No Hero: The Evolution of a Navy SEAL

CHAPTER 12 Killing Compartmentalization

Even though the command had given us a few days off after returning from the mission, I still found myself back at work. I needed to get back to the same routine as I’d had in past deployments.

I wanted to control something. It was comforting to pull up to the building, go to my cage, unpack all my gear, and zone out for a bit. I really wanted some solitude.

I’d never felt anxiety after a mission. I was always able to handle the stress, but now it was messing with me. I wasn’t sleeping. I was on edge. I didn’t want to talk to anyone, and I was even dodging calls from my family.

I heard a buddy who was also on the raid open up his cage just down the aisle from mine. The cage area was pretty quiet, so I gave it a second and walked over. He had his gear out and was doing the same thing I had been doing, attempting to hide in his work. He was slowly putting his gear away but looked up when I walked into his cage.

“Hey, bro,” I said. “What are you up to?”

“Not much, figured I’d clean up some of my gear,” he said.

I could see the thick circles under his eyes. He looked tired. The command is a tough place. To an extent, we’re a pack of wolves. A group of alpha males taught to never show weakness. I’d known this guy for years and we’d been in some pretty shitty situations together. I trusted him with my life, but admitting weakness was something else entirely.

“Can I ask you a quick question?” I said softly.

“Sure, what you got?” he said.

“Are you sleeping?” I said in almost a whisper.

He continued to unpack his bags, and after a long pause he looked back up at me.

“Nope,” he said.

He shook his head when he said it and then turned away.

“Me neither,” I said. “I haven’t gotten more than an hour since we got back.”

That was the single deepest conversation I ever had about combat stress.

I’ve been through shooting courses. I can go rock climbing, ride a dirt bike, drive a boat, and handle explosives. The government spent millions of dollars training me to fight in the jungle, arctic, and desert. I took language courses and I can parachute at night and land right on target. But I’ve never been trained to handle the stress of combat. We spent months learning how to be SEALs and hours of every day keeping those skills sharp, but we got no formal training dealing with any of the emotional stuff.

Before I joined the SEALs, I wondered if I would actually be able to pull the trigger. Could I defend myself? I only really thought about it before I became a SEAL because once I was on missions I didn’t have time to think about it. I was in my three-foot world.

Everything I did overseas was considered work. I snuck into people’s houses while they were sleeping. If I caught them with a gun, I killed them, just like all the guys in the command. I’ve been in massive gunfights and I’d put guys down without thinking about it. I don’t regret my actions in combat. Everything I did overseas was done to protect the guys to my left and right, and my country. I obeyed the rules of engagement and never targeted innocents.

But that doesn’t mean it didn’t fuck with me. To this day, if you ask Phil about “the cat,” he’ll tell this story of a 2006 mission in Iraq.

The unmanned drone flying over the target reported seeing a half dozen men sleeping outside. It was summer in Iraq, and even at night it was too hot to stay inside without air conditioners. The village was really just a cluster of about ten squat, adobe-style houses. I didn’t see any power lines coming into the village as we patrolled, so we expected people to be sleeping outside.

We closed slowly on the village just before three in the morning. Since we’d gotten off the helicopter two hours before, it had been a long march to the village. The desert was flat and wide open and it was hard to see the horizon, even with my night vision goggles down. The village could have been on the moon. Nothing surrounded it for miles except sand and rocks. Above me, the stars were thick and bright. Now, close to the houses, the march was one slow step at a time.

It was 2006 and we’d been fighting in Iraq for three years. My troop was working in western Iraq. A tip brought us to the village. ISR spotted fighters and we spun up. The whole process was pretty simple by this point. We were doing it every day. Find, fix, and finish.

It was hot and I could feel the sweat pooling around my back where my body armor stopped. The troop chief gave the word and we moved into a large “L”-shaped formation and started to close on the village.

The base, or bottom, of the “L” was going to set up just outside of the village and, if needed, provide a base of fire and cover our movement. The vertical part of the “L” was going to move through the village searching for fighters. I was in the second group.

On the radio net in my ear, I heard updates from the other assault teams. I knew that circling above us and just outside of audible range, we had drones to give us eyes in the sky and an AC-130 to cover us in case we needed immediate close air support. I scanned over to where the drones reported seeing the sleepers. I could make out about ten bedrolls.

A pair of men stood, scanning the desert. They weren’t talking, or at least it didn’t appear so. It looked like they were straining to see into the blackness of the desert night.

Did they hear something?

I was sure they couldn’t see us. Maybe they heard the AC-130 above. Finally, one man moved over to where the others were still sleeping and began waking them up. His partner never stopped scanning the open desert. I could see the others getting up, slowly, and start looking around.

While the others got moving, the pair of men walked toward the nearest house. The others eventually followed. None of the men had guns so we couldn’t open fire, but it was definitely suspicious to see a large group of men sleeping on the outskirts of the village. Where were all the women and kids?

The group was halfway to a house on the edge of the village when they stopped. The entire group turned and started to walk back to their bedrolls. We were about two hundred meters away and I could see every one of the men clear as day in my night vision.

When they got back to their bedrolls, I could see them grabbing AK-47s, RPGs, and even a belt-fed PKM machine gun. Multiple IR lasers popped on and zeroed in on the chests of the fighters as our snipers went to work. Seconds later, three of the enemy dropped. The others panicked and started running back toward the village. Suppressed rounds continued to pour in on them.

I counted five dead fighters. By this point in the war, we were very conscious of not running to our death, so we paused for a moment. The base of the “L” stayed in place. We were hoping the enemy hadn’t noticed the rest of us off to their right flank. Our position hadn’t fired yet in an effort to stay undetected.

Within minutes I heard the troop chief’s voice over the radio.

“OK, guys, the base is going to hold position and the maneuver is commencing assault at this time.”

This meant that the maneuver, or our side of the “L,” was going to start slowly clearing our way through the buildings. We’d done this a million times before and the tactic was nothing new. The simple “L” ambush or assault has been used throughout history.

I made a quick check of my gear and took a knee and waited for the order to move.

“OK,” I heard the troop chief say over the radio. “Take it.”

Our entire element got up and began slowly bounding forward in pairs. Two or three SEALs would slowly make their way forward with guns at the ready, stopping a short distance ahead of the next group. They would then take a knee and hold security while the rest of the unit bounded past them.

It wasn’t fast, and I’m sure it wasn’t sexy, but it was the safest way to close on the enemy. Especially when we’d already lost the element of surprise.

I could see a few lasers scanning doorways. The natural instinct is to move quickly, but we continued to move at a glacial pace, always ready to open fire at the first sign of trouble. We were just about to enter the village when we saw four men in a dead sprint racing back to the bedrolls.

“Looks like these guys forgot something,” I heard over the radio.

These guys must have had balls of steel to attempt a dead sprint back to retrieve their guns, especially since their weapons and bedrolls were now littered with the bodies of their dead friends.

I was less than one hundred yards from them. I raised my gun and zeroed in on the first guy in the group. He looked anxious as they sprinted, his eyes wide. He practically slid to a stop, his chest heaving, and started to root through the folds of his bedroll. The first man got to his bedroll and knelt down. I could see him pull out an AK-47.

I put my laser on his chest and fired. My teammates also opened fire. We all hit the same guy in rapid succession, spinning him down. Our rounds kicked up a little dust cloud, covering the area where the man once stood. I tracked to the next guy, only to watch as he fell forward in a heap. One by one, I followed our lasers to the next target until all four were on the ground, unmoving.

Again, we paused to assess the situation.

I took a knee and began scanning the surrounding buildings, waiting for any more “heroes.” Phil, my team leader, took a knee next to me, and I could hear him whisper.

“That was interesting,” he said. “I guess they really want to fight. Let’s take it slow and careful tonight. These guys mean business.”

“Let’s keep moving,” the troop chief interrupted over the radio.

Phil and I got up and continued moving toward the closest building. I stopped at the doorway and waited. Phil squeezed my arm to signal me to go inside. The house was small, with a foyer leading to a single room. The house was muggy inside, and I didn’t see anything as I scanned the room. A rug covered the tile floor and a ratty sofa sat at one end. I could hear my teammates moving into the kitchen just off the foyer.

I quickly moved through the main room and entered a sleeping room. No one was inside, but I could see mats and pillows on the floor. The house was deserted.

“One building clear, at least fifteen more to go,” I thought as we started toward another house.

Maybe the house was empty because the civilians that lived there left when the fighters showed up. Or maybe it was connected to the fighters and they’d fallen back and were still waiting for us in the dark. I cleared my head and tried to focus back on the task at hand.

My team spent the next thirty minutes clearing house after house. I was behind Phil later as we walked up the road. The village was a maze and we hadn’t run into any more fighters. We knew they hadn’t just disappeared. They had to be there somewhere. I scanned every doorway and window, watching for a fighter to pop out.

Up ahead, I caught a glimpse of a guy peering out of a door. He was tucked back in the doorway, but not far enough. I could see the muzzle of his AK-47 as he waited for us to come closer. Thankfully it was dark. At least it was dark to him. We had our night vision goggles.

I wasn’t sure Phil saw him at first. The man pulled his head back quickly and I saw Phil’s laser shine on where his head once was. The man slowly slid his head back into view as he attempted to get a look at our position. Phil’s laser was now on the man’s forehead.

I heard several suppressed shots from Phil’s MP7, and the man’s head disappeared from view.

I held security on the road and additional buildings as Phil and the rest of the team entered the doorway where the fighter once stood. The house was on the far side of the group of buildings we’d just cleared.

I looked back at the door after Phil and the team went inside. I could see the Iraqi fighter’s feet in the doorway. Over the radio, I could hear my teammates working with the AC-130 to track down two squirters.

Two fighters ran through the village, popped out the other end, and tried to hide by running out into the open desert. They stood out immediately on the infrared cameras carried by the ISR and AC-130. A team of four SEALs and a combat dog raced out of the village after the fighters. The AC-130 banked and headed toward the group. I was keeping track of their progress on the radio. Finally, I heard the thump of the AC-130’s guns.

When my teammates got to the bodies, it was a shocking scene. It looked like one of the fighters was blown completely inside out. A round from the plane’s one-hundred-and-five-millimeter howitzer must have hit him. The one-hundred-and-five-millimeter shell is twice the size of a bowling pin, and it can do some serious damage.

Back in the village, I was still holding security when Phil’s voice came over the net.

“Alpha Two, Alpha One,” Phil said, using our call signs. “Need you in here.”

I keyed my radio.

“Roger,” I said. “Coming in.”

I stepped over the fighter’s body and saw Phil and two of my teammates searching the main room. The gun the fighter had been holding was leaning against the far wall of the foyer. Phil had taken the magazine out and cleared the chamber.

I looked back at the dead fighter. His head was lying away from the doorway leading to the main room. Had the fighter not exposed himself in the doorway, there was a good chance neither Phil nor I would have seen him. If he’d had a little patience, he would have had the jump on us.

Phil had clearly popped him with a great shot. The bullet hit him just above his nose, flush in the bottom of his forehead. Half of his face was torn off, leaving one good eye staring blankly at the ceiling. Blood was slowly pooling up around the back of the fighter’s head.

I started to look away when a flicker of movement caught my eye. A ratty-ass-looking calico kitten, its fur matted to its skinny rib cage, was at the edge of the blood pool. I have no idea where it came from, but it wasn’t uncommon to see cats prowling around the villages in Iraq. The kitten sniffed at the pool, and then I saw its pink tongue dart out and lick the blood.

I expected to see dead bodies, and I had more or less gotten used to it by this point, but there was something about the ratty cat and the blood that didn’t seem right. I didn’t expect it. It was pretty fucking gruesome.

I turned away and started to search the house. I saw a doorway just off the foyer and stepped through it. It led to a small hallway, and I walked through it into the kitchen.

Pots were stacked on the counter in haphazard piles. The whole room smelled of cooking oil and spices. A hole in the ground for the cooking stove was positioned in one corner. I started to move the pots, looking for weapons or anything left by the fighters. The area was secure, so I wasn’t quiet. I was digging through a cabinet near the door when I heard something behind me.

It sounded like a sob or a whimper.

I swung around, one hand on the grip of my rifle, and saw a small child huddled in the corner. He was balled up behind a pile of blankets, and my teammates must have missed him in the initial clearance. I squatted down to get a better look at him. I wasn’t sure if he was injured. His hair was matted. His tears washed away some of the dirt from his cheeks. He looked as ratty as the cat licking blood in the foyer.

I looked back over my shoulder and realized that from his vantage point, he would have seen the man in the foyer as he was shot. I had no idea if the man was his father or just a fighter hiding in the house. Either way, he’d watched us shoot the guy and probably saw the cat licking the puddle of blood.

“Wow, I’ve seen some crazy shit, but this poor kid is going to be fucked up by this the rest of his life,” I thought.

The kid was shaking he was so scared. He probably thought we were going to kill him too. Plus, I figured with all of my guns and gear strapped to me, I looked pretty menacing.

The kid continued to quietly sob. I slowly slid a chemlight out of my vest and popped it. The stick slowly lit as I shook it, bathing the room in a green hue. I also slid out a Jolly Rancher and held it out to him. The kid wouldn’t look me in the eye at first.

I shook the chemlight.

“Hey, buddy,” I said. “I’m not going to hurt you.”

I knew he had no idea what I was saying. My only hope was he got my tone. Slowly, he looked up. He was sizing me up, trying to gauge if I was a threat. I tried to smile, but I knew in all my gear a smile wasn’t going to be enough.

He looked away and then quickly snatched the chemlight and candy. He didn’t eat the candy; instead he just clutched it in his hand. I got on the radio to figure out where we were consolidating all the women and kids. They were in a house not far away, so I stood up and waved at him to follow me.

He didn’t move at first.

“Come on, buddy,” I said. “I’ll take you over to the others.”

He didn’t understand me, so I took his hand and led him out of the house. I tried to block his view of the dead fighter and the cat, still licking at the pool of blood.

“That was fucked up,” I thought. “This kid couldn’t be older than five years old and he witnessed the whole thing.”

We walked through the village. I could hear a few of the women and kids sobbing when I got to the house. A teammate was at the door keeping watch. When the kid saw the other children and women, he let go of my hand and walked into the middle of the room. I didn’t linger. I had work to do and I knew the kid was safe now.

As I walked back to the house to continue my search, I could still picture the cat licking the blood, and the kid watching from across the room as the man’s head was blown off. But I quickly pushed the image out of my mind and resumed my search.

I didn’t have time to dwell on it. After missions, I blocked it out. I know some guys who make a big deal about killing. I’d shot people from long distances and shot people at point-blank range. But I always rationalized it this way: If I hadn’t shot the enemy, he would have killed one of my swim buddies or me. I didn’t need another explanation.

But that still didn’t make it easier when I got back home to the real world.

My first deployments were like drinking from a fire hose. I didn’t know the process; I didn’t know what to expect. But after thirteen deployments, I got really good at turning things on and off. I compartmentalized the stress and kept it out of my stateside life.

I remember driving home from our base immediately after returning from the Iraq deployment. There was traffic and I almost drove over the median to get around it. In the early days of the Iraq war, we ran cars off the road when Iraqi drivers got in our way. It was suicide to get stuck in traffic in Iraq. Car bombs were a constant threat. Sitting still made you a target. So we tried to keep moving at all times. We also kept other cars away from our convoy. We threw rocks at car windows, cracked windshields, and shot tires out.

But at home, we’re expected to forget everything we did to survive overseas. How did I leave it all over there? I don’t know. All I know was I got better and better at compartmentalizing things. I simply blocked out a lot of the emotional stuff. I pushed myself through the confusion of living one life overseas and another at home. It wasn’t easy.

I had to make a conscious decision to take control of my life. It was a struggle, one I overcame by redirecting many of the lessons I learned from SEAL training. I simply didn’t let the effects of combat control me. It was like the Las Vegas commercial: What happened in Afghanistan stayed in Afghanistan. When I came home I never talked about work to people outside of my teammates.

But after the

A few years earlier the Navy started trying to address combat stress. Their first idea was requiring us to spend a few extra days in Germany on the way home from every deployment. They wanted us to decompress. This was when post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) was in the news and officials were clamoring to find a remedy for the uptick in cases.

Before Germany, we’d be home sometimes twenty-four hours after an operation. I’d go from a gunfight overseas and within a day be back in the States at Taco Bell for my routine, two tacos and a bean burrito. It sounds pretty strange, but that stop at Taco Bell was probably me putting up a wall on another compartment in my brain; it allowed me to keep everything separate.

So after the policy change, we stopped in Germany and the command’s psychologist flew over to meet us and give us classes on coping with combat stress and reintegration into the civilian world. For the guys with families, the training was focused on going back to the family routine. The funny part was we’d be home for a few weeks, only to head out on our next training rotation, which would keep us on the road for weeks.

The whole Germany decompression idea eventually backfired. It pissed off our families and girlfriends because our deployments were now three days longer. Not to mention we all came home smelling like good German beer.

The command eventually replaced the Germany stop with a new policy. We all had to meet with a command psychologist. We were required to sit down for a single thirty-minute meeting after each deployment. The thirty minutes were used to talk about any issues we might be having. Once I went down with another buddy, Gerry, to knock it out. We weren’t buying into this, and it had become just another line item on my to-do list after returning from a deployment. Each person’s thirty-minute session had to be complete before they would allow us to take any leave or vacation time. It was something the senior guys blew off, but we were required to go. We knew it was a box that needed to be checked so the Navy could say we were being counseled and trained to deal with the stresses of combat.

It was toward the end of the day when Gerry and I got to the psych office. I don’t remember if it was my appointment or Gerry’s, but when the two of us walked into the office, the psychologist was taken aback. She was pregnant, about three weeks away from popping. She looked as tired as we did.

“Listen, you don’t have much time,” Gerry said, pointing at her stomach. “We’re going to save you an extra thirty minutes by doing our sessions at the same time.”

After thinking about it a minute, she waved us both into her office. Gerry folded his more-than-six-foot-five-inch body into the couch. I took a seat across from the psychologist. She sat in an office chair with a notepad.

“We’re going to talk about some stuff, some sensitive things. Are you guys OK with doing this together?” she said.

“Gerry knows everything about me,” I said. “And I know everything about him. We’re good.”

“OK,” she said, taking out her pen and starting on some forms.

For most of the thirty minutes she asked us questions about how we were handling stress and if we had any PTSD symptoms. I can remember her handing us a sheet of paper with a list of symptoms on it. I took a second and quickly read down the list. The symptoms included trouble sleeping, avoiding crowds, and keeping your back to the wall in a restaurant.

I chuckled to myself as I finished.

“Holy shit, I think I have every single one of these,” I thought.

I didn’t live my life differently, but I definitely felt the effects of just about every single symptom.

I smiled at the doctor and didn’t say a word.

When Gerry was done, it was my turn to ask some questions.

“Why are we not more fucked up?” I asked. “Why are we not more messed up from the shit that we’ve seen? You talk about PTSD. Gerry and I have been trained to deal with just about every combat or tactical situation that can be thrown at us, but we’ve never had one second of training to deal with the emotional side of things.”

She nodded.

“The best way I can describe it is BUD/S,” she said.

The mental fortitude, the determination and drive you learn in BUD/S, also helps in combat. We’re pushed beyond our mental and physical limits in BUD/S. I learned that I could perform well beyond what I thought were my limits. Because of this, the doctor said we were stronger than the average person.

“So the mental toughness I learned and used to get through BUD/S training is the same I use to overcome combat stress?” I said.

The psychologist smiled.

“It isn’t that simple,” she said. “But BUD/S does help because most of the training is based on mental toughness. It doesn’t hurt that SEALs are all like-minded individuals. Each and every one of you volunteered time and time again to be in combat situations.”

She was right. I had known early on in my career that I wanted to be in the line of fire. I accepted the risk, but I also knew it was a challenge I wanted to meet head-on. Would I be able to face the stress of combat and not just curl up in a ball? I guess in a way I knew that being able to push yourself beyond your limits was not only a key to being a SEAL, but a key to a successful life.

“So are you saying BUD/S made me stronger? Or BUD/S just weeded out the weak?” I asked.

I stumped her with that one. Before she could answer, Gerry jumped in.

“I think we’re just mentally stronger than everyone else on the planet,” he said with a smile.

He was obviously fucking around.

Looking back, he was showing the doctor how we dealt with the stress with humor. When the going gets rough, we were always really good at changing the subject. We blocked things out or made light of it and moved on. There was no way that we could comprehend all that we’d seen and done. It was easier to just make a joke and ignore it.

We left the doctor’s office after our thirty minutes and never said another word about it. We had checked the box off our list and could now go on leave. Of course, we would get only about two weeks off until it was time to jump back on the speeding train and begin training and deploying all over again.

Over time, I started to sleep better, and there was some comfort knowing I was strong enough to compartmentalize the traumatic experiences I’d had overseas. I still have the list that the doctor gave me. From time to time, I read over it, and I still have every single symptom on the list. From the helicopter crash on the

We all deal with the stress of combat in different ways. The way that I’ve dealt with it isn’t perfect and certainly isn’t for everyone. Being a SEAL is a tough life and career. The sacrifices go far beyond what I’d ever imagined, but if asked whether I would do it all over again, my answer, without hesitation, would be simple.

Yes.