Because I’m working on a romance novel that features a Navy SEAL, I’ve been doing a lot of research.
(Bridging Two Hearts is the story of a massage therapist at the Hotel Del Coronado who is afraid of bridges, who falls in love with a Navy SEAL who isn’t afraid of anything. Coming later this year.)
It’s tricky to get first-hand information about Navy SEALs, so I’ve been doing a lot of reading–novels and memoirs, though I do have The Official United States Navy Seal Workout, revised edition, here at hand. (I can’t do anything in it except the stretches . . . )
The best book by far was Chuck Pfarrar’s Warrier Soul, a beautifully written memoir of a very difficult life.
But the most poignant story was told in Howard Wasdin and Stephen Templin’s controversial Seal Team Six: Memoirs of an Elite Navy Seal Sniper.
Wasdin was involved in the infamous Black Hawk Down tragedy in Mogadishu, Somalia. Prior to that firefight, he spent several months in Somalia and part of his job involved patrolling the roof of their safe house with his partner. The first night, a wretched scent filled the air. They pulled kerchiefs over their noses and tried to find what had died and left such a stench.
They found it: a teenaged boy with an amputated leg and missing a foot, full of gangrene and left to sleep on the rooftop of a hovel not far away.
The kindness of Navy SEALs–while they were there on a deadly mission, they couldn’t stand by while a kid suffered within eyesight. Howard and his partner approached the command: could they take medical supplies and clean up the kid’s wounds?
No. Doing so would compromise the mission.
Every night they pulled something over their noses. Every night the teenager got worse.
A week into this, they took matters into their own hands. Wasdin, his partner and a sympathetic medic dressed in black put on their balaclavas, picked up their machine guns and skulked into the night.
They did a “hard entry” –kicked in the front door, flexicuffed the boy’s family and forced them, gently, against a back wall in the house. While the family watched with eyes round as saucers, one of SEALs climbed on the roof and brought down the boy. Laying him on the floor so the parents could see what they were doing, they scrubbed the boy’s wounds with betadine. They had to put their hands over the kid’s mouth so his screams wouldn’t alert the neighborhood. Eventually he passed out from shock and pain. They gave him IV antibiotics, bandaged his wounds, and gave him injections to stop the infection.
“Then we vanished.”
They did the same a week later. The family put out their hands to be handcuffed as soon as the men entered. An elderly woman brought tea in gratitude and then held out her hands. This time the Americans brought an interpreter to explain how to care for the boy, who was much improved. They left the family with amoxicillin for ten days, but the medic also noticed the boy had scurvy. The next day Wasdin brought a bag of oranges.
Eventually, their CO told the CIA that the boy was related to one of the local “assets,” even though the family had nothing to do with the Americans. They got him a pair of crutches and Howard requested a wheelchair.
The family was beyond grateful.
Wasdin ended his story this way: “It was my most successful op in Somalia, and I had to disobey direct orders to get it done. Better to ask forgiveness than permission.”
They may have to act as steely-eyed killers, but the kindness of Navy SEALs can also be an extraordinary gift.
Beautiful story.