Combat Swimmer (31 page)

He and the other Joint Chiefs had watched the battle unfold and had been considering calling off the operation until I sent back the code word saying we had the governor general safe. They were listening on the SATCOM net when I radioed from the ship to my commanding general, and a big sigh of relief went around the table. Admiral Watkins said that at that point they all knew the outcome of Urgent Fury was no longer in doubt. When I replied that the credit and praise belonged to Duke, the admiral said something to the effect that since I was in command I should take whatever praise was given, because I sure as hell would have taken all the blame. At any rate, I knew who deserved the praise.

Later, I reflected on what had happened in Grenada. We'd done some good things, but we'd lost four men and not gotten the combat-control team to Salines airport. What really troubled me was the incredible confusion at all the Joint Headquarters units during the planning phase. The solutions to that set of problems were way above my pay grade, but I knew if things didn't change before the next operation, we'd again be at the end of a flailing whip.

 

I had been surprised at how much resistance we'd met in Grenada. Despite all precautions, the Cubans had known we were coming at least two days before the operation. “Don't worry about the Cubans. The engineers will stay in their barracks!” I still remember those words. The day before we arrived, Cuba had sent to Grenada a very senior colonel, veteran of much combat in Angola. There was evidence that he instituted defensive measures that probably cost U.S. lives. Army Rangers and helo pilots died who otherwise might not have. And with Cubans present the Grenadans offered more resistance than they would have on their own. Left to their own devices they surrendered at the first opportunity, as they did at the governor general's. At the radio station, with Cuban leadership, they fought and maneuvered well.

In retrospect, I think the State Department did all it could to resolve the situation diplomatically, without military force. That's the mission of the State Department, and if they can't succeed at diplomacy they'll try to limit the violence. Some overzealous officials probably divulged more information than they meant to, in exchange for assurances that the “engineers” would stay out of our way.

The State Department thinks it has failed if the military has to be called in. The United States had never come to grips with military force as a part of diplomacy. Rather, the military is a last resort, to be used after all diplomatic efforts have failed. Then the press gets all over the military for “excessive force” and all involved try to cover their political asses and blame each other. The military says it was called in only after the diplomats blew it, and the diplomats say that the military is always spoiling for a fight. In other crises, after Grenada, it always frustrated me that we were never brought in until we were the only option and the bad guys knew it. As a result, we never had the element of strategic surprise.

The confusion was another serious concern. Urgent Fury was planned and executed in a hurry. It was a complex operation, made more complex by the introduction of last-minute command-and-control changes. Urgent Fury, as it turned out, was not the type of operation the Joint Headquarters had been planning for since its inception in 1980. Rather than being a small-scale operation—quick-in and quick-out, with minimal opposition at the objective—Urgent Fury was a fight-your-way-in, fight-your-way-out operation.

It was also the first time since Vietnam that SEALs had seen combat. In Vietnam we had planned and executed our own operations, but in Urgent Fury we were part of a large task force and subject to factors beyond our control. Also, in Vietnam SEALs eased into operations after lengthy predeployment training. The first few times platoons went into the field after arriving in Vietnam were usually “break-in” operations in which they could make their mistakes under controlled conditions. In Grenada, we didn't have the luxury of a mission-specific rehearsal.

In retrospect, I do consider Grenada an overall success for SEAL Team Six. It wasn't pretty, but we got the most important missions done. We lacked essential equipment such as military radios, light antitank weapons, and reliable boats that would have made our task easier. But our people made up for these inadequacies with ingenuity, quick thinking under fire, and plain old bravery. I put a number of men in for personal decorations, and all were approved. The command received the Joint Meritorious Unit Award.

Duke and his assault team rescued the governor general and held his mansion until relieved—about eighteen hours longer than we had been told we'd have to. (Units from the 82nd Airborne Division were to have relieved our assault teams within four hours after H-hour.)

Before they had to pull out, Kim's team knocked Radio Grenada, which was spewing rallying cries for the Communist forces, off the air by destroying the transmitters.

The mission to put Air Force combat-control people at Salines airfield failed because our Whalers couldn't handle the weather and seas off Grenada. Air Force planners had started the chain of problems by not ensuring the first air drop was done in daylight, as we had insisted and they had agreed.

Despite our successes, Urgent Fury showed the command was not as operationally ready as I wanted. Plus, my unfamiliarity with the operating procedures used by the Joint Headquarters played a role in a lot of our problems. Bottom line: I was the commanding officer. I accepted the Admiral's praise and I accepted full responsibility for our shortcomings.

We had to go back to SEAL basics and move forward again.

 

In taking over SEAL Team Six, I was reminded of SEAL Team Two from 1966 to 1968. Six just hadn't been tested in combat. The men were dedicated and had a clear mission, and I didn't want to make a lot of immediate policy changes just to be making changes. (I did make
one
policy change: we'd do our drinking only after work was done.) I wanted to get to know the command better before I started to “mark my territory.” Unfortunately, we were sent into combat before I could do that.

After Grenada, I realized I had to change the command's belief in its own press. I had to foster self-confidence, but within the context of knowing one's limitations. As I was making the rounds during turnover, I kept hearing, “We're so good, we're two years ahead of the state of the art.” Catchy phrase—but not the mind-set I wanted.

Urgent Fury also showed shortcomings in our readiness and planning procedures. I told Seal Six's officers and chiefs that our organization had to be ready to plan and fight in accordance with whatever stringent schedule was laid on us by our operational commander. I wasn't going to accept an ad hoc approach to mission planning anymore. We would establish and train a cadre of operations, intelligence, logistics, and communications planners. The planning cadre would go to the Joint Headquarters at the earliest indication that something was up. We had to have communicators who could closely link with our operational commander's communicators. Never again would I accept being cut out of the communications planning, after the problems that had caused in Urgent Fury.

I told my operations officer to keep one of our officers or senior enlisted in the operations section at the Joint Headquarters permanently, not just when the staff down there asked for someone. We had to know what they were doing before the train left the station—this was a key to our future readiness.

In the future, too, I wouldn't run off to the Joint Headquarters before I was sure we had things well covered at Six. At the Joint Headquarters, I was effectively cut off from my planning base and dependent upon the operational commander's staff for information. They had their own business to worry about.

Finally, regardless of what the operational commander's staff did, we were going to go to Zulu (Universal) time for all operations and exercises in the future. In all my years with the SEALs, Urgent Fury was the only occasion on which I saw the standard military procedure of using Zulu time violated. Doing that had caused us to jump in the dark instead of daylight as we had planned.

 

In the three years before I arrived, Six had been funded at levels well above other SEAL Teams, and at their expense. Given all that money, Six's lack of fundamental SEAL Team mission-essential equipment was baffling.

Within six months after Grenada we had military radios, antiarmor weapons, and a new mix of small arms, designed to deliver maximum firepower with increased accuracy. We had new boats capable of operating at sea. We developed new parachuting procedures for the boats and the men, replacing the MC-1 static line parachutes and their two-point “capewell” release system with MT-1 square canopies and their simple, reliable single-point release system. Then we rehearsed and rehearsed, until I was certain we could do that complex, dangerous operation at night, at sea, without a problem.

SEAL Six also had trouble with command integrity. In the three years since the command had been formed, each assault team had gone its own way, with different standard operating procedures, different emergency procedures, and different equipment. Even their basic patrolling hand signals were different. Going from one to the other was as big a change as going from one SEAL Team to another.

I had to develop a system to ensure we were all singing off the same sheet of music and to tell me if anyone was hitting wrong notes. I needed to review our training and develop standards to measure how well we could do our mission. In June 1983, before relieving Dick Marcinko, I asked to see training records for the two assault teams. The training officer told me they were training so hard, they didn't have time to keep records. Under Marcinko, the Team had been training hard for three years, but I had no way of knowing how well they could do certain procedures. We implemented standards and measured our ability to meet them. The process eliminated bullshit: you either met the standard or you didn't.

As the training standards went up I could see the command improving in all aspects. The Team leaders and chiefs worked the men hard. Like all SEAL Teams, in order to train realistically we had to get out of town. This was a problem. I'd increased the numbers of assault teams to allow the men more training time and time off. But for the duration of my tour the average man was spending more than 280 days a year away from home. They didn't seem to mind; they were there to operate and fight. But we were violating Navy policy, which called for men to be away from home no more than 180 days per year. I had no choice.

At least with three assault teams the men could take leave occasionally. The only one of us who took no time off during my three years in command was me. I couldn't have been comfortable on leave; I'd have spent the time thinking about Larry Barrett tearing down the taxiway to catch the plane. Becky was the happiest person on the block when I left Six in July 1986.

The true measure of any organization is the ability of the key members to make critical decisions without consulting the leader. I knew we were ready when I was paged one night late in 1985 while eating dinner with Becky at a Pizza Hut (big spender Bob). The code on my beeper was the one for real-world immediate recall—drop whatever you're doing and head for the Team, because we're going to war. “What the hell? I'm the only one who's supposed to authorize this code,” I thought. I called the Team. My operations officer answered, and before I could ask what was going on, he told me he'd gotten a call from the Joint Headquarters saying that a C-141 would be at a local military airfield soon to pick us up for an operation. Knowing I'd approve, he authorized the code. I took Becky home, and by the time I got to Six, all the gear and people were already loaded on trucks and headed for the airfield, along with our boats—ahead of schedule.

Generally I was in my comfort zone, but not completely satisfied. Satisfaction causes complacency. Complacency causes screwups. At Six, we weren't allowed to screw up. In the years after Grenada, we got very good at doing the things we needed in order to carry out our missions.

A
s a rapid-deployment force, SEALs had to deal with any contingency. In the 1980s that came to include terrorism. During the
Achille Lauro
mission we would also learn a tactic we had no training for: diplomacy.

On October 7, 1985, I was in Washington. It seemed I was always in Washington, trying to push our requirements through the bureaucracy. This day I was in the SEAL resource sponsor's office, trying to get him to help us get the manning increase we'd been promised after Grenada, nearly two years ago.

The good captain listened as I explained why I needed additional SEALs now and said, “Sorry, Bob, the other Teams need people too.”

“Don't give me that. You and I know no other Team has the same mission and readiness requirements.”

Later, when I remembered that conversation, I thought, “Too bad he couldn't have gone back to my headquarters with me.” As soon as I walked in the door of my office, my operations officer came in and told me the
Achille Lauro
, an Italian cruise ship with a lot of American passengers aboard, had been hijacked just after sailing from Alexandria, an Egyptian port on the Mediterranean. Within hours, we were on a C-141 heading that way. En route, we developed a good plan to recover the ship and free all the hostages. Meanwhile, before we reached our forward operating base, the PLO ordered the hijackers to return to Alexandria and turn themselves in to the Egyptian authorities.

When we landed in the afternoon of October 8, the commanding general of the Joint Headquarters and I went over the situation. The
Achille Lauro
was heading for Alexandria, but our orders remained in effect. Simply stated, we were to recover the ship and free the hostages. Ready to go, we continued to refine our plan, but because Air Force transport had a slow reaction time key equipment and people I needed to carry it out had not yet arrived. They didn't get there until it was too late to conduct the mission under cover of darkness. To act in the daytime would have been too risky for the passengers, because the hijackers could spot our approach to the ship.