Walking in Mud: A Navy SEAL’s 10 Rules for Surviving the New Normal

A POST HILL PRESS BOOK

Walking in Mud:

A Navy SEAL’s 10 Rules for Surviving the New Normal

© 2021 by Steve Giblin with Jon Land

All Rights Reserved

ISBN: 978-1-63758-064-6

ISBN (eBook): 978-1-63758-065-3

Cover design by Cody Corcoran

Interior design and composition by Greg Johnson, Textbook Perfect

This book contains research and commentary about COVID-19, which is classified as an infectious disease by the World Health Organization. The research about COVID-19 is still ongoing. For the most current information about the coronavirus, please visit cdc.gov or who.int. Although every effort has been made to ensure that the personal and professional advice present within this book is useful and appropriate, the author and publisher do not assume and hereby disclaim any liability to any person, business, or organization choosing to employ the guidance offered in this book.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author and publisher.

Post Hill Press

New York • Nashville

posthillpress.com

Published in the United States of America

I dedicate this book to the first line health care workers, the survivors, and the victims of the pandemic, as well as all their families.

Also, to my family—especially my wife Barbara, my children Tom, Taylor, Tori, and Sydney, my father Paul and mother Judy, and my stepmother Joyce.

To my friends, Teammates and Naval Special Warfare writ large for my special career in the Teams and those who raised me and also rode the ride with me, but more importantly the ones who were my FNG’s and ultimately did the real heavy lifting in Afghanistan, Iraq, and the greater Global War on Terrorism.

To Tommy Valentine, Danny Deitz, Michael Murphy, Axe, and the many more heroes who’ve made the ultimate sacrifice in training and in combat. I think about you every day. If not for all of you I wouldn’t be who I am. Thank you.

The journey of a thousand miles begins with one step.

—Lao Tzu

Contents

Preface

Introduction

Prologue: My Time in the Teams

RESPONSIBILITY

Chapter 1: Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder: An Epidemic in Its Own Right

Chapter 2: Walking in Mud—Literally

LEADERSHIP

Chapter 3: The Bitter End

PRIDE

Chapter 4: The Standard We Hold Ourselves To

FAIRNESS

Chapter 5: BUD/S for Beginners

SEAMANSHIP

Chapter 6: American Grit

SINCERITY

Chapter 7: Defining Character

EXAMPLE

Chapter 8: Women Who Serve

Chapter 9: Warrior Spouses

LOYALTY

Chapter 10: Circling the Wagons

FORETHOUGHT

Chapter 11: Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow

COMMON SENSE

Chapter 12: Tasks, Conditions, and Standards

Conclusion: Frogman Rules

Preface

Well, here we are. The long shadow of COVID-19 is at last receding, bringing brighter days with it.

But how bright?

Our best guess is something like 60 percent of the employment reduction is going to be temporary, and 40 percent is going to be permanent, Nicholas Bloom, an economics professor at Stanford University, told Marketplace.org last May. Looking through history at previous recessions, often these temporary layoffs unfortunately turn out to be permanent.

And, according to AARP, COVID-19 will change everything, from how we greet each other to what’s on our bucket list. ‘It’s the single greatest disruption of our lifetime,’ says Jeffrey Cole, director of the Center for the Digital Future at the University of Southern California. ‘The kind of change that’s occurred over a few months will change how we do things for years.’

Pharmafield, in an article titled New Normal, New Thinking: Life Post COVID-19, adds, The COVID-19 pandemic has changed, and will continue to change, the world and the way we work, rest and play. So ‘going back’ to the way we were before COVID-19 is not an option. The challenge, and I think the opportunity, is now to start the process of thinking about a ‘new normal.’

Ian Davis from McKinsey & Company said this in that same article: What will normal look like? While no one can say how long the crisis will last, what we find on the other side will not look like the normal of recent years.

The point is the light breaking through the clouds of COVID may not burn as bright for everyone. Indeed, the effects and realities imposed upon us by the New Normal are likely to have ramifications for everyone (some more than others). I faced plenty of metaphorical clouds in my twenty-six years as a Navy SEAL, and my goal in the pages that follow is to provide you with time-tested tools to deal with whatever shape the New Normal takes and what that means for you.

So why is this book so damn important to me, and why did I feel the need to intertwine my life story and experiences, as well as those of a few others, into a guide for surviving the post-pandemic world, this New Normal in which we find ourselves? My goal, my purpose, is to get a message out that’s been gnawing at me for several years, even before the pandemic struck.

For many people, everyday life has been getting more and more polarized. Politics is dividing friendships, families, and workplaces. The news has become an either/or predicament: either you believe this or you believe that, with nothing in the middle. We have our left- and right-wing news agencies, and they feed us conflicting news that spins it into the narrative they want us to hear.

This naturally divides us into subgroups of Americans, and it has transformed our sense of collective identity into competing camps. It’s become a way of life, permeating and influencing our conversations, the people and groups we associate with, the shows we watch, and, hell, even the places we eat out at. Yes, now there are restaurants that have made public their moral or ethical beliefs, and that has created factions of people who either will eat there because they agree with the mindset or those who will not come hell or high water; they’d rather starve.

Amazing! Even eating has become polarized!

More recently, we’ve all witnessed the competing viewpoints of maskers and the non-maskers, the vaxxers and the anti-vaxxers. All the contention and conflict that was present prior to the virus has only been inflamed by the social, economic, and practical changes imposed upon us in this New Normal fostered by COVID-19. To put it in US Navy SEAL terms, the virus has left us walking in mud on the bottom of a dark bay carrying a heavy load while breathing from a scuba tank. And as a former SEAL, I find myself wanting to help make sense of this unexpected burden we’re all living with by sharing some of my own experiences and how they relate to what the whole country is facing.

Many of you have no doubt heard of the infamous BUD/S bell that hangs outside the training cadre’s office. You ring it once to get the attention of the cadre inside. Ringing it three times triggers a Drop on Request, meaning you quit. Once rung, you can never un-ring the bell. I think all of us at some point in the months since COVID hit have wanted to ring our own metaphorical bell three times. To throw up our hands in the face of overwhelming adversity and changes forced upon us that we neither embraced nor signed up for. As much as anything, the mission statement for this book is to provide an alternative to ringing the bell when life piles on, if not because of COVID, then because of something else. And, unlike the case in BUD/S, you can indeed un-ring your metaphorical bell and this book will help you there, too, in steering a course toward recovery, reconstruction, and, even, redemption.

How do we get out of the figurative mud in which we find our feet mired, slogging along with every step a challenge? That’s the question. For the answers, turn the page, and let’s begin our journey to the other side.

Introduction

To augment present naval capabilities in restricted waters and rivers with particular reference to the conduct and support of paramilitary operations, it is desirable to establish Special Operations teams as a separate component within Underwater Demolition Units One and Two. An appropriate cover name for such units is ‘SEAL’ being a contraction of SEA, AIR, LAND.

—Vice Adm. Wallace M. Beakley,

Deputy Chief of Naval Operations, June 5, 1961

I wasn’t born until two years after Vice Admiral Wallace Beakley uttered those words that would come to define my adult life. I loved every minute of being a Navy SEAL and served in Special Operations for twenty-six years, fourteen of those (1987–2001) with Naval Special Warfare Development Group.

As a SEAL I traveled all over the world to train with our allies and fight America’s enemies, never imagining that the greatest enemy, and greatest challenge, our country ever faced would end up being something I couldn’t even see. A microbe, a virus.

COVID-19.

As individuals, we never could have anticipated or prepared for this. One day the world was normal and the next everything changed, jolted to a halt by the pandemic. Part of my training as a SEAL involved preparing for biological warfare, but no enemy I’d been trained to fight unleashed this scourge upon us. There are the theories as to how it came to be, but at this point it doesn’t really matter. This virus knows no nationality, culture, or political persuasion. COVID-19 has upended our lives, confronted us with our own mortality, and torn apart the very fabric of who we are.

Not being one to give in or give up, I found myself wanting to respond, not with bullets but a keyboard. My job, my purpose, as a Navy SEAL was to keep you safe from the things that go bump in the night, from the monsters out there that are very real. COVID is a monster too. And if I can’t keep you safe from it, maybe I can at least help you endure the New Normal the pandemic has left in its wake. To foster a mindset of perseverance, of courage, of never giving up in the face of adversity—the bedrock principles of the Navy SEALs.

First, a bit of perspective.

In 1983, the Naval Special Warfare community was going through its biggest reorganization since the early 1960s and Vietnam, which established SEAL Teams 1 and 2. Underwater Demolition Teams (UDTs) were being transitioned over to SEAL Teams and Swimmer Delivery Vehicle Teams (SDVTs, later to change to SEAL Delivery Vehicle Teams). On the West Coast, SEAL Teams 3 and 5 and SDVT-1 were born and Underwater Demolition Teams 11 and 12 were disestablished. On the East Coast, meanwhile, SEAL Team 4 and SDVT-2 were born and UDTs 21 and 22 were disestablished.

In January 1962, a new chapter in the history of special operations opened with the establishment of the U.S. Navy’s SEAL Teams ONE and TWO, Jon Dwight Zimmerman wrote for the Defense Media Network in December of 2011. The 21-year stretch from 1962 to 1983 was a profound one for the new force, one that would see it created from the Navy’s Underwater Demolition Teams (UDTs) and grow to a point where, in 1983, the parent organization would be folded into that of its offspring.

The East Coast Teams also saw a new compound get constructed to house the two newly established Teams and SEAL Team 2. All three Teams were quite a distance apart from one another on the amphibious base. SEAL Team 2 was near the housing units, SEAL Team 4 was near the dining facility and base fire station, and SDVT-2 was where the magazines and Special Boat Unit 20 were located.

The West Coast Teams would stay where they were, co-located on the Silver Strand side of the amphibious base with the exception of SDVT-1. They would remain on the main side of base, next door to Special Boat Unit 12 (now Special Boat Team 12). Both SDV Teams needed proximity and access to the respective bays that their bases sat on in order to launch and recover the SDVs and support craft. A SEAL Team, on the other hand, could be almost anywhere on base since they weren’t so dependent on the required equipment that the SDV Teams were.

My BUD/S class, 124, was one of the first to be assigned to the newly established Teams. The classes before us that year received orders to UDTs or SEAL Team 1 or 2, although the UDTs transitioned into the new framework later that year for them. Be that as it may, we were all still FNGs (fucking new guys) in the world of Frogmen and SEALs, which are one and the same.

As FNGs, we were the designated personnel who would pack up the equipment of the UDT and either move it to the new Team area, get rid of it at the base dump, or place it with the Defense Reutilization and Marketing Service (DRMO) where the stuff would get turned around and used again. This included even the old Vietnam-era office furniture, the desks and file cabinets and all that, which was getting replaced with brand-new furniture.

I was assigned to clean out the front office where the Team’s commanding officer, executive officer, Command Master Chief, and operations officer were located. They had already packed their personal effects, but there was still plenty to clean up. As for all the old classified papers and files, they were to be put into burn bags and sent to the base incinerator where they could be destroyed properly and in accordance with Department of Defense (DoD) policy at the time.

I was going through everything I was told to and sorting it all out to be either destroyed, put into the trash, or kept for reuse. That’s when I found the one-page document that forms the basis of this book, the Ten Essential Qualities of an Underwater Demolition Man, tucked way back in a drawer and left behind by the Team commanding officer who had vacated the office.

Here are those Ten Qualities, reproduced from the original document that I’ve kept close to me ever since the day I found it.

The Ten Essential Qualities of an Underwater Demolition Man

PRIDE: In yourself, in your team, in the amphibious force and in the Navy, and most important, pride in developing the same pride in subordinates.

LOYALTY: Up and down, in action and word.

SINCERITY: In all you do.

RESPONSIBILITY: You have it—act accordingly, and live up to it.

LEADERSHIP: You are the leader in title—be sure you are in deed.

EXAMPLE: You always set it—be sure it’s good.

FORETHOUGHT: Cultivate the habit—and exercise it.

FAIRNESS: Be absolutely fair and square with subordinates—there is no other standard.

SEAMANSHIP: Only a man who is a competent seaman can truly command respect.

COMMON SENSE: Use it—there is no substitute.

LCDR F.R. Kaine, U.S.N.R.,

Commanding Officer,

Underwater Demolition Team-21

These were the simple expectations that then Commanding Officer Francis Kaine of Underwater Demolition Team 21 (UDT-21) expected from his operators. This document found its way into my hot little hands, and I’ve never come across another man with a copy of the same.

There was nothing else I found that week that would last the length of my career like that single piece of paper would. It has remained close to my heart and never far from my thoughts through all the years since—the hard copy accompanying me on all the moves I’ve made from that day I first came upon it until today—and today is what Walking in Mud is all about. We are dealing with the residue of the greatest attack the United States has ever faced, undertaken by an invisible, insidious enemy.

As of this writing, over 610,000 Americans have perished to COVID-19. That’s more than the sum total of American lives claimed from both World War I and World War II combined—all in little more than a year to an enemy we can’t even see, much less fight. I served as an operator in Special Operations alongside some of the best-trained warriors in the world, but even my brothers and I couldn’t stand up to this virus. It is nothing like the traditional sorts of enemies we faced as we carried out our missions.

But in the midst of the pandemic, something occurred to me. Having lived with the Ten Essential Qualities of an Underwater Demolition Man for the better part of my life, I was struck by how those rules, those qualities, apply to the world in which we find ourselves now. A world where nothing is the same as it was going back to the early months of 2020 and might well never be the same for the rest of our lifetimes and beyond.

I can’t change that; I wish I could, but I can’t. What I can do, though, is show you how those Ten Qualities that have been so vital to me in how I try to live my life can