each sprint I could see one other boy on the far side of the pool get to the wall just a split second after me. He’ll drop off soon, I figured. I won’t see him much longer.

  But on the final sprint, he was still there, and we were body lengths ahead of everyone else. When we hit the wall that last time, barely a second apart, I finally looked over at who’d been able to keep up with me. It was my freshman little brother, Nate. Always pushing hard—that’s who the Denver boys were.

  I was getting looked at to play water polo at most of the big-name college programs in California. But by the time I had to make a decision, I wasn’t sure I wanted to go that way. Back in eighth grade, at a summer cabin with my cousins in upstate New York, my mom had bought my brother and me a couple of lacrosse sticks. We didn’t know the game, but Mom taught us the basics—how to use the sticks to scoop up the rubber ball and toss it back and forth. When my high school started a club lacrosse team my sophomore year, I signed up. Most kids who go on to play Division I lacrosse in college have been playing since they were big enough to hold a stick. I’d only played three years. But I went to a one-week lacrosse summer camp at Syracuse University, where both my parents and my grandfather had attended college. At the end of the week, I was recruited by the coaches there. Lacrosse bumped water polo aside.

  Syracuse has one of the most dominant lacrosse teams in the
nation. Johns Hopkins, the University of Virginia, and Princeton are always in the mix, as are a few other East Coast schools. Syracuse has more NCAA National Championships than any other school. I knew if I decided to go to any other major power in the lacrosse world, I most likely would have cracked the starting lineup my freshman year. I also knew that if I went to Syracuse, I would have to scrap it out with the best of the best, and that appealed to me.

  I was one of the very first kids from California recruited to play for a major East Coast lacrosse power. As the sport has grown, all the big programs have recruited players from all over the country. But I was an anomaly back then. And when I showed up for my recruiting visit, I didn’t look too much like a typical northeastern high school jock. I was much more California in my surfer T-shirt, hiking boots, and thick, dark hair down my back. Don’t go looking for any ancient photographs. I’ve already burned them all.

  I was honored to wear the Orange jersey, number 16, and play as a long-stick midfielder and close defender for legendary Coach Roy Simmons Jr. in the Carrier Dome. Coach Simmons taught us many things. None was more important than an utter disdain for mediocrity. I became incredibly close to my Syracuse teammates Colsey, Photo, Sammy Dukes, Toby, K-9, and my closest friend, Oak. Like my brother had, those guys taught me lessons about being a team member and looking out for each other. In my four years at Syracuse, I was a member of two national championship teams. I was a team captain and all-American my senior season.

  It was at Syracuse that I got the nickname that stuck with me all the way through my SEAL days. I arrived on campus at 180 pounds. When I realized that wasn’t big enough for the type of Division I player I wanted to be, I started spending extra time in the gym. That spring, when we divided the team for an upstate-downstate practice game, I was up to 200 and feeling strong.

  About halfway through the game, an upperclassman who used to rag on me for being from California was breaking out on an outlet pass. The goalie lobbed the ball to him. As he looked over his shoulder, I had an open, ten-step shot at him, as clean a hit as there is in lacrosse. It was a dream moment for me, a chance to legally crush someone who’d been busting on me. I dropped my shoulder and hit him so hard he fell to the ground, looking dazed.

  Coach Simmons ran over.

  “Man, I’m not sure what hit me,” the upperclassman said.

  “It looks like you got run over by a diesel pickup truck with California plates,” Coach Simmons said.

  At dinner that night, the team was still talking about that hit of mine. “Damn, Denver,” said Ricky, one of the team’s real stars, “you’re twenty pounds bigger than you were. Coach was right. You are a diesel pickup. From now on, I’m gonna start calling you Diesel.” And it stuck. At Syracuse and later, Diesel sometimes got shortened to “D.” My family still calls me Rorke. But hardly any of my friends do.

  Being from California and looking a little shaggy when I arrived weren’t the only things that made me stand out from my hard-charging Orange teammates. I wasn’t a drinker, and that was definitely unusual in the world of college lacrosse. I’ve never minded if other people drank. Most of the people I know, including most of my relatives, like to take a drink. But I never have. I never believed drinking would make me a stronger athlete, and I’d gotten to know a couple of problem drinkers, including one of my mother’s boyfriends. I just never wanted to start.

  Not drinking could have been a real problem for me at Syracuse. Lacrosse is a famously hard-partying sport. If you made the travel team as a freshman, you got invited to a party run by the seniors. It was called Rookie-Bring-a-Bottle Night. Each new freshman was expected to come to the party with a bottle of hard liquor, and you’d better choose it carefully. Chances are, you’d be drinking most of it by the time the night was done. I wasn’t planning to start drinking that night. But based on the excitement of the seniors, I was pretty sure I needed a plan.

  The toughest man on the team was one of our captains. Reggie was his name. My locker was right next to Reggie’s. He was a beast and one of my idols. He came from a local family of legendary tough guys. He was a lot bigger than I was, a former wrestling champion. But I’d given him a solid hit one day in practice, and I think it earned me some grudging respect. “You know, Denver,” he’d said to me that day, “you’re a lot tougher than we thought you’d be, coming from California.”

  I found out Reggie liked Jack Daniel’s. I brought a bottle with me to the party house, arriving a little late. I could see the seniors eyeing me as I came in. I had a pretty good idea what they were thinking.

  I walked past everyone and found Reggie in the back. I placed the bottle of Jack on the table in front of him.

  “This is for you,” I said. “I don’t drink, and I am not starting tonight. If you all want to test that, it is going to take all of you. And whoever gets their hands on me first is going to regret it.”

  Reggie just smiled. He didn’t say a word.

  I walked back out to the porch, where most of my freshman buddies were already well on their way to drunken oblivion. I waited for whatever was coming next. From the porch, I could see four or five seniors, all consulting Reggie. I couldn’t hear what they were saying. But I liked their body language. Reggie seemed to be telling them that if they wanted to get me, have at it. But he was not interested. Nobody touched me that night. Which is lucky, I know. I could have held my own against most of the lacrosse players. But brawling Reggie would have been tough. It made for one of the greatest nights of my life, proving that almost anything was possible with a well-thought-out plan.

  I ended up choosing fine arts as my college major. My athletic-academic advisor had suggested speech/communications, saying some Syracuse jocks had discovered it wasn’t too time-consuming. But I wasn’t looking for the easy way out. I took a couple of art and art history classes. I liked them, and I kept taking more. I loved being exposed to great thinkers and great ideas. Fine arts isn’t too common a major for serious lacrosse players or future SEALs. But it ended up serving me well. The rest of my life I’d be surrounded by quantitative types, who had studied math or science in college and tended to see the world in black-and-white. Every organization needs some of those. But studying fine arts made me far more comfortable dealing with the nuances and complexities of real life, as any leader must.

  Until senior year, I never thought seriously about joining the military. Not too many people from my high school or my college had shown much interest in enlisting. Neither of my parents served that way. During the Vietnam War, my dad had gone down to the Army recruiting office to enlist. But his thick glasses and poor eyesight medically disqualified him. After a short stint as a college crew coach, he went off to law school.

  We did have a war hero in the family, and I’d heard some stories about him. My father’s father, Thomas Rorke, was an Army Air Corps navigator in World War II, flying a big battle plane called a B-24 Liberator. After a very successful run, he was killed in operations in the Pacific Theater. I never knew him, of course. My dad didn’t either. He was two months old when his father was killed. When my dad was ten, his mom married a New York City police officer named Dan Denver, whose name she and the children took. Yet my father grew up always knowing his father was a war hero. As an adult, my dad didn’t talk about his father all that much. But he and my mom did name me for that side of the family. And when my father got together with his uncles and his cousins, they loved telling wild family stories. The Rorkes were a tough, fun, brawling breed of Irish immigrants who came to America from County Offaly. My great-grandfather was a New York police inspector. Even beyond my name, I think I have a lot of Rorke in me.

  But ancestry alone didn’t open my eyes to the idea of military service. That took a book in the mail from my father. All through college, he sent books to me. I thought of them as sequels to the Elephants, the Argonauts, and those other books he’d read to us as children. senior year, he sent me a copy of My Early Life, by Winston Churchill. I knew Churchill had been
the prime minister of England and an important figure in World War II, but I’d never read that much about him or anything he’d written. I certainly wasn’t patterning my life on his, and I’m quite sure that wasn’t my father’s intent. But in the book, Churchill wrote about his time in the field as a young, frontline officer in the British Army and as a war correspondent overseas. The way he described that world, it sounded unimaginably exciting and profoundly consequential to me.

  There is nothing like the dawn. The quarter of an hour before the curtain is lifted upon an unknowable situation is an intense experience of war. Was the ridge held by the enemy or not? Were we riding through the gloom into thousands of ferocious savages? Every step might be deadly. Yet there was no time for overmuch precaution. The regiment was coming on behind us, and dawn was breaking. It was already half light as we climbed the slope. What should we find at the summit? For cool, tense excitement I commend such moments.

  He talked about his days at the Royal Military Academy at Sandhurst and the excitement of being a real-life combat leader in Cuba, South Africa, and the Sudan. With the benefit of hindsight, he laid out the strategies behind his battlefield decisions and the impact they had. He explained in moving detail what was going through his mind as he went off to war and then came home. He shared his hopes and disappointments about the state of Britain’s large but fading empire. He described his techniques for psyching out the enemy and motivating his men. He detailed the high standards he set for himself and felt responsible to meet. There was a level of focus and a higher purpose and, yes, a sense of romantic adventure in Churchill’s words that struck me like a lacrosse stick across the head. He thought so deeply. His command of the English language was so strong.

  It sounds presumptuous, I know, to say I felt like I’d found a kindred spirit in Winston Churchill. But he was saying things that resonated profoundly with me. He shared his reactions across a spectrum of insight, emotion, and spirituality that I had never experienced before. I swear he was talking straight to me.