But that distinction had now been turned on its head. Now we weren’t going up against armies. Now we were pitted against shadowy leaders like Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri, and forces that faded into the scenery like the morning mist and flowed over national boundaries like water. War itself had in effect morphed into Spec Ops warfare, and our Special Operations warriors — Navy SEALs, Army Rangers, Green Berets, Marine Force Recon, Air Force Combat Controllers/Pararescue Jumpers, and others — had gone from life as bastard stepchildren of the DoD to being the pointy tip of the spear. Which meant the demands on SEAL snipers had intensified dramatically.
Our job was to make sure that NSW sniper training stood up to the challenge and reflected the new world in which we now lived and fought.
“The men who graduated the classes before you are over in Iraq and Afghanistan right now, doing phenomenal work for the teams. They’re cutting swaths through hotbeds of insurgency, carving out safe zones for our Marine and Army brothers to get in and operate without being picked off by enemy snipers or IEDs. They are the most effective snipers the global battlefield has ever seen…”
Eric, myself, and our handpicked instructor cadre dived into our assignment like the combat divers we were, taking the course apart and completely reworking it, bottom to top. We brought in a huge range of advances and innovations. We trained our students in how to operate in situations where they had to deploy independently, rather than in traditional shooter/spotter pairs. We also put our instructors through more rigorous training so that they were all not only excellent technicians but also consistently good teachers and much more. It was an ambitious and sweeping overhaul, and we had a blast sinking our teeth into it.
Over the first year of this assignment, Eric and I had gone through four full iterations of our transformed course — and we were getting results. We were graduating better students and graduating more of them. In the old course, a failure rate of 30 percent or more was common. (In the summer of 2000, Glen’s and my class flushed 14 out of 26 starters, a loss of more than 50 percent.) Through the changes Eric and I implemented from Summer 2003 through Summer 2004, we slashed that attrition down to less than three percent. By the time of my subterranean induction talk in June of 2004, we were graduating the highest percentage of students in the school’s history, and producing the most highly skilled snipers the American armed forces had ever seen.
“This course will push you harder than you’ve ever been pushed, for a higher level of excellence than you’ve ever achieved. Halfway through you’ll probably hate being here and wish you’d never signed up…”
This was nothing like the first day of boot camp. No sullen expressions, no shuffling feet, no teenage anxieties trying their best to stay hidden under a mask of macho bluster. The two dozen men who stood before us were already highly trained professionals. These guys had survived BUD/S and gone through years of advanced SEAL training. Most had by this time been through at least one overseas deployment. Still, they were about to enter a three-month pressure cooker, and how they each responded would tell us volumes. I was watching them more closely than they probably realized.
Among the two dozen young men there, a few stood out immediately. It’s always that way. As instructors, we’d trained ourselves not to trust our first impressions 100 percent — but damn close. In the field, sometimes your gut feeling is your only compass, and if you can’t act on it accurately and with precision, you might be dead before you get a second chance.
So even as I continued wrapping up my opening remarks, I was letting those first impressions sink in.
One guy, in particular, flagged my attention — a larger-than-life Texan. Later, when I had the chance to hear the students converse, I noticed that every time this one opened his mouth, what came out sounded like a cross between a country-western song and a gunslinger from the Old West getting ready to drawdown. “This guy’s trouble,” I thought with a smile. I meant that in a good way.
The kid standing next to him was obviously a close friend. You could see it from the way they glanced at each other now and then, sharing wordless snapshot reactions to something I’d said. The kid was slender and tall, well over six feet, short curly blond hair, thoughtful widely spaced eyes. In their brief round of introductions before my remarks began I’d learned he was from California but didn’t quite catch his name. Quiet guy.
“But I can promise you this: If you give us every ounce of your attention, every calorie of energy, every percentage point of your focus and commitment, the instructors and I will do everything in our power to make sure you do make it through.”
By the time my short talk was over, I knew one thing: I would be assigning the loud Texan and his quiet friend as my personal students in our instructor-student mentor program. I wanted to keep my eyes on those two.
My gut told me they were quality.
Read more about Matt Axelson and Marcus Luttrell’s twin Morgan in Part II.
This excerpt is from Brandon Webb & John Mann’s bestselling book, Among Heroes, available everywhere books are sold and on Amazon.
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