The Red Circle by Brandon Webb

Author:Brandon Webb
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: St. Martin's Press

SEVEN

WHEN EVERYTHING CHANGED

In the late summer of 2000 our platoon embarked on a trans-Pacific run, headed for the Persian Gulf by way of Hawaii, Australia, and points west. Our first deployment. Thank God, we were finally getting out of here! We were attached to the USS Duluth, a troop transport ship, or amphibious transport dock. The Duluth was a fine old vessel, the last ship to be launched from the Brooklyn Navy Yard in the summer of 1965 before the yard’s closure.

The Duluth departed from California on August 14, 2000, with most of our gear aboard—but not us. We skipped the boat and boarded a plane for Hawaii. Rather than having us waste a lot of time on board, our command would fly us ahead to the ship’s next destination, where we could put in additional days of training while waiting for the vessel to catch up. This was a pattern we followed for most of the trip west. During those times we did spend on board we got a lot of kidding from the rest of the navy personnel, because in their eyes all we did was train. (They said the acronym SEAL stood for Sleep, Eat, And Lift, as in lift weights.)

In Hawaii we did some combat diving, paired off for a little hydrographic survey work, and occupied ourselves with the various ways SEALs continually train and retrain. In the daytime, that is. Once evening hit we’d go have fun. The single guys all chased girls, and we married guys had good times out with the boys. Chief Dan and I had both brought our surf boards along, and we’d meet up early in the mornings and surf for a few hours before joining the rest of the guys for our workouts. Later on, at other ports of call on our westward trek, we found a few days to peel away and go on surfing outings together. We got some pretty odd looks at various customs stations. (SEALs with surfboards? What were we going to do, take out bad guys by outsurfing them?)

The Hawaiian port where we put in was one with a unique place in American history. It was at Pearl Harbor that we had been attacked on our own soil nearly sixty years earlier. Being there on that historic site almost made you wonder: That could never happen again … could it?

Leaving Hawaii, we hopped on a C-130 transport plane and headed for Darwin, Australia. I have to tell you, flying in a C-130 is an absolutely fantastic way to travel. We could stretch out, go do push-ups in the corner, or do pretty much whatever we wanted. We brought our own food, had hammocks strung up all over the back of the plane, went up to the cockpit to shoot the shit with the pilots for a while, or rocked out to our headphones. I’ll take that over commercial flying any day of the year.

We made a few brief stops on our way to Australia,

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