That meant keeping barrel discretion on point. We train as we fight, and live ammo is necessary to mimic true combat so we could perfect the SEAL battle maxim: shoot, move, communicate. I carried six to seven of those (one on the gun, four on my waist, and one in a pouch strapped to my rucksack), the weapon, and my fifty-pound ruck everywhere we went and was expected to move just as fast as everyone else. The weapon alone was twenty pounds, and each belt of one-hundred rounds weighed in at seven pounds. Most people dreaded Pig detail, but I was obsessed with that gun. SQT graduation (note the blood stains from the Trident being punched into my chest) Some men were trained as snipers, and since I was the biggest man in the unit-my weight was back up to 250 pounds by then-I scored the job of carrying the Pig, the nickname for the M60 because it sounded like the grunt of a barnyard hog. We rappelled and fast-roped up and down from hovering helicopters. Training continued with jungle warfare exercises in Malaysia. Meanwhile, we were moored in Malaysia, awaiting orders, hoping to join the fight.Īfter BUD/S, I moved on to SEAL Qualification Training, where I officially earned my Trident before landing in my first platoon. It was real and ongoing in the mountains, villages, and cities of Afghanistan. Combat was no longer a mythical state of mind we aspired to. September 11th was still a fresh, gaping wound in the American collective consciousness, and its ripple effects changed everything for guys like us. Or so I thought, but this was years before my descent into the ultra rabbit hole. It was 2002, I was fresh out of BUD/S, and as a full-time Navy SEAL, I was now officially one of the world’s most fit and deadly warriors and one of the hardest men alive. There was nothing else but me, my weapon, and the target I was shredding with zero apologies. As the one-hundred-round belt fed the growling machine and flared from the barrel, adrenaline flooded my bloodstream and saturated my brain. My entire body reverberated with the rhythm of the M60, a belt-fed machine gun, firing 500–650 rounds per minute. I was twenty-seven years old, and my Platoon and Rambo fever dreams had become real as I blinked twice, exhaled, and on the OIC’s signal, opened fire. Even without sunlight, the tropical heat was intense and sweat slid down the side of my face like dew drops on a window pane. We crested a pass, took shelter beneath a thick stand of towering mahogany trees in the triple canopy jungle, and tracked our targets through night vision goggles. He who hits first wins the fight, most of the time. Our movement was stealthy and silent, but swift. We were humping through the jungle in the dead of night. The anesthesia took hold, and I felt myself wheeling backward until I landed in a scene from my past.
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