Tom Sileo (33 page)

                
I am doing ok over here. Since arriving I have been tasked reviewing all the evals [evaluations] and awards for the command as well as work in the TOC [tactical operations center]. I am sure you have heard about the decreased violence out here and PIC (provincial Iraqi control) taking
place in Al Anbar. To see how much different it is over here since last time is a true testament to the work that everyone over here has done.

                
I have not had the opportunity to get out to COP [Combat Outpost] Manion. On a trip out west to Al Asad [Airbase] though, while myself and Rob Sarver—another USNA '04 guy who knew Travis—were waiting for our helo to show up, struck up a conversation with a young Lance Corporal. This young Marine was a MiTT member and had mentioned that he had just come from COP Manion.

                
When we heard that, I let him know that Travis was a good friend of mine and roommate during college. He said that he did not know him, but had only heard great things about [Travis]. He also said that there was a room at the COP dedicated to him with pictures. I just thought that you would like that story since Travis is still influencing the men and women over here.

                
Love,

                
Brendan

Sarver never asked Brendan what it felt like to be serving in the city where Travis had died, but he didn't have to. He could see the significance in Brendan's eyes.

Amy could also sense the impact being in Fallujah was having on her husband. She asked Brendan what a normal patrol was like and what he had to bring with him.

“Well, I always make sure I wear two things over here,” Brendan said. “I wear the bracelet Mrs. Manion gave me on my right wrist and my G-Shock watch with my wedding band attached to it on the other.

“You're always with me here,” he continued. “And so is Trav.”

Brendan and Sarver, two of SEAL Team Three's newest members, patrolled the city. Bonding with officers and enlisted SEALs
alike, they were rotated into various assignments, much like rookies on a football team seeing their first playing time. The platoon that Brendan and Sarver accompanied on patrol would often have the new SEALs operate on the periphery to contain danger zones from the outside. If a firefight were to erupt, Brendan and his BUD/S roommate were always ready to strike with devastating, pinpoint effectiveness.

During the weeks when Brendan spent the most time on patrol, he and Sarver helped capture six suspected insurgents. With a calm, professional demeanor that quickly won the respect of his new teammates, Brendan ensured that the narrow streets Travis once helped rid of the enemy remained considerably safer than in previous years for Iraqi men, women, and children.

To SEAL Team Three, Brendan was bringing the mix of talent and determination that he and Travis had always pushed each other toward at the academy. Inside Fallujah gyms, fellow service members marveled at Brendan's workout routine and sometimes collapsed while trying to follow along. If there were no night missions scheduled, Brendan would watch movies on his laptop and read. But before he relaxed, he always e-mailed Amy, who had moved across the country from Maryland to California shortly after they were engaged.

For Amy, the hardest parts of the deployment were the days between her husband's e-mails or rare phone calls. She worried about Brendan and always wondered what he was doing, but was also supremely confident in the years of training that had prepared him for whatever could happen. Even in the hell of combat, there was no situation a Navy SEAL couldn't handle, and Brendan's constant refrain of “don't worry, I'm fine” reinforced what she always told herself to believe. Still, the vivid memory of Travis's funeral
served as a painful reminder to Amy of the risks her husband was facing.

Even with more than 150,000 US troops deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan in 2008, only a tiny fraction of the population—less than 1 percent—had a spouse serving in a war zone. Not only was Amy part of a small community to which very few Americans could relate; she had watched Brendan leave for Fallujah, where Travis had died the previous year, less than forty-eight hours after a priest pronounced Brendan and Amy man and wife. As Amy, an East Coast native, settled into life and work in unfamiliar San Diego, the challenges she faced were extraordinary.

The new military wife also had several shining examples to follow. Amy could lean on the strength of her mother, Christina Palmer, who had raised Amy on her own while working full time. She also received constant support from the Looney family. In addition, Amy drew on the same approach that her husband brought to his duty as a Navy SEAL: “Be strong. Be accountable. Never complain.”

Heather Hojnacki, Rob Sarver's girlfriend, was astonished by Amy's adjustment to life as a military spouse. Heather had moved to California after meeting and falling in love with Sarver around the same time that Amy had moved. Like Amy, she barely knew anyone on the West Coast, and she had only met Brendan's wife once, back in Annapolis. The second time they met was when Amy volunteered to pick her up at San Diego International Airport.

Amy took Heather under her wing right away. As Brendan and Sarver bonded in Fallujah, their significant others were growing closer in California, where Amy managed a retail store and Heather was starting law school a few hours away at Pepperdine University in Malibu.

Whenever Amy got an e-mail update or attended a meeting for the wives of deployed Navy SEALs, she would alert Heather, who as a girlfriend was not privy to the same real-time information. On most weekends, Sarver's girlfriend drove down to check on Rob and
Brendan's house in Imperial Beach. She then met up with Amy, who took Heather to downtown San Diego for relaxing evenings to distract them both from the constant worry they were experiencing.

Over drinks one night, Sarver's girlfriend expressed bewilderment at how Brendan's wife could cope so calmly with such a difficult set of circumstances.

“I don't know how you could have enjoyed your wedding,” Heather said.

Before and after Brendan left, Amy said, she tried not to let his dangerous job creep into every aspect of their lives.

“I just want to make the best of it,” Amy said. “We have to enjoy the time we have.”

Brendan was silent during several rides through the Pizza Slice. On multiple occasions, he and Sarver operated near the infamous Blackwater Bridge while navigating narrow roads riddled with huge potholes, possibly from IED attacks during Travis's time in Fallujah.

Inside the once-hellish enclave where daytime patrols were once regarded as suicide missions, Sarver would occasionally look over at his fellow SEAL and wonder what he was thinking. Once again, he could see the impact on Brendan by simply looking into his steely, focused eyes.

For three and a half months Brendan, Sarver, and their fellow SEALs patrolled Fallujah's streets, where they confronted insurgents and terrorists with the same courage that Travis and his fellow Marines had displayed. As few could have predicted a year earlier, the sacrifices of 3-2-1 MiTT had made SEAL Team Three's current mission immeasurably safer.

Even though Travis didn't live to see the outcome of his sacrifice, Brendan made sure his friend's legacy was sustained in Fallujah and around the world. At the same time Brendan, as Travis
had once predicted to Tom, was making his own mark as a Navy SEAL in the summer of 2008.

Stuck at a base in Iraq for nearly a week at the end of the deployment, Brendan and Sarver amused themselves by holding a “sleeping contest” to make up for the countless hours of lost rest during BUD/S and then Fallujah. Brendan then finally returned to California. When Amy ran toward him, Brendan embraced his wife and passionately kissed her.

It was the moment Amy had been dreaming about since the night of their wedding. At long last, her husband was home.

During the drive from Coronado to San Diego's W. Hotel, where they would stay that night, Amy asked Brendan about seeing where Travis had spent the last weeks of his life.

“This may sound strange,” Brendan said. “But after being there and seeing the places where Trav spent those last few months, I felt a strong connection to him.”

It didn't seem strange to Amy at all. It helped her understand what her husband had experienced in Iraq.

While serving his country in war, Brendan found peace. Gaining some closure didn't eliminate the pain of Travis's death, but as his wife understood, Brendan was learning how to deal with losing such a close friend.

A few months later, Brendan learned that SEAL Team Three would be heading to Afghanistan, where he would lead a platoon into dangerous, much more frequent combat missions than during his first deployment as a special operations warrior. He did his best to hide his emotions from Amy to keep her from misunderstanding his enthusiasm, but she knew Brendan felt like he'd just won the lottery.

The SEAL wasn't looking forward to being apart from Amy or being in the middle of violent clashes with the Taliban. He was eager to realize nearly a decade of intense, almost nonstop preparation by going to the country where 9/11 had been planned and
having a positive impact on people's lives. After valuable experience in Korea and Iraq as an intelligence officer and a combat deployment to Iraq as a SEAL, Brendan knew that leading his fellow warriors into battle in Afghanistan was his best chance yet to make a difference, just as he and Travis had once discussed.

Brendan poured himself into readying his platoon for the mountains of Afghanistan, which would be vastly different than Fallujah's urban terrain. He read books, studied manuals, refined his already solid marksmanship, and worked out at levels that were unprecedented, even for him. He was quiet around the other SEALs, which made his words even more meaningful when he did speak up. Not only did Brendan give clear, constructive orders to those who looked up to him, he never asked anyone to do something that he wasn't willing to do himself.

For Brendan, the most difficult part of his combat assignment, which would start in the spring of 2010, was leaving Amy behind in San Diego during his fourth overseas deployment since they had started dating. By Valentine's Day, with Brendan's deployment quickly approaching, Amy was overcome by stress and a recent bout with flu-like symptoms. After being sick for several weeks, she finally felt well enough to go out to dinner, but still couldn't shake the uneasy feeling that in a few weeks, her husband would once again be risking his life halfway around the world.

“Look, if anything happens to me,” Brendan said at almost the exact moment it was dominating Amy's thoughts. “The first thing you need to know is that you are never allowed to get remarried.”

His joke provoked a nervous laugh, and after they shared an appetizer, Brendan put down his fork and looked straight into his wife's eyes, much like during their first wedding dance.

“Seriously, if anything happens to me, obviously you should know that you will always be part of my family and that they will always be good to you,” the SEAL said.

Amy's eyes welled with tears as she tried to change the subject.

“There's just one more thing,” he continued. “I also want to make sure you stay in touch with the Manions, and especially Ryan, since I've always thought you two would become good friends.”

Amy always referred to Brendan as her “friend-finder,” because he had introduced her to at least four of her very best friends since they had become a couple almost seven years earlier. But this conversation was getting too visceral—too real—for Amy to allow it to continue.