The Last Punisher: A SEAL Team THREE Sniper's True Account of the Battle of Ramadi (3 page)

I sat alone in the room and reminisced about the good times. My transition out of the military changed my affiliation with the Teams. Once I was out, I became a former action guy, a guy who used to do cool things but has moved on. It’s not the most glorious self-realization, but it is reality. My departure from the Teams changed my direction. I was on the path to becoming a physician assistant, I had earned a bachelor’s in political science, I had a wife and a son and a
house and a whole life that separated me from who I was when I was a Teamguy. Yet, somehow, I’ve always felt drawn back to the Teams. Especially in times like those, at the death of a brother, I realize that a Teamguy is never really out. The brotherhood binds us for longer than a deployment, longer than a platoon, longer than a work-up.

I recalled the phone call Chris made to me to tell me that Ryan “Biggles” Job had passed in 2009. It was my first introduction to loss outside the Teams, and it was raw. I could make sense of dying on the battlefield, but Ryan had overcome his injuries and lived a full life for several years before succumbing to complications from a reconstructive surgery. When Chris called and told me, I felt angry, like we’d been cheated. There was no goodbye. Just a few days before his death, Ryan had called to tell me his wife was pregnant. He was so happy. Then he was gone. I regretted that I hadn’t told him more. I hadn’t told him how proud I was of him. I didn’t say how much of an inspiration he was to others—and the Teamguys—around him. There was no going back. Only memories to relive.

Ryan was the beginning of a cycle. There would be more phone calls and bad news. More anger and memories, and more of the feeling that I am always connected to the brotherhood, no matter how long it’s been since I’ve worn the uniform. Pat Feeks. Nick Checque. Matt Leathers. Tim Martin. The list goes on. Each time the loss brings me back.

And now Chris had left us just as suddenly as Biggles and the others, with nothing but memories to relive.

Each time, the news incites the same rage. The rage is not directed toward any individual, but rage that the world lost a favored son. The memories I had of these individuals strengthen this claim. These were giants among men, and they will no longer walk among us. I feel sorrow for the future that will not know them. I felt the rage boil in me when I thought about Chris.

I downed the last of my bourbon. There is only one place to go when you lose a close friend. A Teammate. A brother. You have to go back. My time in the Teams constantly intersects with the present. It is unavoidable. Each time I suffer a loss, I go back to better times when I knew him living. I go back to the genesis—the beginning of my Frogman days. There is comfort in this journey. It takes me back to the brotherhood, to the blood, the sweat, and the tears endured to earn the beloved burden. It helps me not to lament the passing of a Teammate, but rather to relish in the luxury I was afforded to live and fight next to him.

Many people search their entire lives for meaning or for a single memorable experience. My time in the Teams with the Punishers, with Chris, was my holy grail.

I slid my glass to the side and opened a file on the computer. I stared at the picture of Chris and me at our 2007 awards ceremony. A wave of energy shot through my veins. We had all gone to Danny’s Island Bar for the drink-up afterward. My dad had been there, along with Lindsey, Momma Lee, and the hundred or so Frogmen from Team THREE. I laughed out loud as I remembered catching my dad’s eye at the bar. We had captured some unsuspecting BUD/S trainees and voluntold them to participate in some “team-building” exercises. I let my mind drift to the following drink-up and after party at Ty Woods’s bar, the Far East Rock. The memories were clear. They would always be clear. I smiled as I thought about my progression as a Frog.

I opened a CD case and put on my platoon’s video from 2006. I used to watch it religiously after I got out of the Teams, but as the years had gone by the frequency had decreased. Tonight, it felt right to watch it. As the sound came to life and the images appeared, they were as vivid as my memory.

All the way back. I felt drawn to the experiences, the men I fought with, and the memories shared. I felt life lived at its fullest. Although
someone had taken Chris’s life on that February day, they couldn’t take my memories of him. The same is true of Biggles, Marc Lee, D-Rock, JT, and the others who helped shape who I am. I was being drawn to another life. I was back to where I’d started again. Back to the Teams.

“It pays to be a winner.”

—unofficial motto of the SEAL Teams

W
HEN I WAS
a child, I was sometimes described as “tenacious,” which is really just a euphemism for stubborn. Whatever the case, I’ve always been one to travel my own path, even when it meant making decisions that didn’t make much sense to others around me. At times, I refused to give up on things that no one saw much merit in. Other times, I changed course abruptly when it seemed to make sense to stay put.

My tenacity littered my central Connecticut childhood with a strange dichotomy of accomplishments and incompletions: I pitched on a Little League baseball team that nearly won the New England title, then quit the next year to focus on soccer, a sport I wasn’t nearly the same standout in. I was a Boy Scout for more than ten years and then quit before making Eagle Scout because the idea of the project was too tedious to me. Similarly, I quit my high school golf team when I got bored with the sport, despite excelling at it. Instead, I took up swimming and competed at the state level by my senior year.

I was in possession of one of the worst things a teenager lacking real motivation can have: God-given talent. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to be good. I did, and I toed the line. I went to class and stayed on the honors list, but nothing challenged me enough to feel invested. I consistently earned high marks and praise without ever feeling truly tested. At my all-boys Catholic prep school, the stakes were never high enough for me to commit 100 percent of my effort to securing my future.

At eighteen, I saw college mostly as an opportunity to get out on my own. I stumbled through two semesters at James Madison University in Virginia, failing spectacularly with about a 0.7 GPA. By the fall of 2001, I was a nineteen-year-old undergrad with a Mohawk, any number of bruises or shiners acquired in brawls and fistfights, and a general ambivalence toward just about everything that wasn’t girls, booze, or rugby.

Although I couldn’t make it to class or turn in my assignments, my first attempt at college wasn’t a complete loss. Early in my first semester, I stumbled into the Rugby House on Harrison Street, and it quickly became my home away from home. The rugby team took me under their collective wing. They were young men with names like Blumpkin (RIP), Strapper, Spidey, Beardo, Reeper, Snorty, Metal Head Nick, Dirty Dustin, AY, and Weird Jason. On Bastard Wednesdays we finished a keg while listening to metal, playing beer pong, and lifting weights. Chicks dared not enter. We hosted theme parties. We brawled with fraternity boys. We crushed it on the pitch against a large portion of our opponents.

I embraced the lifestyle, some might say a little too much. My parents were not impressed when they showed up at Parents’ Weekend and I had a black eye I’d gotten in a match. They didn’t love my Mohawk. I found my niche in the team, however, and I did well for myself. If my stint as a young college student taught me anything, it’s that I am a pack animal.

I woke up in the Rugby House on September 11, 2001, and logged on to AOL Instant Messenger. The scrolling ticker disclosed the same awful news the rest of the world was learning. For whatever reason, the magnitude of the situation didn’t really register at first. It seemed surreal. I brushed my teeth, got dressed, and casually answered my mom’s call when my phone rang. As she relayed the details of the two planes hitting the World Trade Center, only two hours from where I grew up, the gravity of it sank in.

I went to the house next door and watched on television the dark clouds of billowing smoke, the people jumping to avoid the searing flames, the pancaking collapse into the massive fog of dust and rubble. I was overcome with the same feeling of anger that gripped the American consciousness.

Later that day, I heard about Bruce Eagleson, a close family friend who had been a mentor to me growing up in Middlefield, Connecticut. Bruce worked for the Westfield Corporation, and he called his son from one of the twin towers that morning. “I’ve got employees up there,” Bruce told him. “I have to go back in and check on them.”

They never found his body.

At Bruce’s memorial service, I found myself at a crossroads. I was not doing enough with my life. Evil men murdered my friend, and what could I do about it? Playing rugby and beer pong until I puked had suddenly lost its allure. I wanted to kill the men who planned the mass murder of nearly three thousand Americans. It was my generation’s Pearl Harbor, and I thought about my family’s connection to the Navy in World War II. My grandfather was a machinist’s mate on a ship in the South Pacific, and my great-uncle flew a biplane, hunting Japanese in the Pacific, where he was shot down and spent four days floating on the open sea before being rescued by U.S. forces.

At the Navy recruiting station, I was drawn to an old poster for the
SEALs. Five gun-wielding Frogmen in face paint, web gear, and caterpillar mustaches were climbing out of the water. They looked ready to make somebody’s day. The poster read simply “SEALs,” and I vaguely knew of their reputation. I was interested, and after a little research, it didn’t take long to decide I wanted to become one. I was done living a life of mediocrity. It was the first real risk I’d ever taken—the moment I decided to step up and be a man.

When I told my parents, it went over like a turd in a punch bowl. I’m the oldest of three brothers in a proud working-class family from Connecticut. My maternal great-grandparents and my paternal grandparents emigrated from Poland in the early twentieth century. My paternal grandfather was a factory worker and farmer. My mom’s dad worked in a factory until he went into business with die molds. My parents have spent their entire lives in central Connecticut in a small, tight-knit community, and they felt I was putting my future on hold by joining the Navy.

I scored high on the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery test, and my recruiter tried to convince me to sign up for the Navy’s nuclear operations program. Qualifying test scores like mine are hard to come by, and he talked up the technical training and skills, the cash bonuses and college money. I wanted none of it. My goal was to go into combat and shoot terrorists.

In March 2002, I went off to Navy boot camp at Recruit Training Command Great Lakes, or “Great Mistakes.” Boot camp was mostly a giant disappointment in terms of the challenge it provided. The Navy used to have a saying: our ships are made of wood, and our men are made of steel. Based on my boot-camp experience, it seemed more like the modern Navy’s ships are made of steel and its sailors are made of sausage. The vast majority of sailors I encountered were not preparing themselves for SEAL training.

After Great Mistakes, I went on to sixteen weeks of training at hospital
corpsman school. All I did was work out, study, and think about the challenge ahead. I worked hard, found some time to blow off some steam with my friends, and graduated near the top of my class.

In January 2003, a buddy of mine picked me up from the airport and drove me across the San Diego–Coronado Bridge to report for Basic Underwater Demolition/SEAL (BUD/S) training on Coronado Island. Driving across the bridge in my dress blues, I felt like I’d finally arrived.

Some guys will tell you that SEALs are made. They’ll describe BUD/S, tell you about the approximately 80 percent attrition rate, and attempt to illustrate all the ways that Naval Special Warfare takes the toughest men and turns them into SEALs.

I say that’s bullshit.

SEALs aren’t made. They’re born. From the moment a candidate steps onto the beach in Coronado, he either has what it takes or he doesn’t. In spite of the Navy’s best efforts, there is no real way to identify what that “it factor” is. Men join the ranks from all walks of life, from all regions of the country, of varying heights and sizes. The fastest, strongest, and leanest aren’t guaranteed to make it through training. What guarantees success cannot be measured in minutes or pounds. The men who do graduate from BUD/S and SEAL Qualification Training and go on to join the Teams all possess an intangible drive and resilience worth more than thousands of hours of preparation on any track or in any pool.

The Teams don’t “make” SEALs, but they do sharpen those abilities a man already possesses. They peel away the layers covering up the killer instinct lying dormant somewhere inside and show him how to be useful. The Teams chip away the excess.

We call it a brotherhood because we forge bonds through our experiences,
but also because we are a family of men separate from all others. Our innate warrior spirit unites us. On the most basic, most primal level we are cut from the same cloth.

I was twenty-one when I started BUD/S with Class 245 in early 2003. I completed five weeks of Indoctrination and Pre-Training before starting the first and most challenging phase of BUD/S. Day one started on the BUD/S Grinder, the big asphalt courtyard where students muster in the morning. I looked around at the more than two hundred men who started the six-month course with me. Most of them would be gone by week six. The group was full of guys with beastlike physiques and I-belong-here looks projected with varying degrees of certainty. At six foot three and around 200 pounds, I fit right in. I knew that
my
“unfuckwithable” expression was authentic, and I knew that the vast majority of the others’ weren’t.

The first quitter DOR’d (drop on request) before PT even started on the first day. In order to quit, you have to ring “the Bell” three times to announce to your classmates that you’re not Teamguy material. Quitting becomes extra humiliating when a guy has to cross in front of a formation of 150 of his peers gutting out their three hundredth four-count flutter kick. The Bell goes everywhere the class goes, whether it’s to the O-Course, or the beach, or anywhere else. Ringing it promises hot coffee, donuts, and a lifetime of regret.