Service: A Navy SEAL at War (35 page)

A day in the life.

In front of the stage, the pallbearers and the rest of the SEALs were seated on the front row to the right. Hawkeye lay down on the floor in front of Scott.

JT’s “final message to the world” was played: a fast-moving
Irish song by Flogging Molly, “If I Ever Leave This World Alive.” His sisters spoke tearfully of his love for his family, his zest for life, and his lasting influence on them and their children. We all stood up and shared stories, animated by turns with love, anger, and humor, each one a different shade of loss. Boe said he never met another man who could match JT’s combination of size, speed, and power. “He was unafraid and loved the work. If JT had known his helo would be shot down while going to the aid of others, he would have chosen to go anyway. If you knew JT, you would know that.”

At one point Scott let go of Hawkeye’s leash, and damn if the dog didn’t wander over to the center aisle, approach the casket, and lie down on the gymnasium floor in front of JT. He stayed there for a while, and nobody wanted to move him. Photos of that moment went viral and got a lot of attention on cable news. It was a powerful moment, one I know I will never forget.

At Riverside Cemetery, north of town, the crowd reassembled, encircled by Patriot Guard Riders and police. All the SEALs lined up and filed past the coffin, performing our traditional ritual. As each frogman passed JT, he stopped, placed his Trident on the coffin, and pounded in its steel spike with a blow of his fist. This signifies that when a SEAL dies, a part of each of us goes with him. When he reaches the afterlife, he still has them by his side. In death as in life, we stand together, always a family, always a team. The brotherhood never dies.

Almost all frogmen have had the experience of burying a brother in arms. There’s nothing you can do to erase the pain of loss. But you can spread it around and dull its sting. We told every story we could think about this great warrior’s days on earth. We helped the family take care of business. All I can say
about JT that squares his no-limits personality with the finality of his death is this: he went to heaven for the climb, and for the company.

In his all-too-brief life, JT had summited every peak put before him and cleared every hurdle, had become a SEAL, a champion triathlete, and a chosen member of our most elite unit. One thing he never achieved was taken care of as soon as the news of his death reached Rick Perry: the governor of Texas made JT an honorary Texan. The family has the officially stamped certificate to prove it. It may have come a little late here on Mother Earth, but don’t worry, brother, I hear the good Lord has a special place in heaven for good ol’ Texas boys.

On September 21, about a month after we all got home from Iowa, the Taliban commander who was the original target of that raid in the Tangi Valley was killed in an air strike. As with the August 9 strike that took out his henchman, the one who had downed the bird, it was small comfort to the families of the fallen, and to our community.

Only when a mission goes wrong or spectacularly right do our most elite warriors come out of the shadows. A hundred other strikes on high-value targets in the months prior to August 9 had netted gains bigger than that one. But somewhere JT, Trey, and Matt, along with all the others, had to be proud to know that their brothers had delivered some payback. Never forgive. Never forget.

The hero of
The Count of Monte Cristo
saw grief and happiness as relative things. “There is neither happiness nor misery in the world; there is only the comparison of one state with another,
nothing more,” Alexandre Dumas wrote. He continued, “He who has felt the deepest grief is best able to experience supreme happiness.” I think that’s why most of us understood that our heavy hearts weren’t the end of everything. The sadness we still feel opens us to an even greater joy with our loved ones. In that way, the men we lose truly become immortal.

T
hroughout my time in the military I have had the privilege of serving with or knowing some of the finest people in the world, people who would give up everything for our flag and what it stands for, no matter what the cost.

In this chapter, I would like to bring to light a group of people who more often than not go overlooked, a group that never seeks the spotlight but undoubtedly deserves it more than our most decorated warfighters do. Through good times and bad, they hold the line, usually with no formal training and certainly with no benefit of rank or pay. Still, I think the spouses of our men and women in uniform are one of our nation’s most valuable assets for how they support the war effort, without ever firing a shot. It’s their ability to remain steadfast under a thousand types of pressure that enables us to go out and do what needs to be done downrange. On the bad days, we need them most. We lean hard on the ones who are closest to us yet also sometimes the farthest away.

Some of the best frogmen I’ve ever seen work are family men. Part of the hidden reason for their success was the strength and character of their wives back home. While they were gone, they
couldn’t afford to worry about the particular issues their wives were dealing with. But they did know their wives were strong enough to take care of themselves and the kids, and hold down the fort while they were on deployment.

A lot of women don’t make it, and I don’t blame them. I was never married when I was in the teams, and I don’t know that I could have been. This career is hard on relationships; the divorce rate in SEAL marriages is said to be around 80 percent.

But here are a few stories of some really strong women who held it together for their men. You will read about Amy, Diane, Kristy, and Kimberly. Each in her own way is a warrior in her own right. You’ve met Amy already. She’s on her second pregnancy at the moment, with her husband serving in Afghanistan (and recently extended). Diane is known as “Momma Shipley”; she is married to one of the toughest old frogs out there and has a son in the teams to boot. Kristy is for a pseudonym the widow of one of our fallen but never-forgotten teammates who died in Afghanistan on August 6, 2011. Kimberly is the widow of Trey Vaughn, KIA 8/6/11. She is left behind taking care of two beautiful children.

Here are their stories.

Being married to a Navy SEAL is no joke. It’s so much harder than people realize.

I have known my husband for twelve years. We met as friends; I was in a serious relationship and so was he. Like many SEALs, Boss (yes, I call my husband by his nickname and I love it) was married once before. It was what we call a “starter marriage” (a typical situation: young and naive, wrong combo from the start).
He was a new SEAL, dedicated and not sure how to balance family and work life, and she just couldn’t, or wouldn’t, handle just how hard this life can be.

Years later, when both of us were single, life eventually brought us together. After another deployment, he called me up and said, “I’ll be in the U.S. in a few hours. Let’s hang out.” He showed up on my doorstep… and never left. We’ve been together ever since.

And my life has never been the same.

For most of our relationship, he’s been away more than he’s been home. The first deployment, I thought I was prepared. After all, I had known him for years and he was away plenty of times before. Well, I wasn’t prepared. Nothing can truly prepare you. You just have to live it. The first deployment I turned into a bit of a crazy person—my man and all of my buddies were gone in Iraq, and I had no idea how to cope. But I learned quickly the most valuable asset to a wife in our community: support. Support from family, friends, other wives, neighbors, hell, you’ll accept favors from strangers. You have no choice. I once asked a total stranger off the street to come into my house and kill what was I swear the world’s biggest, most terrifying cockroach; it was the size of a small dog, and I just couldn’t do it that day. I rely on so many people, and that is the key for me; that is literally what keeps me going while he’s gone. Well, that and many good bottles of wine.

A few years later, Boss proposed. The story of our engagement pretty much illustrates the character of our marriage. For years, Boss has called me his Warrior Queen. We traveled to Greece for a much needed, long-overdue vacation (I’m Greek and wanted to visit my homeland). The last day of an incredible
two-week trip, we drove from Athens to the original site of the Battle of Thermopylae. Today it’s nothing more than a pit stop off the side of the highway. Tour buses cruise by, stop for photo ops, and drive off. It’s not particularly picturesque. Over the course of time, the coastline has extended several miles, so it no longer borders the water. To us, however, the site was awe inspiring. Across the highway, up a small dusty hill, where the final battle occurred, the Spartans, including King Leonidas, are said to be buried. There lies a simple bronze tablet with an epitaph to them that reads: “Go and tell the Spartans, stranger passing by / That here, obedient to their laws, we lie.”

On this spot and on one knee, Boss proposed to me. “We have a great love. I’ll always treat you with respect and honor, until the end of my days.” After a moment of disbelief, I whispered a sobbing yes.

He never promised it would be easy, he never promised he’d be home when I needed him, he never promised they’d all come home alive. He almost should have said, “I’ll be mentally and physically gone,
a lot
. I’ll be in danger, I can’t always tell you details, money will always be tight, you’ll have to become the rock in the family and hold everything together by yourself, you’ll likely have to leave your friends and family and career and move to another city across the country, you’ll spend a lot of nights alone, oh, and you’ll never be able to afford those fancy shoes that you want, but you’ll have a new family, you’ll be stronger than you ever imagined, and you’ll never regret it.”

Unlike some wives, I don’t watch the news when he’s overseas. We have developed our own basic code for the phone—random words and sayings in order to discern where he is, if he’s “working,” how long he’ll be gone, and so on. We usually can’t
communicate anything substantive, so I wait. I wait for a journal, which he keeps and sends home several months in. I wait for a phone convo or e-mail with some of our lingo to clue me in a little. And I wait for him to walk in the door and, one day, tell me everything he’s been through.

Being the wife of a SEAL you have to be flexible. Boss refused to get married without his closest friends (most of whom are also SEALs, all on different schedules). Needless to say, we had four wedding dates and lost three deposits! We had eleven groomsmen! But I had a whole pack of new brothers.

And to me, they are my brothers. His teammates are all special to me and have made this life so damn fun. JT, Morgan, Marcus, and so many men are my brothers. We are a family. And when we unexpectedly lost JT, I finally understood the old SEAL saying: The only easy day was yesterday. Like many wives in this community, my husband’s teammates are my family too. They have taken care of me, and I them, so many times over the years that their presence in my marriage is indispensible. JT would call and e-mail on deployments when he knew Boss couldn’t. If they were out partying all night on a work trip, JT would send reassuring updates and text me. The guys always took me out to dinner, to concerts, came over for movies, for breakfast, called me to check in and make sure I was okay. I cooked for them and gave tons of rides to the airport. We went out drinking more times than I can count. When I was pregnant, Morgan, Marcus, JT, and so many others, even guys who were no longer in the military, totally took care of me. They took me out to dinner, exercised my dog, set up movie dates, you name it. All I had to do was call and they were there. One night, I was seven months pregnant while Boss was in Afghanistan,
and being particularly lonely and overly hormonal, I called JT up for a dinner date. “Hell yes, pick you up in an hour. Oh, is it okay if Andrea joins us? She’s pregnant, too, and I don’t want her to be alone.” We all went out and he had us carefree and laughing in no time.

At one point, while Boss was out of town, JT and I went to the local watering hole, spent the entire night at the bar drinking and laughing. Boss got a call from someone the next day, reporting that I was brazenly out with another guy. Without hesitation or question, Boss replied, “Yeah, she was partying with my brother. It’s all good.” JT was one of our third wheels (we had a few—lots of single guys in the teams). He was close like this with so many other couples and supportive of so many other wives. I was only one of many women he was there to support. And, like so many others, I too loved him deeply.

When I lost JT, for the first time in my adult life, I truly fell apart. I didn’t cry. Not one tear for well over a week (not a tear until I went to Iowa and saw his bedroom; untouched since high school, it was innocent and hopeful). But when I heard the news, at first I simply said to Boss, “No, he’s fine. I don’t feel anything.” And I literally went back to sleep for almost two hours. When I woke up, Boss was calm and catatonic. And I knew. I collapsed on my bedroom floor and stopped breathing. And then, suddenly, something in me terrifyingly woke up. In my mind I always knew I could lose one of them, even my husband, but only now did it feel real. JT was a crucial part of my marriage, and when he died, that part of my marriage died as well. Boss and I, all of JT’s friends and so many wives, will never get over losing these guys, but, strangely, now that several months have passed and the shock has worn off, I have never been more sad
and more grateful. I now look at the widows, women who are indescribably, almost unbelievably strong, and I beg God to bring my husband home.

At JT’s gravesite the day of his funeral, a beautiful young new widow whom I had never met graciously approached me and said, “I am so sorry.” Stunned, I looked at her and responded, “JT was my good friend; he wasn’t my husband.” With a gorgeous smile she looked at me intently straight in the eye, squeezed my hand tightly, and said, “He was your friend and brother, and I’m so very sorry for your loss.”
^*
I will never forget how deeply her words affected me. This widow was comforting me? I was floored by her humble graciousness and selfless kindness. I looked around at all of the wives, female friends, and ex-girlfriends who had traveled so far to attend JT’s service, and I couldn’t help but think:
We were all married to him, in a way.