Combat Swimmer (8 page)

Back then all SEAL business was classified “Secret.” Even people in UDT didn't know exactly what SEALs did. Every piece of paper I saw when I got there was classified Secret, right down to the personnel roster. In fact, SEAL Two was doing very little. From its heyday of the early sixties and the Bay of Pigs, the command had fallen into the doldrums.

SEAL Team Two was small then, ten officers and fifty enlisted; it had no routine deployments, no money, and no real mission. The Naval Operations Support Group Atlantic, which controlled the UDTs, SEAL Team Two, and Boat Support Unit Two, was so unimpressed by its capabilities that, shortly after I arrived, the commodore called me over to his office and chewed me out royally for no other reason than that I had decided to go there. Still, I never thought I had made a mistake in joining SEAL Two; there, I worked with some of the best people I ever met, and Tom Tarbox was high on that list.

When I checked in, Tom told me I would be assigned to one of the assault groups, as the platoons were called then, and my administrative duty would be as ordnance officer, in charge of the Team's first NWAI, nuclear weapons acceptance inspection.

I replied, “Great. What's that?”

Tom said, “Find out and get back to me.” What he didn't say (and didn't have to) was “Don't flunk.”

Thanks largely to Chief Petty Officer Bob Gallagher, we didn't. Bob was my “assistant.” In his usual diplomatic style, he said, “Lieutenant, you go learn how to be a SEAL, and I'll get the department squared away for the inspection.” I took his advice, and we did so well our program was cloned for UDTs 21 and 22 so they could pass their later inspections. Bob Gallagher went on to be probably the most-decorated man ever to serve in SEAL Team Two. On his third tour in Vietnam he was an assistant platoon commander, the only enlisted man from SEAL Two ever to hold that position. During one particularly nasty operation, his platoon took on what they thought was a VC company; it turned out to be a battalion. In the fierce fighting, his platoon commander and many of the men were seriously wounded. Bob's ingenuity and bravery turned the tide. He rallied the platoon, organized a tactical advance away from the enemy, ordered in helicopters, and got all of his men out. He personally carried one of the most seriously wounded men across a rice paddy to waiting helicopters. Then he kept up a deadly stream of fire to cover the rest of his platoon as they boarded. Gallagher was the last man on the last helo to leave the battle zone. He was awarded the Navy Cross, the U.S. Navy's highest decoration, for heroism. If he had been a commissioned officer, he would have been awarded the Medal of Honor.

At the time, though, SEAL Two functioned on a shoestring. It was under the administrative control of COMPHIBLANT (amphibious force), but under the operational control of CINCLANTFLT (Atlantic fleet). That meant the amphibious folks had to pay our bills but didn't get to use us. CINCLANTFLT wasn't using us either, so we were basically dangling in the wind.

For equipment, we were using what the Team had received on its initial outfitting in 1962. Our closed-circuit scubas were badly in need of spare parts. Of course, we couldn't afford to buy spares, so we “cannibalized,” using parts from one rig to keep two others going. That's a recipe for disaster, but fortunately our guys were professional enough to pull it off. Even so, we had to cut back on training, especially since the Team was so underfunded we had to pay our own way to training sites.

Things started to get better in August 1966. SEAL Team One, already heavily committed in Vietnam, was being pressured to provide more SEALs in-country. In midsummer we got a new CO, Lieutenant Bill Early, a West Coast SEAL who had just returned from a year tour advising the Vietnamese Linh Doi Nui Nai (their equivalent to SEALs). Bill was acutely aware of the need for more SEALs, so he set about getting his new command involved. After wrangling with Pentagon bureaucrats, Bill convinced the powers that be that we needed to spend some money on training and equipment. In October, the bucks flowed and we got gear.

We had about three months to get ready once the word came that we'd be deploying. Lieutenant Jake Rhinebolt, our detachment officer-in-charge, and the rest of us officers and chief petty officers put our heads together and came up with a schedule we figured would prepare us. We had to polish individual skills and learn new ones—and, most important, we had to learn to work together in our new platoon organization.

SEAL Team One deployed platoon-sized units of two officers and ten enlisted. SEAL Team Two was organized into assault groups of one officer and five enlisted each, so we just combined assault groups to form platoons. SEAL One also operated almost exclusively in squad-sized elements of one officer and five enlisted. The new system was easy to pick up because we had been operating in squad-sized units all along.

My outfit, the 3rd Platoon, was actually two units, each with a different character. Lieutenant Larry Bailey was the platoon commander, and I was the assistant. My squad was the best group of SEALs I had seen up to that point, and I wouldn't trade them for any I've seen since. Meet my “trained killers”!

Chief Boatswain's Mate J. P. (Jess) Tolison was my squad chief petty officer—I worked for him, and he was the best. Quiet, forceful, tough, aggressive, smart, he could do it all. He had more sense and leadership than any officer I've ever worked with, and I trusted his judgment without question. He always seemed to do the right thing. Six feet tall, about 200 pounds, he intimidated a lot of tough SEALs. Jess had blue eyes that seemed to look right through you when he talked—and he always looked you in the eye. When Larry and I picked squads, I stole Jess. The rest of the platoon would go anywhere with him. Sadly, he was killed in a truck accident in 1971. I've buried too many good SEALs, and his funeral was the hardest.

My leading petty officer was Boatswain's Mate First Class Bill Garnett, “Mr. Squared Away.” I've never met anyone more organized than Bill. He was also a super operator and, as the second senior enlisted in our squad, the perfect complement to Jess. Bill made sure things got done. He could foresee problems and solve them before they became problems. He was rock-solid dependable, and there was none better under fire. Bill would go on to have a long and distinguished career as a SEAL.

Our “doctor” was Hospital Corpsman First Class Fred (Doc) McCarty, a great field medic and diving corpsman. We'd break 'em, he'd fix 'em. Fred was a Navy First Class Diver, and he had attended many corpsman schools before he came to SEAL Two. He also had a great sense of humor and always seemed to say the right thing when we got in trouble. All SEAL Two corpsmen I saw during the Vietnam era were good, but Fred was the best.

Petty Officer Second Class Charlie Bump was my point man—the first man in the line of patrol—and a superb operator. Long—six feet tall—and lanky—he weighed about 150 (soaking wet)—he could go through mud better than anyone I've seen. He looked like a water bug leading us through difficult terrain. We called him “Mr. Steady,” and thanks to his sixth sense in the field, he kept us out of trouble. On a subsequent tour, he was awarded the Silver Star for leading an operation to free American POWs reputed to be held in the U Minh Forest. Charlie infiltrated the camp with four men, killed a guard, and called in a helo-borne force. They freed about a hundred Vietnamese but just missed the Americans, who'd been moved by the VC only hours before.

Petty Officer Second Class Pierre Birtz was the youngest in the squad and pound for pound the strongest SEAL I have ever seen. He could carry a lot of bullets, so I made him our automatic-weapons man. Of French-Canadian descent, Pierre was the squad dissenter, always “going on record” to make a point. We loved him. His secondary function was to keep me awake on ambushes—he never failed, because he never slept in the field.

I can't imagine being around a better group of people. I cut my fighting teeth with them.

 

We decided that the best way to get started was to take our detachment away from the home fires for some concentrated training. We went to Camp Picket, an Army Reserve training post about forty miles southwest of Richmond, Virginia, that had everything we needed to get started—weapons and demolition ranges and plenty of woods where we could work on our patrolling techniques.

Jake set up good training problems. He assigned each of the four squads different operating areas; there, we disappeared to set up our base camps. Only Jake knew where all of them were. Each squad was also given a “secret” radio frequency that Jake used to pass us mission orders and set up resupplies. We also each had an emergency frequency, which Jake monitored twenty-four hours a day.

He'd pit one squad against another, usually not telling either group that it had company. We'd be assigned reconnaissance or raid missions, usually five or ten kilometers away from our base camps. Patrolling to and from the targets gave us plenty of opportunities to establish our standard operating procedures and get to know each other, until we came to think of ourselves as one entity rather than six individuals.

After we set up our base camps, we called Jake on the PRC-25 (a rugged, man-portable VHF radio that became our primary means of communicating in Vietnam) to give him the eight-digit grid coordinates for our base camp. Jess suggested it might not be good for Jake to know
exactly
where we were, and I agreed. So I made a “mistake” on two of the numbers, which made it appear we were about a thousand meters from where we really were. Jake never could figure out why Lieutenant Fred Kochey, the 2nd Platoon commander and a whiz with a map and compass, couldn't ever find us.

My squad made shelters with our ponchos and put our sleeping bags underneath. Jess and I talked it over before we went, and I'd opted not to use tents. I wanted to be able to move out in a hurry, because I knew sooner or later Jake would tell each squad where the others were located. This way, when we left on a mission we'd simply collapse the ponchos over our sleeping bags and the gear we weren't using, pile leaves and branches over them, and go. We did such a good camouflage job that we usually had to search for the camp each time we came back.

Chief Bob Gallagher and a couple of other SEAL Two guys helped Jake run the three-week field training. Bob built some quick-reaction ranges for us to shoot on that really improved our close-quarter shooting skills. We figured most of the shooting we'd have to do in Vietnam would be within twenty-five meters because that's what SEAL Team One was experiencing in the Rung Sat Special Zone. Once we got to the Mekong Delta, we found we hadn't been entirely correct; still, it was good training.

We also went to the ranges for controlled shooting with our new M-16s. Each man in my squad was assigned a primary weapon, which would stay with him as long as he was in SEAL Two, or until it broke. We figured a man would take better care of a weapon that was
his
than of one he'd drawn from the armory. Same for our other equipment: each man had his own parachute and Draeger closed-circuit diving gear. As Dave Schaible used to say, “Nobody waxes a rental car.”

 

We all carried the same basic gear: a flashlight with red and green lenses; a medical kit; ammunition pouches; an MK-26 fragmentation grenade; a K-Bar knife; two canteens; and a butt pack for miscellaneous items. In my butt pack I always carried handheld pop flares to illuminate ambushes after we initiated contact. We always wore, or carried in our butt packs, UDT life jackets; with all the weight we carried, the life jackets were invaluable for crossing canals. They were also handy if we had to get out of a tight situation. Most military forces view water as an obstacle. As long as I was near water I didn't have to worry. SEALs see it as a haven.

We carried the gear on an H-harness attached to a pistol belt, which fastened around our waist. An H-harness distributes the weight evenly on your shoulders and around your waist. We all wore the gear in the same place on our rigs so at night each man could find whatever he wanted on any rig he happened to grab. The grenadier and the heavy-weapons man had different configurations for their ammo, but otherwise we looked pretty much the same. For each mission I would decide what additional weapons or equipment we would carry, and we'd distribute the weight among us; everyone pulled the load.

After his first deployment ended in June 1967, one of the chiefs in Fred Kochey's platoon, Jim Watson, designed a load-bearing vest with a built-in life jacket, magazine pockets, grenade attachment points, and a large pocket in the back that replaced the butt pack. It was a well-thought-out piece of gear. It distributed the weight well, and the magazine pouches were high on the front of the vest to help keep them dry as we waded around in rice paddies. I found I had to wear my knife high on the back of my vest, between my shoulder blades, where I could get to it easily by reaching over my shoulder. The vest resembled one a hunter might wear—appropriately, since we were hunting VC. I liked it and wore one throughout my second tour.

 

At the end of the three weeks' training we returned to Little Creek much more confident of our capabilities. I'd learned a lot from Jess, and we'd all learned a lot about each other. I never heard any serious bitching (except from Jake when Fred couldn't find and destroy our base camp). Knowing that our lives and the mission would depend on how well we trained, we took no shortcuts. We were determined to train like we were going to fight. That's the only way to go.

Back at Little Creek, we learned for sure we'd be going to the Mekong Delta rather than the Rung Sat. We looked around for someone to talk to about operations there; the terrain was entirely different from the mangrove swamps of the Rung Sat. We found a Navy lieutenant, assigned to the Naval Amphibious School, who'd just returned from a year in the Mekong Delta advising South Vietnam's Junk Force, which used indigenous craft for river operations. Jake and I picked his brain over many a beer, getting a lot of useful information about the river and canal system.