No Hero: The Evolution of a Navy SEAL

CHAPTER 1 The Right to Wear the Shirt Purpose

It was just a black T-shirt.

Size medium, one hundred percent cotton.

On the front was a skeleton in a wetsuit crawling over the beach. He had an M-16 in his hands and a knife on his belt. The skeleton was coming out of the surf, the dark waves crashing behind him. A SEAL trident was on the left breast of the T-shirt. The trident was the sole reason I got the T-shirt in the first place.

I remember when it came in the mail. There was no way I could get a shirt like this from a store in the Alaskan village where I grew up. I put it on as soon as I opened it, and wore it practically every day. If that shirt was clean in the morning, I was wearing it.

To everyone else, it was just a shirt I always wore. But to me, it represented my goal in life. Each time I wore it, the shirt renewed my quest to become a SEAL. I slid the shirt into my suitcase and finished packing the rest of my clothes—including a borrowed suit and dress shoes—and headed for the airstrip. I was on my way to a conference in Washington, D.C., for “future military members.” It was 1992, and to this day I don’t know how I got invited, but it probably came from one of the many recruiters I’d talked with about being a SEAL.

The airstrip was on the outskirts of the village, and it was our only lifeline to “civilization,” if you can call any town in Alaska that. The frontier lifestyle is why people move to Alaska. If you want convenience, stay in the lower forty-eight.

I watched the bush plane clear the trees at the far end of the strip and come in for a landing. As the pilot and a newly arrived group of hunters unloaded, I hugged my parents near the small one-room building that served as the airport terminal.

The trip was a first for me. It was the first time I’d left Alaska alone. It was my first trip to Washington, D.C. But of all the firsts, I was most excited that I was going to meet my first SEAL.

Everyone in my village in Alaska knew I wanted to be a SEAL. It was something I talked about with my friends and dreamed about at night. I read every book I could find on the SEALs.

I knew nothing of SEAL Team

At the time, I just thought it would be cool to be a SEAL. I knew the training would be hard, but I was too young to really understand how hard. I certainly didn’t know all of the sacrifices I would have to make. I just wanted to be like the guys I read about, and at the time that was enough to push me forward.

I was lucky. I figured out my purpose early on. I don’t think I understood it at first, but from the moment I found out about SEALs, I knew that was my goal, because of the challenge. If you asked me then to say why I wanted to join, a sense of duty would be on the list, but not at the top. At the top was a need to prove to myself I could make it through the toughest training the U.S. military had to offer. Why would I want to do something that was easy? If it were easy, everybody would do it. Looking back now, I’m not sure why I had to prove myself. All I knew was after reading the history books, I decided the SEALs always stood out as the hardest and most challenging. I guess I figured if I was going to join the military, I might as well go big.

The pilot helped me stow my suitcase and I climbed aboard the plane. I waved to my parents from my cramped seat in the back as we taxied into position on the runway. My family wasn’t rich, but my parents offered to cover the airplane ticket, and two Army veterans from the village covered the remaining costs.

At the airport in Anchorage, I pulled the itinerary for the trip out and went over it again. Before the SEAL session, I’d have to endure trips to the national monuments and listen to sessions on the Army and Air Force.

But it was worth it to meet a SEAL.

I got to Washington and instantly fell into the rhythm of the conference. We went to the Pentagon, which is much cooler in the movies. It is really just an odd-shaped office building. We also saw the Lincoln and Vietnam Memorials. At the time, nothing held my interest. The vast number of names on the Vietnam Memorial took me aback, but the impact faded because I hadn’t experienced loss like I would years later in Iraq and Afghanistan. Thinking back now, I really had no idea that someday I’d look at a list of names like the wall and understand just what it means to lose close friends and teammates. Visiting the wall now, I understand the gravity. But at that time, I was just fixated on meeting the SEAL.

Everything was scheduled to the minute, and each morning as I pulled on my clothes I saw my T-shirt still neatly folded. I was saving it for the SEAL session.

The session was in the afternoon, so after the typical sandwich-and-cookie conference lunch, I hurried over to the meeting room where the SEAL was going to speak. Unfortunately, when I got to the door, they said the room was full.

The room was jammed with people, but I could still see a few chairs. I tried to reason with the woman guarding the door. She was one of the chaperones and organizers who were with us throughout the week. I could tell she wanted to let me in, but there were only a set number of seats.

She was apologetic but didn’t budge.

There was a small crowd gathering outside. The SEAL session was the hallmark of the period. Through the door, I could see the SEAL in his uniform talking with the younger chaperones. Time was running out. I opened my itinerary, looking at the other sessions, but nothing came close. I didn’t know what to do. I’d flown more than four thousand miles to attend this session. At that moment, the whole trip was wasted. I was crushed.

Then, just before the session was about to begin, the lady at the door waved me over to her. She told me they were going to let a few more people go in and ushered me inside. It was standing-room only. I found a spot in the back and waited for the SEAL to begin.

The SEAL was wearing a green BDU camouflage uniform with a black balaclava pulled down around his neck. His pants were tucked into black-and-green jungle boots. He had longer hair than you’d expect for someone in the military. Not shaggy, but not the high-and-tight haircut favored by the Marines. He had an air of cockiness about him, a fact I realized years later. More cocky than confident, he lacked the self-awareness to know that it wasn’t cool to act cool.

His session started with the SEAL boilerplate stuff. SEALs are the Navy’s primary special operations force. The acronym SEAL comes from the unit’s ability to operate at sea, in the air, and on land. President John F. Kennedy saw a need for special operations forces to fight guerrilla wars and created the SEALs with the Army’s Special Forces. In his 1961 speech announcing plans to land a man on the moon, Kennedy also laid out plans to invest one hundred million dollars to create and train special operations forces.

Populated at first by members of the Navy’s underwater demolition teams, SEALs were deployed to Vietnam, where they worked with the CIA and set up ambushes to slow the supply lines in the Mekong Delta. SEALs earned the nickname “men with green faces” because of the camouflage face paint they often wore on missions.

I hung on each word for the hour-long presentation. He told stories about Basic Underwater Demolition/SEALs or BUD/S training. He stressed how tough it was; nothing about BUD/S was easy, from the frigid swims in the ocean to the grueling runs in the soft beach sand. His stories just made me want it more.

After the question-and-answer period, we had a short break before the next event. I ran upstairs to my hotel room to change into my black SEAL T-shirt. I wanted to get my picture taken with the SEAL. I figured if I was going to get a photo, I’d better be wearing my favorite shirt. When I got back to the room, the SEAL was still talking and taking questions.

I waited patiently for my turn.

“Hey, can I get a picture with you?” I asked, shaking his hand.

He smiled and put an arm over my shoulder. If he told me to shave my head and walk backward the rest of the week, I’d have done it. Just before one of the chaperones snapped the picture, he leaned over and whispered into my ear.

“Hey, you know you usually get your ass kicked for wearing a SEAL T-shirt when you’re not a SEAL,” he said.

I smiled and thanked him, but at that moment all I wanted to do was get the shirt off. I raced up to my hotel room and buried the shirt in the bottom of my suitcase. I never put it on again. When I got home, I put it in the back of my dresser drawer. I wasn’t a poseur. I just hadn’t had a chance to prove myself yet. The comment didn’t sting as much as it fueled my passion to actually become a SEAL. I felt like I’d cheated myself by wearing it. It was then I realized my desire to be a SEAL wasn’t an adolescent fantasy. It was the only thing in my mind that would give my life some real meaning and purpose. I wanted to earn the right to wear the shirt.

Once I realized my purpose was to be a SEAL, I never stopped trying to achieve it. Looking back, I think my parents taught me that having a purpose and living up to it was important. My parents were young when their purpose brought them to Alaska, and I knew it meant sacrifice and hardship.

My parents were missionaries. Their faith drove them to move our family from California to Alaska, far from any of the creature comforts of a city. There was nothing easy about living in a village, but that didn’t matter to my parents. Everyone was poor by suburban American standards, but really it was just a more simple life.

We lived in a two-story house one hundred yards off a river. I saw moose from my front door so often that it didn’t amaze me. There was one TV station and no radio. Our house had water and electricity, but no central heating. We used a massive iron stove in the living room to keep warm in the winter. My father would get up in the middle of the night to make sure the fire was still going.

A huge hopper stood next to the stove. It was my job to keep it full of wood in the winter. I’d split the logs and keep the woodpile stacked on the porch. As the stack in the hopper dwindled, I’d be out on the porch getting another load. Chores for me weren’t a way to make some spending money. We never got paid. It was part of my family’s team effort to survive in Alaska.

One of my first memories of elementary school was fire building. Instead of just teaching us how to read or write, our school taught us survival skills. Each student in my third-grade class got two matches to start a survival fire using bark from trees surrounding the school. We had to build a fire big enough to stay warm during a winter day. The drill was designed to teach us the survival skills that we might need if we ever got lost or became stranded. Alaska’s wilderness can be a very dangerous place if you don’t know what you’re doing, making the walk to and from school hazardous.

My high school was one hallway with six rooms. It had about seventy kids in grades seven through twelve. My senior class was three students. I graduated as the valedictorian; just don’t ask me what my grade point average was. My interests were mostly outside the classroom.

I hunted as often as I could. When I was a teenager my father would let me take the family boat up the river for long camping and hunting trips. I wanted to be outside and active, which likely led to my goal of being a SEAL. I never wanted to have to deal with stoplights, traffic, and wearing a suit to work every day. The thought of working in a cubicle sounded like a death sentence.

I purchased my first assault rifle at school from my history teacher. It was an AR-15, a civilian version of the military’s M-4. I’d earned the money for the rifle doing odd jobs for people in the village and working construction in the summer. Between classes, I paid my teacher seven hundred dollars, then took the rifle and locked it in my locker until the end of school. When the bell rang, I put it on the back of my snowmobile and rode home. Yes, I did ride a snowmobile to school in the winter.

Anything we couldn’t get from the land, we bought from the two stores in town, or during a semiannual trip to Anchorage to stock up. Because we lived so far from Anchorage, groceries were expensive. Milk was six dollars a gallon in the village, so my parents bought less expensive powdered milk.

The powdered milk was sold in massive tubs, too big to store on the kitchen counter. To make it easier for daily use, my mother measured out small amounts and put the powdered milk in plastic bags. She did the same thing with the tub of laundry soap and other bulk goods.

One morning, I fixed myself a big bowl of cereal. My mother was busy at the stove making pancakes for my father. The batter was bubbling up into big, fluffy pancakes as I poured the milk over my cereal.

Sitting at the table, I took a few bites, but it didn’t taste right. I stirred the cereal around and I swore I saw suds. I started to get up to throw the bowl of cereal away, when my father stopped me.

“Eat it,” he said. “It’s just the powdered milk, and that is the way it tastes.”

I tried to protest. “It isn’t that,” I said. “It has a sour taste. It tastes like soap.”

“You just have to get used to it,” my father said.

I never liked the taste of powdered milk, but there was something wrong with this batch. I choked down the whole bowl one spoonful at a time. After a while, my taste buds died. I couldn’t taste anything but the sour, soapy flavor of the milk. My father’s pancakes showed up soon after I finished my cereal. He took one bite and spit it out.

“What is wrong with these?” he asked my mother.

My mom stopped plating a short stack of pancakes for my sister and gave the batter a quick stir. She then picked up the plastic bag and sniffed it.

“I think I might have used laundry detergent instead of powdered milk,” she said, with a sheepish smirk on her face. “No wonder the pancakes bubbled up so much.”

My mother started to laugh, then my father. When they realized I’d eaten a bowl of cereal with soapy water, they laughed harder. I tried to laugh too, until my stomach started to hurt.

My mother poured out the batter and started fresh. When she offered me a fresh bowl of cereal, I declined. My stomach was doing flips and I had bubble guts the rest of the day.

Living in Alaska was hard, and it wasn’t always because I had liquid soap in my cereal. There was nothing normal about my upbringing, but my parents knew the sacrifices they were making. They didn’t have to choke down horrible-tasting powdered milk or live in a village deep in the Alaskan wilderness. They chose to live a harder life than most because it was the only way my parents could achieve their purpose in life, to be missionaries and spread their faith. I know their dedication rubbed off on me. It gave me the values I needed to eventually excel in the Navy.

My parents set me on a course that wasn’t the norm in the village. People didn’t leave the village. They found jobs working construction in the summer and just lived off their savings and the land during the winter. My parents urged me to dream big and find my own way. I was one of the few kids I grew up with who had plans of doing something beyond staying in the village.

My father was always fair and never pushed me to do anything beyond what he knew I could accomplish. So when he asked me to at least try one year of college before enlisting in the Navy, I had to honor his wish. He was part of the Vietnam generation and didn’t want anything to happen to me, but I think he also understood my passion to serve because he’d felt the same passion for his missionary work.

So we made a deal.

After high school graduation, I enrolled at a small college in Southern California and made a commitment to stay for at least a year. But I didn’t plan on being there a day longer than that. After the first year, I planned to enlist and go to BUD/S.

My first year flew by, and my father was right. College was fun. Experiencing life outside of the village was actually pretty cool. My grade point average wasn’t setting any records, but I was having a great time and making new friends. I’d promised him one year, but I decided to stick it out and finish my degree.

My school didn’t have a Navy Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (ROTC) program, and the surrounding programs didn’t have a partnership agreement. The Army program at Cal State Fullerton did accept students from neighboring schools, so I signed up.

ROTC is a college-based program for training officers. Students take military science courses, work out, and drill together. Once a week typically, ROTC students wear uniforms to school. I’d take classes at my school during the day, and then drive across town for events and military science classes at Cal State. My goal wasn’t to become an officer or join the Army. I just wanted to be involved in something military. I liked wearing the uniform; it gave me a sense of pride.

After my freshman year, the ROTC instructors asked if I wanted to go to the United States Army Airborne School at Fort Benning, Georgia. I’d excelled in my first semester, and they figured this carrot would not only keep me in the program, but also convince me to take a scholarship and be a future Army officer.

I accepted the chance to go to jump school, which is what most people call the airborne training program. I’d read enough books to know the SEALs sent guys straight from BUD/S to get airborne qualified. I figured this was a chance to knock out the three-week school early. Before I left, I got a short haircut like the rest of my classmates.

The first morning, we got up at dawn and lined up in formation on the parade field near our barracks. The sun was just peeking over the pine trees, and the air was already humid and sticky. By the second exercise, my gray Army T-shirt was soaked.

Everyone looked the same—gray shirts, black shorts, high-and-tight haircuts—except for a small group of guys who had longer hair and brown T-shirts. When I saw the group in their uniforms after physical training, I noticed they had U.S. Navy name tapes over their left pockets. I knew they had to be SEALs.

The SEALs stuck together during training. I watched as the instructors corrected a SEAL and ordered him to do ten push-ups as punishment. As soon as the SEAL started, his buddies hit the floor too. In unison, they called out the reps. “One, two, three…” No one approached them, even though I desperately wanted to pick their brains about BUD/S.

If I’m being honest, I wanted to be them.

During the second week of training, I finally got to talk with one of the SEALs. It was lunch and the only seat open was across from me. We didn’t talk at first, except for a nod. I was too intimidated to initiate a conversation. But after a few bites of his lunch, the SEAL finally spoke.

“Hey, bro, can I ask you a question?” he asked.

Unlike the SEAL I met in Washington, this one was skinnier, with shorter hair. He was lean and had an air of confidence, not arrogance.

“Sure,” I said.

It was kind of exciting to finally be talking to one of the SEALs. In the back of my head, I wanted to be the one asking questions. I had so many, especially since I knew he’d just finished training. But while I saw my future, the SEAL just saw another cadet playing Army for three weeks.

“What is up with the haircuts?” the SEAL said. “I just don’t get it. Why do you have that haircut?”

I stopped eating.

I couldn’t believe this question was directed to me. The question wasn’t asked to be mean or mocking. It felt like he was really curious, which made it worse. If he’d mocked me, I’d at least have been justified in being mad.

“I don’t know, man,” I said. “I really don’t know.”

I quickly tried to change the subject to BUD/S. I really didn’t want to be talking about something I didn’t truly understand. And I felt uncomfortable, embarrassed really.

Before the end of the conversation, I made up my mind. I was done with the Army. I went back to California and turned in my uniforms and boots, no longer shined to a high gloss. My high-and-tight haircut was starting to grow out.

As I finished up the paperwork, one of the officers at the unit stopped me.

“Hey, man, are you sure you want to leave?” the officer said. “We need good cadets and would hate to see you go.”

“I just can’t do this,” I finally said.

The instructor tried to reason with me.

“You’re a great cadet,” he said. “We only send the top cadets to jump school.”

I appreciated the compliment, but I didn’t want to be in the Army.

“I want to be a SEAL,” I said. “It has been my dream since I was a kid.”

I knew I was taking a risk. By leaving ROTC, I was giving up the chance of a scholarship. But it was worth it, and I think sometimes you can achieve a goal only if you are willing to risk it all. Take my parents moving out to Alaska, far from family and any support, to achieve their goals. This was no longer some idea I had because I thought it was cool. It had become the beacon that was driving my life decisions.

I’m confident many of the guys who became my teammates were the same. We all wanted to be part of something bigger. I’d veered off my path and lost focus on what I really wanted.

When I finally signed my Navy enlistment contract, I had to pick an “A” school, which was basically deciding which job I’d perform if I washed out of BUD/S and didn’t become a SEAL. The recruiter wanted me to go into nuclear power, or “nuke,” to work on the reactors that propelled the subs and aircraft carriers. The school took eighteen months. I knew recruiters probably got a bonus for putting people in the toughest programs, but I didn’t want to wait that long to start BUD/S.

“What is the shortest school available?” I asked the recruiter.

He flipped through his files and found a chart with details on all the schools. Running his finger down the list, he stopped and looked up at me.

“Torpedoman. Seven weeks,” the recruiter said, resigned to the fact he wasn’t going to get me to go nuke and boost his numbers.

Instead, I’d be waxing torpedoes for a couple months before hopefully getting a chance to go to BUD/S. I didn’t spend a lot of time thinking about what would happen if I washed out. Four years as a torpedoman would have driven me crazy, and maybe out of the Navy altogether. For me at that time, there was no backup plan.

I set my goals higher than most people thought were possible for a kid from Alaska, but I knew in my guts that I’d make it or die trying. I didn’t want to be an old man and regret not trying.

There was some comfort in finally working toward my ultimate goal of becoming a SEAL. I’d learned sacrifice from my parents. They showed me what it meant to live for something bigger than myself. I got off track when I signed up for ROTC. It took that lunch at jump school to push me back on track. When I looked in the mirror, I saw someone with the drive and discipline to make it happen. I saw someone with a purpose. I just needed a chance to prove I was up to it. I knew nothing in my life would feel right unless I at least gave it my best shot.

“Seven weeks,” I said. “Sign me up.”