Inside SEAL Team Six(53)

Once the pole was hooked, the pole man would pull the pole, which released a small caving ladder attached to it that unrolled down into the assault craft.

The ladder extended as far as forty feet. For ships with higher decks, we’d use two ladders attached to each other and conduct a multi-pitch climb, which was basically a two-stage climb. You’d climb up a good portion of the ship to a landing, then hook again for another climb to the main deck.

Every part of an under-way is quite dangerous. I had a buddy who fell off the caving ladder near the deck of the ship and landed thirty feet down in the assault boat. He was beat up pretty badly and ruptured his spleen. Our team doctor, who was on the ship, saved his life that night. And I witnessed plenty of other lead climbers being flung off the caving ladder once it went taut from the ship going in one direction and the ladder being secured down.

We typically assaulted ships in thin (three-millimeter) wet suits or, in warm climates, black skin suits. We each wore a holster with an S&W 686 revolver and carried gear on a black web belt—Ka-Bar knife, hostage gear, tie-ties, commo, medical supplies, and so on.

As the lead climber, I went up the ladder first and secured it to something on the deck with a piece of one-inch tubular nylon and a carabiner. Attached to the right side of my belt was a carabiner with two to three nylon runners I could sling over something solid and then attach a safety line from the runner to the ladder.

With the ladder secured, I would take up a position of cover and signal the rest of the team to board the ship.

As we reached the deck, helicopters would swoop in, and another element of SEALs would begin fast-roping in. Timing was critical. If the helicopters arrived before the guys on the boats were on deck, the assault boats and their crews would be sitting ducks.

The SEALs from the helicopters would clear from the deck on up, leapfrogging from one position to another. And then they’d proceed to wherever they’d been tasked to go—a ballroom or a stateroom, maybe, in the case of a hostage rescue.

The guys on the boats would clear from the decks on down, and maybe secure the engine room; it depended on the op. Afterward, the assault boats were picked up by the helicopters, or they were driven somewhere and recovered.

Under-ways were by far the hardest thing we did, and we got very, very good at them.

We worked with ■​■​■​■​■​■​■​the best helo pilots in the world. They liked to mess with us. Like the time we were sitting outside on the skegs during a training op in Puerto Rico and the pilot flew fewer than two feet over the treetops at 120 knots. At times, we thought they were crazy, and the feelings were mutual, I’m sure.

Our HAHO capabilities would have given them good reason to think so. We’d fly in thirty-man stacks, and after we jumped, we’d time it so that all thirty chutes opened at the same time and at the same altitude. We would exit the bird up to twenty-five miles away from the target and land just before sunrise.

Every man in the stack would be in communication with the others. You knew who was supposed to be in front of you and who was supposed to be behind you. You would count off from the rear, “Thirty okay,” “Twenty-nine okay,” and so on. In the case of a low jumper or a malfunction, a member of the stack would split away and accompany the distressed jumper to the alternate DZ (drop zone).

I loved the sensation of free-falling. But these weren’t recreational jumps. We were going down in full combat gear with oxygen and weapons.

Guys suffered serious injuries—I broke my back in two places on a HAHO, and I have seen broken legs, ankles, and backs; some men even died.

One night we did a 17,999-foot HAHO jump outside of Tucson where we exited the aircraft about twenty miles from the target. I was carrying a seventy-five-pound rucksack, my weapon, oxygen tank and mask, my compass board, and my altimeter, and I was wearing my jump helmet with comms.

Before opening the main chute, the procedure is to wave off and then look left and right before pulling; this way, when you open, you don’t have another jumper falling or flying into you, which can be fatal.

That night, when I exited, I waved off. But when I pulled, I flipped right through my parachute risers and started falling backward.

This caused my risers to quickly spiral all the way down to my helmet and jerk my neck, helmet, and jaw sharply to my left, knocking off my O2 mask. I thought I’d broken my neck and jaw. And when I looked up and saw the other jumpers way above me, I knew that I was dropping like a stone. My parachute wasn’t even partially opened.

When experiencing a malfunction, the jumper pulled his cutaway pillow with his right hand, which freed the main parachute. Then he’d pull the reserve handle with his left hand, which hopefully would deploy the reserve chute.