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R
EPLACEMENTS
W
e’d been in that war for four years, through countless hairy
situations, and no SEAL had ever died. It had looked like the action
in Ramadi, and all Iraq, was starting to wind down, and now we’d
been hit terribly hard.
We thought we would be shut down, even though our
deployment still had a couple of months to run. We all knew the
politics—my first two commanders had been ultra-cautious pussies,
who got ahead because of it. So we were afraid that the war was
over for us.
Plus, we were seven men short, cut nearly in half. Marc was
dead. Brad and Ryan were out because of their wounds. Four guys
had gone home to escort Marc’s body home.
A
week after losing our guys, the CO came around to talk to us.
We gathered in the chow hall at Shark Base and listened as he
talked. It wasn’t a long speech.
“It’s up to you,” he said. “If you want to take it easy now, I
understand. But if you want to go out, you have my blessing.”
“
....
yeah,” we all said. “We want to go
out.”
I sure did.
H
alf of a platoon joined us from a quieter area to help fill us out.
We also got some guys who had graduated training but hadn’t been
assigned to a platoon yet. Real new guys. The idea was to give
them a little exposure to the war, a little taste of what they were
getting into before they trained up for the main event. We were
pretty careful with them—we didn’t allow them to go out on ops.
Being SEALs, they were chomping at the bit, but we held them
back, treating them like gofers at first:
Hey, go line the Hummers
up so we can go.
It was a protection thing; after all we’d just been
through, we didn’t want them getting hurt out in the field.
We did have to haze them, of course. This one poor fella, we
shaved his head and his eyebrows, then spray-glued the hair back
on his face.
While we were in the middle of that, another new guy walked
into the outer room.
“You don’t want to go in there,” warned one of our officers.
The new guy peeked in and saw his buddy getting pummeled.
“I gotta.”
“You don’t want to go in there,” repeated the officer. “It’s not
going to end well.”
“I have to. He’s my buddy.”
“Your funeral,” said the officer, or words to that effect.
New guy number two ran into the room. We respected the fact
that he was coming to his friend’s rescue, and showered him with
affection. Then we shaved him, too, taped them together, and stood
them in the corner.
Just for a few minutes.
W
e also hazed a new-guy officer. He got about what everyone
got, but didn’t take it too well.
He didn’t like the idea of being mishandled by some dirty
enlisted men.
R
ank is a funny concept in the Teams. It’s not disrespected
exactly, but it’s clearly not the full measure of the man.
In BUD/S, officers and enlisted are all treated the same: like shit.
Once you make it through and join the Teams, you’re a new guy.
Again, all new guys are treated the same: like shit.
Most officers take it fairly well, though obviously there are
exceptions. The truth is, the Teams are run by the senior enlisted. A
guy who’s a chief has twelve to sixteen years of experience. An
officer joining a platoon has far less, not just in SEALs but in the
Navy as well. Most of the time he just doesn’t know shit. Even an
OIC might have only four or five years’ experience.
That’s the way the system works. If he’s lucky, an officer might
get as many as three platoons; after that, he’s promoted to task unit
commander (or something similar) and no longer works directly in
the field. Even to get there, much of what he’s done has been admin
work and things like de-confliction (making sure a unit doesn’t get
fired on by another one). Those are important tasks, but they’re not
quite the same as hands-on combat. When it comes to door-kicking
or setting up a sniper hide, the officer’s experience generally doesn’t
run too deep.
There are exceptions, of course. I worked with some great
officers with good experience, but as a general rule, an officer’s
knowledge of down-and-dirty combat is just nowhere near the
same as the guy with many years of combat under his belt. I used to
tease LT that when we did a DA, he would be in the stack, ready
to go in, not with a rifle but his tactical computer.
Hazing helps remind everybody where the experience lies—and
who you better look to when the shit hits the fan. It also shows the
people who have been around a little bit what to expect from the
new guys. Compare and contrast: who do you want on your back,
the guy who ran in to save his buddy or the officer who shed tears
because he was being mistreated by some dirty enlisted men?
Hazing humbles all the new guys, reminding them that they don’t
know shit yet. In the case of an officer, that dose of humility can go
a long way.
I’ve had good officers. But all the great ones were humble.
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