The military requires stacks of paperwork for even the most meager financial transaction. Members of other government agencies had more freedom to pay for information, to pay local contractors to build wells in villages, to pay for a host of projects that might help to open relationships.
The money worked. You can"t buy peace, but you can sometimes make a down payment on it, and it struck me that it was much cheaper to invest money in relationships with potential Afghani allies than it was to house, feed, arm, water, transport, and supply tens of thousands of American troops. Not every investment paid dividends, but if we could pay one man a few hundred or even a few thousand dollars to give us quality information on a high-level terrorist, and we could use that information to capture or kill our target, it was cheaper and more effective than spending millions of dollars on complex signals intelligence collection platforms that cost hundreds of thousands of dollars to operate and rarely gave us a clear line of attack on our targets. If we could pay a local leader a few thousand dollars a month and buy safe pa.s.sage for our forces, the goodwill of a village, and information on al Qaeda, it was far more effective than sending twice-daily patrols of kids from Missouri rolling through villages to project "presence," in the hope that the people of Afghanistan would become enamored with Americans.
I love American idealism. I love the hopeful spirit of Americans endeavoring to shape the world for the better. A lot of times, though, many Americans-especially those in senior positions in government and the military-who have never spent a day working with people who suffer, can be blinded by the bright shining light of their own hopes. You cruise through a town where you don"t speak the language and offer someone a conversation about freedom or fifty bucks, most people will take the cash, thank you very much.
I"d learned, working in Croatia, Rwanda, Albania, Cambodia, and Gaza, the very simple lesson that people were smart enough to know what they needed, and if we wanted to have credibility with them, we had to be able to help them directly.
As we sat in villages under a fierce sun and talked with haggard, scarred, and bearded men who looked to be in their mid-fifties, they often smiled at us and told us that they were in their early thirties. The average life expectancy in Afghanistan was forty-three years old. The infant mortality rate was estimated to be about 257 out of every thousand. In the United States, by comparison, the infant mortality rate was six out of every thousand.12 In graduate school I had often looked at the United Nations Human Development Index, which ranks countries on the basis of "three basic dimensions of human development: a long and healthy life, knowledge, and a decent standard of living." In graduate school I had often looked at the United Nations Human Development Index, which ranks countries on the basis of "three basic dimensions of human development: a long and healthy life, knowledge, and a decent standard of living."13 Full statistics were hard to come by for Afghanistan because of the movement of refugees across the borders and the ongoing war, but generally speaking, Afghanistan ranked approximately 174 out of the 178 countries of the Human Development Index; one of the poorest, harshest, and most brutal places to live in the world. Full statistics were hard to come by for Afghanistan because of the movement of refugees across the borders and the ongoing war, but generally speaking, Afghanistan ranked approximately 174 out of the 178 countries of the Human Development Index; one of the poorest, harshest, and most brutal places to live in the world.14 The men on the SEAL teams were impressive. The days were long, the air full of dust. Often our visits seemed fruitless, and as we drove from one village to another we ate meals of MREs in hot pickup trucks. Yet even at the end of a long day every radio transmission was crisp, every potential threat was noted. We drove one early evening as the sun was fading, when a call came over the radio, "Stop him! White Toyota, the pa.s.senger, that"s our guy!"
"Get him!"
I jumped out of the truck, stepped into the street, and pointed my rifle at the chest of the oncoming driver. A white compact car with two Afghani men was rushing toward me. I shuffled two steps backward so that I could move behind our truck while firing if the car accelerated at me, but the driver applied the brakes and the car slowed. The pa.s.senger and the driver threw their hands into the air. I held my rifle on them as other men on our team opened the doors to their car and pulled both men from the vehicle. We searched their car and emerged with a blue notebook; did it have intelligence value? As we questioned the driver, a crowd began to form on the road. Afghani men approached to see what was happening. They stood with their arms crossed on their chests, and then they would shout and point at us as they yelled to other Afghani men joining the crowd. Eyes narrowed.
"Two cars stopped on the road, one hundred meters south. Men emerging."
"I"ve got three men on a rooftop, two hundred meters east, one of them with a stick or an AK in his hands."
More people began to step from their stopped cars. Children and young boys inched closer.
"There"s a truck stopped on the road to the west, blue truck, about fifty meters back. Has five guys in it, all young, all full beards, all black turbans."
We released the driver and quickly ushered his pa.s.senger into one of our trucks. Every man on our team jumped in a truck and one second later our convoy was accelerating away.
I sat in the room while Chris, a professional interrogator working with our team, spoke with the detainee. "a.s.salaam alaik.u.m," Chris said and shook the hand of the man who was now our prisoner. Chris touched his hand to his heart. Chris handed the man a candy bar, opened it for him, and asked the prisoner if he"d had enough to eat. Yes, he had, he said, thank you.
So tell me about yourself, Chris said, what is your profession? The man said that he was a farmer.
"Where is your farm?"
The man answered. "And what kind of crops do you grow?" The man answered. "And where were you going when my friends stopped you?" The man explained that he was returning to his village in a car driven by the friend of a relative. He had been on a trip to sell something and he was now on his way home.
Chris sat comfortably, and he occasionally asked the man if he needed anything to drink, if he was sure that he wasn"t hungry. As they talked, Chris covered the same ground as before, often with slightly different questions: "Do you often make this trip? What kind of crops did you grow last year?"
Chris talked with the man for a few hours, and by the end of the conversation Chris a.s.sessed that we had detained the wrong man. Our prisoner was, it seemed, indeed a farmer, who had been on a personal errand when at the end of a long day we mistook him for a terrorist and yanked him from his vehicle. Chris explained to the man that we were very sorry to have caused him this inconvenience. Chris explained that our prisoner looked similar to a known terrorist who had been murdering innocent people in the area, and that we were doing our best to protect the local population. Chris said that the American people have a great respect for the people of Afghanistan, and that we had a desire to work with them. Chris said that we would provide this man money in the morning to help him make the trip back to his village and to pay him for the trouble we had caused him.
I later watched other young Army interrogators try to intimidate detainees into talking, and I never saw one of those interrogators get a single piece of useful information. Chris was a professional, and he knew what worked. The world"s best interrogators proceed not by fear and intimidation, but by establishing rapport with their prisoners and learning from them over time. We"d learned in Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape school that the world"s most effective interrogators, from World War II to the present day, are men who use their intelligence to establish rapport and gain information.
There is a famous picture from World War II of the legendary interrogator Major Sherwood Moran of the Marine Corps "breaking" j.a.panese POWs.15 In contrast to images of dogs held several feet from prisoners to scare them, Moran is sitting on a cloth foldaway chair across from a j.a.panese prisoner. He is listening intently, his body leaning forward and eyes focused on the prisoner. This practice of highly effective, respectful, intelligent, and noncoercive interrogation has been applied effectively to al Qaeda, too. In contrast to images of dogs held several feet from prisoners to scare them, Moran is sitting on a cloth foldaway chair across from a j.a.panese prisoner. He is listening intently, his body leaning forward and eyes focused on the prisoner. This practice of highly effective, respectful, intelligent, and noncoercive interrogation has been applied effectively to al Qaeda, too.
Jack Cloonan, a special agent who worked at the FBI"s Osama bin Laden unit from 1996 to 2002 described the following incident of "breaking" a terrorist.
One man we captured was Ali Abdul Saoud Mohamed, an al-Qaeda operative behind the 1998 bombings of the U.S. emba.s.sies in Kenya and Tanzania. Ali Mohamed had fully expected to be tortured once we took him in. Instead, we a.s.sured him that we wouldn"t harm him, and we offered to protect his family. Within weeks, we had opened a gold mine of information about al-Qaeda"s operations. One man we captured was Ali Abdul Saoud Mohamed, an al-Qaeda operative behind the 1998 bombings of the U.S. emba.s.sies in Kenya and Tanzania. Ali Mohamed had fully expected to be tortured once we took him in. Instead, we a.s.sured him that we wouldn"t harm him, and we offered to protect his family. Within weeks, we had opened a gold mine of information about al-Qaeda"s operations.Ali Mohamed wasn"t unique. We gave our word to every detainee that no harm would come to him or his family. This invariably stunned them, and they would feel more obligated to cooperate. Also, because all information led to more information, detainees were astonished to find out how much we already knew about them-their networks, their families, their histories. Some seemed relieved to reveal their secrets. When they broke, the transformations were remarkable. Their bodies would go limp. Many would weep. Most would ask to pray. These were men undergoing profound emotional and spiritual turmoil-the result of going from a belief that their destiny was to fight and kill people like us to a decision that they should cooperate with the enemy.16 The professionals who I was working with also understood that the man we had just brought in for questioning was going to go home and tell his entire village about his experience with the Americans. There was a good chance that this man would be the first person in his village to have any interaction with Americans, and he might well live in a village with no newspapers, magazines, or TV news coverage. His story would likely be the the story of Americans in Afghanistan. What happened to you? How did the Americans treat you? Are they like the Russians? The British? This man-by our best estimate-was a farmer on a personal errand being driven home by a friend when I stepped into the road and pointed my rifle at him and my teammates yanked him from his vehicle. If we were going to be able to catch real al Qaeda targets, we would need the kind of human intelligence that only men like this farmer and his friends and family could provide. In every interaction that we had, we had the opportunity to create enemies or to create friends. story of Americans in Afghanistan. What happened to you? How did the Americans treat you? Are they like the Russians? The British? This man-by our best estimate-was a farmer on a personal errand being driven home by a friend when I stepped into the road and pointed my rifle at him and my teammates yanked him from his vehicle. If we were going to be able to catch real al Qaeda targets, we would need the kind of human intelligence that only men like this farmer and his friends and family could provide. In every interaction that we had, we had the opportunity to create enemies or to create friends.
Treating Afghanis well was not only essential to the conduct of the campaign to win the intelligence war. I also began to see that it was essential for ourselves. The Taliban were often well trained, arguably often better trained to fight in Afghanistan than many American troops. So what makes us different from the Taliban? What distinguishes a warrior from a thug? Certainly it"s not the quality of our weapons or the length of our training. Ultimately we"re distinguished by our values. It would have been easy to abuse a prisoner, but any act of wanton personal brutality is not only unproductive to defeating a group like the Taliban, but on a personal level it degrades the warrior and turns him into a thug. Any man who tortures a prisoner, who shoots an innocent person, might escape formal justice, but he can never escape his own self-knowledge. As I worked with this small group of professionals in Afghanistan, it became clear to me that men need to have the strength to conduct themselves with honor on the battlefield.
Every day the men on this team went out to meet with allies and to hunt enemies, and every moment of every day was filled with a low-grade tension. Is somebody gonna take a shot at us here? Is this guy telling us the truth? Are we driving into an ambush? Is somebody gonna take a shot at us here? Is this guy telling us the truth? Are we driving into an ambush?
One day we stepped into our trucks and drove for an hour until we came to a collection of mud-walled buildings that were home to a local leader who had in the past provided information on al Qaeda targets. When we walked into the center of his compound, a few boys wearing skullcaps dashed away. Our contact came striding out to meet us dressed in jeans, a T-shirt, and sungla.s.ses. He talked with one of our colleagues from another government agency, and then he directed us out of the compound-he wanted our help. We walked fifty yards down a dusty lane shaded by overhanging trees. One of the members of our team pointed to opium fields on the hillside. We spread out for security, and I took a knee about twenty yards from a compact car parked under a tree. Our contact and one of our teammates walked up to the car. I watched our teammate bend at the waist and lower his sungla.s.ses to peer through the dust-covered windows of the car, and then he started to walk away quickly while talking with his Afghani contact. The American called for our Explosive Ordnance Disposal expert, and as the EOD tech walked toward the car, I walked away from it. The car was filled with explosives. Old unexploded artillery sh.e.l.ls lined the seats. It was unclear if the car had been parked outside the compound as a bomb but had failed to go off. Some of the men from the village had pushed the car down the street to move it away.
"Well, tell everyone not to touch it again."
The man wanted our help to safely blow up the bomb. Our team could destroy small amounts of explosives, but we had only one EOD tech and he a.s.sessed that the explosives were too unstable, and the bomb was too close to the village for him to safely blow it in place. We called in to headquarters to have an EOD team sent out to the village to destroy the bomb. By the time we jumped back into our pickup trucks we had information about a possible Taliban bed-down location nearby. Our contact explained that there was a group of young Taliban fighters in the area.
As we drove for the suspected Taliban site, we called back to headquarters and had an unmanned aerial vehicle diverted to look at the campsite for any human activity. As we bounced along the road, our team leader worked at a ruggedized laptop computer to plot our position in relation to the target site. The site appeared empty, but it was daytime. Should the team plan a night reconnaissance, possibly an ambush?
When the UAV had been deployed, we turned and drove to meet with another potential ally in the area. The police station was set on a relatively well-manicured compound that hosted a set of white-painted buildings, and we talked with the head of the local force as he smoked a cigarette. What had he learned since our last conversation? Did he have any information on the targets we were tracking? Had he heard about a suspected Taliban camp in the area? Sitting in a disheveled Afghani police uniform and filling a tray with ashes, the officer talked about how difficult it was to train and feed and equip his men. Someone from the government had promised him more money, but it had not arrived. He asked, could we help him?
This police chief wanted money, and he probably had information that we needed. At first glance, it seemed a simple question: should we pay him?
Every interaction in Afghanistan was, however, more complicated than it first seemed, and the success of our campaign depended upon tens of thousands of individual human interactions just like this one.
The police chief-and every Afghani we talked with-had his own allegiances, to the government, to the Taliban, to his ethnic group, to his tribe, to his personal financial gain, to his family"s honor, to his professional career. He had his personal loyalties, his personal quirks. In order for us to win here, we had to have friends and allies, but building those friends and allies could only happen if we worked through barriers of language and geography and culture and custom.
Most of the professionals I knew had made an effort-as I had-to brush up on their history of Afghanistan. But just when we thought we understood the history of the Taliban, we began to learn that we also had to pay attention to ethnic differences in Afghanistan-between, for example, Tajiks and Pashtuns. And just when we thought we had begun to understand ethnic groups, we learned that we had to understand tribes.
Of course, once we began to understand tribes, we realized that we had to try to understand the particular issues and difficulties of the communities and individuals with whom we were interacting. And of all the incredible men on my team, there wasn"t a single one who spoke more than twenty words of Pashto or Dari-the major languages in Afghanistan-or more than twenty words of Arabic-a predominant language among al Qaeda fighters.
The stakes involved in every interaction were incredibly high and we learned fast, but American forces usually deployed for three, seven, or twelve months. Because of the frequent rotation of forces in and out of Afghanistan, knowledge was lost.
I felt like I was just beginning to get a sense of the fight. Afghanistan is about the size of the state of Texas, and depending on how you count refugees, the population is generally thought to be about 30 million people. The population is overwhelmingly rural. If you took twenty-five of the major cities in Afghanistan, they would only encompa.s.s about 20 percent of the population.17 In contrast, 80 percent of America"s population lives in an urban/metropolitan area. In contrast, 80 percent of America"s population lives in an urban/metropolitan area.18 The population, moreover, was spread out over one of the most mountainous and inaccessible countries in the world. If we wanted allies, they"d be difficult to find and difficult to supply. And when we did make it to their villages, we"d find a population that was 70 percent illiterate, living in an economy that was-next to Somalia-one of the worst in the world.
More difficult still, this fight involved Pakistan as well as Afghanistan, where at that very moment, much of al Qaeda was waiting, training, organizing, equipping, and rearming, just over the border.
All of this suggested that the mission in Afghanistan would be complicated and difficult, but perhaps the most difficult aspect of the fight was that it was not at all clear what our long-term mission actually was. Was our aim to defeat al Qaeda? Was our aim to defeat the Taliban? Was our aim to build a functioning democracy and prosperous economy in Afghanistan?
I felt that-even in 2003-we had begun to misremember what happened in Afghanistan in 2001. We began to think that we we had defeated the Taliban and driven al Qaeda into Pakistan. It was true that American financing, air power, and military personnel had been essential to the effort, but the ground forces in that fight were Afghans. Our allies, the Northern Alliance, were the predominant forces that had defeated the Taliban on the ground, and it concerned me that now, just a year and a half later, the American "campaign" didn"t seem to have a clear enough plan for recruiting and supporting our allies. We also seemed to confuse the Taliban with al Qaeda. had defeated the Taliban and driven al Qaeda into Pakistan. It was true that American financing, air power, and military personnel had been essential to the effort, but the ground forces in that fight were Afghans. Our allies, the Northern Alliance, were the predominant forces that had defeated the Taliban on the ground, and it concerned me that now, just a year and a half later, the American "campaign" didn"t seem to have a clear enough plan for recruiting and supporting our allies. We also seemed to confuse the Taliban with al Qaeda.
Al Qaeda was a foreign force, made up of men like Bin Laden, from Saudi Arabia, and Ayman al-Zawahiri, from Egypt. Of the nineteen hijackers who had partic.i.p.ated in 9/11, fifteen of them were from Saudi Arabia. The Taliban, by contrast, was an Afghani force. And it seemed to me that they both required a different approach. Al Qaeda terrorists had attacked the United States. They represented a threat and they needed to be killed. Some of the Taliban also needed to be killed, but the Taliban was a wide and diverse group with many competing interests and a history of shifting allegiances, and it seemed to me that we had better determine for certain who among them needed to be fought before we launched a shooting war with tens of thousands of men spread throughout a mountainous country.
The Taliban and al Qaeda were a.s.sociated, but not the same, and in order for us to fight effectively, we had to be laser-focused on killing and capturing the right people, and building as many allies as we could.
Some people argued that in order to defeat al Qaeda and secure American interests we had to defeat the Taliban, and that in order to defeat the Taliban we had to build a democracy in Afghanistan. This seemed to me like arguing that in order to rid your house of rats you had to replace the walls in your home and then build an Olympic-sized swimming pool in the backyard. To turn Afghanistan into a country with a highly functioning democracy, a well-run economy, and a prosperous population is a n.o.ble vision. But defeating al Qaeda is a more pressing and more modest mission, not to mention a clear mission that we could achieve. But it also seemed to me that it would require us to keep our efforts in Afghanistan focused.
If our strategy to defeat al Qaeda was going to require us to build democracies and economies, then we had to do that work not just in Afghanistan and Pakistan, but in Somalia, Yemen, and a dozen other enclaves and countries around the world.
We returned to the firebase that night while a UAV patrolled over the site of the suspected Taliban camp. Our phone rang, and I answered it. The commander of our unit in Kabul was on the other end. "I talked with Bruce. SEAL Team One and Special Boat Team Twelve want you to go back and take command of the Mark V detachment before the next field training exercise." In other words, they were sending me stateside already.
I shut my eyes in disappointment.
"Yes, sir. I"ll be ready to go."
I had spent only a few weeks in Afghanistan. I had only just begun to feel that I had my body armor riding well. Before I had come to Afghanistan, I had taken command of a Mark V special operations craft detachment that was preparing to deploy to Southeast Asia. The deployment wasn"t scheduled to leave for several months, and we thought that I"d have all that time to spend in Afghanistan. No luck.
I left Afghanistan through the main base at Bagram, full of the French, Dutch, Polish, and German flags of our allies. I pa.s.sed the giant chow halls where thousands of meals were prepared for soldiers every day, walked past the huge bunkers, the oversized TVs, and I sat through briefings on counterdrug initiatives, legislative plans, civil affairs efforts. I remembered the village leader who said that it was much easier to fight the Taliban.
When I got back to San Diego, I learned that a SEAL who served in the unit I deployed with had been killed right after I left.
Now, the bullets were real.
13. Southeast Asia
AS WE PULLED out of Sembaw.a.n.g Wharves on the northern tip of Singapore, I looked at the radar. Green dots indicated three large tankers in the shipping lanes. Otherwise, it was a quiet night. out of Sembaw.a.n.g Wharves on the northern tip of Singapore, I looked at the radar. Green dots indicated three large tankers in the shipping lanes. Otherwise, it was a quiet night.
"Let"s turn the lights off," I said.
The boat captain spoke into the radio, "Lights off," and our two ships went dark. With our running lights extinguished and the internal lights dimmed, we became two black ma.s.ses rolling over black waves on a black night, white wakes our only visible sign.
As we pa.s.sed our second checkpoint, the navigator said to me, "Mr. G, that"s checkpoint Betty."
"Roger."
The radioman called to headquarters, "Eastgate, Eastgate, this is Calisto. Calisto. I pa.s.s Betty. How copy? Over." I pa.s.s Betty. How copy? Over."
"Calisto, this is Eastgate. I copy Betty. Over." this is Eastgate. I copy Betty. Over."
Our checkpoints were often named in categories and progressed alphabetically-we used the names of cities: Albany, Buffalo, Colorado Springs, Denver; or of cars: Alfa Romeo, Beemer, Cadillac, Dodge; or, most popularly, girls: Alexis, Betty, Ca.s.sandra, Danielle. Guys would sometimes slip the names of their wives and girlfriends into the operation.
We pa.s.sed checkpoint Betty and the open sea beckoned. The boat captain said, "Bring it up?"
"Bring it up." The boat captain pushed the throttle forward, and the jet engines roared and soon we were rushing over the small chop of the sea at fifty knots. The moon was hidden by clouds, but occasionally threw its white shadow onto the waves, and as I turned my head left I saw the black outline of our sister ship flying just thirty meters to port.
I pulled a waterproof card from my pocket with the call signs, radio frequencies, and checkpoints for our journey. Using a red-lens flashlight, I checked our distance to the next checkpoint and tucked the card away. The cabin was blacked-out dark, but my guys picked up from the tone of my voice that I was wearing a huge grin.
"You havin" fun, Mr. G?"
"Loads."
I was the commander of a Mark V special operations craft detachment, in charge of two boats and twenty-one men, conducting operations in Southeast Asia. We had left Singapore for Zamboanga, Philippines, on a journey of over fourteen hundred nautical miles. If we were successful, this was going to be the longest transit in the history of Naval Special Warfare.
The Mark V (p.r.o.nounced "Mark Five") is a special operations boat-usually called a "craft"-that was created in 1995 primarily for the clandestine insertion and extraction of Navy SEAL teams.1 At eighty-two feet long and seventeen and a half feet wide, the craft is large enough to carry a boat crew and sixteen SEALs, yet nimble enough to make hairpin turns at high speed. At eighty-two feet long and seventeen and a half feet wide, the craft is large enough to carry a boat crew and sixteen SEALs, yet nimble enough to make hairpin turns at high speed.2 The boat"s shock-absorbing seats offered some relief from the pounding we took as we flew over the waves at fifty knots. The boat"s shock-absorbing seats offered some relief from the pounding we took as we flew over the waves at fifty knots.
Each boat had four gun mounts, and we often ran with twin .50-caliber machine guns at each mount. On the two boats, we had sixteen .50-caliber machine guns, an incredible amount of firepower. Other times we"d run with a mix of .50-cals and Mark-19s. The Mark-19s are automatic grenade launchers capable of sending a 40mm grenade over twenty-four hundred yards. In the hands of a trained operator, it"s possible to launch forty to sixty accurate grenade shots in one minute. In addition to weapons, we carried onboard some of the nation"s most advanced signals intelligence equipment.
The Mark V runs on jet propulsion, and its angular shape makes it harder to detect on radar.3 The back end of the craft is slanted toward the water, and on our back deck we carried Zodiacs-fifteen-and-a-half-foot combat raiding craft-that we could silently slip into the water with Naval Special Warfare commandos...o...b..ard. The back end of the craft is slanted toward the water, and on our back deck we carried Zodiacs-fifteen-and-a-half-foot combat raiding craft-that we could silently slip into the water with Naval Special Warfare commandos...o...b..ard.
Running side by side, we were two small fish in a big sea, but we were built to be fast and smart, and-in a pinch-we had big teeth.
The boats were impressive, but it took the right men to bring them to life, and those men in my crew were Special Warfare Combatant-Craft Crewmen (SWCC-p.r.o.nounced "Swick"). SEALs and SWCC are the two groups of operators that make up Naval Special Warfare, and SWCC-though less well known than their SEAL brothers-are the often-unsung heroes of the force. They make U.S. Naval Special Warfare the best maritime special operations force in the world.
SWCC go through training at Coronado at the same facilities where BUD/S training is conducted. Though different, SWCC training is also intense, and like BUD/S, has a very high dropout rate. During Crewman Qualification Training, aspiring operators undergo a rigorous physical training regimen and learn radio communications, boat handling, navigation, engineering, and maintenance. They learn how to shoot pistol, rifle, and the heavy weapons that are used onboard special warfare craft. In advanced training, some of the teams learn how to navigate winding, shallow inland rivers, while others learn to parachute from a plane with a ten-ton rigid-hulled inflatable boat (RHIB-p.r.o.nounced "rib") into the open ocean. The men learn to fire their .50-cal guns with accuracy while absorbing incredible g-forces as the hulls of their boats shoot over waves at full speed.
As the commander of the detachment, I was in charge of the mission, but the men ran the boats. Each boat had a captain, and the captain ran his crew. A navigator, chief engineer, radioman, and back-deck chief formed the core of each crew, while intel specialists and corpsmen complemented our team.
As we began to run across the open sea-a long night now ahead of us-our chief engineer, Crazy T, said, "Hey, LT"-short for "Lieutenant"-"I was thinking about making you one of those fish crackers, you want one?" Doug Traver-Crazy T-was a former police officer with a great sense of humor who came to Naval Special Warfare for his life"s next challenge.
"That"s all you, T."
Traver was referring to the "treats" that had been prepared for us when we crossed the equator. One of the great traditions in the United States Navy is the "crossing the line" ceremony that takes place when a sailor first crosses the equator and goes from being a lowly "wog" to an esteemed "sh.e.l.lback."
Usually, only large Navy ships made the journey across the middle of the earth, but when we came to Singapore we were only eighty-two nautical miles north of the equator. We looked back at the history of Naval Special Warfare and couldn"t find an instance of any small Naval Special Warfare craft crossing the equator on its own hull. As a team we decided to make a run for it. At the time, I was a lowly wog, so our chief, Steve MacIntyre, and a few of the other sh.e.l.lbacks in our crew organized a special operations-style ceremony. It began while still ash.o.r.e in Singapore.
As wogs we were split into pairs. I was teamed with Crazy T. Standing on a green field near our barracks, we saw a bright yellow Slip "n Slide laid out on the gra.s.s. At the prompt of the sh.e.l.lbacks, we ran hard for the slide, dove, and as we flew down the field headfirst, we realized that the plastic sheet was covered not with water, but with fish oil.
We ran and dove down the slide several more times, until stinking fish oil dripped from our hair and covered our shirts and shorts. Then the sh.e.l.lbacks put two eggs in our oily hands.
"OK wogs, you have to protect those eggs all day. The sh.e.l.lbacks have set up stations around the base. You"ll run from station to station, and at each station you"ll have to complete tasks. The faster you complete the course, the more points you get. If your eggs break, you lose points, and you"ll be punished by the mighty sh.e.l.lbacks. It pays to be a winner!"
Crazy T and I ran around the base stinking of fish oil. With slippery fingers, we programmed radios and a.s.sembled parts into weapons. We did pushups and frog hops in the sand and we crab-walked in the dirt.
We came huffing into the final station covered in fish oil and sand and dirt and sweat. Our eggs were unbroken, but when we tried to hand the eggs to the sh.e.l.lbacks, they told us, "Just set "em down; we don"t want to touch you guys."
Soon all of the stinking wogs gathered outside of our barracks, and then Chief MacIntyre said, "OK, wogs, here"s the deal. You now have the opportunity to earn back time that you lost on the obstacle course by consuming delicacies from the Seven Seas."
The sh.e.l.lbacks laid out a plate of crackers that were covered in some kind of Marmite, fish, octopus, and mayonnaise concoction. With my fish-oil-and-sand-covered fingers, I pinched a cracker and brought it to my nose. I took one whiff and lost my motivation to "earn" back time.
Crazy T, however, was always very motivated. Each cracker was worth a few minutes, and T calculated that if he could down six or so crackers, we would win.
"T...".
"It"s OK, LT, I got it."
T held his nose and swallowed one cracker fast, and then a second. He inhaled a third cracker. I think he even got the fourth cracker in, but the rule was that the crackers had to go down and stay down, and somewhere around the fourth cracker, T"s stomach started to spasm.
The crew was yelling for him: "Hold it in, T! Hold it in!"
T managed to keep his mouth shut as he threw up. He bent over and held his legs. All twenty guys in the detachment-wogs and sh.e.l.lbacks alike-were yelling for him: "Hold it in, T, hold it in, you can do it!"
T then brought his hands together in front of his face and threw up into his hands. "You OK, T?" The whole crew stood waiting for T"s next move. Spit hanging from his mouth, Crazy T said, "Guys, I can get it back in. I can get it back in."
The crew erupted: "Go for it, T. Go for it!" T stood looking at the mess in his hands awhile, and then I put my hand on his shoulder and said, "That"s good enough, T. I think we did it," and T let go of the puke.
The next day we drove our boats down eighty-some nautical miles to the equator, with our sister ship flying a giant black Jolly Roger-the black pirate flag marked by a white skull and crossbones. As we approached the equator, the sh.e.l.lbacks hooked up speakers in the Mark V and-reflecting the varied tastes of our crew-blasted a mix of heavy metal, country, and rap as we shot over short blue waves on the ride south.
Traditionally, sailors are driven over the equator aboard ship, but our sh.e.l.lbacks decided that-being special operations-we had to swim across. We wogs jumped into the open ocean about a half mile from the equator. There was nothing but our boats and salt water in every direction. We started to swim but soon it was clear that the current was running north, and after a half hour we were farther away from the equator than when we started. The sh.e.l.lbacks, however, were not going to let us back onboard. They threw thick ropes off the back of the Mark Vs.
"Grab on! We"ll drag you over."
The engines revved and we grabbed ahold. As the Mark Vs picked up speed, the ocean grabbed at us and tried to rip us from the ropes, but we all held on as the boats dragged us across the equator.
Once we crossed we swam to the back of the Mark Vs and were pulled dripping from the sea and welcomed aboard as new sh.e.l.lbacks. We replaced the Jolly Roger with the American flag and we then conducted an awards ceremony on our back deck. A few of my men had made extraordinary efforts and I had put them forward for recognition, so medals were pinned on their uniforms and orders were read on the open sea. Then we asked the chaplain-who had joined us for the journey that day-to say a few words.