Welcome to Veterans Chronicles. I'm Greg Corumbus. Our guest in this edition is
retired US Navy Seal Lieutenant Mark Green. He's also the author of the recently
released book Unsealed, a Navy Seal's Guide to Mastering Transitions and Mark, thank
you so much for being with us. Hey, thanks for having me.
Well, let's begin at the beginning of your story. Where were you born
and raised? I was born in Anchorage, Alaska back in nineteen seventy one.
I was an Air Force of Brat, so I spent two years there.
Then we went to the Okinawa and I we were bouncing back and forth
between Ohio and the Far East So Philippines and then mainland Japan. So you
grew up all over the place. Yeah, yeah, tell me a little
bit about your dad service twenty years in the Air Force Vietnam Air Guy.
I provided a really great childhood that I didn't appreciate until I got older and
understood how cool traveling around the world was and seeing different cultures. Now from
the book, it didn't seem like you were initially planning on a military career.
You were a very good athlete, and we're playing quarterback in college until
you were injured, explained what happened there, what type of injury was it,
and what did that do to your mindset about what would be coming next.
So I played quarterback at Miami, Ohio and Kent State. I did
really well at Miami. The coaching staff was fantastic. Transferred to Kent State
and the coaching staff was not the same level. I was still progressing,
but not in the same way I was at Miami and we were doing spring
ball. I was third string, which is pretty normal for freshmen. Took
a really bad hit on my shoulder, completely tore up my shoulder, and
I went from plans of being Randall Cunningham and to just smart in the mediocre
student, and I was your throwing shoulder. I assume, yeah, yeah,
And you know, the doc said it would heal on itself in about
four years, three or four years, but he said they could do a
surgery and they pretty much cut me open from my arm pit up to the
top of my shoulder and do a repair. You know, I didn't want
to have that scar because in the back of my mind, I was like,
I'm young, I'll bounce back. But yeah, at that point,
my football career was over. That wasn't long after that that a friend had
planted the idea in your mind of pursuing becoming a Navy seal, both of
you, but it was a few years before you actually acted on it.
What was what was your thinking and why did it take you that many years
to do it? I felt since I started college, I felt like it's
something I needed to finish. So I transferred back to Miami because you know,
that's closer to home and where my friends were. And I was just
going through the motions. You know. I wasn't there because I wanted to
be a student or get a degree. I wanted to play football, and
but tried to finish what I started. And that loss of my football career,
even though it was challenging in so many hours, was really part of
my identity. And I really just I wouldn't say I spiraled, but I
definitely lost focus because that was the focus. And then yeah, eventually flunked
out of college. Well, you say the book also that you're working at
a Blockbuster, and there was just eventually a moment where you said, I'm
not doing this another day, I'm getting out of here. And it was
not long after that that you enlisted, right, yeah. So I don't
know if you remember that old movie Clerk's So you know there was a guy
who could get just a very vague amount of information about a movie and rattle
off the movie. So this gentleman walks up and he said, yeah,
man, I needed this book about this girl. She turned into an alien
and just starts eating dudes. And I was like, and with the most
confidence, he did a double tap on his nose and was like, yeah,
Specky's and I said, sir, Oceanian species and he's like yeah.
So right after that, I was like, you know what, I've had
it of So I joined the Navy the next day. I was in a
delayed entry, so but it was I was like, when can you get
me the first thing out of here up to Great Lakes? And that was
in June, and I left for Great Lakes mid July. How about what
you thought about what military life would be like. It seems like your your
basic training was a little bit of a culture shock. Well, like,
my grandfather was career Army and I grew up in the military, so it
was always an option. But you know, boot camp is boot camp,
you know, you're isolated by a design and you're not sleeping, and you
know, you don't have the kind of the creature comforts, and so it
was a little bit of a culture shock, but it was the culture shock
lasted for a couple of days, as opposed to some guys throughout that entire
eight weeks just never figured it out. Mine was like, oh man,
this is different. And so once I settled in and figured out it was
there was a routine everything and was really structured, which I grew up with.
So that initial shock was like whoa. And then once I settled in,
you know, it was just long days but short weeks. I think
it was week three, two or three. They introduced us, you know,
they said, here are a bunch of different cool jobs in the Navy.
And then they showed me the video that my friend Jeff had shown me
back in ninety one, and I was excited all over again. So like,
yeah, you guys can take the test in two days. So I
say, okay, sweet, I got it. And so I did the
pushups, sit ups, the swim all that stuff. But when I came
to the pull ups, it was just ugly. You know. It was
big six' two two hundred and something pounds strong kid. I'd never done
pull up and so I think I got two, maybe three, but I
think they gave me three. But I needed that, like, hey,
you're not ready for what you're getting ready to do. If you can't do
the eight pull ups, then you're in the wrong business. So what I
did was at the end of each night, lights would go out and then
I would There was a pole over the bathroom and we just do pull ups
all night. My back was shaking. I think I had three or four
weeks to take the to retest, and then if you didn't retest, then
you know you're gonna I was gonna be a mine man for my career.
So I was like, you know what, this is good. So I
got up to ten pull ups. But this isn't a vacuum right, no,
you know, no, no to the swim and all the other stuff.
So I was like, now I can get ten, and if I
really push it, I hope I can get eight. It was still a
hope, but you know, once I had reached ten, I was like,
okay, I should I should get it. So did swim that was
fine, did the push ups all out? I was like ooh, a
little tired. Did the sit ups, and then the dreaded pull ups came
and one, two, three, four, you know, just strong,
and then five was a little bit more of a struggle. Six was getting
ugly. Seven was definitely ugly, and then eight, like the bar was
at my chin. I think I could have gotten it, but I wasn't
quite sure, and divine intervention, somebody called the instructor's name and he turned
away just for an instant, and that instant was like, Okay, you
can either you know, try to get it and may not get it,
or you can, you know, pull your chin up over the bar and
pull yourself up. So I made that executive decision and used my chin to
pull myself up, and it was I got up to eight right, and
the instructor looked back and we locked eyes and he could tell. He's like,
I know you cheated on that one. I was like, I don't
know what you're talking about. So eight counted and I tried to get nine,
but I couldn't get nine, and I hopped down and he's like,
you know, don't get cocky. You still have that run to do.
And I was a talented runner, so I was just like, yeah,
whatever. But after the after the run, he pulled me over to the
side like, look, I know what you did. He's like, wouldn't
get the buds, work on those, work on your pull ups. I
was like, oh yeah, and went down to Ingleside, Texas for my
trade school. And once I'd gotten over that mental barrier of the eight pull
ups, once I got down to Ingleside and had to retake the test,
it was no problem. When did you actually go to buds? January second,
nineteen ninety seven when I checked in So joined the Navy in July,
and five or six months later I was at the toughest training center in the
world. So you had seen the video. I'm sure you would talk to
people about what it was like. But I've also I heard from enough people
that it's never exactly what you expect, no matter how much you try to
prep for it. So how did the reality compare to the expectation for you?
Well, the interesting thing there was no real expectation. I saw that
video. There were no seals in Ohio, so I didn't get to talk
to anybody, and the first seal I saw in person was Instructor Brown at
Great Lakes and so I didn't know. But I didn't know. I just
knew that hell Week was in there somewhere, and it was five days and
no sleep. You know, it's the toughest training in the world. And
when I got there, I thought that it would be this humong as space,
right, But it doesn't take a lot of space to create the toughest
conditions, and I wasn't ready for it. Nobody, nobody really is.
You can get to a point, but nobody pushes themselves to all out effort
for twelve hours a day. Just don't do it. I got there a
month early, and I really just worked on getting stronger till the first day.
The first p two had I just it was just I'd never been so
sore in my life. And that was on a Friday, and I got
to recover on the weekend, and then I just got to the business of
getting ready for Buds. But I buged my instructors, how do I do
better pushups? And how do I do better this? And how do I
do better that? And finally, cream just shut up and you're doing fine,
Just please be quiet. But they like that though, because you need
to be the best and you're determined to be the best. So well,
it might be slightly annoying at times. They could tell that you had to
drive people to do whatever it took, right, yeah, yeah, and
so you endeared yourself to them, even if they wouldn't necessarily admit it.
So in the actual buzz training, whether it's hellwic or anything else, what
was the hardest part? Was it physical, was it mental? Anything specific?
It was the cold water. I mean, you're constantly in cold water
and you're always miserable, and there's no escape. You're either in the Pacific
getting surf tortured, or you're at the pool and it's cold at the pool
San Diego on January. I didn't do any research, so I didn't know
that San Diego actually had a winter got out of thirty nine degrees at night.
So you're just always cold and miserable, and they're sand everywhere. So
that was the hardest part. You know, as strong as you are physically
and mentally, as soon as you hit that water, it is you know,
it's the great equalizer that's retired to US Navy seal Mark Green. He's
also the author of Unsealed, a Navy Seal's Guide to mastering transitions still to
come. In this edition, Lieutenant Green gives us a detailed look at sniper
school and the calculations that go into long range shooting. And we'll hear about
the unexpected challenges he overcame and becoming an officer. But up next Green will
take us through buds training and how he was nearly killed shortly after becoming a
seal. That's all straight ahead. I'm Greg Corumbus and this is Veterans Chronicles
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This is Veterans Chronicles. I'm Greg Corumbus. This is part one of a
two podcast interview with retired US Navy Seal Lieutenant Mark Green. He is also
the author of Unsealed, a US Navy Seal's guide to Mastering Transitions Still to
come. In this addition, Green will tell us about the riggers of sniper
school and the rocky path to becoming an officer. But first, Green shares
his reflections on BUDS training and what proved to be the biggest challenges. Did
his many years of football and being coached hard help prepare him for all the
training? Not as well as you might think. Well, the yelling part
didn't get to me at all because it was just white noise. You know,
you could filter that out, but what I each day was a little
bit easier than I thought. But one day's good, but one hundred and
seventy nine more days, you know, it was harder cumulatively than I thought.
Once you do Hell week, you're just so wiped out physically and mentally
because it takes so much effort to get through. But you have to get
faster and better and stronger each phase. So that's when the mental part kicks
in because your body's like no more, but mentally you're like, yeah,
you got some left, and you want to get through this training and achieve
this goal. So I think that's where the mental part takes over. I
got lucky, and once I got there, I figured out that I got
hungry every four hours, and right when my son would start growling, they
would send us off to eat. So I was like, wait a second,
they feed us every four hours. So then it wasn't hey, I'm
having a hard time getting thro a twelve hour day. It was just a
four hour block. So then I broke up buds in the manageable chunks for
me. So then once I got that part done, that was the mental
part of it, and then the physical part I was surviving and my body
was holding up for the physical So then at the end of the day,
I was just working out in San Diego with my buddies on the beach,
so I was like, Okay, well this isn't so bad. And so
amate what they're trying to do is kind of break you down and build you
up and too working as a team while you as an individual are being evaluated.
So what's it like to have that switch flip in your mind about why
you're there and what they're trying to actually accomplish there? Looking back on it,
you know you have to They have high levels of intensity, right,
and then there's a lull for amount of time you don't know how long it's
going to be, and then they ramp it back up. But then you're
also having to think through problems. And what that selection course does is it
really prepares you for what a deployment or what combat's going to be going to
be like. And they simulate that really really well, and it's really to
bring out the attribute you need to survive the course for one, but then
that mentality to go on to be a seal. So it's very necessary,
it's very calculated and once do you make it through that grinder. You have
twenty in my case, eighteen guys who are physically and mentally ready and have
earned the right to do that job. Shortly after you got your tried m
hm, you were out on an exercise with the USS Kitty Hawk. Oh
yeah, and so you know what's coming here. And the amazing thing this
has happened once to you. The fact that it happened twice to you on
another mission off the USS German Town is crazy. You fell off the boat
twice and you almost got chopped up by the propeller twice. So explain,
explain what's going on here? Which would first order? Second would let's go
Kitty Hawk first. Okay, so we're doing a VBSS a visit board Search
and seizure, which means you fast up onto the deck of the ship,
and then some people take one part of the ship and another group takes the
other part of the ship and we do what's called a crawl, walk,
run, you know. And we met the pilots and they came out and
one guy came out and said, all right, man, I'm the best
pilot in the squadron. We're gonna we're going to do a great mission.
I was like, man, this guy's good. So during the day it
was Lake Placid out there, and he did a great run. We dropped
everybody off. But then at night, you know we did we ramp everything
up full full speed, and the sea state was really bad and we were
right on the limit where the waves were either too high to do it safely,
but you know, we want to accomplish the missions. So everyone's like,
yeah, we're right at the limit, but we're going. So first
helicopter comes down, drops off eight guys and takes off, and then my
pilot I was looking at him and he was just white knuckle on that yoke
and rightfully so, I mean, the ship is bound going this way and
he's trying to keep us on station. So six guys go down and the
air crewman says, okay, sir, we have two more. The pilot
thought, he said no more, so he starts taking So Todd hits the
deck and then all of a sudden, I'm going down the rope as fast
as I can, and all of a sudden, the Hito's taken off from
the strong Texan, from the ship we're going to hit, and I'm like,
why are we leaving the ship. I haven't hit the ground yet,
So then I realized what's happening, and so I tried to do my stop.
I stopped right before I hit the water, and I'm trying to climb
back up the rope toor I can hook in with my feet and just you
know, hang on. And I looked up at the at the helicopter and
for some reason, augusta wind caught it or something. But there was this
long, this width in the line, and I saw it coming. I'm
like, oh, it was bad and snapped me right off. I think
I think I felt like one hundred feet. And then I hit the water
and the ship's going one way and the current has pushed me the other way.
And I put on my stroke light and I hear this disgusting sound,
so it is shorted out. In the meantime the waters, I'm sucking down
a bunch of salt water. So I had to turn around and then I
just started floating out to sea. And it took him a little while to
and realized that I was gone. So I'm like, man, this is
bad. I don't know where I am. I don't know where Catleena is,
so I could swim to Catalina. If it was thirty miles, you
know, I'd swim the thirty miles or where San Clemente Island was. So
I didn't know if I started swimming. I had no idea worked a way
I was going. And the worst sound I've ever heard in my entire life
was the helicopter does a figure eight trying to look for you. And I
was on the outside of the figure eight. And the worst sound I've ever
heard was the here the helicopter coming towards me and then veer off and go
back. And I was like, they can't see me. And it's two
in the morning, and I'm like, all right, I don't guess I'm
swimming. So I popped my life vest. But it's rated for somebody who's
one hundred and forty pounds and I was two twenty with all my gear,
so I was pushing close to two sixty and I started to sink, I
said, I started to panic a little bit. I was like, wait
a second, You're in the middle of a great white breeding ground right now,
and I'm splashing around, and I'm like, I'm getting ready to be
food. So figure this thing out. So I calmed down, and then
I get ready to put my fins on. I had a spare light,
so I pulled out my spare light and I turned it on and I just
looked towards where I think the ship is. But again, I start to
suck down a bunch of water. So I turned back around again, and
one of our guys had an experimental night vision scope on his rifle and he
puts the night vision scope on the hel goes back up, and about thirty
or forty five minutes later, I hear his helicopter coming and I can tell
it's coming right at me. So I turned my you know, I turned
towards the sound, and had John not had that night vision guggle, I
would have hyped out because I was out. I was getting hypothermic already.
Helicopter comes in and the pie over the search and rescue guy. They have
a script like I'm here to save you. Calm down. So he comes
down, does a script and I was like, hey, man, I
get it. Will you just get me under the water. He's like,
oh yeah, man. So he voiced me up. And that was my
first near death experience. That's retired US Navy seal Mark Green. He's also
the author of Unsealed and Navy Seal's Guide to Mastering Transitions. Still to come.
In this edition, we'll hear all about the challenges of sniper school and
the hurdles Lieutenant Green had to clear to become an officer. But up next
you hear about the other time the Green fell overboard and was almost killed.
I'm Greg Corumbus and this is Veterans Chronicles. This is Veterans Chronicles. I'm
Greg Corumbus. This is the first installment of a two part interview with retired
US Navy Seal Mark Green. We now pay up green story by skipping ahead
for just a moment to another instance of him being knocked overboard and nearly killed.
That was an amphib So we had a bunch of marines on. So
they have these boats that they put in the well deck, and so when
it's time to launch, they flood the well deck and you know, the
boats can launch. So we had been on you know, we'd been steaming
down south for about a week and we finally needed to just start prepping for
the missions we're doing. And you know, one of the new guys was
looking at everybody on the fantail. There were some girls up there, and
he's just like, hey, they'd being a cool guy. So he's missing
the back of the ship and we all yell his name and he's veering off.
So he looks and said, oh okay, and he corrects. And
I was on the sponsor and we were like five feet from the from the
ship and I fell over the side right in the chop, in the chop
and the prop wash. So I went from the surface to thirty feet like
instantly, almost, and all of a sudden, I'm looking down there.
I'm just like, you've got to be kidding me. So I try to
swim up and it's like a huge hand, like the hand of Aside and
was just holding me down. So I sit back and it was like I
was sitting in a chair. It's almost i've ever been. And I leaned
back and I'm just like and I looked down at my life vest and I'm
like, I can't pop this thing because I could rock it to the surface.
So I just sit back and just sit in my chair and I'm like,
all right, I'm gonna try one more time. So I tried to
get up again, and the same hand was there and I sat back in
my chair and I was like, Okay, I'm gonna try this one more
time. And then I tried it one more time and I started to make
a little headway. So thirty feet later, I pop up to the surface,
I rate right, and the ship's back a quarter mile way. Ipleton
thought it was dead, and so they they see this head pop up and
they, you know, they haul but to come pick me up. And
my friend Ryan looks at me, puts his hand out and it's like,
hey man, you might need to rethink this whole water thing now in between
these two. Uh you also went to sniper school. Yeah, so how
did that happen? And how easily or difficult that did becoming excellent at that
come to you? So it was it was probably it's a ten week stress
course and it was awful. It was just miserable. So we're back from
our first deployment and nobody's at the command and there's no expectation of us,
and I want to check on my gear and I'm walking out the compound and
I hear some guys say, hey you, what are you doing? And
I look over I was like, hey, I just step back from the
point and get ready to go home. He's like, nope, Pecker,
shit, we have one seat left in sniper school and you need to fill
it. So so that's how I got sniper school. I mean, some
people wait their entire career, or you know, they're an opportuny, or
do a cycle for four years just to get this course. And here I
was literally just walking across the grinder mine my own business and pushed into I
haven't been to the breacher school, but the sniper school was just miserable and
I wasn't even a great shooter. So I did what I always do.
I panicked at first. I was like, man, I'm not ready for
this, but I sat through the classes and all of a sudden, Mark's
who was bugging my buds instructors. It was ten times worse for my sniper
instructors, and they're just like, Green, please shut up and get on
the line to shoot. But I was really I you know, I was
really obsessed. Once I was there and given the opportunity, I wasn't gonna
let it slip. So I really just studied the art of sniping and I
did all kinds of drills just to see what's called the trace which is the
hardest thing to do, is to watch the bullet vapor as it's going through
the air hit your target. And once you see that, it really changes
things. But you know, you have tests every day, you have to
get eighty percent on all your tests, and you just it teaches you to
see the world in a completely different way, like you're looking for any of
the smallest anomalies in nature. If you're in a meadow and all of a
sudden you see one thing that's man made and straight, but okay, that
doesn't fit. And then your life is built in one hundred yard increments because
you know you're like, Okay, that target's two hundred and fifty yards a
way, Win's coming from right to left at twelve to fifteen. Here's what
my hole's going to be. Then you know, how do I hide and
get into a good sniper hide, and how do I make my shot?
What's my cold board look like today? And you know you're going through all
these calculations, and it's constant. Everybody's a great shooter, and I just
felt like I was just playing catch up. But I got my eighty two
percent and it's a shooting portion. And then went onto the to the stalking
portion, and I didn't make the stalking portion the first time, so I
had to recycle, and a year later I graduated the stalker portion and got
my sniper certificate. But it was it's a brutal course, but it's necessary
because you're on your own with your sniper pair and you go behind enemy lines
and either take a shot, but you observe the enemy in his own backyard,
and it just takes a completely different skill set. Talk about the sniper
pair or spotter a as some would say, and the dynamic. You'll explain
this really well in the book. And the spotter is actually the one who's
usually considered the better shot. So how does that teamwork play out, identifying
the target, confirming the target, figuring out all the different dynamics like wind
and everything. How how does that work? And how quickly do you have
to get all those facts in order? So if we're if it's a typical
sniper of you and your spotter're usually working for the entire year. Greg was
my spotter and he just he was a great shooter, but he could just
understand the wind in the atmospheric second nature, and I had to work really
hard at it, and I mean the differences are marginal, but when you're
taking shots out to five or eight one thousand yards, you know that margin
gets bigger. So initially it starts off with a lot of communication, right,
and then over the course of your workup you know it's now it's just
a grunt or two because you're all on the same page. And he's like,
hey, you've got to target at eleven o'clock, and then I range
it, and then he confirms the range. I confirm my dope with him,
which is data previous engagement. So you just have what at two hundred
yards what you have to doll your scope into. So but your spot is
constantly looking at the wind, the wind conditions indicators, which should be either
the grass blowing or leaves in the trees. But if you're in a city
and you can't see any of that stuff, you have to look at the
mirage coming off of the street. You see the mirage and it's what's called
a boil. That means there's no wind and the mirage is coming straight up
like this. But if the wind is blowing, it actually pushes the mirage
over and then we can calculate the wind by how far the the mirage is
getting pushed over, and then you have to do It's called call your shot.
So I always shoot a right handed but I'm a left handed shooter,
so whenever I would shoot, it would I would push it a little bit
down into the right. So when I would take a shot, it's like,
hey, that was four o'clock. So Greg would look at four o'clock
and he's like, yep, that's a good hit. But he's constantly looking,
so he's got to be so good to the point where he can watch
the round flying through the air. And if I happen to miss, which
never happened, he would correct me right on the spot, say come up
a minute, over a minute and take your next shot. So it all
happens really fast, and I'm paying attention to the target. He's paying attention
to ninety percent of everything else. And he is this constant communication. He's
just letting me go with what the wind's doing and where my targets are.
But by the end of it, you're on target and you're so dialed into
each other. He would just nudge my leg on a certain direction and I
knew that was three o'clock on my right leg, and then he would do
it on my left leg. So it's just it's not so much communication was
through body language, Like if he saw something, he would tense up and
I would feel and I was like, what you got and he's like,
over at three o'clock or nine o'clock, I got something. I'd look over
And there was just so many non verbals. But when you're in bad Gat
country you can't talk a lot, and you were saying the book you could
actually target things up to a mile away, so depending on the weapon system
we had, so we were practicing for taking a shot at a mile away,
so that changes every thing you know you have. You have the basics,
but then you're like at the wind at two hundreds, doing come in
this one direction? But are four hundred this is a different direction, And
on target it's something else. And it depends on where you're taking your shot.
If you're taking your shot in the desert, that's completely different on your
because because the gunpowder is hotter, so the round's gonna fly higher higher,
So that changes, you know everything. But then we have to take shots
in Alaska, so we have to have our data for each atmosphere condition,
sea level, two thousand feet up in the mountains. You know, all
that stuff has to be taken into account. So and then when you're shooting
out to a mile, you know you have to factor in the curvature of
the earth sometimes you know the Corelis effect, and you know that changes things
too. I was told there would be no math, but apparently there is.
There's a lot of app But you shoot so much you don't you don't
like do the math anymore. You're like, Okay, this round at this
distance, with this elevation, this is what this round's going to do.
And so out to a mile, it's like, hey, I have target
it out to a mile, so you know, load up your mile data
and you know hold. So the shot that we took at a mile,
we had to hold a football field to the right of the target, so
over the course of a mile, it would push the round one hundred yards.
Incredible, incredible. All right, let's move to nine to eleven.
Where were you on that day and how did that immediately change your life?
We were deployed to Okinawa. I think it was a movie night. So
it happened in the evening for us because we were in Okinawa and somebody's like,
everybody, get in here. So we thought we were watching a movie
of the towers on fire or the wind tower on fire, and we didn't
really understand what was going on. And then a few minutes later we see
the other plane hit. I was like, oh, all right, and
then the phone starts ring and everybody has to accounter for and then it's just
chaos, you know, because we went from Vietnam era tactics and planning and
operations to we're not quite sure what we're doing. So everything changed, and
everything became hey, this is this is not a joke anymore. This is
all this trainings you've been doing for the last year and a half to deploy,
but now it's happening. And so yeah, it was just everything was
real at that point. Between nine to eleven and your first deployment to Iraq,
you pursued Officer Candidate School two thousand and three. How did that opportunity
arise? And as you describe in the book, it was kind of a
miserable experience. So what were the biggest challenges for you there? Ohcs are
just getting my package done. A couple of different things there. Let's talk
about the package first, because one of the interesting things that you talk about
in your book is preconceived. No he might have about people didn't turn out
that way. There was one guy who was a former skinhead that you were
warned about, and ultimately he had kind of reformed himself and he was fine.
Yet on your path to become an officer, there are a couple of
black officers who were very reluctant to move you along. So this talk about
that a little bit. Yeah, that was the strangest thing because a master
chief said, hey, this is this is different. You know, we're
going to become an officer. Everything you do is and listen, throw that
away because it is completely different. So I had a ton of support from
my commandee officer and my EXO and officers who had worked with me. And
I go through the selection process of you know, interviews with the officers,
which is equally brutal. You know, they're like, hey, we have
to confirm that you're going to be a good officer. So I do that
process and then I take it over to the administrative chief. I thought thought
he was a buddy of mine. We're working through, you know, polishing
up my package, and then he gives his check off and I take it
to the officer's going to do the final sign off. He's like, why
is this have two nines on it? I was like, sir, I
have no idea what you're talking about. It's like, I gave you all
tens and now that I'm looking at it, my grade has been changed.
And I was like, huh, it's like, well, somebody changed it,
because I know I gave you all tens. And he's like, if
if we hadn't reviewed that, you would have sent your package up and they
said no, because you didn't. You didn't get all tens. So I
go to the chief. I was like, hey, Cheef, what what's
happening. He's like, oh, you know, it must have been a
typo, and I just looked at him. I'm like, you've been in
this job for twenty years. You knew exactly what you were doing. And
they called about on and you know, eye contact stopped and he just kind
of looked at his shoes and I was like, I cannot believe that you
made a conscious effort to torpedo my career. And had Rosie not checked it,
then you know, I would have still bedn't listen. I was still
going to seal, which been great, but just to be for that effort
to just say, hey, your community believes you're gonna be a good officer.
I, as a as a Navy chief was like, yeah, I'm
gonna do everything I can to make sure that doesn't happen. Is it because
they thought you would have a hard time as a black officer? Did you
have any idea why they would do that? I mean, that's really complex
to go to, really complex issues, but it was he just didn't want
me to succeed, and he had the ability and the desire and the means
to make sure that happened, and he made an effort. He made a
conscious decision to like, I'm gonna sneak this in so he doesn't become an
authomat. And then the other one, you repeatedly asked him to send it
in and he never did, and because you got the inclination that he wouldn't,
you did it himself. Yeah. Yeah, So this guy, same
thing I was. I was talking to him and lett him know that my
package was due, and I was like, hey, sir, are you
going to I need to mail this off by X amount of on this date?
And I keep checking and check and say, oh, Mark, I'll
get to it. And I was like, something's not right. So he
was gone on leave and he because he wouldn't give me my package. So
he was on leave. I was like, hey, the other admin who
was there, I was like, hey, can I get a copy of
my package? Just need to change a couple of things. So I made
a complete copy of the package. You got the address and mailed it,
mailed the copy and left the original in his desk. And after the deadline,
I was like, hey, sir, you know did you get my
my OCS package out? And he looked like, oh, man, I
missed the deadline. You just gonna have to wait till next year. You'll
get it though, And I was like, you know what, I thought
you were going to do that. So I made a copy and I sent
it in on time. He was so angry with me because he was just
like, yeah, you'll get it next time, because I would have had
to go through the entire process all over again. One of the things that
officers say is like, you have to take care of your own career.
And I was just like, you know what, my dream and goal of
becoming an officer is not going to be stut by this guy, and so
I just did it myself. And I was surprising him that when he was
a black officer also and same thing. He was like, not on my
watch, you're not going to be an officer. That's retired US Navy Seal
Mark Green. Don't miss part two of our conversation with Lieutenant Green. In
our next edition, you'll hear about his priorities as an officer, his deployments
to war zones and the work he did there, and his work now helping
military veterans transition from service to the private sector and thrive while doing so.
That's next time. I'm Greg Corumbus and this is Veterans Chronicles. Hi.
This is Greg Corumbus, and thanks for listening to Veterans Chronicles, a presentation
of the American Veterans Center. For more information, please visit American Veteranscenter dot
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