The Ultimate Dichotomy

Jocko Willink

CHARLIE MEDICAL FACILITY, CAMP RAMADI, IRAQ: 2006

"Sir," the young SEAL whispered in a faint voice, "come here." Our hands were clasped in a handshake. Not a formal handshake like two businessmen, but palm to palm with thumbs wrapped around the back of the hand like an arm-wrestling contest — a handshake of brotherhood. The young SEAL was feeling the morphine. I saw it in his eyes, but he was still there, still conscious and aware. He was everything a young man should be: smart, brave, athletic, funny, loyal, and tough. He had been shot in the leg about half an hour before. I found out later that Mikey Monsoor, a young SEAL machine gunner, had run out into heavy enemy gunfire and dragged this SEAL out of a war-torn street in the Malaab District in the city of Ramadi, the violent heart of the insurgency in Iraq.

The wounded SEAL now lay on a gurney in Charlie Med, the Camp Ramadi field hospital where U.S. military surgical teams worked furiously to save the lives of gravely wounded troops almost every day. The bullet, a mammoth armor-piercing 7.62 × 54 millimeter round with a steel core, had entered his leg at the lower thigh, ripped apart flesh and bone inside his leg, and exited in his upper thigh, close to the groin. It was hard to say if he would keep his leg. From the looks of the wound, my guess was no, he would lose it.

The wounded SEAL's grip on my hand tightened and he pulled me in, drawing me just inches from his face. I could tell he wanted to say something to me, so I turned my head and put my ear next to his mouth. I wasn't sure what to expect. Was he scared or angry or depressed that he might lose his leg? Was he nervous about what might happen next? Was he confused?

He took a breath and then whispered, "Sir. Let me stay. Let me stay. Please. Don't make me go home. I'll do anything. I'll sweep up around the camp. I can heal here. Please, please, please just let me stay with the task unit."

There you go. Not scared. Not angry. Not depressed that he might lose his leg. Only concerned that he might have to leave our task unit.

Task Unit Bruiser. Our task unit. Our lives. This SEAL was our first significant casualty. We had had guys catch some frag on previous operations. We had had some very close calls. But this was the first wounded SEAL from Task Unit Bruiser whose life would be forever changed by a grave combat injury. Even if he kept his leg, the damage was so substantial that it didn't seem possible he would ever fully regain the extraordinary athleticism he had displayed previously. And yet this SEAL was only concerned that he would let me down, let the task unit down, let his platoon — his team — down.

This was a man. This was a true friend — a brother. This was a hero: young, brave, and without question more concerned for his friends than for his own life.

I was moved. I felt tears welling up in my eyes. I fought them back and swallowed the lump in my throat. This was no time to break down. I was "the Leader." He needed me to be strong.

"It's alright, brother. We've got to get you healed up first," I whispered. "As soon as you heal up, we'll get you back over here. But you have to get healed up first."

"I'll be okay," the wounded SEAL replied. "Just let me stay ... let me stay."

"Brother," I told him earnestly, "I'll bring you back as soon as you can stand. But you have to go and get yourself healed up."

"I'll heal up here. I can work in the TOC," he argued, referencing our tactical operations center, where we monitored combat missions via radio and television screens that displayed overhead video feed from aircraft, both manned and unmanned.

"Listen," I told him, "that won't work. This wound is no joke. You're going to need real rehab — and we don't have that here for you. Go home. Heal up. Get back on your feet and I'll get you back over here. I promise."

I meant it. Whether he kept his leg or not, once he was stable enough, I would do all I could to bring him back.

"Okay, sir," he replied, convinced that it wouldn't take long, "I'll be back soon."

"I know you will, brother. I know you will," I told him.

Soon he was being loaded onto a medevac1 helicopter and flown to a more advanced medical facility where he would get the surgery he needed — a place where they might be able to save his leg.

I went back to my camp, a compound of tents and buildings we called Sharkbase sandwiched between the large U.S. military base of Camp Ramadi and the Euphrates River.

I went to my room on the second floor of the building that housed our TOC, a once lavish structure with ornate columns that had previously belonged to members of Saddam Hussein's regime. Now it was our headquarters and barracks, with sandbagged windows and makeshift furniture. I sat down on my crude bed, constructed of plywood and two-by-fours.

Reality set in: we were only one month into our deployment. My guys were getting in gunfights on a daily basis. The city of Ramadi, where we operated, was crawling with insurgents. And the insurgents were good: they were well equipped, well trained, and well disciplined. They fought with tenacity and ruthlessness.

Of course, we were better. Our training, gear, and attitude were among the best of any combat troops in the world. We were in Ramadi to make the city safe for the local populace by taking the fight to the enemy — to hunt the evil insurgents down in the streets and kill them. All of them.

But we weren't bulletproof. We couldn't run around this city day in and day out and not expect to take casualties. If you cut wood, you get sawdust. When you wage war, especially in violent urban combat, you take casualties. That was the nature of the business. Oddly enough, up until this point, SEALs in Iraq had been very lucky. Three years into the war, only a handful of SEALs had been wounded — and none had been killed. The incidents were fairly random, often more bad luck than anything else.

But we weren't going to get lucky this whole deployment. The proof was evident, as I'd just witnessed, seeing my wounded SEAL, pale from blood loss, hazy from morphine, and lucky — so extremely lucky — to be alive.

The wounded SEAL was a young man. This was only his second SEAL platoon and his second deployment to...