SEAL Team Six: Memoirs of an Elite Navy SEAL Sniper (14 page)

Team Six’s baptism of fire came in 1983. After Communists allied with Cuba and the Soviet Union overthrew the government of Grenada in a bloody coup d’état, the United States launched Operation Urgent Fury to restore Grenada’s government. In support of the operation, twelve shooters from SEAL Team Six would parachute-drop off the coast of Grenada. This first mission was a goat-screw for at least three reasons. First, although SEAL Team Six had trained intensively in numerous counterterrorist tactics, they had not trained in nighttime water drops—which is even more difficult with boats. A mission that probably should’ve gone to SEAL Team Two, who were standing by, went to SEAL Team Six instead. Second, intelligence was crap. The mission was planned without taking into account daylight saving time; as a result, that hour difference made a daytime drop turn into a nighttime drop. Not even the moon was out. No one told the Team Six guys about the ten-foot ocean swells, high winds, and hard rain. Third, probably because the air force pilots weren’t experienced with water drops, the second plane dropped the SEALs in the wrong spot, far from everyone else.

As a result, when the twelve men hit the water, the wind continued blasting their parachutes, dragging them. With too much equipment and not enough buoyancy, some of the SEALs were sinking. Although they had practiced with high-tech parachutes, now they were using old MC-1 chutes. The guys fought for their lives to keep the parachutes from dragging them to watery graves. Without lights, gathering everyone together became impossible. One SEAL kept shouting and fired three shots into the night—but no one could reach him. A total of four SEALs disappeared. The survivors searched, but they never found their Teammates: Kenneth Butcher, Kevin Lundberg, Stephen Morris, and Robert Schamberger. Although heartbroken, the other SEALs still had a mission to do.

Black Hawk helicopters raced for an hour through the early-morning darkness to the governor-general’s mansion to rescue Governor-General Paul Scoon. Soviet aircraft rounds carved green lines into the sky. Aboard one of the helos, the fifteen SEALs crammed inside appeared calm—until enemy fire started punching holes in the helo. Denny “Snake” Chalker and the others who had never been in combat dropped their poker faces. Vietnam veteran SEALs officer in charge Wellington T. “Duke” Leonard, Bobby L., Timmy P., and JJ smiled. “How’s it feel getting shot at?” After a tense moment, Denny and the others smiled—what else could they do? The command helo, carrying SEAL Team Six’s commanding officer, Bob Gormly (Dick Marcinko’s replacement), took the heaviest fire and had to break off from the others in order to limp back to the aircraft carrier before the wounded helo fell out of the sky.

Duke and Denny’s chopper flared its nose up to a stop 90 feet in the air in front of the mansion while the other helo took the rear over the tennis court. One of the pilots was shot, but he continued flying. AK-47 fire popped at them from the mansion. A SEAL leaned out and fired back. Rich had been hit, but he was so pumped on adrenaline that he didn’t notice. Denny kicked out the rope and fast-roped to the back of the mansion, crashing through pine tree limbs on his way down. Duke and the others followed close behind—hitting the limbs Denny hadn’t already broken.

As Denny neared the mansion, an AK-47 poked out from a door in his direction. Denny held fire with his CAR-15 (forerunner of the M-4) assault rifle until he could identify the target—it was Governor Scoon. Duke, carrying a shotgun, relieved the governor of his weapon. The guys cleared the mansion, but only the governor, his family, and staff were inside. They set up a perimeter. RPGs—rocket-propelled grenades—skipped across the top of the roof without exploding.

Their satellite communication (SATCOM) radio had flown off in the wounded command bird, limiting communications, so they had to conserve the batteries in their handheld radios.

Duke told everyone, “Don’t challenge anyone unless they enter the compound.” They didn’t want to start a fight they couldn’t finish. Rescuing the governor was the priority.

As night began to fall, thirty enemy fighters and four Soviet eight-wheeled armored personnel carriers (BTR-60PBs) circled the mansion. Duke used his little MX-360 handheld radio to contact Master Chief Dennis Johnson at Port Salines airfield. The master chief relayed Duke’s message to an AC-130 gunship flying overhead. “Do a 360-degree firing run around the mansion.” The Spectre fired its 40 mm gun:
bloop, bloop.
The resulting explosions took out the surrounding enemy except for two that ran. Soon the little MX-360 radios ran out of power. Duke used the governor’s telephone to maintain communications.

Two Cubans armed with AKs walked up the driveway. The Cubans raised their weapons. So the guys fired: shotgun, CAR-15s, Heckler & Koch 21 light machine gun, M-60 machine guns, and a .50 RAI 500 (Research Armament Industries Model 500) sniper rifle. One Cuban tried to escape over a wall, but he and his comrade were literally cut down.

The next morning, Force Recon Marines helped the SEALs, the governor, and his family out. They saw the charred remains of burned-out trucks, weapons, and blood where the Spectre had fired—someone had removed the bodies. On their way out, the SEALs found a Grenadian flag, so they replaced it with a SEAL Team Six flag, which someone always carried for such an occasion. Later, the guys would hang the Grenadian flag up at SEAL Team Six when they returned. The entourage proceeded to a helicopter landing zone where a helicopter extracted everyone.

On a separate mission in Grenada, twelve SEALs, led by Lieutenant Donald Kim Erskine, flew in a helo to the radio station, which they were to secure until Governor Scoon could come in and broadcast a message to the people on the island. While in the air, they received some small-arms fire, but when they landed, the enemy had deserted the radio station. Erskine’s men had radio problems and couldn’t make contact with the command post—someone had changed the frequencies without informing the SEALs.

They set up a defensive perimeter. Before long a truck arrived loaded with twenty enemy soldiers. The SEALs ordered them to drop their weapons, but they didn’t. So the guys opened up on them, using about a third of their ammo, and killed ten of the enemy. They took the surviving ten as prisoners and used up most of their first aid supplies patching them up in the radio station. None of the SEALs were wounded.

A BTR-60PB and three trucks climbed up the hill to the station. Forty to fifty enemy soldiers poured out of the vehicles. The Cuban officer swatted his men on the butts with a command stick: “Attack.” Erskine and his guys defended from the building. The enemy tried to outflank them while their BTR rolled up toward the front door and unleashed its 20 mm cannon. The cannon blasted holes through the building’s concrete like it was paper.

One of the SEALs mounted a Rifleman’s Assault Weapon (RAW), a rocket-propelled grenade, onto the barrel of his CAR-15 and pulled the rocket’s safety. He aimed at the BTR and pulled his rifle trigger, the shot launching the rocket. Two pounds of high explosives scored a direct hit on the BTR.

Running out of ammunition in the face of overwhelming enemy firepower, Erskine and his SEALs set their explosives on the station and ran out the back door. They all thought they were dead, but the SEALs dashed across the meadow behind the station. With enemy closing in on their rear and both sides, Erskine calmly led his men in a leapfrog across a wide-open kill zone to the beach. He and half his men fell to the ground and fired at the enemy while the other half retreated. Then the retreating men dropped and fired at the enemy while Erskine and his shooters retreated. Bullets hailed down on them, one blowing Erskine’s canteen off; even though Erskine stood taller than six feet and weighed over 200 pounds, the shot knocked him to the ground. His squad members hit the dirt with him. They turned around and fired while the other squad retreated. As the guys continued their leapfrog, another round tore off Erskine’s boot heel, sending him to the earth. The next time he got up and ran, a shot ricocheted off the ammo magazine on his belt, whacking him down again. Bullet number four was less kind. It ripped out a chunk of Erskine’s right elbow, literally picking him up off the ground before slamming him into the dirt. He felt like his entire arm had been blown off. At the end of the meadow, the guys cut through a chain-link fence and crawled through. As Erskine counted his men, he realized a SEAL leader’s worst nightmare—he was missing a man. Then the SEALs saw their missing Teammate. Erskine and his men fired at the enemy as the radioman lugged the useless SATCOM radio across the field.

“Drop the radio!” Erskine yelled.

The radioman took off the radio and fired several rounds from his SIG SAUER 9 mm sidearm into its cryptographic parts. Then he sprinted to join his buddies.

They ran into a jungle of vegetation, which hid them from the enemy. Even though they had killed some of the opposition, the SEALs were still outnumbered and had almost no ammunition left in their rifles. The men continued down a path and embraced Mother Ocean. Swimming straight out to sea would make them targets for the enemy. Erskine told the guys, “Ditch everything except your primary gear and swim parallel to the beach.” They shed their rifles, backpacks, and nearly everything except pistols, pistol ammo, and E&E (escape and evasion) kits. The SEALs swam parallel to the beach and found shelter in the cliffs, where an overhang concealed them from the enemy above.

Friendly forces, not knowing they were still alive, blasted the bad guys near their position. The SEALs waited until the enemy had gone, then at 0300 swam out to sea. The SEALs floated in the ocean for six hours until a rescue plane saw them and called in a navy ship to pick them up. The guys had been awake for forty-eight hours. After making sure he had all his men on the ship, Erskine passed out. He later recovered. The navy awarded him the Silver Star Medal.

In 1985, PLO (Palestine Liberation Organization) terrorists hijacked the cruise ship
Achille Lauro
and killed passenger Leon Klinghoffer. The terrorists sought shelter in Egypt, and when Egypt tried to sneak them out on a flight to the PLO headquarters in Tunisia, U.S. Navy fighter planes forced the plane down at the NATO base in Italy. SEAL Team Six surrounded the terrorists on the runway, but the Italians stopped the SEALs from taking the plane down, demanding the five terrorists be turned over to them. After a brief showdown of SEALs vs. Italian military and law enforcement, America agreed to turn over the terrorists to Italy. Unfortunately, the Italian government freed the leader, Abu Abbas (who was later captured in Iraq in 2003). Although the other terrorists went to jail, one was granted furlough and escaped (he was recaptured in Spain). Another terrorist disappeared from Italy while on parole.

In 1989, SEAL Team Six went to Panama to capture drug-dealing dictator Manuel Noriega. Noriega tried to hide out in a Catholic church, but with no way out of the country, he finally surrendered.

Grenada, the
Achille Lauro,
and Panama were just three of the many operations SEAL Team Six performed before I joined them.

*   *   *

I took my first deployment with SEAL Team Two to Machrihanish, Scotland—land of my mother’s Kirkland ancestors, who changed their name to Kirkman when they immigrated to the United States. The Scottish locals gave Smudge his nickname, taken from a famous English soccer athlete. We went with some of the guys to a tartan museum in Edinburgh, where I found that my clan had come from the Highlands.

Smudge teased me about finding my tartan. “Wow, Howard’s the Highlander.”

“Yeah, there can be only one!” I exclaimed.

From Scotland, we trained alongside or interacted with a number of foreign special operation units: the British Special Boat Service, French Commando Hubert, German Combat Swimmers (Kampfschwimmer), Swedish Coastal Rangers (Kustjägarna), Norwegian Navy Ranger Command (Marinejegerkommandoen), and others. During a harbor penetration exercise in Germany, I exchanged a case of my MREs with the rations of a Commando Hubert. His commando frogman unit had received much help in its creation from a World War II naval officer named Jacques-Yves Cousteau, whom many came to know because of his TV series about the underwater world. The French rations included bottles of wine, cheese, and pâté. It amazed me how much they liked our freeze-dried food and Maxwell House coffee—just add water. When I returned to the barracks in Scotland, nearly everyone begged me for some of my wine, cheese, and pâté.

For winter warfare training, I enjoyed over a month of fun with the Swedish Coastal Rangers, who perform long-range reconnaissance, sabotage, and assaults against enemies invading Sweden’s coast. Although all young Swedish males must serve in the military for one year, some of them attempt to become Coastal Rangers. During the Cold War, Russia was their biggest threat.

Burt, DJ, Steve, and I flew into Stockholm, the capital of Sweden. Historic churches, palaces, and castles mixed with green parks and waterways, making it a Venice of the North. Newer buildings blended ecological designs with high tech and functionalism. Our hosts put us up in a wonderful hotel. One evening, as we returned from training, a short, skinny guy with spiky hair sat in the lobby, a long-legged woman sitting on each leg and one in his lap.
Who is that?
Two of us walked in closer to see who it was: Rod Stewart. There’s hope for ugly guys everywhere—become a rock star.

In the morning, Burt drove us in a rental car to a ferry, which shuttled us across the water, so we could drive to the Coastal Rangers’ base, located in Berga at the Swedish Amphibious Corps, First Marine Regiment (Första Amfibieregementet, AMF1). Our first operations began in the Stockholm archipelago. With thousands of islands, it is one of the largest archipelagos in the Baltic Sea. My counterpart and I pushed off in a light, two-man, nonmetallic folding kayak to search for Soviet submarines. I wore Vuarnet sunglasses, named after the French Olympic gold medalist Alpine ski racer, to shield my eyes from the sun. We landed on islands and searched them for any human activity—a cat-and-mouse game with the Soviets. Kayaking from island to island while carrying all our equipment was cold, hard work.