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B
EATEN BY
D
OLPHINS,
E
ATEN BY
S
HARKS
A
fter spending the entire summer at sniper school, I returned to my
platoon and got busy with the rest of our workup, going through the
different training sessions as we prepared to deploy in a year. As
usual, I had some of my hardest times in the water.
E
veryone gets all warm and fuzzy about marine animals, but I’ve
had close and personal encounters that were anything but.
While the Navy was testing a program using dolphins for harbor
defense, they used us as targets, in a few cases without warning.
The dolphins would come out and beat the shit out of us. They were
trained to hit in the sides, and they could crack ribs. And if you
hadn’t been warned in advance of the exercise, you didn’t know
what was going on—your first reaction, or at least mine, was to
think you were being attacked by sharks.
One time we were out and the dolphins were taking it to us.
Getting beaten bad, I headed toward shore to dodge the bastards.
Spotting some piers, I ducked underneath—I knew they wouldn’t
follow me.
Safe.
All of a sudden, something clamped hard on my leg. Hard.
It was a sea lion. They were being trained to guard the piers.
I went back out into open water. I’d rather be beaten by a
dolphin than eaten by a sea lion.
B
ut sharks were, by far, the worst.
One evening, we were supposed to swim across the bay off San
Diego, in the dark, and plant a limpet mine on a particular ship.
Simple, standard SEAL operation.
Not every SEAL hates the water like I do. In fact, a lot of them
like it so much they’ll swim around and play tricks on the others in
the exercise. You might have a guy plant his mine, then sink to the
bottom and wsait for the next guy to come over with his. There’s
usually enough light from above that the second diver is silhouetted
and easy to see. So when the victim—I mean, diver—comes to
plant his mine, the first diver comes up, grabs his fin, and jerks it.
That scares the shit out of the second diver. Usually he thinks
there’s a shark in the water and screws up the rest of the exercise.
And his gear may need a special cleaning.
On this particular day, I was beneath the ship and had just
planted my mine when something grabbed my fin.
SHARK!!!
Then I put my heart back in my chest, remembering all the
stories and warnings about my brethren SEALs.
Just one of the guys messing with my head,
I told myself. I
turned around to flip him off.
And found myself giving the finger to a shark who’d taken a
particular liking to my flipper. He had it in his jaw.
He wasn’t a huge shark, but what he lacked in size he made up
for in pure orneriness. I grabbed my knife and cut off my fin—no
sense keeping it now that it was all chewed up, right?
While he was munching on what remained of it, I swam up to the
surface and flagged down the security boat. I grabbed onto the side
and explained that they were taking me in RIGHT NOW!! because
there was a SHARK!! out here, and he was one hungry mother.
D
uring another training exercise—this one was before my first
deployment—four of us were inserted on the California coast from
a submarine. We came ashore in two Zodiacs, built a hide, and did
some reconnaissance. When the time came, we all got in our
Zodiacs and headed back out to meet the sub and go home.
Unfortunately, my officer had given the submarine the wrong grid
coordinates for the rendezvous. In fact, they were so far off that
there was an island between us and the sub.
Of course, we didn’t know that at the time. We just circled
around, trying to make radio coms with a vessel that was too far
away to hear us. At some point, either our radio got wet or the
battery drained, and all hope of connection was lost.
We spent just about the entire night out on the water in the
Zodiacs. Finally, as dawn approached, our fuel was nearly gone.
My raft was starting to go flat. We all decided we’d just go back
ashore and wait. At least we would get some sleep.
As we were coming in, a sea lion swam up, all friendly-like.
Being from Texas, I had never really had much of a chance to look
at sea lions, so naturally I was curious and started watching this one.
He was a pretty interesting, if ugly, critter.
All of a sudden—
splop
—he disappeared below the surface.
The next thing I knew, he—and we—were surrounded by large,
pointy fins. Apparently, a number of sharks had decided to make
breakfast of him.
Sea lions are big, but there were way too many sharks to be
satisfied with just him. They started circling closer and closer to the
sides of my raft, which looked increasingly thin and perilously close
to the water.
I glanced toward shore. It was very far off.
Holy shit,
I thought.
I’m going to get eaten.
My companion in the raft was a rather round fellow, at least for
a SEAL.
“If we go down,” I warned him, “I’m shooting you. You’ll be
something for the sharks to munch on while I swim to shore.”
He just cursed at me. I think he thought I was kidding.
I wasn’t.
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