Inside SEAL Team Six(56)

I said, “I understand, sir. But you can’t cancel this.”

The officer in charge of my team, who was sitting beside me, said, “Don, he’s the CO. Let it go.”

“I know, but this is important. We’re going to have an accident one day, and we don’t have enough medics in my team to cover everything we do.”

Captain Murphy eventually got tired of hearing me talk and relented. He said, “Okay. Your medics can go to goat lab. But no one else.”

My point was that we didn’t have enough medics. In fact, we had only one, and that was me.

But I had received permission to conduct the goat lab. So I typed up forms for eight people, now two from each boat crew, and made them all “medics.” I had no authority to do so, but I did it anyway.

Then I ran a week-long goat lab and taught the eight medics how to perform cricothyrotomies and cut-downs, how to insert chest tubes and make splints, and so on. All the ABCs of combat medicine. And I made all of them advanced trauma medical kits, which they wore.

Less than two months later, my boat crew was called to do a demonstration at Fort Bragg in North Carolina for a group of VIPs.

First, we rehearsed. Each four-man team flew in on separate Black Hawk helicopters. The helos flared and hovered about thirty feet over the tarmac as we fast-roped down, two men from each helo at a time, wearing gas masks, camo, and all our ■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​

Once we all got on the ground, we lined up and faced the reviewing stand, which was going to be packed with senators, congressmen, admirals, generals, and other VIPs. The rehearsal was rough, because one of our Black Hawks came in on a hard landing. Then a platoon of Rangers rappelled down from ropes after us, and a few of them broke ankles.

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The Black Hawks approached the tarmac and flared. My partner and I fast-roped down, but when the second two started descending, one of them—a SEAL named Mark—got hung up. The strap from his M5 got stuck on something in the helo.

I shouted up at him from the tarmac, “Mark, come on down.”

His weapon sling had dislocated his shoulder, and he was hanging from it and in a lot of pain.

He shouted back, “I hurt my shoulder.”

I said, “I’ll look at it when you get down here.”

He cut the sling and came down, and our eight-man assault team ran up past the side of the reviewing stand. I saw that Mark’s right shoulder was dipping way down, obviously dislocated.

As I was examining Mark, I saw the CH-53 carrying the Rangers approach. It hit its back rotor on the tarmac and bounced about seventy feet into the air. The rear ramp was open, and, as I watched, a soldier came out the back door just as the tail of the helicopter swung left. Then I saw a large pink burst, and the soldier flew through the air and landed in the dirt.

I was standing about a hundred meters away with my mask, body armor, and ■​■​ gear still on. I threw down my MP5 and ran as fast as I could to the downed man.

He was lying facedown in a pool of blood with his helmet still on. I turned him over and saw that his entire face and most of his head had been sliced off.

I took a deep breath.

Then I looked to my left and realized that there were six other bodies lying on the ground.