Welcome US. Marines...

The SEAL Training Hell Night for the June guys was pretty standard.
The Platoon Training for the June guys was pretty standard.
The Advanced Training for the June Guys was pretty standard.

What wasnt standard was the June guys themselves.

When everything was said and done, the June guys did something that should have been impossible; something no one could have done.
When the June guys did that, they continued to excel by virtue of a confidence, normally reserved for SEALs who spend a lifetime doing things others say cant be done.

Doing the impossible becomes pretty standard in SEAL Team and a DEEP confidence goes along with that for the rest of your life.

To tell it correctly, to tell the story of what the June guys did, I have to go back months to when this Operation began taking shape.

I was approached by a long time friend of mine, a local farmer, who allows us to use his land for training He asked about doing an Operation during one of my courses where our Bad Guys were active duty U.S. Marines.

Anyone who has stolen chickens here during a course knows who Im talking about.

NOW before I get started I want to state for the record my admiration for anyone who wears a uniform especially U.S. Marines but the fact remains that no one should ever get so cocky that they feel they are un-beatable

I agreed to do the Mission with the June Class, and the Mission was simple. All we had to do was capture the farmer and his wife from inside their house.

12-15 Marines would protect the outside of the house and prevent us from capturing them

I felt it would be fun and a great learning experience for my guys, but I was under no illusion of our chances of success. I knew wed get HAMMERED by the Marines, but so many useful lessons would be learned by the June guys attempting it that win, lose or draw, the June guys would learn much from it.

I didnt give it much thought after agreeing to do it.

I began giving it much thought though after my farmer buddy began stopping by, sometimes several times a day, gloating over the fact that the Marines were going to MURDER us.

Phone calls and daily updates on how bad we were going to be stomped began to annoy me in a BIG way, but I kept my composure and said nothing.

It really began to bother me that Id known this guy for 20+ years, and that he was siding with a group of Marines hed known for mere months at best.
Hes seen what I was capable of, he knew plenty of other SEALs, yet he still sided with the Marines and I began to get pissed at his little faith and loudmouth.

I REALLY began getting pissed when he explained what the Marines were planning without giving anything away to me. They were loaded for bear with night vision, thermal imagers, and a host of non-lethal gasses and projectiles as well as perimeter defenses that would alert them whenever someone crossed a concealed laser beam in the area and rolls of razor wire would encircle much of the Target area around the house.

He referred to the Marines as The Steroid Squad, and that they were going to give anyone they caught on the Target a major physical beating.
We discovered later, that they had moved all the furniture out of a trailer next to the Target as a POW Camp where they would pound the guys they caught for a few hours.

He laughed, he joked, he beat his chest, and he told me over and over Id fail and I didnt stand a chance of wining.

OK DICKLIPS GAME ON

I respect what the Marines do but this was a bit much. Eight guys in the June Class were under eighteen years old; the oldest was forty + and a Computer Dude by trade. In short, it was simply f**kin ridiculous that they (the Marines) were playing this hard, and their only goal was to make us look and feel like fools while making themselves feel better by beating up a bunch of guys who had ZERO experience.

I decided to pull off the gloves, and show them what a few motivated guys with ZERO experience could do.

To explain what we did, you have to understand who did it.

Elonzo, a Graphic Designer by trade, was selected as Class Leader. A MONSTER of a man, hes a charming guy who commands respect by his low key personality, but not the guy youd ever want to see get mad with his large, powerful frame.

Elonzo set the Class up for success with a dynamic performance of leadership during the Hell Night Mission the Class does.

Elonzos Boat Crew Leaders were a Cop from a tough Hood in Great Briton who smiles no matter what happens, and the Computer Dude who by maturity remains level headed at all times and seems unflappable no matter the circumstance.

Behind them were the Sled Dogs of the June Class that bonded and took teamwork to a new level. A great bunch of guys, they got along great with each other and kicked Hell Night in the ASS.
A good leader is only as good as the sled dogs under him, and Elonzo was fortunate to have an awesome TEAM that wanted only to meet challenges and excel.

We began discussing Options for the Mission after Hell Night on Sunday as a Class. While I intended to stay out of the Operation as a player, I felt it necessary to suggest a few ideas for the ZERO experience guys to chew on.

My biggest suggestion was Lets Lure them into a False Sense of Security

Lets Lure them into a False Sense of Security basically means wed rely on DECEPTION and lie our asses off, hoping theyd drop their guard a little bit

Wed act like total idiots, wed let them believe we were sheep going to the slaughter; wed have them believe that we were going to do something and then wed actually do the exact opposite.

The simple plan was all about a Poker Face, and hoping theyd underestimate us.

They did and theyd regret that in a HUGE way

I figured the best way to begin the deception was to let everyone meet and I set a time of 1900 on Monday for everyone to get together at the Cabin for the scenario and a safety brief.
Wed hit them the next day

Prompt as always, the Marines and farmer showed up right on time.

Before they arrived, the Class had staged and loaded the Zodiac boats in the driveway and piled all their weapons and assault vests around it for the Marines to see.
We needed to give the appearance that we were inserting that night.
Hard to explain, but if they thought we were leaving that night, then the Marines would know where wed be coming from the next day and would set security and build defenses where they thought we were at.

What they didnt know was we would not be inserting that night, and it was just an elaborate ruse.

We also staged a few stupid questions that the Class would ask me when the brief was over in front of the Marines to further the ruse.

When do we put on our safety glasses at night coming through the woods?

What happens if the guns get wet?

Can we see our airsoft rounds at night and know if were delivering accurate fire?

Those three questions would hopefully have the Marines believe that we were coming from the area they expected us to come from, and that wed be coming at night.

Sucks to be them the plan was to already be on the Target when they arrived, and wed be there in broad daylight.

The plan was to sneak a Squad on the Target before the Marines arrived. The Squad would hide on the Target and allow the Marines to build their defenses around the Squad before they hit them.

A Trojan Horse build, defend, and secure whatever you like were already here and just waiting for the right moment to strike

Before they arrived for the brief, I instructed the guys to shake hands and introduce themselves to the Marines. Act stupid, act awestruck, LURE THEM into believing were idiot children

I briefed the Mission to all A very simple Mission, wed succeed if we captured the farmer and his wife. We could all die doing it, but if we captured them before we did, we WON.

I briefed everything, I told them all the rules, and I basically told them what we were going to do without telling them what we were going to do.
All the Marines had to do was listen to the brief and if they focused on it, if they focused on what I was saying, theyd realize right then and there that I had opened a door to exploit their defenses.

Instead of listening to me, they (the Marines) chose to wave money and attempt bets with the Class. $200 dollars here, $200 there who wants some of this action???

The chest pounding, the arrogance, the insults from the cocky Marines were tough to take, but the June guys just smiled like they were stupid, yet each man in the Class knew they were about to make them regret that arrogance and regret underestimating the guys with ZERO experience

We hid the boats after the Marines left because the farmer passes my house each morning early and would alert them. We needed them to think we were In the Field, when actually we were prepping to spank them from the Cabin, and insert the guys by the Helo Bus from here.

Assignments were made, plans were briefed, and in the end we discovered from some friendly agents and detective work, that the wife would be home around 1700 that evening, and the farmer would be home around 2000.

The Marines we werent so sure of but we figured theyd need to work that day and show up after that.
In the end we had them believing that wed hit them after darkness fell.

We inserted the first element at 1430. Their job was to hide on the Target and grab the wife when she came home.
Grab her as she opens the door, force youre way inside, dont allow her to do anything until the husband comes home.

Grab the husband next when he enters the house, and weve won. Anything else after that meant little in the big picture.

We figured after we had the farmer, the Marines would start knocking on the door when they arrived, and wed lure them in one at a time. When we had one Marine, we thought another Marines would look for him after a few minutes and wed allow another to enter the house and take him.

Now if youre thinking We Cheated, by going on the Target early youd be wrong as I briefed the Marines on what the Mission was, what they were responsible for, and basically what we were going to do
They were too busy pounding their chests and werent listening.

I briefed everyone that the farmer was a high level Taliban Warlord who was responsible for the kidnapping and execution of four British Journalists. I told them that hed already escaped from two Special Forces Raids in the past, and survived two Predator Strikes dedicated to kill him.
I told everyone that he moves through several Houses that he feels safe at, and that he moves frequently, rarely spending more than a day at any house and that he travels with numerous bodyguards (the Marines).
I told everyone that he travels with a woman who lured the Journalists into the ambush and we wanted her as well.

Finally, I told everyone that tomorrow would be a Recon/Direct Action Mission of the three known hideouts he frequents and that the Class Target was designated Charlie and it would need to be Hit before midnight if they arrived.

Our Mission, was to kill or capture Mussa Allotet, the woman he travels with, and all enemy personnel on site

If the Marines had paid attention to the word Recon, they would have known we would be watching the place and waiting for him and her to arrive.

Thats called an AMBUSH folks a very simple and very common mission done everyday in Iraq and Afghanistan.
A Recon/Ambush is set up BEFORE you expect the Target to arrive Not after they arrive

Pretty simple stuff, if theyd have been listening instead of insulting, theyd have known what we were going to do they would have known, because I had just told them

Instructor Ben inserted with the first element to defuse chaos we knew would happen when the Marines discovered what we had done. The entire Mission was led by our Computer Dude, and would be done by cell phone and text messages to the rest of the elements outside the perimeter.

The first element snuck quickly from the nearby woods at their insertion point, and entered a detached garage and hid. They also hid two guys under the house in the crawl space and closed the small plywood hatch that covered the entrance.
The guys under the house screwed a screw into the hatch so they could open and close it easily. The plan was for them to shoot distant Marines from deep in its dark recess and shut the hatch quickly after a single shot was fired.
We knew the Marines would be pulling out their hair wondering where the shots were coming from and dying one after the other, after the other

The two other squads inserted at 1530 and were led by Elonzo and Mike our British Cop. Those two squads contained two Snipers and two Spotters as well as three dedicated guys in each element to keep the Marines at bay if they tried to assault the Sniper positions.

The Snipers trained hard the day before and had their weapons shooting HOT. Theyd pick off the defenseless Marines at great distances one after another, and there was no way the Marines would be able to do anything much to counter the shooting.

They could hide, but wed have them on two sides and our hidden Snipers under the house would pick off the remaining Marines.

Hard to understand from this email Im writing how bad a situation the Marines would be in, but trust me on this they never stood a chance

With all elements in position, I waited at my house for updates when suddenly my phone rang. It was Instructor Ben whispering into the phone that a few Marines had arrived early and were driving around the Target shooting their weapons randomly into the woods and conducting patrols

I held my breath and hoped the Marines wouldnt check the garage. If they did, it was game on

My phone rang again a few minutes later. Checking the number, I recognized it was the farmer doing a little checking on me

I didnt answer the call and my mind reeled with What should I do now? If he thought I was at my house instead of him thinking we were in the swamps, hed call the Marines and tell them something was up

I had to do something fast or risk blowing the Operation and all the hard work the guys had put into it

I ran into the house, I grabbed a pistol, I grabbed my daughter, and I called his number back.

I told my daughter outside, When I drop my hand, you start firing the pistol

I called the farmer and apologized for missing his call He asked, Whats going on wadda you doing???

I dropped my hand and my daughter began firing off bullets in the background and I replied, Were just running the live fire training doing a little shooting down here What do you need???

* He knows where we do our live fire training and believed we were in the swamps behind his farm*

With a big storm approaching, he said that he was knocking off early as they couldnt pick wheat in the rain and he was heading home. He asked, The rain aint gonna stop you is it?
Nope, I replied The rain aint gonna slow us down a bit

A few insults to me later, he hung up assured that all was OK and that I was still the stupid SEAL he thought I was

Thirty minutes after his call to me, I received a call from Instructor Ben that they had captured him as he entered the house before he could lock the door behind him.

Ben put him on the phone with me and I yelled, I GOT YOUR F**KIN ASS NOW BITCH, AND IM GONNA GET YOUR WIFE NEXT MOTHER F**KER
YOU STAY COOL DUDE IF YOU TRY AND GIVE US AWAY TO THOSE F**KIN MARINES, THOSE GUYS OF MINE ARE GONNA HOG TIE AND BEAT THE SHIT OUTTA YOUR SORRY ASS YOU LOUDMOUTHED F**K

As I finished YELLING with unparallel joy and total satisfaction, I heard Ben in the background yelling, YOURE GONNA BREAK THE DOOR DONT BREAK THE DOOR

Turns out, when Ben entered the house as last man he turned and saw two wide-eyed Marines looking at him with their mouths opened so far you could have stuck a baseball in their opened yack holes Surprise, surprise, surprise Wereeee Hereeee

The Marines were shot by the guys but that didnt stop them as they pulled and kicked trying to force the door opened and yelled LET US IN MOTHER F**KERS!

The reply from the guys was a simple NO, and a warm, friendly smile

All our elements outside the perimeter were then alerted that the fight was on. Wed been holding our fire, and had hoped to continue holding our fire until we had captured both farmer and wife.
With the gig up though, the Marines were free game now.

Inside the house, Ben had brought a large sheet of flip-chart paper and was forcing the farmer to hold it up and pose with it for pictures. A stunt perfected by Underwater Demolitions Teams during WWII, (UDTs were the predecessors to modern SEALs) the UDTs would swim the beaches and blow up obstacles for landing craft to safely land Marines during the Invasions in the Pacific Theater against Japan.

With the Marines always blowing off about being First Ashore to Fight, the UDTs would crawl on the beaches under fire and stake signs in the sand that read, Welcome U.S Marines! and theyd sign it with their UDT Team number.

It let the Marines know they were Second Ashore, and the Navy Frogmen had been there first.

When done having the farmer pose with the sign, Ben stuck it on the front door of the house and taped it in place while the Marines continued their assault at the side door.

As a heavy rain fell that only made the Marines madder having to stand in it without cover, they began to ask nicely if they could come inside for a little while.

Ben finally relented, or so the Marines thought, and Ben told them to come to the front door. Believing they would be allowed in from the rain at the front, they arrived and FREAKED being COMPLETELY FRUSTRATED and PISSED beyond words as they read the sign that simply said,

Welcome U.S. Marines, Extreme SEAL Experience 0609.

The phone calls had begun 10 minutes before as the Marines called the other Marines on the Base a few miles distant telling them to GET THE F**K OVER HERE FAST!

Knowing we had the house and they could not get in, they began spinning tires of their trucks in the mud as they raced around the perimeter blindly firing into the woods where they thought we were hiding.
Not knowing where we were in the woods, they soon figured it out as one of our Snipers shot a SUPER PISSED Marine whod been trying to force the door in the face as he drove by with a powerful Airsoft BB.

The Marine threw a major Hissy as he screamed in frustration while flailing his arms wildly after being shot.

As the truck pulled back to the house to regroup, a couple more of the guys were lying in wait and assaulted the vehicle killing the Marine occupants.

I was staying out of it all and was a few miles away receiving phone updates. It was the Classes Operation and I had told the Marines I was neutral and would arrive on Target later that evening.
Ben was only on site to keep things under control as well and Ben called a final time and said, Don you need to get down here RIGHT NOW

I arrived to find everyone standing outside in the rain and could clearly see two distinct groups outside of the obvious Class guys and the Marines.

One group was VERY HAPPY

One group was VERY MAD

The senior Marine on site jumped me as soon as I got out of the vehicle in front of everyone in a tirade of stuttering insanity through clenched teeth as he hissed about us not following the rules.

This was the same Marine whod been forcing the door, saw the sign first, and to add insult to injury the guys had shot him in the face a few minutes before

I was in no mood to hear his whining and shot straight back down his throat. DO YOU THINK IM F**KIN STUPID DID YOU REALLY THINK I WOULD ALLOW MY GUYS TO SIMPLY ATTACK A DEFENDED POSITION MANNED BY MARINES IN SOME SILLY CIVIL WAR MANUEVER JUST SO YOU F**KS COULD HAVE SOME FUN.
Pointing to young man in the Class, I said, THIS GUY IS 16 YEARS OLD. I pointed to another guy and said, THIS GUY IS OVER 40 AND A COMPUTER F**KING ANALYST!

WHAT THE F**K IS YOURE PROBLEM???

I attempted to calm everyone down after getting everybodys attention with my own tirade and simply explain that the defenses were Over the Top, and Out of Control. There was no way we would have been able to penetrate them and that they were ridiculous defenses for the skill level of civilians who had been here since Friday afternoon.

THESE GUYS AINT SEALS

I explained the word Recon to them; I explained the word Bodyguard, as one of their briefed duties. You allowed him to be captured because you were not protecting him

I tried to stroke some egos after that saying my guys were outclassed by the Marines and we had to be creative, but it wasnt working

Everyone else in the Class was in place outside the perimeter and would have allowed them (the Marines) to all arrive and build those defenses and then we would have Sniped their Marine asses to pieces anyhow.

I told the Marines that the guys in the house would have stayed in the house and not fired at them through windows and doors. They were in there to get our primary objective and hopefully the Marines would have never known we were there.
That part didnt work out for us

Our Target arrived early instead of his wife because of the rain and the Marines had seen us, but we rolled with it The Marines, instead of thinking clearly and attempting to continue the Operation just freaked and came unglued.

The worse part of it that pissed them off so much was all their faults anyhow. They showed up with a couple guys early and started the Operation by conducting Patrols and trying to get us to shoot back at them as they attempted to draw our fire in a well-known tactic called Recon by Fire.
As they shot up the woods, they were hopeing if we were there that wed shoot back at them and announce that we were in fact On Target.

>From well-concealed positions, the Class just ignored the shooting to their credit and never let the Marines know they were there

>From my prospective when only a couple Marines showed up early and not the full compliment of Marines they were going to have later, that they started the Operation and then we finished it.
Kinda like going to a gang fight with a couple guys, and telling the other gang Lets wait until our other guys show up before we fight, OK

Before the June Class arrived, I sent out an email telling my subscribers about the Operation and also sent a copy of it to the farmer for the Marines and below is an excerpt from it,

*** A few minor adjustments to the schedule, well throw ALL IN for this Operation and the Class will do it without any help from me except learning to Think like a SEAL.
Its the Outside the Box thinking that will ensure that after this Mission is over, the look on each Marines face will be one of SHOCK and ADMIRATION for us.
Well SHOCK anyhow***

As the Marines left the briefing before the Operation started, one Marine pulled out a printed copy and handed it to me as he left Instead of being arrogant, he should have read what I wrote about Think like a SEAL, and Outside the Box as I told them in that email that I was up to something and they should prepare for it

The Operation just showed what every SEAL knows anyhow Conventional thinking and conventional training can never stand up very well against guys who think outside the box.
Really just kinda foolish to believe that we would just do what the Marines wanted us to do and die a graceful conventional death while charging their defenses.

Perhaps they would have liked us to assault them on horseback with drawn sabers and bugle calls.

The worst mistake anyone can make is to tell a SEAL he cant do something; to tell us well fail or use the word impossible to us. While were not arrogant enough to believe were bullet proof or infallible, we certainly rise to the challenge of the word Impossible and exhaust our minds attempting to figure out a way to make the impossible, possible.

Small units like SEAL Platoons rely on Deception to survive against larger units and bad situations, and we are taught to think Outside the Box.
Just ask the Pirates who probably at some point wondered, Does that tow rope they gave us look like its getting shorter and shorter the longer were out here?

Sorry you cant ask them their all f**kin dead

In the end, it started getting ugly on the Target and a bit aggressive, and I decided to pull the guys out before things escalated further. One Marine yelled, Just wait till next month!
I replied back with, Not next month, not ever again were done we won

As I backed the bus out loaded with the guys, one Marine grabbed a can of pepper spray and was going to hose the bus down through open windows.

To his credit, he didnt do it after seeing the look on my face.

If he would have, hed be drinking from a straw in a hospital bed

Well-done June Guys

Kick Some Ass