Warrior Soul: The Memoir of a Navy SEAL (34 page)

As the APC passed, the gunner lifted two fingers, waving his hand back and forth, grinning in his tanker’s helmet, and flashing us a peace sign.

IT WASN’T DIEN BIEN PHU,
but it wasn’t good, either. We didn’t get it every day, but often enough. Often enough so we knew what was coming and who fired it the instant we heard it. We’d learned the sounds of RPGs, mortars, and Katyushas. We knew the crack of dud artillery rounds slamming into the runway, and where to find them after the barrage, stuck into the asphalt, busted-up Russian 122-millimeter shells that dumb-ass Druze artillerymen had forgotten to screw fuses into.

Beirut was a weird goddamn place, but it wasn’t half as strange as Washington, D.C. As the shells whistled in during mid-September, the commandant of the Marine Corps, General P. X. Kelly—certainly a man who should have known better—told Congress that “there was not a significant danger to our marines.” He went further to convince himself, adding that there was no evidence any of the rocket or artillery fire had been specifically directed against the multinational force.

Maybe he was right. Maybe they were shooting at our vehicles.

It was becoming apparent that Lebanon was a fixed idea in Washington. Who wanted it worse was also becoming obvious. The marines and sailors in the bunkers had no love for this place, and there was no love for us in the stinking, sweltering slums outside the wire. The multinational force no longer even pretended to control what happened in the city. The combined arms of an entire marine amphibious unit had not even been able to subdue Hooterville. In the Pentagon someone, somewhere, must have known how fucked and deadly this situation was becoming. There must have been one colonel, one captain, one prescient, fast-tracked major who looked at the pie charts, view graphs, shiny white papers and asked, “What the hell are we doing?”

But we were in, and politicians don’t like to pull out. Pulling out makes you look weak on communism, terrorism, fanaticism, or whatever “ism” it was that we went there to be hard on. So we stayed, and things quietly, insidiously, and inexorably got worse.

It happened very suddenly in October that the summer ended. There had been some rain before, just a little, but quite at once the days were cooler and the nights damp and cold. Dust turned in now-frequent rains to mud. And in the bunkers, rain beat into the sandbagged roofs with a comfortable, almost dreamlike sound. When the showers ended, the air was clear beneath broken clouds. The hills, which had simmered brown and distant in summer haze, were close and green, their roads shining wet, almost silver, in moments of sunlight. These were the pleasant days in which cease-fire after cease-fire deteriorated into a monotony of sniping, rocketry, and ambush. In the brilliantly fresh air, the sounds of gunfire carried with an effulgent clarity.

Like everybody else, I’d had my fill of this crazy six-sided war. The tour was telling on the lads as well. They were quieter. There wasn’t as much grab-assing as there had been at the start of the tour, and often they would just sit quietly in the bunker, eight of them, together. No one would say a word until I came down into the cool, quiet underground and gave a warning order for a jeep run or a recon. Then they would mount out, collecting gear and weapons and ammo like a platoon of mutes. It was dangerous outside the wire, but it was as dangerous inside. They weren’t fearful or disaffected, just tired. Oddly, we looked forward to operations, thinking, rightly, that we were safer in the bosom of the night than we were squatting in the bunker.

I had only one problem case: the assistant leading petty officer, Stan. He had done well on our Honduran adventure, but he’d been in a pointed decline since we landed. By the first weeks in October, he was useless to me and alienated from his platoon mates.

Stan had been an operator, but the whole Beirut trip had put him in the hurt locker. Although I’ll make no apologies for his conduct, it might not have been too difficult to argue that he was shell-shocked. In most other conflicts, SEAL Teams operated from secure rear areas, staging and planning missions, then penetrating enemy territory and returning to a safe haven. In the rear with the gear and the beer. In Beirut we operated against any of several antagonists, but our position on Green Beach was open to almost constant fire. With the exception of the occasions we staged from the ships or patrolled in the Seafox, we were constantly in harm’s way. We had certainly taken enough shit, but the only one who seemed to break down in it was Stan.

He was a small man, short and skinny in a juvenile sort of way. Although he was one of the older members of the platoon, his fair skin and black hair gave him a youthful, almost boyish look. Wally-world was no place for a family man, he would say. Making a show of pretended courage, he was sullen, sometimes overwhelmingly so, depending on the mail. He was the kind of guy who could not string together three sentences without mentioning his wife, his dogs, or his kids. The platoon had no interest in his family; to young bucks out in the world, wives and children are incomprehensible entanglements, and Stan’s family was simply another trait that set him apart.

During the shellings, he always took deep cover, sometimes curling up under his rack, wrapped in two flak jackets. Early in the deployment this earned him the nickname Mr. Safety. And it was only this epithet that gave him notoriety. The barb in it seemed lost on him. He cultivated the name, referring to himself as Mr. Safety again and again, until everyone was sick of it.

As the summer wore on and the sniper fire became more intense and accurate, he volunteered for nothing. Any reason to move beyond the vehicle barricade was “stupid” and the officers who gave such orders were just “looking for medals.” His pouts and ass-dragging were usually sufficient to piss off everyone around him. Sometimes the act was enough to get him removed from detail. He was an E-5, an electrician’s mate second class, and the platoon thought he was yellow. Sometimes his boat crew went to maneuver against snipers without him. After a while no one would even ask where he was during firefights. The squad would return to the bunker, someone would kick sand under his rack, and he would be there with one flak jacket over his chest and one over his legs.

In this way his authority gradually deteriorated until he had no effect on his men. If he even tried to give an order, Dave, Cheese, Rudi, and Doug would simply tell him to fuck off. Stan was a nonentity, and he knew it; this increased his isolation.

One October morning he ate breakfast with the boat crews, boxes of cornflakes and Parmalat milk, on the benches behind Rancho Deluxe. He spoke to Rudi and Dave, saying he’d had a dream, and in it the squad had been picked apart by a sniper and only he was left unwounded. He said that in the dream he had moved forward under fire, single-handedly taken down the sniper, and captured the weapon. As he spoke, I noticed quick glances between Rudi and Dave: Oh, Jesus, quit pissing on my shoes and telling me it’s raining.

I listened without speaking, and when his story was over, no one said a word. The only sounds were those of plastic spoons shoveling cornflakes. There had been heavy fighting the night before, the Druze and LAF in double overtime, and although only the usual shit had hit us on the beach, Stan had stayed buttoned down in the bunker while everyone else deployed to right flank in an attempt to spot artillery.

There wasn’t a person in the platoon who thought Stan could have such a dream. Cowards do not dream brave deeds. They dream of staying alive. Fear is the blood in their veins, and courage does not very often lie in weak hearts. His dream was a lie, and to the members of his squad, eating cornflakes on this blustery morning, it was only a lie like any other they had been told.

It was now mid-October. The French had launched air strikes against the Shouf, and U.S.S.
Dwight D. Eisenhower
’s aircraft, Tomcats and A-6 Intruders, roared overhead daily on recons. It was little more than an air show. As the overflights picked up, it was decided that the SEAL rotation should now include a boat crew staged aboard
Iwo Jima
as a combat search and rescue team. Frank took the first shift. Boat crew Alfa went aboard, staging parachutes, ammunition, arranging messing and berthing, and working with the CTF61 staff to prepare E&E (escape and evasion) plans in the event that we were deployed after downed aircrew. Every day a long-range CH-53E helicopter was designated as the CSAR contingency bird. Aboard
Iwo Jima,
the CSAR job was like being a fireman. The on-duty boat crew slept late, polished gear, and waited for an alarm. After months in the bunker, clean sheets, hot water, and good food aboard
Iwo
were a blessing. We came to look at the CSAR billet as our R&R.
Iwo
’s call sign was Crosswalk. When the CSAR billet was established, we started to call her Cakewalk. Doc led Bravo aboard the next week, got the drill, and settled in. We were next, and I promised myself that once aboard, I would embrace the philosophy of Epicurus and eat seven grilled-cheese sandwiches. The day before we were to rotate, Stan asked to speak to me. He asked if he could go aboard
Iwo
permanently as the CSAR petty officer.

“What do you mean, ‘permanently’?” I asked.

“I want to get off the beach,” he said, “until the end of the tour.”

“Everybody wants off the beach, Stan.” I started to walk away, but he followed me.

“I used to work in air ops,” he kept on. “I’m the best-qualified guy to check and maintain the parachutes.” He did his best to appear enthusiastic. “I could be the permanent CSAR team leader.”

“Steve’s got more experience in air ops,” I said. “I want you to stay with your boat crew.”

“Why?” he asked.

I wasn’t used to people answering my orders with an interrogative. Stan was passing from annoying to pathetic. I was blunt. “I don’t think I can count on you to lead a mission.”

“I could do it.”

“Then start acting like it,” I said.

That was that until a few weeks later. The shit continued, and one afternoon we assisted in the medevac of a badly wounded marine. We covered the LZ, a task made dodgy by the snap, crackle, and pop of incoming rounds. Dodgy and absurd, because during the dust off we did not receive permission to shoot back.

We popped smoke, and a Cobra gunship hovered nearby as the Huey put down, and from the BLT came a pair of marines carrying a stretcher. A navy corpsman in battle dress ran with them, crouching at a trot beside the dark litter. We jogged to the helo as the wounded man was shoved aboard. The marines ran back to the BLT across the cratered parking lot, and boat crew Delta jumped in through the Huey’s sliding doors. I was the last to board, giving the crew chief a thumbs-up as the engine howled, lifting.

Then, in the helicopter, the corpsman put his fingers on the bloody stretcher, turning the wounded man’s face so he could see it. My eyes were on Stan, pale, shaking, his gaze locked on the blood oozing across the deck. He gripped his rifle with both hands and closed his eyes. As the helo banked, I looked through the doors, out of the cabin at the beach, which flashed beneath us, the white surf, then water, green fading to cobalt. In the swirling wind of the cabin, the stretcher was now pooling with blood, an astounding amount of fluid, and I looked down at the wounded man’s hand. On it there was a gold wedding band.

The medevac touched down aboard
Iwo Jima
and then took us to
Portland,
where I was to meet Frank. Our uniforms were spattered, so I had the guys go below, change into new BDUs, get showers, and grab a hot meal. I was in my stateroom, having wadded up my blood-soaked uniform, showered, and changed. There was a knock on the door.

“Come,” I said.

It was Stan. He was still dressed in the cammies he’d worn during the medevac. “I need to talk to you,” he said. His voice was quavering. The knees of his trousers were still black with blood.

“Why don’t you get changed? Get some chow and come back.” I wasn’t trying to put him off; I knew that clean clothes and a meal would help him.

Stan stood there shaking. “No. I have been trying to get a chance to talk to you. I don’t think I can handle this anymore,” he said quietly.

I nodded at a chair, and he fell into it. He suddenly seemed lost in the folds of his cammies. A child pretending in the uniform of a soldier.

I didn’t know what else to say, so I asked, “What’s going on?”

“It’s everything. It’s being ashore.” His voice trailed off. “You don’t understand,” he murmured. “I don’t belong here. I have a family.”

“We all have families.”

“I mean kids.”

I wasn’t in the mood for a counseling session. I didn’t have any gung ho left in me, either. I wasn’t going to tell Stan to buck up and be a frogman: No one should have to put up with the kind of shit we were going through. We were targets. In two hours, when we left
Portland,
we would be targets again.

For a long time Stan sat looking at the deck. A tear rolled off his nose. “I want off the beach. I want to stay on the ship. I’ve had it.”

For a split second I was disgusted—pissed that one of my operators was sitting here begging to be placed into safety. But the anger went away in an instant, and it was not sympathy, kindness, or pity that settled me. Stan was nothing to me; over the last few weeks Stan’s fear and weakness had made me totally indifferent to him. I was calmed because I recognized what had made me angry. It was not the weeping, broken young man slouched in front of me. I will claim no supremacy of valor—I was reacting against my own fear.

Cowardice disgusted me because I feared it in myself. I did not hate weakness; I feared it. I feared that I would not be brave enough to lead my men. I was afraid that I would not be gallant enough, or wise enough, or proficient enough to safeguard the lives entrusted to me. My feelings for Stan had to be put aside, and I will tell you honestly that I cared nothing for him. His failings endangered men who daily did their best and better. My feelings for Stan were without even a leaven of pity, but his life had been entrusted to me as well.