SEAL of Honor (19 page)

Oil portrait of Lieutenant Michael P. Murphy painted by New York artist Gerald Slater and presented to the family on May 7, 2008. Replica prints now hang in several places around the country that have been named in honor of Lieutenant Murphy.
(Courtesy of Gerald Slater)

Every muscle in his body tightened; his teeth clenched, and his jaws began to ache from the tension. The rock-hard muscles of his physically fine-tuned body became clearly defined. To Michael Murphy, this was personal.

The instructor walked toward the front of the classroom while he muted the sound with his remote control. The sudden silence mentally snapped Michael to attention. As the instructor reached the front center of the classroom, he turned sharply, facing the class. Without looking behind him, he pointed to one of the television screens and in a low stern voice stated, “Gentlemen, this changes everything. We’re going to war!” But Ensign Michael Murphy was not
going
to war—he was already there.

After several more minutes of discussion, the class assembled back outside to complete their PT before going on to reconnaissance training. As the PT repetitions were being counted, the men’s voices were louder and crisper. Ben Sauers noticed a visible change in Michael: “Michael always had a smile on his face, was intense but very easygoing; after 9/11 something changed in him. You could see it. While he was still very personable and went out of his way to help anyone and everyone, his intensity changed. It’s like he became quieter. To those who didn’t know him, they would have noticed nothing out of the ordinary, but having been with him since his rollback, I could see it. He internalized 9/11.”

With the resolve of the class having changed, the men’s last day at La Posta began with familiarization shooting without scores to get ready for the Top Gun competition, a single-elimination tournament with members going one-on-one on the range. Each member contributed $10 for the Top Gun Trophy, a KA-BAR knife engraved with the class number.

Each shooter possessed an M4, ten rounds, and an extra magazine. On command the trainees dropped to a kneeling position and fired rounds at the target at twenty-five meters, then shifted to a prone position and fired at the target at fifty meters. They could fire as many rounds as they liked, and the first shooter with a hit on each target was the winner and progressed on to face another opponent.

After La Posta, the students of Class 236 traveled to Camp Pendleton, California, the U.S. Marine Corps’ 125,000-acre facility, where the students utilized the Edison Range, one of the most complete shooting-range training facilities anywhere. There they continued to hone their shooting skills using the entire SEAL arsenal, but with special emphasis on their M4A1.

The next two weeks found them back at the NSW Center for demolitions training. A SEAL must be very familiar with a variety of military and other types of demolitions, and must be able to safely detonate explosives both on land and at sea. While the basics of priming both electrical and nonelectrical demolition
charges were covered at Coronado, the majority of demolition training was conducted during four weeks of field training on San Clemente Island.

Michael and his class loaded their equipment into a McDonnell Douglas C-9 for the short flight to the “Rock,” San Clemente Island. Upon arrival they unloaded their weapons and personal gear into an old white bus for the two-mile drive to the training facility.

San Clemente Island is the southernmost of the Channel Islands off California. Officially uninhabited, the twenty-one-mile-long island hosts an active sonar base, a simulated embassy, and a rocket-test facility. Known for its high winds, dangerous terrain covered with scrub grass, ice plants, and prickly pear and golden snake cactus, it is the home of the Camp Al Huey SEAL training facility, located just north of the runways of the Naval Auxiliary landing field. Built in 1989, Camp Al Huey was named after a Vietnam-era master chief petty officer who had dedicated many years to both the SEAL teams and the training of SEALs. It is a complete training facility containing barracks, chow hall, armory, weapons-cleaning stations, classrooms, shooting, demolition, and hand grenade ranges, and an O-course.

During their last four weeks of Third Phase training, the students began to work seven days a week from 6 AM to 8 PM without a break, until their BUD/S graduation.

One of the more lighthearted but extremely challenging exercises performed by Michael’s class was “flight training.” Flight training for BUD/S candidates involved the frequent running up and down of the steep hills of San Clemente while carrying a large heavy wooden pallet over their heads. With the very strong winds coming off the Pacific, it was more than a challenge for the SEAL candidates to maintain their balance and footing. It was not uncommon for the winds to lift them off the ground, which slowed their “flight” time. As in every training evolution, there was a precise procedure to flight training, including a prearranged “flight pattern” and “maneuvers,” as well as proper “landing instructions.” Failure to follow instructions resulted in another “flight.”

In life, nothing is free. The same is true in BUD/S. At Camp Al Huey, to earn breakfast, the trainees had to perform maximum push-ups and sit-ups in two-minute timed intervals with full H-gear and full canteens. Before lunch they completed a two-hundred-meter run up a steep hill to “Frog Rock”; this was also made in full H-gear with full canteens, and it had to be completed in ninety seconds. The price for their evening meal was fifteen pull-ups and fifteen dips—also with full H-gear and canteens.

Having familiarized themselves with the SEAL weapons arsenal earlier at the Naval Special Warfare’s Mountain Warfare Training Facility, Michael and the other students learned combat shooting techniques with both the M4A1 and the SIG SAUER pistol. Combat shooting involved fast and accurate shooting as well as changing magazines while continuing to get rounds on target. The trainees then progressed to immediate-action drills (IADs), which taught the men how to break contact in a firefight or quickly assault an enemy position. During these drills they learned how the leapfrog maneuver, in which one element of the combat unit moved while the other provided covering fire. This meant that someone off to a trainee’s side and behind him was firing at a target in front of him. Class 236 first walked through the IADs, then ran through them at full speed, both in daylight and then at night. Other land-warfare skills learned were ambushes, structure searches, handling of prisoners, reconnaissance techniques, and raid planning—again, each skill was taught in the classroom and then practiced in the field, both in daylight and at night. The trainees learned the skill of holding one’s breath and diving twenty feet to place demolitions on obstacles submerged off the island’s coast. Using the hydrographic reconnaissance skills learned in First Phase, the class conducted a simulated night-combat beach reconnaissance, prepared a hydrographic chart, and returned the following night to place the charges and blow them up.

Class 236’s final field training exercise (FTX) problem was conducted over a five-day period. First, the men were divided into squads, upon which each squad entered a period of isolation to begin mission planning. Each squad then conducted four consecutive night operations utilizing the skills they learned during the previous six months at BUD/S.

These separate and exhausting exercises made it a sobering but exciting time for Michael and his classmates, because they saw their months of training begin to gel and pay off. They knew these skills would be utilized in the months and years ahead.

Back at the NSW Center, their last graded physical evolution was the SEAL Physical Readiness Test (PRT). The test began with the maximum number of push-ups, sit-ups, and pull-ups in timed two-minute intervals, then continued with a three-mile timed run and a half-mile timed swim. It was not uncommon for individual scores to seem unbelievable by civilian standards, with the number of push-ups exceeding 200, sit-ups exceeding 150, and pull-ups exceeding 30, with near fifteen-minute three-mile runs and twelve-minute half-mile swims.

After the men successfully completed their SEAL PRT, only two physical evolutions remained before graduation. The first, Hooyah PT, consisted of a run through the O-course, a seven-mile beach run, and then another run through the
O-course. The other was the Balboa Park Run, a ten-mile run from Balboa Park in San Diego back to Imperial Beach.

With one day left in their training, the students completed their BUD/S checkout briefing, received their orders, and spent time rehearsing for the event they had been working toward for the previous nine months—graduation.

On the Friday of Class 236’s final week at BUD/S, the grinder was transformed with flags, rows of chairs, a small stage, a microphone, and colorful and patriotic bunting. With family, friends, SEALs, and the entire NSW command in attendance, and after remarks by invited guests, each graduate received a certificate of completion. Having threatened to resign their positions with the New York City Police Department if not permitted to attend their best friend’s graduation, Jimmie and Owen O’Callaghan joined Michael’s parents, Maureen and Dan, and his brother, John, as they watched Michael receive his certificate of completion.

Ben Sauers remembered him as “the guy that always had a smile on his face and words of encouragement for everyone. And he was always the guy that during our rare time off could be seen running with full combat gear and doing extra PT. He was not the fastest. He was not the strongest, but very smart and very determined. No one had more determination than Ensign Murphy. I would follow him anywhere.”

On October 18, 2001, Ensign Michael P. Murphy signed his Fitness Report and Counseling Record for BUD/S. The written comments about his performance read as follows: “Completed 25 weeks of instruction in physical conditioning, surface swimming, small boat handling, hydrographic reconnaissance, weapons training, small unit tactics, demolition training, and open and closed circuit scuba. His professional performance was outstanding during this physically and mentally demanding course of instruction.”

For Murphy and the rest of his class, it was a bittersweet moment. The cost had been high, with the loss of Lieutenant Skop, and Michael’s near loss of both his lower legs and feet. Although they had graduated, Michael Murphy and each of the other members of BUD/S Class 236 realized that his certificate of completion was merely a ticket of admission to the next phase of their training.

The
agoge
was the warrior-training program utilized by the ancient Spartans. NSW had its own version of the
agoge
to train modern-day warriors for a nation at war.

CHAPTER NINE

—ADMIRAL ERIC OLSON, quoted in Dick Couch,
The Finishing School

 

 

 

S
parta was a city-state in ancient Greece, located on the Eurotas River in the southern part of the Peloponnese. It rose to become the dominant military power in the region in 650 BCdue to its military efficiency and its social structure, unique in ancient Greece. In 480 BC a small force of Spartans, along with allies from Thespiae and Thebes, led by King Leonidas made the legendary last stand at the Battle of Thermopylae against the massive Persian army, inflicting very high casualty rates on the Persians. The weaponry, strategy, and bronze armor of the Greek hoplites and their phalanx proved far superior to that of their opponents. The phalanx was a military formation in which the soldiers would lock shields and project their spears over the shields and progress in a fashion that all but prevented a frontal assault, making the phalanx greater than the sum of its parts.

The
agoge
, a rigorous training regimen for all Spartan male citizens, involved stealth, cultivating loyalty to one’s group, military training, hunting, dancing, and social preparation. The
agoge
, first introduced by the Spartan lawgiver Lycurgus in the first half of the seventh century BC, was designed to train male citizens from the ages of seven through twenty-nine. The goal was to produce physically and morally strong males to serve in the Spartan army by encouraging conformity and stressing the importance of the Spartan state over one’s own personal interest, and so generating the warrior elites of Sparta.

When a boy reached his seventh birthday, he was enrolled in the
agoge
under the authority of the
paidonomos
, or magistrate, charged with supervising education. This began the first of three stages of the
agoge
: the
paides
(ages seven to seventeen), the
paidiskoi
(ages eighteen to nineteen), and the
hebontes
(ages twenty to twenty-nine). The boys were given one item of clothing per year and expected to
make or acquire other needed clothing. They were also deliberately underfed, and taught to become skilled at acquiring their food.