Chapter 58
I still wonder sometimes if I made the right decision. In my mind, as long as I am fit and there is a war, my country needs me. Why would I send someone in my place? A part of me felt I was acting like a coward.
Serving in the Teams is serving a greater good. As a civilian, I'd just be serving my own good. Being a SEAL wasn't just what I did; it became who I was.
A FOURTH DEPLOYMENT
If things had worked according to "normal" procedures, I would have been given a long break and a long stretch of sh.o.r.e duty after my second deployment. But for various reasons, that didn't happen.
The Team promised that I'd have a break after this deployment. But that didn't work either. I wasn't real happy about it. I lost my temper talking about it, as a matter of fact. I'd guess more than once.
Now, I like war, and I love doing my job, but it rankled me that the Navy wasn't keeping its word. With all the stress at home, an a.s.signment that would have kept me near my family at that point would have been welcome. But I was told that the needs of the Navy came first. And fair or not, that's the way it was.
My blood pressure was still elevated.
The doctors blamed it on coffee and dip. According to them, my blood pressure was as high as if I were drinking ten cups of coffee right before the test. I was drinking coffee, but not nearly that much. They strongly urged me to cut back, and to stop using dip.
Of course I didn't argue with them. I didn't want to get kicked out of the SEALs, or go down a road that might lead to a medical discharge. I suppose, in retrospect, some might wonder why I didn't do that, but it would have seemed like a cowardly thing to do. It would never have felt right.
In the end, I was all right with being scheduled for another deployment. I still loved war.
DELTA PLATOON
Usually, when you come home, a few guys will rotate out of the platoon. Officers will usually change out. A lot of times the chief leaves, the LPO-lead petty officer-becomes the chief, and then someone else becomes LPO. But other than that, you stay pretty tight-knit. In our case, most of the platoon had been together for many years.
Until now.
Trying to spread out the experience in the Team, command decided to break up Charlie/Cadillac Platoon and spread us out. I was a.s.signed to Delta, and put in as LPO of the platoon. I worked directly with the new chief, who happened to be one of my BUD/S instructors.
We worked out our personnel selections, making a.s.signments and sending different people off to school. Now that I was LPO, I not only had more admin c.r.a.p to deal with, but couldn't be point man anymore.
That hurt.
I drew the line when they talked about taking my sniper rifle away. I was still a sniper, no matter what else I did in
Besides finding good point men, one of the toughest personnel decisions I had to make involved choosing a breacher. The breacher is the person who, among other things, is in charge of the explosives, who sets them and blows them (if necessary) on the DA. Once the platoon is inside, the breacher is really running things. So the group is entirely in his hands.
There are a number of other important tasks and schools I haven't mentioned along the way, but which do deserve attention. Among them is the JTAC-that's the guy who gets to call in air support. It's a popular position in the Teams. First of all, the job is kind of fun: you get to watch things blow up. And secondly, you're often called away for special missions, so you get a lot of action.
Comms and navigation are a lot further down the list for most SEALs. But they're necessary jobs. The worst school you can send someone to has to do with intel. People hate that. They joined the SEALs to kick down doors, not to gather intelligence. But everyone has a role.
Of course, some people like to fall out of planes, and swim with the sharks.
Sickos.
The dispersal of talent may have helped the Team in general, but as platoon LPO I was concerned about getting the best guys over to Delta with me.
The master chief in charge of the personnel arrangements was working everything out on an organizational chart that had been set up on a big magnetic board. One afternoon, while he was out, I snuck into his office and rearranged things. Suddenly, everyone who was anyone in Charlie was now a.s.signed to Delta.
My changes had been a little too drastic, and as soon as the master chief got back, my ears started ringing even more than normal.
"Don't ever go into my office when I am not here," he told me as soon as I reported to him. "Don't touch my board. Ever."
Well, truth is, I did go back.
I knew he'd catch anything drastic, so I made one little switch and got Dauber into my platoon. I needed a good sniper and corpsman. The master chief apparently never noticed it, or at least didn't change it.
I had my answer ready in case I was caught: "I did it for the good of the Navy."
Or at least Delta Platoon.
Still recovering from knee surgery, I couldn't actually take part in a lot of the training for the first few months the platoon was together. But I kept tabs on my guys, watching them when I could. I hobbled around the land warfare sessions, observing the new guys especially. I wanted to know who I was going to war with.
I was just about back into shape when I got into a pair of fights, first the one in Tennessee I mentioned earlier, where I was arrested, and then another near Fort Campbell where, as my son put it, "some guy decided to break his face on my daddy's hand."
"Some guy" also broke my hand in the process.
My platoon chief was livid.
"You've been out with knee surgery, we get you back, you get arrested, now you break your hand. What the f.u.c.k?"
There may have been a few other choice words thrown in there as well. They may also have continued for quite a while.
Thinking back, I did seem to get into a number of fights during this training period. In my mind, at least, they weren't my fault-in that last case, I was on my way out when the idiot's girlfriend tried picking a fight with my friend, a SEAL. Which was absolutely as ridiculous in real life as it must look on the printed page.
But taken together, it was a bad pattern. It might even have been a disturbing trend. Unfortunately, I didn't recognize it at the time.
PUNCHED OUT
There's a postscript to the story about "some guy" and my broken hand.
The incident happened while we were training in an Army town. I knew pretty much when I punched him that I'd broken my hand, but there was no way in h.e.l.l that I was going to the base hospital; if I did, they'd realize I was (a) drunk and (b) fighting, and the MPs would be on my a.s.s. Nothing makes an MP's day like busting a SEAL.
So I waited until the next day. Now sober, I reported to the hospital and claimed I had broken my fist by punching out my gun before I actually cleared the doorjamb. (Theoretically possible, if unlikely.)
While I was getting treated, I saw a kid in the hospital with his jaw wired shut.
Next thing I knew, some MPs came over and started questioning me.
"This kid is claiming you broke his jaw," said one of them.
"What the h.e.l.l is he talking about?" I said, rolling my eyes. "I just came in off a training exercise. I broke my d.a.m.n hand. Ask the SF guys; we're training with them."
Not so coincidentally, all of the bouncers at the bar where we'd been were Army SF; they would surely back me up if it came to that.
It didn't.