Denver Rorke - Damn few: making the modern SEAL warrior

Title page photograph is by Rob Greer.

All other photographs are courtesy of the author.

Copyright 2013 Rorke Denver

All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher. For information address Hyperion, 1500 Broadway, New York, New York 10036.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data for the original print edition has been applied for.

eBook Edition ISBN: 978-1-4013-0489-8

Cover design by Laura Klynstra

Cover photo Rob Greer

First eBook Edition

Original hardcover edition printed in the United States of America.

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For My Wife, My Heartbeat.

For My Mom, My Champion.

For My Dad, My Compass.

For My Brother, My Archetype.

For My Girls, My Fuel.

And for my warrior brothers, my deepest respect.

Heres tae us.

Whas like us?

Damn few,

And theyre a deid.

Early Scottish Toast

The Sunni fighters had learned to mount three-prong mortar tubes on the beds of Toyota Hilux pickups. These little trucks were scooting around western Iraq like homicidal go-karts. They would pull up to a spot, andthoomp, thoomp, thoompthe mortar operator would launch three fast rounds, powerful enough to flip a Humvee or dispatch half a dozen U.S. Marines to the hospital or the morgue. Then the driver would slam on the gas and, pedal to the metal, theyd screech right out of there. Once they got proficient, no amount of reconnaissance or technology could pinpoint where these roving thugs would turn up next. By the time my SEAL teammates and I arrived in Anbar Province in the spring of 2006, the mortar boys were certified pros. My first night at Combat Outpost COWBOY outside Habbaniyah, a mortar round came flying over the concertina wire and landed thirty feet from me while I was in the head.

Message received.

How can we help impact the battle space? I asked the Marine lieutenant colonel who was in charge of the outpost. How can we protect the base and help the Marines get after the enemy?

He didnt have an immediate answer, but I could tell he hated how things stood. We could definitely use some help here, he said.

These were the dark days before the Sunni Awakening, when the major tribal leaders finally got sick of the senseless violence of Al Qaeda in Iraq and turned noticeably more sympathetic to the U.S. cause. Back then, the area around Habbaniyah was one of the bloodiest in Iraq, truly one of the most lawless places on earth. Improvised explosive devices, rocket-propelled grenades, random sniper fire from hidden alleys and rooftopsthe dangers seemed to lurk everywhere. The way the insurgents saw it, the Americans had invaded their country and so deserved to die. These people we were fighting wore no uniforms, answered to no central command, and displayed a maddening ingenuity at threatening the lives of U.S. troops. Conceiving an effective counterstrategy wasnt proving any easier than tracking down Saddam Husseins weapons program.

The SEAL platoon we were replacing had been training Iraqi Scouts, the Iraqi version of our special forces, though the comparison was almost laughable. The Iraqis were mostly willing soldiers. Mostly willing. But Im pretty sure Iraq had Boy Scouts with more field experience. Thanks to the efforts of SEAL Team One, the Iraqis had made some progress on the combat basicshow to plan a mission, how to communicate, how to shoot more effectively, and, if at all possible, how not to get themselves or their American trainers killed. Still, these budding special operators hadnt seen much action at all. Theyd been going out on night patrols with our guys, which was standard procedure and would have kept them busy in some other war zone. But western Iraqs tribal region was almost entirely dead at night.

The camel spiders and the feral dogs never seemed to sleep. Everyone else was in bed by 8:30, including the pickup-truck mortar boys and their many violent cohorts. Then, as soon as the sun came up, the truck tires were squealing again and the mortar shells were raining down.

I knew we had to find a way to get the SEALs into the middle of the fight and somehow shift the balance in this lopsided battle zone.

First thing the next morning, I sat down with my senior guys from SEAL Team Three. We gotta get outside in the daytime, I told them. We have to make ourselves visible to the enemy. Well beg them to fire on us. Well be like human bait. But our snipers will be waiting in the palm groves. Our heavy gunners will be out there, too. Well have to show some nerve here. We might have to dodge some sniper fire and some mortar shells. Well just have to outshoot em, I guess. Anyone up for that?

It wasnt really a question. I had been with these guys for more than two years already. Id gone through SEAL training with some of them. It didnt matter that theyd barely had time to unpack the gear yet. These were real-deal, ready-for-action American warriors, as impatient as I was to find some action, just itching to test their training and preparation in a hot battle zone. I knew what those evil grins meant.

This will get us fighting? one of our heavy gunners asked.

No doubt, I told him.

Then, yeah, he said, as the others nodded and smiled. Were good to go.

Three hours later, all sixteen of ussnipers Rolex and Ro, heavy gunners Big D and Bakes, communicators Lope and Cams, assistant officers Nick and John, and the rest of the platoonbacked by sixteen Iraqi Scouts, were on our feet, taking a late-morning stroll beyond the perimeter wire of Combat Outpost COWBOY and into the pockmarked outskirts of Habbaniyah. This was a banged-up neighborhood of high-walled houses, open sewers, and potholed streets. Cars and trucks zoomed past us. When bullets are flying, no one likes to drive slowly. Garbage burned in piles on the corners. One whiff of that could sap your appetite for the rest of the day. Most of the local people tried to stay inside. The blocks were eerily quiet until they were ferociously loud. Every block or two had another mosque, some modest, some grand, all of them sending out calls for prayer five times a day. In full kit and body armor in the 110-degree heatlong pants, long shirts, boots, gloves, battle helmet, weapons, ammo and water, probably sixty pounds of gear per manwe did not exactly blend in.

We might as well have carried a giant banner as we walked along: Go ahead. Take your shot. The SEALs are here.

With the desert sun directly overhead, I took an overwatch position on a rooftop with our snipers. My assistant officers were positioned in a nearby palm grove with our heavy-weapon gunners, a perfect L-shaped ambush layout, when the first Toyota rolled up.

I dont think the Iraqi mortar team had a clue what was coming next. Given the free-fire zone Habbaniyah had become, they had no reason to expect anything at all. Standing on the truck bed, the mortar operator wasnt even looking our way. He was staring at what must have seemed like another easy target for an over-the-wire mortar attack. Maybe hed hit the next American taking a bathroom break.