SEAL Team Six: Memoirs of an Elite Navy SEAL Sniper by Howard E. Wasdin, Stephen Templin Read Free Book Online Page A

Williamsburg, Kentucky—a Christian school. All the work saving up for a car had been to no avail, because Tammy totaled my blue 1970 Ford LTD before I even left home, so I had to take the bus instead. Before I stepped on the bus, my mother told Dad, “Hug Howard.” Then she told me, “Go hug your daddy.” Leon put his arms out. We did an awkward hug. It was the first time we had ever hugged each other. Then I had a rare hug with my mother. I got on the bus glad to get the hell out of there.

4.
    Russian Sub and Green Hero
     
    At the age of twenty, after a year and a half of college, I used up the last of my hard-earned money and couldn’t afford to go back to school. There wasn’t a lot of financial aid available at the time, and I was tired of washing with leftover soap and was weary of searching for lost change on Thursdays so I could enjoy three-hot-dogs-for-a-dollar night at the nearby convenience store. I decided to visit the military recruiters at the shopping mall in Brunswick, Georgia, hoping to join, save enough money, and return to college. A poster of a Search and Rescue (SAR) swimmer in a wetsuit hung outside the navy recruiter’s office. Later, I signed up to do Search and Rescue for the navy.
    Before shipping out, I decided to marry Laura.
    My mom had one request. “Talk to Brother Ron first.”
    I knew our preacher didn’t like Laura. I knew he didn’t agree with her Mormon religion. “No, Mom, I won’t do that. I’m not going to talk to Brother Ron. I love her, and I’m marrying her.”
    Leon came into my room and with both hands pushed both of my shoulders, knocking me back a few steps. That was his big way of asserting dominance. If I looked at him or stepped forward, he would interpret that as a sign of aggression. I had learned to lower my head and stay back. “If you can’t listen to your mom about this one thing, you pack up and get the hell out of my house!”
    I couldn’t believe my ears.
    “Yeah, I saw you just look at me,” Dad said. “You want to try me? Go ahead and try me. I’ll go through you like a dose of salts.” Epsom salts were used for constipation, and that was the South Georgia way of saying, “I’ll go through you like crap through a goose.” He had just threatened me for the last time.
    I packed everything I could fit into a small suitcase, walked out the door, and headed down the street to a pay phone. After I called Laura’s house, her parents sent her to pick me up.
    Laura’s family acted much different from my family. The kids and the parents talked. They had conversations. The parents were nice to the kids. Her father even told them good morning. That blew me away. They were loving and affectionate. I loved what their family had as much as I loved Laura.
    Her parents let me live with them until I could get a temporary construction job and a small apartment. Months after I left my home, Laura and I married in her church on April 16, 1983. My parents grudgingly attended the small wedding. We lived in a town where it would’ve reflected poorly on them if they hadn’t come. After Laura and I exchanged vows, my dad gave me a hundred-dollar bill and shook my hand without saying anything—no “Congratulations” or “Go to hell.” Needless to say, my parents didn’t stay for cake.
    French kissing and lovemaking came naturally for me. Doing things like telling her I loved her and holding her hand were difficult. I was switched on or off—there was no in-between. I lacked a role model for being a husband and father. Dad never put his arm around my mother or held her hand. Maybe he did when I wasn’t around, but I never saw it. Most of their conversation had only been about work or us kids.
    *   *   *
     
    On November 6, 1983, I arrived at navy boot camp in Orlando, Florida. Two days later, we all had fresh buzz cuts and smelled like denim. At lights-out, I told the guy in the bunk below me, “Hey, today was my birthday.”
    “Yeah, man. Happy