Service: A Navy SEAL at War (25 page)

We all took something home, of course. The biggest thing, probably, was victory. The city had been transformed: not its broken infrastructure, but its daily psychology. When the advance element of SEAL Team 7 showed up to relieve us—their turn to do a turnover op, feel out the dangerous textures of this city, and find their battle rhythm—everything had changed. Tribal cops were in the streets. More than three thousand new recruits had joined their ranks. There was no sanctuary for Al Qaeda when the locals were standing tall in uniform. The police knew their neighborhoods. It was easy for them to spot foreign terrorists, and if a local did something bad, well, there was usually a cop nearby who had gone to high school with the guy’s best friend. The fruit of our work could be seen in the new activity by the chamber of commerce to get small businesses working again. Kids played soccer in the side streets. Iraqi women began organizing, aided by some female Marine Corps civil affairs officers who listened to their problems and taught them how to depend on themselves, organize their finances, get jobs, learn to read, and run their households. Most of them were widows, thanks to years of murder and terror in their country. As they began having a greater role in city life, they also served as a bulwark against Al Qaeda’s return. When one of their sons came home with a pocketful of cash, saying he was on a holy mission, Mom had the courage to challenge him: “What kind of holy mission? Who is telling you this?”

In September 2007, there was a five-kilometer road race in
memory of an Iraqi police officer, Captain Ali, who died trying to stop a suicide bomber who was targeting his police station. It started at the Ramadi Glass Factory, passed Camp Hurricane Point, then turned down Route Michigan—once almost impassable because of IEDs—and ended in the Ma’laab district. More than a hundred Iraqis took part, and onlookers were waving national flags all along Route Michigan. The success went beyond Ramadi. Skipper and Master Chief had used their freedom of movement in a wide area to help integrate our operations with SOF and conventional units in Fallujah, Habbaniyah, the northern Euphrates River Valley, and even all the way out to Al Qaim, near the Syrian border. Army Special Forces were a big part of it. I saw it up close on my trip to the city of Hit. Those Green Berets did great work there and in Haditha, too, allowing us to focus on the Ramadi-to-Fallujah corridor.

From there, the Anbar Awakening spread east toward Baghdad and north into Diyala Province. Sunni sheikhs in those areas signed their young men into service and went after Al Qaeda wherever they found them. Enjoying the goodwill of tribal leaders, our soldiers were welcomed into towns and villages that had never seen Americans before. Together they systematically dismantled the terrorist threat.

The change that overtook Anbar Province was so durable that it survived even the assassination of the Awakening’s principal sponsor. On September 13, during the opening days of Ramadan, Sheikh Sattar went to Al Asad air base to be photographed with President Bush. At his home afterward, Sattar was attacked by suicide bombers. He died along with several of his guards. It was a blow to the good guys, but just as you can’t kill your way out of an insurgency, Al Qaeda couldn’t kill its way back into
one, either: Sattar’s death had no real impact, because his brother, Sheikh Ahmed Abu Risha, stepped into his shoes, took charge, and kept up the momentum toward reconstruction. Believe me, I understood Ahmed’s motivation.

We also saw a different attitude in the Iraqis at the training range. Where once they lived from paycheck to paycheck, caring for little more than getting by, now they seemed interested in something larger than themselves. One time a big argument started between some trainees, and our terps explained what was going on. An Iraqi soldier (a malcontent, one of the lazy ones) was complaining to the others, asking them why they were working so hard. The other trainees responded, “We’re going to fight for Iraq. We’re going to make this country great someday.” The attitude spread. They started training harder, and the next thing we knew, we had a company and then a battalion of Iraqi forces more or less ready for action. We integrated them into our operations and got some great work done straightening out their broken city.

DQ, our operations officer, told me he used to get kidded about the way we were handling the COIN mission. His counterpart in regimental headquarters at Fallujah, a hard-charging Big Army type, liked to say that the SEALs in Ramadi weren’t doing much more than handing out soccer balls. But after seeing the change that had come over the city, his tune changed. He said to DQ, “I’m buying what you’re selling. It all makes sense.”

It was around this time that the majority leader of the U.S. Senate stood on the floor of his chamber and said, “This war is lost and the surge is not accomplishing anything.” The president called it “one of the most irresponsible acts I witnessed in my eight years in Washington.” Naturally the president’s opponents
were determined to deny him any credit. The smart people at another media outlet told their readers, “Whatever [President Bush’s] cause was, it is lost…. Additional military forces poured into the Baghdad region have failed to change anything.” These people’s hatred for our commander in chief seemed to overshadow their love of their country. With Anbar Province turning the corner, it looked like they were moving the goalposts to manufacture a defeat. When America got a new president in 2009, the press seemed more willing to credit us for what we did. Eventually
Newsweek
ran a cover story declaring, “Victory at Last: The Emergence of a Democratic Iraq.” Better late than never, right? Those of us who were there know how the history really went down. When the guys from the 1/506, the Currahees, got back to Fort Campbell and held their awards ceremony in the Lozada Physical Fitness Center, two hundred soldiers received decorations, including eighty-seven Purple Hearts, fifteen Bronze Stars with a “V” device for valor, and three Silver Stars. Their names stand proudly in the annals of the American military tradition, but they were generally typical of all the men I saw in action in that city.

All of us understand the price we paid for victory.

Something Master Chief said still stands in my mind today as the ultimate expression of what our work is all about, and what it means to serve. When a few of us complained that we were putting ourselves needlessly at risk by letting Iraqis do our work, Master Chief replied, “There are times when you have to put yourself at a disadvantage in order to accomplish a larger mission and secure a longer-term goal.” He went on, “You can take the
simple view that Iraqis are all corrupt and beneath us. Or you can see it another way—see that they’re all human, and even America’s been that same way at times during its own history, with innocent people taking fire from both sides in a bloody civil war. There are people who have to live in Ramadi, who can’t flee to Syria, America, or Baghdad. They’re stuck, just trying to get by. It’s complex. And that complexity means you have to understand that everything you do can have a huge effect.” We did have a huge effect in Ramadi. I look to American history to measure it. In 1787, after the shooting was over, the meetings that produced the U.S. Constitution had just adjourned and a lady asked Benjamin Franklin what kind of government he had given the American people. “A republic,” he said—“if you can keep it.” I guess that’s what we helped give the people of Anbar.

Once again, it was Master Chief who summed it all up: “We’ve trained and trained for a reason: to be better at the craft of war than our enemy, to use our skill to perform the mission, and to accept the risks. As American warriors, it’s our obligation to protect the innocent. And that means, sometimes, that
we’re
the ones who need to be put on the disadvantaged side of the threat cycle.”

In other words, it’s not about us. I don’t think you’ll find a better expression of the true nature of service than that.

During the deployment, I fired my weapon at an enemy probably only four or five times. A chief’s job is to put his men in position to handle the gunplay. I took care of my guys and did my best to make sure they had what they needed. There’s satisfaction enough in that.

That deployment marked the last time I would carry a rifle with a SEAL team into battle. The time was coming for me to hang up my spurs as an active-duty warfighter and get on with life’s next adventure.

At the end of the day, what we did in Iraq wasn’t exactly the kind of revenge for Operation Redwing that I thought I had wanted, but as we packed up our gear at Camp Marc Lee and welcomed the advance elements of the SEAL team that was relieving us, I realized I had managed to accomplish my own personal mission as a by-product of the larger, more significant one.

Every now and then, I awake from my dreams thinking of Mikey, Danny, and Axe, and praying that they might be proud.

M
organ and I had always meant to become SEAL officers. Our plan was to enlist, work our way up through the ranks, then jump into Officer Candidate School (OCS) or the Navy’s Seaman to Admiral program. Officers who come up through the enlisted side, known as mustangs, have a lot more street cred than the ninety-day wonders who take a commission straight out of college. The mustang’s path was the one we always planned to walk.

As my teammates and I boarded a C-17 transport at Al Asad and left the country, we counted our successes and tended to our wounds, wondering when the next chance to fly downrange to find bad guys would come our way. Except for me. I was done. After nine years in the Navy, I knew then that it was time for me to retire.

With my book
Lone Survivor
set for June release, I had to separate quickly. The Navy required that I not be operational when it was published. Normally we get a month of leave after coming home from deployment. Back at the Strand, I finished up my medical boards (examinations that determine your benefit levels), filled out my separation papers, and turned in my military ID and my classification card.

The Team 5 area was a ghost town, with everyone gone on postdeployment leave. Team 7’s quarters were nearly vacant, too, as they were overseas in Anbar Province, doing the Lord’s work. The other odd-numbered teams were in various stages of workup and deployment. The sheer anticlimactic feeling of it all wasn’t what I expected. I turned in my gear, picked up my DD214 service record, and said adios, amigos, to the skipper and the team master chief, finally checking out of my life as an active-duty SEAL. When the gate slammed shut behind me, it started to sink in. I’d never get back inside without an escort.

Leaving the Navy was my hardest evolution. I immediately missed having a place in the active-duty fraternity of men who were forged on that anvil. You learn each other’s habits and quirks, but you share everything in common in spite of your differences. You pick on each other relentlessly, but it’s the by-product of brotherly love. Seeing my teammates in situations of great stress (as well as mind-numbing boredom), I got to know many of them better than their own families did. The worse things get, the more you know you can count on men like that to always have your back. If you really want to know if someone is a true friend, get yourself into a tight spot with him or her; everyone has plenty of friends when things are good, but true friendship is forged in moments of chaos. It’s a sad fact, but it’s the truth.

I was scarcely out of uniform when the news came: Morgan had been accepted to Officer Candidate School; he was going to Pensacola to cross over to the dark side. I stood at a fork in the road, too, bound for the book-promotion circuit. Our directions, if not our lives, diverged a little at that point.

Morgan finished his three months in OCS as the “honor man,” first in his class, just as he had done in “A” school (where
enlisted men go after boot camp), at BUD/S, and at SEAL sniper school. At his graduation ceremony in Pensacola, I swelled with pride to see him in dress whites with an ensign’s gold stripe on his sleeve. He was still in the brotherhood.

I know I’m blessed to have survived, and to have served in the company of the best warriors on God’s great earth. But survival wasn’t necessarily a wonderful thing if it left me stuck wondering every day what I was meant to do with this gift of life, which I would have gladly given a dozen different times under fire for any one of my guys, any time, any place. In combat, you’re in a world where things are certain. Even in a counterinsurgency mission, which is filled with so many areas of gray, the enemy is always out there, looking to kill you. That brings energizing clarity to even the most ambiguous situation. At home, the world is far less urgent and clear. When I went back to Texas, I felt like a lost dog looking for a new home. Every time I saw a news story about something the teams had done overseas, I felt some jealousy tainting my pride as I wondered,
What are the boys up to? What’s the mood at the team house?
I missed them more than they will ever know.

As a wise man in the Naval Special Warfare community once said, “This thing is not going to last forever, and the flaming Ferris wheel will continue to spin without you.” Boy, does it ever.

You walk a steep and dangerous path from your time in military service back into civilian life, and the warriors in my family haven’t always walked it well. All the men on my mother’s side served in our armed forces in combat—warfighters from front to rear, right on down the bloodline. There were World War II
fighter pilots, infantrymen, Marines, and Civil War riflemen. My mother’s cousin traced our line back to the Revolutionary War and a distant relative of Martha Washington. We’ve been here for a long time. Our menfolk fought wars while the women raised more warriors. My father made sure we got his message. He’d tell my brother and me, “Before you take advantage of this country’s opportunities, son, you are going to serve it in some way. Just like all the men in your family before you.” When I got out of the Navy, I felt like I’d checked that box.
Now what?
I often wondered.