Stories from Bob's Life

I began Green Team training in September of 1989.  Green team training was meant to be very intense, to test the mettle as well as the tactical skills and aptitude of those who would be going into tactical positions in what were then called the Assault Teams, but are now called the Tactical Squadrons of what is referred to as the “National Mission Force”. It had been nearly 7 years since I had been actively engaged in tactical training.  After leaving the Kampfschwimmerkompanie, I had been at NSW Group TWO  Staff, then Operations officer at Seal Team 2, then XO at NSW Unit TWO in Scotland and then an action officer on the COMSECONDFLT staff on the Mt Whitney. I had stayed in good physical shape, but in the meantime my tactical skill had gotten rusty, and tactics had changed from when I’d been in SEAL Platoons in the 1970s.

Much of what ST6 focused on was Close Quarter Battle, and fire fights inside buildings and in urban terrain. At that time, ST6 was the only SEAL team that specialized in those skills and tactics, though they were key skills for police SWAT teams.  The other guys in my Green team class had been introduced to CQB in their platoons, and most of them had friends at ST6 who had worked with them to prepare them. I was better than most in Green Team at parachuting and diving – those having been primary activities of the Kampfschwimmers, but I was near the bottom at the skills associated with rapid fire clearing of buildings and rooms. Some of the other skills we had to master were new to all of us, and in those I held my own, based on good physical fitness and generally good athletic ability.

But my job in Green team was to learn what ST6 did – I was not being trained to go into a tactical position as a shooter in one of the tactical squadrons, as my Green Team classmates were.  I was slated to be the OPS officer, and unlikely to actually use most of the tactical skills we were learning.  In December 1989, as we in Green Team were getting ready to stand down for Christmas, the CO, Capt Rick Woolard pulled me out of training to go along with the team for the invasion of Panama for Operation Just Cause.  He wanted me to participate in a contingency operations to see how the team responded to real-world (vice exercise) contingencies and how the team worked within their joint structure.  I had been pulled out once previously to go to El Salvador when some Americans were taken hostage in a hotel, but the crisis was resolved without the US military being engaged.

When Rick told me we would be invading that night, he told me that was top secret, all the phones out of the command had been shut down to avoid a security breach.  Not wanting to leave Mary hanging that evening, I drove off the base, went to a pay phone at a nearby 7-11, called home and told Mary I wouldn’t be home that night. Why not? she asked. I said simply read the papers.

But for me, this was my first real combat deployment.  Operation Just Cause was the US invasion of Panama after a lot of tension between the US and Panama over rights with the canal and in the Canal zone, finally precipitated when Noriega had his people intentionally mistreat an American military officer and his wife – who later became friends of mine.

I recall being on the airplane flying to Panama wiht most of the command. Rick Woolard was carefully going over his rosters of people.  I had nothing to do – but wonder what awaited us upon landing.   I saw and participated in the organized chaos of arriving, establishing a headquarters, finding places for guys to sleep, eat, shit, shower shave, rehearse and be ready to go. Our first night was indeed chaos because that was invasion night – we hadn’t wanted to give Noreiga and his thugs a heads up that we were coming.  And that night SEALs from ST4 attacked  Paitilla Airfield in Panama City, to disable Noriega’s plane to prevent his escape, and in the process, 4 of our SEALs were killed.

The next morning’s in papers in Norfolk reported that not only had we invaded Panama but that 4 SEALs had been killed during the night.  Mary Anne got that word from neighbors and friends and Vadm Jerry Johnson my boss at COMSECONDFLT who’d advised me against going to ST6, called Mary Anne that day and asked if he could help in any way.  She doesn’t recall if she knew at that point that I wasn’t one of the fatalities,  but she figured I wasn’t and wasn’t too worried. Rick Bernard came by that day with a bouquet of flowers for her. But it was clear to her that I would miss Christmas. My parents drove down a few days later from DC.

During operation Just Cause I participated in and even led several operations.  Rick Woolard put me “in charge” more as an officer figurehead, knowing that his experienced NCO’s were there to handle any difficult tactical details – which indeed I wasn’t trained or ready for.  I was “in charge” of the team that relieved ST4 at Paitilla Airfield after our disaster there, led a ship “take down” in the canal when we thought some of Noriega’s henchmen were trying to flee, and was on a fast rope team to go into a compound where we suspected Noriega’s henchmen were located, which I write about elsewhere.  I was also made Rick’s deputy to work with Pat Toohey XO of ST4, when a combined ST6-ST4 team led by Rick Woolard fast roped onto the southern most island on the Amador Causeway where the Panamanian SEALs had been based.  Our intent was to neutralize this elite force of Noriega’s and we were prepared for resistance, but their compound was empty.

It was strange going thru their spaces as they were very similar to our own spaces, in that we sensed a very similar  military/commando culture that we have in US SEAL commands.  It felt a bit like going thru another athlete’s underwear drawer.  By and large we treated their spaces with respect, and left the compound more-or-less as we found it, after confiscating weapons and a lot of their booze. I was later told that the young soldiers of the 7th Infantry DIvision went in and completely. trashed the place.

One of the highlights of that window while we were looking for Noriega was Chrismas eve.  During the 80s, there had been a fair amount of tension between ST6 and the other SEAL Teams.  I attribute much of that to Dick Marcinko’s self centered bravado, insinuating that there were really only two types of SEALs – those at ST6, and everyone else – who either wished they were at ST6, or didn’t deserve to be.  Marcinko had deliberately infused that elitist mindset into the people he brought in, and it persisted for decades after he’d left.  But in Panama ST6, ST2, and ST4 were indeed working together on a common mission, and on Christmas eve, the SEALs at NSWU 8 on Rodman Naval Base,  with help from SEALS from ST2 and ST4 had set up a grill in the NSWU8 compound and invited us from ST6 who were living in the hanger at Howard Air Force Base (5-10 minute drive away) over to join them.  Steaks, chicken, beer, combat – and the Christmas spirit – for that moment, those earlier tensions were erased, and we all felt like SEAL brothers sent forward together to do our nation’s work.

Then we got word that Dick Cheney, the Secretary of Defense was coming.  His helicopter landed just outside our compousnd and he walked in to join us in our revelry. Pretty exciting.

Shortly after he joined us, our radioman got a message that all ST6 operators had to return to the hanger at Howard AFB and get ready for an emergent op. There was a report that Noriega had been spotted at a condominium in Panama City and we were to go get him.  So we rushed back, a team of guys got jocked-up and went to the reported site, but it was a dry hole.  We called these “Elvis Ops”  and there were a number of them. That was in reference to all the reported Elvis sitings that would get people spun up – all rumors, made up fantasies.

We stayed in Panama for about two weeks and after we had cornered Noriega in the Papal Nuncia, the fighting was essentially over and I was sent home – arriving home just prior to New Year’s transition from 1989 to 1990. The rest of the team redeployed to Va Bch a few days later.  Once 1990 got underway at the beginning of January, I rejoined my Green Team class for another 6 or so weeks before being pulled from their final exercise to assume the role as command Operations Officer.

Command Operations officer was a challenge for me, because I had not served in that command before, and Green team was a rather artificial introduction to the command and its culture.  ST6 has always had its own culture and it took me quite a while to learn it, and I was never completely accepted into it.  Because of that, it was probably the hardest job I had in my career in the Navy. It has always been important to me to feel like a fully enfranchised and valuable member of the team – which I never fully did at ST6, though I had the number 3 position in the command..    I worked my butt off to do the job well and become a part of the Team and I did make progress, gaining ground in increments with good decisions and performance.  Probably 2 nights most weeks, I slept at the command or in one of the rooms in the BoQ that were  available to us year round.  I lived about 45 minute drive from work, but was still able to spend most evenings and weekends at home with my family – my kids were 10, 8, and 6. Mary Anne had to carry most of the  family load during that window.

The biggest event that happened after Just Cause was Sadam Hussein invading Kuwait in August 1990.  During Desert Shield, the entire command prepared to be called into the war.  We had all of our gear loaded on pallets, ready to be called away on a moment’s notice, and every morning when I went to work, I’d say good bye to Mary Anne, not sure I’d be coming home that evening – that had happened twice to me before (El Salvador and Panama.)   I did make one admin/planning trip to Saudi Arabia with the Joint Force commander Maj Gen Wayne Downing during Ooperation Desert Shield, but when Desert Storm kicked off, General Schwartzkopf, the General commanding US forces on the invasion, didn’t like or trust Special Ops forces in general – and SEALs in particular.  We believe this was due to some of his experiences as an infantry officer in Vietnam.  So,  much to our chagrin, ST6 stayed on standby in Va Bch for the whole war doing exercises with the skeleton JSOC staff that was left behind, even after Schwartzkopf reluctantly called JSOC and Delta forward to search for SCUDs in the desert – a mission no other force could do.   When a mission arose for which ST6 was uniquely prepared, a small contingent of our Boat capability was called forward, and LCDR Jim O’Connell went as the senior member of our command. Our mantra back in Va Bch was: “Frogman, Frogman, where ya been? Watching the war on CNN.”

Once the US had recaptured Kuwait and the fighting was over, we licked our wounds, disappointed and angry at not having been called as a command into “the big one”, though our army counterpart had.   So we got back into training and preparing for the next contngency – whatever it may be.  And my time was running out, since I had screened for command and would be leaving to attend Spanish Language school in Monterey before heading to Panama to command NSWU 8 in January of 1992. I left the command in June of 1991, and Joe Maguire finally was able to get out of BuPers, but he came into the Chief of Staff job and Jim O’Connell fleeted up to take my place as the N3.

I left the command as many do – exhausted, ready for a break, but pleased at having been put through the ringer and succeeded, or at least not failed, and I probably learned the most in that job as at any job I ever had in the Navy – probably because I worked harder there than at any job I had in the Navy.   Because I had not grown up in that command and was not well integrated into their culture, I was not a great N3.   I didn’t have the background or experience to really succeed and do great, as I’d wanted to. Nor did I really fit that well into their rather elitist total-go-to-war culture.

I’m pretty sure I was the last N3 to serve there who did not grow up in the assault squadrons. Since the  mid/late 90s, the key leadership positions in the operational chain of command have been almost exclusively filled with people who have succeeded in tactical squadrons.  A good policy.

That said, all the work and effort I gave to that assignment, the mistakes made, lessons learned, connections gained and credibility earned served me well in my follow on tours, and arguably set me up for success that led to major command.  And that’s to say nothing of the experience of having served at arguably the most elite special operations team in the world.