Remembering to the Ending of the World

Admiral William McRaven was not a-bed. Sea Stories: My Life in Special Operations tells the story of his rise from child daredevil though Navy SEAL training through his career ending as a four-star Admiral in charge of the US Special Operations Force. He was there, to put it mildly, at a busy time for Special Operations. The units he oversaw captured Saddam Hussein, killed Osama bin Laden, and captured or killed over 2000 other threats per year. That is 5-6 successful operations per day, year after year.

McRaven is a natural story teller; the whole book reads like hearing a guy telling stories over a couple of beers at a canteen. It is only when you pause to think about the story he just told that you are literally stunned. The tales of SEAL training, rumored to the hardest physical training in the military, are the sort of thing that leaves us mortals slack-jawed. Don’t believe me? McRaven’s training class started with 155 people. This is not a random cross-section of humanity. Imagine the toughest people in the world. Out of the 155 people who started the program, 122 quit. Yeah. That is not easy.

Want another tale? McRaven jumped out of an airplane on some training mission one day. While falling, he got tangled up in his parachute. He survived hitting the ground, but his pelvis was completely separated from his back. Five inches away. Obviously, he needed surgery. And after that, he went right on serving as a Navy SEAL. Yeah.

It is literally impossible not to hold your manhood cheap when reading this book.

As terrible as it sounds, every SEAL longs for a worthy fight, a battle of convictions, and an honorable war. War challenges your manhood. It reaffirms your courage. It sets you apart from the timid souls and the bench sitters. It builds unbreakable bonds among your fellow warriors. It gives your life meaning. Over time, I would get more than my fair share of war. Men would be lost. Innocents would be killed. Families would be forever changed. But somehow, inexplicably, war would never lose its allure. To the warrior, peace has no memories, no milestones, no adventures, no heroic deaths, no gut-wrenching sorrow, no jubilation, no remorse, no repentance, and no salvation. Peace was meant for some people, but probably not for me.

Then there are the tales, one after another, of extraordinary men doing extraordinary things all around the world. In my world, you get called “brave” for saying something unpopular at a meeting of the faculty. In their world, you get called “brave” for leaping out of a helicopter that just crashed and immediately rushing into a building containing armed men waiting to shoot you and then proceeding to systematically eliminate all the threats in the building as you go floor to floor and then you go back to get into another helicopter to take you out of the war zone deep in enemy territory.

After he retired from the Navy, McRaven became the chancellor of the University of Texas. I would have loved to see him talking with an angry faculty member.

I look back on the hundreds of men and women I visited in the hospitals. Every single one of them—every single one of them—asked me the same basic question: When can I return to my unit? When can I be back with my fellow soldiers? When can I get back in the fight? No matter how battered their bodies, all they could think about were their friends, their colleagues, their comrades, still in harm’s way. Never once—never once—did I hear a soldier complain about their lot in life. Soldiers with missing legs, blinded soldiers, paralyzed soldiers, soldiers who would never lead a normal life again, and yet not one of them felt sorry for themselves.

How do they do it? One step at a time

One evolution at a time. One evolution at a time. These words would stick with me for the rest of my career. They summed up a philosophy for dealing with difficult times. Most BUD/S [Basic Underwater Demolition/SEAL] trainees dropped out because their event horizon was too far in the distance. They struggled not with the problem of the moment, but with what they perceived would be an endless series of problems, which they believed they couldn’t overcome. When you tackled just one problem, one event, or, in the vernacular of the BUD/S training, one evolution at a time, then the difficult became manageable. Like many things in life, success in BUD/S didn’t always go to the strongest, the fastest, or the smartest. It went to the man who faltered, who failed, who stumbled, but who persevered, who got up and kept moving. Always moving forward, one evolution at a time.

Why do they do it? As someone says to McRaven (echoing a line often misattributed to Orwell):

“It’s what I like best about this job,” Copeland said. “Every day you get to do some good. Someone is alive today because the guys did their job. Someone will have a lot more Easters because rough men stood ready to do violence on their behalf.”

And us?

And gentlemen in England now a-bed
Shall think themselves accurs’d they were not here,
And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks
That fought with us upon Saint Crispin’s day.

So, today, whenever you are reading this, pause a moment to remember these heroes who guard you while you sleep. I have no words better than those used by Kipling to explain why this should be so.

“Tommy”

 I went into a public-’ouse to get a pint o’ beer,
The publican ‘e up an’ sez, “We serve no red-coats here.”
The girls be’ind the bar they laughed an’ giggled fit to die,
I outs into the street again an’ to myself sez I:
O it’s Tommy this, an’ Tommy that, an’ “Tommy, go away”;
 But it’s “Thank you, Mister Atkins”, when the band begins to play,
 The band begins to play, my boys, the band begins to play,
 O it’s “Thank you, Mister Atkins”, when the band begins to play.

I went into a theatre as sober as could be,
They gave a drunk civilian room, but ‘adn’t none for me;
They sent me to the gallery or round the music-’alls,
But when it comes to fightin’, Lord! they’ll shove me in the stalls!
 For it’s Tommy this, an’ Tommy that, an’ “Tommy, wait outside”;
 But it’s “Special train for Atkins” when the trooper’s on the tide,
 The troopship’s on the tide, my boys, the troopship’s on the tide,
O it’s “Special train for Atkins” when the trooper’s on the tide.

Yes, makin’ mock o’ uniforms that guard you while you sleep
Is cheaper than them uniforms, an’ they’re starvation cheap;
An’ hustlin’ drunken soldiers when they’re goin’ large a bit
Is five times better business than paradin’ in full kit.
 Then it’s Tommy this, an’ Tommy that, an’ “Tommy, ‘ow’s yer soul?”
 But it’s “Thin red line of ‘eroes” when the drums begin to roll,
 The drums begin to roll, my boys, the drums begin to roll,
 O it’s “Thin red line of ‘eroes” when the drums begin to roll.

We aren’t no thin red ‘eroes, nor we aren’t no blackguards too,
But single men in barricks, most remarkable like you;
An’ if sometimes our conduck isn’t all your fancy paints,
Why, single men in barricks don’t grow into plaster saints;
 While it’s Tommy this, an’ Tommy that, an’ “Tommy, fall be’ind”,
 But it’s “Please to walk in front, sir”, when there’s trouble in the wind,
 There’s trouble in the wind, my boys, there’s trouble in the wind,
 O it’s “Please to walk in front, sir”, when there’s trouble in the wind.

You talk o’ better food for us, an’ schools, an’ fires, an’ all:
We’ll wait for extry rations if you treat us rational.
Don’t mess about the cook-room slops, but prove it to our face
The Widow’s Uniform is not the soldier-man’s disgrace.
 For it’s Tommy this, an’ Tommy that, an’ “Chuck him out, the brute!”
 But it’s “Saviour of ‘is country” when the guns begin to shoot;
 An’ it’s Tommy this, an’ Tommy that, an’ anything you please;
 An’ Tommy ain’t a bloomin’ fool — you bet that Tommy sees!