Seal Team Six

I just finished Seal Team Six by Howard Wasdin.

This memoir of an elite navy SEAL sniper is well done.  He isn't a writer, but he has a story to tell and he tells it well.  I knew SEALs were bad ass dudes, but I didn't know just how badass.  He tells his story, where he came from and where he went.  What a life.  


I recommend it highly.  There is a thread throughout of him trying to help people. I think I might check out more military memoirs.  This story made humans out of heroes.

I thought I had a lot to say about this, but I guess I don't.  I guess I am interested in war and conflict and violence.  I bet everyone is though, they just don't want to admit it.  Violence is the way nature deals conflict, so when it happens right in front of you it speaks to you on an innate level.  It gets your blood pumping, kick starting your lungs to draw more air and your brain releases chemicals in response, most notably cortisol, which makes your blood coagulate.  Your brain does this in the event you lose some blood.  Than it releases dopamine to make you happy, and deaden pain and adrenaline to allow you to run or fight as it decides. 

Weird thing abour the brain, it wants to protect itself, and when it sees violence and perceives danger it protects itself.  That's when the fight or flight response kicks in. 

This is where you really get to know people, or rather get to know who a person really is.   I remember this story this guy told me about a car that flipped over on an icy mountain road. Lets call him Stan.  I know it to be true because I have seen similar things happen in front of me.  Stan sees the car lose control, slide across the road and right off the mountain and tumble down the side.  He parks near the edge and goes down to help the people.  On his way down this guy comes running up like its part of an obstacle course, he just had to get out of there.  He doesn't need Stan's help so Stan keeps going while crazy man runs up the road.  At the bottom of the mountain the car is on it's roof.  Stan lays on his belly to look inside.  There is a woman still buckled up and hanging upside down and she calmly looks over to him and says, "Have you seen my husband?  I think he got thrown out."
        "I just saw him, he is fine," Stan says.
        "He's ok?  That's great!" the woman says.  Stan tries to get her out, telling her to support herself when he unbuckles her and they crawl out together and up the mountain they go.  The woman keeps checking with Stan to make sure her husband is ok.  Stan keeps assuring her he is.  Finally they reach the top of the mountain and they see the husband walking away, and he is way up the road by now, like a half mile.  She asks where he is going.  Stan shook his head and offered her a ride to the hospital.  She gets in and they pick up the husband.  She calls out to him, "Honey!  Honey!"  And Stan sees he is crying.  He pulls up and opens the door.  The guy climbs in back with his wife.  And she kisses him all over and is over joyed he isn't dead.  That they survived.  The husband looks up in the rear view mirror and sees Stan looking at him and quickly looks away and starts sobbing.

In the hospital the wife was getting some x rays and the husband was standing next to Stan, the two were alone, and he says to Stan, "You know, I wasn't leaving her back there."  And Stan looks at him.  His face is neutral, no blame, but no belief either.  Than he adds, "I just had to clear my head."  Stan didn't believe him, but didn't want to make a scene.  He nodded.  The husband seemed happy about this, like his conscience was now clear.  The wife returned and was unhurt.  Both were ok, which is to say that the wife was ok but the husband was not.

He would forever be tortured with guilt for leaving her trapped in the car.  He was her husband, how could he leave her like that? Not knowing if she were alive or dead and just running away.  And than to keep on going...  No, he convinced himself there was something wrong with him and she deserved something better.

He tried to make problems with her so she would ask for a divorce, but where this tumble off the cliff had separated him from her, she was only drawn closer to him for having survived it together.  So he kept doing bad, being rude to her, cheating on her, treating her worse than a bad pet, and she kept taking him back and loving him despite all of it.  Finally she suggested they go to counseling. 

They had to come to terms with reality, his abandonment and her deliberate ignorance of it.  After many sessions he accepted what he had done, she was made aware of her deliberate ignorance and could not accept what he had done.  Her forced ignorance was the only thing holding them together after the crash, with that gone they divorced, a year after the crash.