Chapter 65
I wanted to go back to the war. I felt I'd been cheated on my last deployment. I struggled, trying to decide what to do. Some days, I was through with the Navy; other days, I was ready to tell my wife the h.e.l.l with it, and reenlist.
We talked about it a lot.
Taya:
I told Chris that both our kids needed him, especially, at that particular time, our son. If he wasn't going to be there, then I would move closer to my father so that at least he would grow up with a strong grandfather very close to him.
I didn't want to do that at all.
And Chris really loved us all. He really wanted to have and nurture a strong family.
Part of it came down to the conflict we'd always had-where were our priorities: G.o.d, family, country (my version), or G.o.d, country, family (Chris's)?
To my mind, Chris had already given his country so much, a tremendous amount. The previous ten years had been filled with constant war. Heavy combat deployments were combined with extensive training workups that kept him away from home. It was more heavy action-and absence-than any other SEAL I knew of. It was time to give his family some of himself.
But as always, I couldn't make the decision for him.
The Navy suggested that they could send me to Texas as recruiter. That sounded pretty good, since the job would allow me to have regular hours and come home at night. It looked to me like a possible compromise.
"You have to give me a little time to work this out," said the master chief I was dealing with. "This isn't the sort of thing that we can do overnight."
I agreed to extend my enlistment a month while he worked on it.
I waited and waited. No orders came in.
"It's coming, it's coming," he said. "You have to extend again."
So I did.
A few more weeks pa.s.sed-we were almost through October by now-and no orders came through. So I called him up and asked what the h.e.l.l was going on.
"It's a Catch-22," he explained. "They want to give it to you, but it's a three-year billet. You don't have any time."
In other words, they wanted me to enlist first, then they would give me the job. But there were no guarantees, no contract.
I'd been there before. I finally told them thanks, but no thanks-I'm getting out.
Taya:
He always says, "I feel like a quitter." I think he's done his job, but I know that's how he feels. He thinks if there are people out there fighting, it should be him. And a lot of other SEALs feel that way about themselves, as well. But I believe not one of them would blame him for getting out.
RYAN GETS MARRIED
Ryan and I remained close after he returned to the States; in fact, our friends.h.i.+p grew even stronger, which I wouldn't have thought possible. I felt drawn to him by his tremendous spirit. He'd been a warrior in combat. Now he was an even greater warrior in life. You never completely forgot that he was blind, but
He had to get a prosthetic eye made, because of his wounds. According to LT, who went with him to pick it up, he actually had two-one was a "regular" eye; the other had a golden SEAL trident where the iris ordinarily would be.
Once a SEAL, always a SEAL.
I'd been with Ryan a lot before he got hurt. A lot of the guys on the team had a wicked sense of humor, but Ryan was in a cla.s.s by himself. He'd get you in st.i.tches.
He wasn't any different after he got shot. He just had a very dry sense of humor. One day a young girl came up to him, looked at his face, and asked, "What happened to you?"
He bent down and said, in a very serious voice, "Never run with scissors."
Dry, droll, and a heart of gold. You couldn't help but love him.
We were all prepared to hate his girlfriend. We were sure she would leave him after he was torn up. But she stood by him. He finally proposed, and we were all happy about it. She is one awesome lady.
If there is a poster child for overcoming disabilities, Ryan was it. After the injury, he went to college, graduated with honors, and had an excellent job waiting for him. He climbed Mount Hood, Mount Rainer, and a bunch of other mountains; he went hunting and shot a prize trophy elk with the help of a spotter and a gun with some bad-a.s.s technology; he competed in a triathlon. I remember one night Ryan said that he was glad it was he who got shot instead of any of the other guys. Sure he was angry at first, but he felt he was at peace and living a full life. He felt he could handle it and be happy no matter what. He was right.
When I think about the patriotism that drives SEALs, I am reminded of Ryan recovering in a hospital in Bethesda, Maryland. There he was, freshly wounded, almost fatally, and blind for life. Many reconstructive surgeries to his face loomed ahead. You know what he asked for? He asked for someone to wheel him to a flag and give him some time.
He sat in his wheelchair for close to a half-hour saluting as the American flag whipped in the wind.
That's Ryan: a true patriot.
A genuine warrior, with a heart of gold.
Of course we all gave him s.h.i.+t and told him somebody probably wheeled him in front of a Dumpster and just told him it was a flag. Being Ryan, he dished out as many blind jokes as he took and had us all rolling every time we talked.
When he moved away, we would chat on the phone and get together whenever we could. In 2010, I found out he and his wife were expecting their first child.
Meanwhile, the injuries he'd had in Iraq required further surgeries. He went into the hospital one morning; later that afternoon I got a call from Marcus Luttrell, asking if I had heard about Ryan.
"Yeah. I just talked to him yesterday," I told him. "He and his wife are having a baby. Isn't it great?"
"He died just a little while ago," said Marcus, his voice quiet.
Something had gone wrong at the hospital. It was a tragic end to a heroic life. I'm not sure any of us who knew him have gotten over it. I don't think I ever will.
The baby was a beautiful girl. I'm sure her father's spirit lives on in her.
MIGHTY WARRIORS
After her son's death, Marc Lee's mom, Debbie, became almost a surrogate mother to the other members of our platoon. A very courageous woman, she has dedicated herself to helping other warriors as they have made the transition from the battlefield. She's now president of America's Mighty Warriors (www.AmericasMightyWarriors.org) and has done a lot personally for veterans through what she calls "random acts of kindness" inspired by Marc's life and a letter he wrote to her before he pa.s.sed away.
There's nothing random about Debbie; she's a dedicated and hardworking woman, as devoted to her cause as Marc was to his.
Before he died, Marc wrote an incredible letter home. Available at the site, it told a moving story about some of the things he saw in Iraq-a terrible hospital, ignorant and despicable people. But it was also an extremely positive letter, full of hope and encouraging all of us to do some small part for others.
To my mind, though, whatever he wrote home doesn't adequately describe the Marc we all knew. There was a lot more to him. He was a real tough guy with a great sense of humor. He was a gung-ho warrior and a great friend. He had unshakable faith in G.o.d and loved his wife with might. Heaven is surely a better place because he's there, but earth has lost one of its best.
CRAFT
Deciding to leave the Navy was hard enough. But now I was going to be out of a job. It was time to figure out what to do with the rest of my life.