Damn Few

by Rorke Denver

  That Super Hornet is one sinister-looking aircraft. It’s also loud enough to shake the trees.

  “I got flares left,” the pilot said. “Let me see what I can do.”

  Four minutes later, he was banking past our location, launching his countermeasure flares, burning-hot phosphorous canisters de signed to ward off inbound enemy rockets by disrupting their heat-seeking mechanisms.

  It was pure shock and awe. Screeching up the river. Screaming down the bank. Shrieking over the hillside where the shots came from.

  The daredevil Blue Angels had nothing on this guy. He flew so close to the river, I thought the water was going to erupt. It was an impressive presentation. I can’t say for sure what the shooters made of all that empty drama. But it must have scared the hell out of them. Their assault on us ceased immediately.

  The pace we kept was just ferocious. No days off. No real breaks. Nothing. Day missions, night missions. We never slowed down. A raid to take down a house, a five-hour operation, and we might do two or three of them a night. We’d get the intel. We’d take down the house. We’d bring the prisoners to the holding facility. Then the guys would go back to the base, clean the gear, make sure the trucks were ready to go out again. With my two junior officers and a couple of key platoon mates, I’d go to the TOC, the Tactical Operations Center, to write up the operational summary. Some nights, we didn’t get done until 4 a.m. Collapse. Then we were up again by 8 a.m., planning or launching another operation. From the second we started until the second we dropped, it was always scorching outside. We were wearing body armor. We were walking down streets and inside houses and up on roofs. On those roofs, the tar was more like a swimming pool. Up and down, in and out, sometimes getting into gunfights, sometimes not—but never slowing down.

  As our deployment wore on, I noticed something disturbing. We were still getting the job done, but little things were going wrong. A tire was flat. Someone forgot a radio. Two guns that weren’t working had to be fixed. Somebody screwed up the navigation computer and we had to turn back. No one got hurt as these things were happening. But we were causing messes for ourselves. We seemed a little more clumsy, a little less nimble.

  It seemed to me like we were losing our edge. It wasn’t dangerous yet. But it was a noticeable contrast to how smoothly things had been running before.

  What the hell is going on here? I thought to myself.

  I discussed it with the task unit commander, my boss and good friend who was overall in charge of Task Unit ALPHA.

  “Rob,” I said, “I think we’re riding for a fall here. I don’t know if we’re pushing it too hard or we’ve been at it too long or what exactly the reason is. Maybe a combination. But something’s gonna go wrong. I don’t know how the leadership feels, but I say these guys could use a break. How ’bout if we take a couple of days and let them all relax.”

  I wasn’t sure if I’d get pushback from Rob. I didn’t. “You got your pulse on the guys,” he said. “If you think they need a break, break ’em. None of the missions we have in our deck won’t be here two days from now.”

  So that’s what we did. We took a little break.

  We had a mission already set for that night. As usual, the team was all jacked up and ready to go. I went in to brief the mission like I always did. I think the teammates were all surprised by what they heard.

  “Hey,” I said, “I feel like we’re in a bad spot right now. Everybody’s tired. We’re making mistakes, the type we can’t afford. We’re not gonna make it with everyone running on empty like this. So the mission’s off tonight. We’re not going out. Keep your gear on. Load up in the trucks. We’ll have some good food. I think everyone’s ready for decent chow. Everybody will get a big block of sleep. When we get up in the morning, let’s relax and have some fun for a change. You guys figure out what that’s gonna be.”

  We drove to the main mess hall on the other side of the base for pizza, ice cream, and an array of other high-calorie, high-taste, low-nutrition food. That dinner was one of the best meals I ever had.

  On the way out, someone stole some pizza dough from the dining room. A SEAL from our predecessors at Team One had built an ingenious, wood-burning pizza oven from a fifty-five-gallon drum. SEALs can be resourceful, even beyond the battlefield.

  The next morning, the guys broke up into teams for a reverse-hand softball game. The righties played left, the lefties played right. Playing backward like that, these guys were some of the worst athletes in history. But everyone had fun. We had a highly competitive water-balloon fight with the Marines, using a surgical-tubing launcher as our support-by-fire weapon. SEALs don’t know how to abandon their aggressive tactics even in a water-balloon fight. Eating, smoking some cigars, we had nothing but fun for the next two days.

  We found some inflatable Zodiac boats in a storage facility near Lake Habbaniyah, and one of our guys showed up with a wakeboard—where did he get that?—and spent a couple of hours pulling SEALs around the lake. As I stood on a ridge looking down, watching my guys briefly unplugged from all the tension of war, I felt like I’d stepped into that scene from Apocalypse Now, where Robert Duvall asks the new guys from California in his air-cavalry unit to surf the point break, even though bombs were coming in. That may not be a standard operating procedure in any combat zone, but I knew for a fact it was what we needed at the time. When we got back into the battle, we were fresher, sharper, and more energized. We had the steam we needed to get us to the end.

  Seven months is not long in the course of a lifetime. I have seven-month stretches in my life that I can barely remember. But the members of BRAVO Platoon packed so much life and death into that mad seven-month deployment in western Iraq, I wasn’t sure how much more I could ask of them. Like our exhausted boat-mate Coop during Hell Week, our whole platoon had really given everything they had. A new platoon was arriving. Our stay was coming to an end.

  We had a responsibility to turn over our region to the incoming team. Their senior leadership arrived a month early. They started joining us in planning missions and coming out on patrol. When the rest of the new team showed up, everyone got a taste of the battle space.

  It’s never easy, turning over to another team all that you’ve been fighting for. I’m sure it was hard for SEAL Team One, who turned the region over to us. No matter how you explain it or what you show them, the new team doesn’t fully understand the whys and hows of what you’ve done. You’re trying to jam an intense seven months of combat experience into a short two-week turnover window. But life goes on, and so does the fighting. War by its nature is always a team sport. We’d had our chance. If, as SEALs say, “All our lessons are written in blood,” we had to share them willingly with the new guys. And we did. We pushed it to the end. The week we were scheduled to leave Iraq, we were still conducting missions.

  That last week, on the Wednesday, I was out on yet another op. It went well. We were home by 2 a.m. I knew our turn was almost over. I wrote up my last after-action report and at about 3 a.m., I was ready for bed.

  “No more missions for you, huh?” Rob, my task unit commander, asked me. “That’s it?”

  “Not for me,” I said. “Nick’s going out in the morning.” Nick was one of our assistant officers in charge, a smart young leader with good things ahead. He was taking a patrol on another dangerous route to the northeast. This time, I wasn’t on the force list.

  Rob slapped me on the back and said, “Good night.”

  I got back to my barracks room and got cleaned up. I was putting my gun down, straightening up my gear and getting ready for bed, when a thought occurred to me: Unless they shoot our plane down, I’m gonna make it home.

  I had looked at Nick’s plan already. He knew what he was doing. He was taking armed Humvees then going out on foot patrol with the usual mix of SEALs and Scouts. I figured I’d stop by for a word with him before I hit the rack and encourage him for the morning.

  The light was on, and he was still poring over details when I stopped
by. “Plan looks good,” I told him. “Everything looks fine.” We’d done that a hundred times already.

  “You want me to come, Nick?” I asked him.

  “No,” he said. “You don’t have to, LT. We’re good.”

  But as I stood there, ready to say good night, something in the back of my brain was nagging me.

  I couldn’t shake the feeling that if something went wrong out there and one of our guys got hurt, if the mission went south in any way at all, I would never forgive myself for staying in bed and missing the last mission of my deployment in Iraq. It didn’t matter what Nick said.

  “I’ll join you,” I told him.

  After a couple of hours’ sleep, I was back up again. I threw my gear on. I got outside just as they were loading the trucks.

  Although I’d read Nick’s plan, I hadn’t even been in the mission brief. So going along really wasn’t such a good idea. As I climbed into the truck, I smiled as I thought to myself, Man, if I lose it on this mission, won’t that be the bitch.

  I knew it was overkill, being out there. Thankfully, the patrol that morning was totally routine. We exchanged a few rounds of fire with some roving bad guys. We took no casualties, and as far as I could tell neither did they. But just being out there this one last time gave me a real feeling of confidence. The SEALs who were replacing us seemed to know exactly what they were doing. This shouldn’t have come as a surprise, I know. They were trained the same way we were, but it sure was nice being with them and seeing with my own eyes. Working with their leaders, Nick had integrated the new team seamlessly into our battle plan, and I knew our efforts would be continued. The gains we had made would be held and expanded on. The new guys would move the ball another ten yards down the field.

  The way theater airlifts worked, we couldn’t all fly home together. A few of my teammates went home before I did. Some stayed a few days later. But everyone was back in San Diego within two weeks of each other. Only then did I allow myself to feel anything like relief.

  We had our close calls. A sniper bullet came through an open door but only a fragment hit one of my guys. I still believe that bullet was fired from a mosque. Cams was on a roof with a few other boys when a grenade went off. Some of the fragments caught him in the upper body and face. He earned a Purple Heart for that one. When I saw him, he was, no exaggeration, covered in blood.

  Truly, it was amazing how lucky we were. Ro was the turret gunner when a huge IED went off, knocking everybody out. They all woke up together and alive in the Humvee. They staggered a little. But they all returned to base.

  I’ve been to funerals, too many. But I never had to go to a funeral for one of my platoon mates. As an officer in charge of a SEAL platoon, you don’t make every call. So much is happening fast and on the go. A lot of calls my team members make on their own. That’s a special thing. People are making complex decisions all the time. But I also knew that the ultimate responsibility for BRAVO Platoon of Task Unit ALPHA was mine.

  That is the very definition of the burden of command. It’s the weight of knowing you have in your hands the lives of your closest teammates, your very best friends, the future of their families and loved ones.

  All of these men said at the start they wanted to be there. All of them were happy they had come. And they all felt hugely grateful they were going home. They knew the horrors and hardships of war and knew what could happen on the battlefield. Every teammate of mine recognized and accepted that the worst could happen until the moment they were home.

  There’s a different understanding of fate on the battlefield. If you are a devout person, that may provide some comfort or some explanation. Religion is something people can fall back on. You may believe your every move in life is guided by a greater power. That may explain who lives and who dies.

  If the worst happened, as it had to Mark and Mikey, we’d hold a little ceremony in the theater at the base. Then that teammate’s body would be escorted back to Dover Air Force Base in Delaware. And even before that happened, a teammate in uniform and a chaplain would be walking up a stairway or onto a family’s front porch. They’d deliver the worst news the family would ever hear.

  It would be right for the officer in charge of a fallen teammate to deliver that news to his family. Any one of us would do it if we could. I’d met all those families, the mothers and fathers, the wives and children. We’d spent time at barbecues and beach parties and bonfires. I’d gotten to know many of them. Delivering that news would have been one of the most gut-wrenching moments of my life. But that is not how it happened, and that is one of the experiences of war I am grateful to have missed.

  We’d had this most active and violent deployment. An amazing group of warriors had done a phenomenal job. The momentum had started shifting in Anbar Province. Fewer snipers, fewer mortar attacks, a genuine reduction in support for al Qaeda. We’d had a measurable impact on the region.

  And everyone I brought to war, I brought back home.

  It’s a point of pride and satisfaction and gratitude for me.

  13

  KILLING SCHOOL

  And now the youth

  was to enter the line of battle with his lord,

  his first time to be tested as a fighter.

  His spirit did not break and the ancestral blade

  would keep its edge, as the dragon discovered

  as soon as they came together in the combat.

  —BEOWULF

  * * *

  The house is not always the right one. Our intelligence may be mistaken. Maybe it’s not a bomb factory or a safe house. Maybe it’s a husband, a wife, and six children who just happen to live in a dangerous neighborhood. When we’re wrong, we do what we can to make amends. We pay reparations to fix the door. We get whatever intel we can. And we move on.

  But still.

  I can only imagine how scary it is to be in a house in Iraq or Afghanistan when the SEALs come blowing through the door. These are people living in another era. They hardly have electricity at night. And all of a sudden fifteen or twenty-five of what must look like Terminators are flooding the house. We are physically bigger than they are. We have large weapons and body armor. With the eerie green glow of night vision, we appear almost otherworldly. It must be terrifying and maddening at once.

  I know how I’d feel if foreign troops came busting through the door of my house in San Diego. I’d be worried about the safety of my wife and daughters. I wouldn’t want invaders stomping around where we live. I’m sure I’d feel something precious was being violated, whatever their business was.

  I know I’d want to respond, and it wouldn’t be politely.

  Nevertheless, house raids were something we had to do in the battle zone. The thought of it didn’t keep me up at night. It didn’t mean I couldn’t go out again tomorrow. But as many houses as we raided, I never forgot that feeling. And neither, I’m sure, did the Iraqis who lived there.

  * * *

  I can’t say for certain when I first killed someone. It was in Iraq. I know that much. It was in Indian Country with my guys. It may have been in a gunfire exchange across the Euphrates River. It might have been the morning we narrowly dodged an ambush on the road to Fallujah and then doubled back to pop the insurgents from behind. It could have been in any one of many firefights with mobile mortar boys. But that’s all just conjecture.

  Gunfights are a lot murkier in real life than most people realize. Because of movies and TV, people expect a gunfight to be decisive and clear. Onscreen, we get the benefit of a director’s trained eye and such great camera angles, we see everything vividly. We see the gunfight from the bad guy’s perspective and the good guy’s perspective—the far angle, the close angle, every little detail. And no one ever dies without falling to the ground in front of a camera. Even if the scene’s wildly chaotic, the whole purpose of movie and TV gunfighting is to let the audience know who just killed whom. In Tombstone, the hapless Thomas Haden Church doesn’t have a chance against Val Kilmer’s dea
deye Doc Holliday. In Taxi Driver, there’s no doubt that Robert De Niro’s Travis Bickle blows away the Times Square pimps. The carnage is right there on the screen. Even when no one dies, there is rarely ambiguity in a movie shoot-out. In Terminator 2, Arnold’s under strict orders from John Connor to harm no human beings. So Arnold demolishes the police cruisers with his mini-gun until panicked cops all run in terror.

  But the sight lines don’t always cooperate in real battlefield gunfights. No one’s keeping score in a live-fire war zone, and often, the results can’t be easily verified. When I’d be out with my platoon in Iraq, we’d get shot at from a tree line or a palm grove or a building across the river. We’d usually return the fire. Sometimes we could see the bad guys—exactly who was shooting from what window or from behind which tree. Sometimes we could only tell that someone was shooting and we were the target.

  A sniper usually knows. He’s on a scope. His shot can be confirmed in the moment. He selects the target, pulls the trigger, and, more often than not, can see if the shot connects and how. But for most of us in active combat, rolling right, rolling left, shooting at moving targets, it was often hard to tell if we were fighting one or fighting twenty guys. And often we didn’t know exactly how many, if any, we had hit.

  Then, one day it happened right in front of me.

  When I meet people and they hear what I do, they sometimes say to me, “You’re a killer.” Yes, I am. I do not shy away from that at all. To me, that is in no way an insult. Warriors exist and train for that eventuality. That’s the business I have chosen. It’s an important one. My duty is to be guided by just principles and to do it well.

  Like so much else in the lives of SEALs, my preparation as a killer built up gradually over the years. And it started back at BUD/S, where the firearms training was as realistic as it could possibly be. We began with paper targets—but not just any paper targets. Every one of them featured a real-looking bad guy with a gun, a rocket, a grenade, or a knife. No circular bull’s-eyes in SEAL training. That may seem like a tiny detail, but it gets you thinking from the start about who is on the other end of our firepower and what flying lead can do to them.