By Honor Bound Read online

  Then as now, BUD/S is a six-month course divided into three phases. Phase One is the conditioning phase; Phase Two is the diving phase; and Phase Three is the land warfare phase. They have been called other things over the years and even conducted in different order. Yet this was how it was in our day and much as it is now. Phases One and Two are conducted at the center on Coronado, and Phase Three is conducted on Coronado and offshore at San Clemente Island. Hell Week, when most of the attrition occurs, is typically scheduled midway through Phase One.

  “I was glad to get orders to the center—the training unit, as we called it. I began as a Phase One instructor. Most new instructors begin their tour at the training unit in Phase One. We instructors either led physical training or did PT with the trainees, so it was a chance to get back into top physical condition. Since the water was my thing, I was able to help some of the weaker trainees with their swimming. But we were not there to be nice to these guys. And having been put through training by Vince Olivera, I tried to pass a little of Olivera along to the men I put through training. And with the war over, there was not the need for new guys in the UDT and SEAL teams, so we made sure the ones we sent to the teams were the right guys.

  “It was good duty at the training unit, but the hours were long. Days often began at 0500 with PT and we didn’t knock off until late afternoon or early evening, unless there was a night evening evolution. During Hell Week, we worked the trainees in shifts, just like our instructors did to us—twenty-four hours on and twenty-four off. When I was going through training, I thought the instructors had it easy. Now that I was an instructor, I found that this was not necessarily the case. And it gave me a new respect for Olivera, Dick Allen, and Mother Moy. Those instructors had expectations of themselves and their trainees, and I had to live up to those expectations. I still do.”

  “Mike had the reputation of being something of a hard-ass,” said then Lieutenant Commander Dick Flanagan—Mike’s platoon officer from the Thailand deployment. He was then the assistant director of the Naval Special Warfare Center. “And more than once I had to rein him in, because he could really come down on the trainees. The trainees respected him, but they also feared him. But Mike could also be a great source of inspiration. They all knew his story and what he had done. I think his best work at the center took place when we made him a class proctor. Each class is assigned an instructor who is the class proctor. He serves as their counselor and mentor during all three phases of the training for that class. The class proctor served as the trainees’ link in the chain of command, and it was the proctor’s job to oversee their well-being and attend to any personal problems during the course. When he shed his hard-ass-instructor role for one of a mentor, no one was more effective than Mike.”

  “I was the proctor for Class 83 and Class 87. You work some long hours as a class proctor, but it was very rewarding. As proctor it was my job to see that they pulled together as a class—that they learned teamwork and how to help each other. I was there to mentor them, but I still came down on a trainee when he failed to take care of his swim buddy or didn’t take time to look out for a classmate. I also made sure the officers looked after men in their boat crews and that they always kept track of enlisted trainees assigned to them. That’s an officer’s job. During their diving phase, I came in to supervise nighttime study hours and to ensure that the officers were helping the enlisted men prepare for their written diving exams.

  “Partway through my tour at the center, I was moved to Phase Three. Phase Three was all about land warfare, handling weapons and weapons safety. This was also when these sailors were introduced to basic infantry tactics. We still kept the pressure on the trainees, but Phase Three was more about teaching SEAL skill sets than physical harassment. The training class and the Phase Three instructors moved out to San Clemente Island for the last half of the phase. On San Clemente there were no distractions; we trained every day, starting with PT before sunup and working into the night. There were day and night swims and day and night work on the shooting ranges. The trainees were assigned full-mission-profile combat problems and had to work them up, just like we did in Vietnam. They’d work up the training mission during the morning, brief the mission early afternoon, conduct rehearsals late afternoon, and conduct the mission at night. Then following the training mission, when the trainees were cold, wet, and beat tired, they had to conduct a debriefing and tend to their equipment. By the end of their time on San Clemente, those who were left in the class were now learning what it was like to be a Navy SEAL—long hours and hard work.

  “I spent three years at the training unit. I was proud of the guys I put through training, especially the men in Class 83 and Class 87, the classes I proctored. I hope I did for them what my instructors did for me. In August 1977, I left the training unit and the West Coast. I had orders for SEAL Team Two in Little Creek, Virginia.”

  * * *

  “I was at Team Two for only a year, but it was a great year. Again, I was assigned to the team training cell with a great bunch of East Coast SEALs. I worked for a guy named Bob Gallagher. We conducted cadre training and special operations training at the team on the Naval Amphibious Base at Little Creek and at Camp A.P. Hill down in central Virginia. Camp A.P. Hill served the East Coast teams much like Cuyamaca served the West Coast teams. In those days there was a bit of rivalry between two SEAL teams, Team One and Team Two. But most of us who had been around for a while knew each other from our tours in Vietnam or by reputation. Then as now, reputation was everything. At Team Two, I finally made chief petty officer. Putting on chief, for me, was a bigger deal than putting on the Medal. You have to do a career in the Navy to fully appreciate what it is to make chief. It was a goal of mine. It seemed unreachable for so long, and now I’d made it. Making it was one thing, but the informal initiation ceremony that goes with making chief was another story. Back then, the chief petty officer initiation that was conducted at the chief’s club on base was a little abusive—and then some. It was a hazing, and the Team Two chiefs didn’t hold back. That’s when some of that East Coast–West Coast rivalry came into play. At SEAL Team Two, I worked for two team executive officers. One of those XOs was Gary Stubblefield.”

  “I was a teammate of Mike’s at Team One,” Gary Stubblefield recalled, “and as a young ensign, I felt he was the epitome of a Navy SEAL—big, tough, and walking around the compound with a serious scowl. But always ready with a grin or a helping hand. And here we were at Team Two. I was a new lieutenant and he was a new chief petty officer. As the team executive officer, I was responsible for issues that related to conduct of the men in the command. Mike was like a lot of good SEAL operators in that he never seemed to get into trouble when he was working—only when he didn’t have enough to do. So I tried to keep guys like Mike busy. But on the job, they got it done, and Mike was better than most at getting the job done. He was simply a very capable and inspirational Navy SEAL. He was bigger than life back then, and he’s still bigger than life today.

  “I recently ran into him at the fiftieth anniversary of SEAL Team One on Coronado. My new wife was with me and she’d never met Mike. But she’d certainly heard me talk about him. When I introduced him to her, he leaned over and in a conspiratorial manner, but so I could hear as well, said, ‘I know Gary travels on business a lot. Next time he leaves on a trip, you give me a call.’ She was totally charmed.”

  “Also while at Team Two,” Mike recalled, “my commanding officer for a short period was a fellow named Dick Marcinko. Our paths were to cross again a few years down the road.

  “In September of 1977 I continued my Navy journey in an easterly direction. I received orders to a British Special Boat Service—an allied special operations unit that I’ve been asked not to discuss in detail for security considerations. This unit trained much like our own SEAL teams with advanced training much like SEAL Qualification Training is today. Fortunately I was able to validate much of their training requirements and standards—some of it, but not
all of it. Here I was, a SEAL chief petty officer, and now I was back in training. But it was okay and the Brits treated me well—but they sure didn’t cut me any slack. I had to show them I could do the work. But I like a challenge, and I was sort of duty bound to put on a good show. Actually, my SEAL training and experience, and my tour at the training unit, had me well prepared for their version of predeployment training they called Employment Training.

  “One thing I had going for me, and that not many of them had, was combat experience. Some of them had been on operational missions, but none of them had the extended time on combat rotation that was so common with the veterans at the two U.S. SEAL teams. Back then and much like today, few allied special operators had as much trigger time as a Navy SEAL. When it came to weapons, I could shoot with the best of them. They were a thoroughly professional force and I was proud to serve with them. They kept me on my toes, and I wanted to make sure I held up the honor of the Yank special operators.”

  I made it a point to ask Mike about how they treated him as a recipient. “Oh, they knew about the Medal and what it meant. It was similar to their Victoria Cross—similar but not the same. The VC has been around about as long as the Medal of Honor but with only about half the number of recipients when compared with our Medal. And by comparison, a much greater percentage of VC awards have been posthumous. I don’t know how many living Victoria Cross recipients there were when I was with the SBS, but there weren’t many. Today there are nine, compared with seventy-nine of us today who wear the Medal of Honor. The Brits like to drink beer as much as I do, and I did do some beer drinking with my Brit mates. But being a recipient, I had to be careful. I was still Mike Thornton, but being a recipient was always in the back of my mind.

  “After I completed my Employment Training and did well, they made me an instructor. This was okay for a while, but I’d been in a training billet of one form or another for most of the last five years. I wanted to get back into the operational side of the business. As an E7 or chief petty officer, I was in line for a slot as platoon or operational team sergeant major in one of their platoons. So I volunteered for the job. They said okay, but first I had to plan and lead a training operation to qualify as a team sergeant major. It was a nighttime raid on a ship at anchor in a nearby coastal harbor. This was like a SEAL takedown of a ship at sea, something that I was very familiar with. I did well enough and was posted to a team as the sergeant major—the senior enlisted man on the team and a role that was similar to the platoon chief in a SEAL platoon. It was a good team and a great experience for me. We worked hard and we had a solid operational team. I finished my tour in September of 1980, so I was not there when it really counted. In the spring of 1982, the team was deployed with the British expeditionary force to recover the Falkland Islands in the South Atlantic. The team took casualties in the Falklands fighting, and two operators from another team were killed by friendly fire. I’d like to think that my work and training with my British teammates helped to get some of them through that crisis and safely back to England.

  “With my tour in England completed, I headed back to the West Coast. I had orders to Underwater Demolition Team 11. The commanding officer of UDT 11 was Dick Flanagan, and I was looking forward to serving with him again. He was a great officer. I was also anxious to get my family back to the West Coast. The tour with the SBS was an accompanied tour, so my family was with me in England. But to be honest, I was having some problems at home. This was nothing new for SEALs with families, or anyone else in the military, for that matter. Even when we were home, we were gone for a few days here or a week there on training evolutions. We were home but not necessarily at home every night. Yet, now I had two kids. I loved them, and I missed them terribly when I was away. Looking back, I might have handled it better, but balancing family needs with the demands of a special operator was never easy. I did the best I could, and we’ll leave it there. I’m sure the SEALs today deal with these same issues. Nonetheless, I thought getting back to San Diego and a tour at UDT 11 might improve things at home. But that did not happen. We divorced a few years later. Yet Gladys was a good Navy wife to me. She raised my children, Mikey and Gina, and was there for them when I was away. My children are the stars of my life, and I’m so proud of the people they’ve become today.

  “There were changes ahead as I came back from England and we moved into the 1980s, and not just for me. There were forces in play that would create change for the entire SEAL community.”

  In the fall of 1980, the United States military was wrestling with two issues that would color much of the Reagan military buildup that was to take place during the 1980s and carry forward into the threat environment today. The first of these fell under the broad topic of terrorism. Just as our military developed a more robust unconventional warfare capability during and following the Kennedy years, there developed a need to meet the growing threat posed by terrorists—both the state-sponsored variety and those that were emerging from radical Islamic factions. The second problem was the U.S. military’s apparent inability to respond quickly to a rapidly emerging crisis—especially if the response required joint-service cooperation. This deficiency was underscored by the failed Operation Eagle Claw, our unsuccessful attempt to free the imprisoned American embassy hostages taken by the new revolutionary government in Iran in April 1980. There was simply no integrated, multiservice capability to quickly plan, coordinate, and execute a small-scale engagement—a special operation.

  This led to the creation of a joint command structure to deal with rapid, small-unit, expeditionary operations. The Army had one such special missions unit in place for these kinds of operations. Now it was the Navy’s turn. Working this issue was a small task unit assigned to the Joint Chiefs of Staff known as the Terrorist Action Team. Assigned to this staff element was a charismatic and mercurial SEAL officer named Richard Marcinko. A Navy special missions unit needed to be put in place. That job was handed to Lieutenant Commander Marcinko with broad latitude and ample funding to create such a unit.

  “It wasn’t like we didn’t see this coming,” said then Lieutenant Norm Carley, who at the time was the operations officer at SEAL Team Two. “In early 1980, we had established MOB-6 at Team Two—Mobilization Platoon 6. There were twenty SEALs assigned to the platoon and we were allowed to allot 50 percent of their time training for the counterterror mission. We were given a free hand in this, and we went to other nations’ militaries that had expertise in this area. Several European special missions units had some excellent capabilities in this area and we learned a great deal from them.”

  “I was given a lot of latitude and power,” Marcinko recalled of his new unit, “and I can tell you that I was not the most popular guy around Coronado or Little Creek. The new unit was to begin with fifteen support personnel and eighty shooters, and I could take my pick of operational and support personnel from the existing teams. While the commanding officers of the SEAL teams and UDTs had to stand by and watch, I interviewed their people and took the ones I wanted. It didn’t make them all that happy, but I had a job to do. One of those I chose was Mike Thornton. I knew about the Medal, of course, but I selected him for his combat experience, and I knew that he was talented, capable, and a little cocky. Well, maybe ‘confident’ was a better word for Mike, but he was just what I was looking for.”

  “Mike didn’t really want to come to the new unit,” said Carley, who became the executive officer for the new team and helped with the selection, “but Dick Marcinko can be very persuasive. And he wanted Mike. Overall, I think we did a pretty good job of selecting experience, leadership, and special skills. We took most of those SEALs at Team Two assigned to MOB-6 platoon and some of the Echo Platoon SEALs at Team One. It was a mix of talent and, candidly, some of the best operators in the two SEAL and four UDT teams then in place. But it did little for our popularity in the community.”

  “When I got back east with the new team, it was a whole new experience,” Mike recalled. “We had to build new
facilities and develop new tactics and procedures for this new counterterrorist mission. There were the normal SEAL skills like diving, parachuting, and marksmanship that we had to refine and keep current. There was also new equipment that had to be acquired and put into service. A great deal of what we did at the new team was original, outside the box, and classified, so I can’t say much more about it. We were a select group of Navy SEALs doing things that had never been done before. I’m very proud today to have been one of the plank holders of this new unit.

  “Life in the teams is hard and dangerous in the best of times. BUD/S was hard, predeployment training prior to going to Vietnam was hard, and the daily grind of staying in shape and keeping your skills and qualifications up to standard was hard. But I’ve never worked harder than those first six months at the new team. It was eighteen hours a day, seven days a week. When we did take time off from the work, it was usually to go out and have a few beers with the skipper. And with Dick Marcinko, it could sometimes be more than just a few beers. But we accomplished some amazing things in a very short period of time. At the time there were two teams or squadrons within the unit with forty men in each team. I was the team chief for one operational element and Bob Schamberger was the team chief for our sister element. Bob was a great operator and a great friend. He was killed in the Grenada operation.”