Welcome to Veterans Chronicles. I'm Greg Corumbas. Our guest in this edition is
US Navy Seal veteran Chris Alvarez. You also know him now as an actor
from series like The Terminal List in General Hospital. Chris, thanks so much
for being with us. Thanks for having me. Where were you born and
raised? I was born in Miami, Florida. I grew up mostly South
Florida, Miami area for lake let's see middle school area. Middle school time
for him, and then once middle school sixth seventh grade, I moved to
Cluiston, Florida, so that I don't know if you know what Florida looks
like on a map, but there's a big lake. The very southern tip
of that lake is this little small sugar cane town and that's a that's where
I was. I grew up in so wake O Keachobe, Yeah, very
southern tip. Have there been a history of military service in your family?
Uh? No, not my family. Now, none of that came actually,
to be honest with you, my dad it's like, why are you
gonna go? Like you know, when I was younger and having aspirations and
stuff, he was almost like because he's Cuban, you know, migrated here
and that was a whole nother experience with the military over there. He actually
ran away from the military, was wanted, migrated to the United States.
So he doesn't really have a good opinion of it, and so it was
almost pushed back a little bit. But now it's just me on my own.
And did you also have an interest in acting at a young age?
So the acting piece. I was just very creative when I was younger at
the time, I have like a small circle of friends. We would all
do like lots of creative things together with a handheld camera, and I got
into music and really like my original goal early on when I was a kid,
Yeah, I knew I wanted to serve. I knew I wanted to
contribute to my community, my society in some way, shape or form.
There's an inflection point when my young teenage years where you know, my family
had a schism and in my heart, like I knew I could be a
seal, but I thought I could be a musician. You only lived once,
and so I was like, I'm gonna pursue music and then if something
doesn't come around by a certain timeframe, then I joined the Navy and go
be a seal like no drama. That was kind of like where the creative
aspect of me was was. I was used to being on stage. You
know, I was a singer. I mean I was just like some young
pod kid with dreadlocks, like a lot of angsts and stuff. I wanted
to get out and you know, being on stage was therapeutic for me at
a young age. Eventually I followed my plan just because being in a band
is kind of like with buds. You know, you're in a boat crew
right in the seal teams, like when you're in training and there's seven dudes,
sometimes six if you have a quitter, but a boat crew six or
seven, and you carry this boat like everywhere you go. And if one
person's not carrying their weight let's say evenly distributed, it's thirty pounds each.
Well, when one person decides to duck their little head, you feel that
on your neck like immediately. So with the music stuff, it was kind
of like I was motivated. I was ready to go out and promote.
And times were different then I didn't have all the social media stuff you have
nowadays, and my team, my bandmates were just duck and vote. So
I I was like, dude, I'm ready to go surround myself by with
some good dudes and go try to protect our country and do something good and
positive. So you joined the Navy in two thousand and nine, and so
you came in with your eyes wide open. We're at war for eight years
in Afghanistan, six years in Iraq at that point. So how did you
process where we were in the wars as you made this decision? Yeah,
So if I can backtrack just a second with like my initial like coming in,
right, So I had that onset of a guy one I wanted to
deserve. I wanted to do something like when I was a kid, I
wanted to be a cop or I wanted to be a firefighter, but then
I wanted to be like a ninja cop for whatever reason. Right. And
then living in Cooliston, my dad had some He's a truck driver, you
know, migrated from Cuba, very low income. But he had a friend
from New York and they'd come over on Fridays and they just sit around,
drink a couple of beers and have conversations with him and I just listen.
And at the time, you know, my eighth grade math teacher. His
name is Keith Richter. Like that dude changed my life. I believe he
was an officer in the Marine Corps and he flew a Cobra helicopter during the
First Person Gulf. So smart. So in eighth grade he was teaching us
like algebra, like math, but we would talk to him about anything and
he would just go down the rabbit hole of like how the sun works,
how light permeates glass, and just very very smart individual. And so I
watched under Sea each and Steven Seagall played a navy seal in that movie.
So I'm getting this like urge to want to do stuff, and I knew
mister Richter was a marine. So going back to my dad's conversation with his
friend, I was sitting around a fire and then his debt had him.
I forgot what his name was, but he looks at me. He's like,
so, so you want to be in the military, right, I'm
like yeah, and he's like, well, you want to be a marine,
And I'm like really. I was like, are they the best?
And he's like yeah. He's like they'll take the dogs out and you won't
even hear it. How ninja is that? You know? Uh. I
was like, cool, well, I'm gonna be a marine. So I
went up to my eighth grade math teacher and I was like, mister Richter,
I figured out what I want to do with my life. And he's
like, what's that. It's like, I want to be the best of
the best. I'm gonna I'm gonna be a marine. And he's like,
okay, well, why do you want to do it? I was like,
cause I want to, you know, I want to protect our people.
I want to serve my country, and I want to be surrounded by
the best, like it's got to be the hardest. And I didn't know
at the time, Like I watched Under Siege, but I don't understand what
a Navy Seal was. And mister Richter is like, again, he's a
marine, and he's like, well, do me a favor, Like why
don't you look these guys up? And so at the time, you know,
internet was like dial up and I think Yahoo was like the biggest thing,
And so I just yahooed Navy Seal and then I saw hell week,
you know, basically going to water demolition, seal training, toughest military training,
blah blah blah blah. And then that was it. I was like,
I'm doing that. He's like you sure. I'm like yeah. He's
like, well you can't just you know, you gotta be strong, but
you gotta be smart. I'm like yeah, I mean that's why I'm doing
I got to eight in your class, right, And he's like yeah,
yeah you do. And I'm like okay, cool, Well I'm gonna do
that. So then I started looking into it, looking stuff up. I
joined the Sea Cadets, which is it's very humbly being here around all the
rotc cadets and stuff. So I joined the Navy Sea Cadet Corps. And
luckily where I was in Okechobe, there was a unit there on the north
side of Lake Okeechobee, and uh it was basically a youth development program sponsored
by the Okechobe County Sheriff's office. So they were a Sea cadet unit,
but they were like seal cadets because the guy who ran it was a former
green berat SF guy, and they basically tailored their program to be kind of,
you know, like naval special warfare. And it was like twice a
month, I'd spend Friday, Saturday, Sunday there, kept me out of
trouble, and then we would travel over to the Fort Pierce Udt Seal Museum
where it all started. A couple of spots remorts start, but that's where
they were originally, and we would pet on the beach. We would get
surf immersed. They taught us like land now, taught us how to shoot
weapons, and so I was like in it to win it. At that
point, I was like, this is phenomenal. I love this. And
then were out that time the skis them happened with my family. I went
down the music path and then you know, lo and behold, like nine
to eleven happens. I remember being in my criminal justice class walking in and
when that happened, just ad It was ninth grade, so I think I
was fourteen. I just remember walking in and at first, you know,
being a young kid not really understanding stuff, I'm like, whoa. You
know, we had the big square TVs and I'm seeing all that smoke and
I just remember going like, dude, somebody colorful language, like messed up.
And my criminal justice teacher, she used to be a cop in New
York City and she's just bawling. And when I first came in and saw
it again, not jokingly but just not really quite understanding, and then the
gravity of it like hit me as I was looking at her, I'm looking
there and then reading the room, and I was like, wow, like
this the world is different, like this is this is never going to be
the same. And then that led to feeling that desire, so to speak,
like inside. I continued down the music path, and at some point
Lone Survivor came out the book because of Operation Red Wings. I picked that
book up and reading that and seeing just that opening part are they were just
inserted into the area, just just reading the stories just like totally ReLit that
flame. And so then a couple of years, I mean that was probably
two thousand and eight when I read that book, and then a year later,
you know, I joined up and at the time, like you know
to your original question, at the time that we'd already been at war for
you know, roughly almost the decade, right, So I joined in two
thousand and nine. I didn't get to a seal team to twenty eleven by
the time I joined the Navy and got to a seal team. Going back
to like my original like how I came in, graduated buds lo and behold.
I get assigned to Seal Team ten and Sylteam ten was the QRF that
came to rescue those guys during Operation Red Wings and then they got shot down
in the helicopter. And so here I am, as a new guy,
you know, checking in. You walk on the quarter deck and there's a
mural to all those loss on that day. Very very humbling, just walking
in and we're walking walking down the team team space and then I look and
I see what appears to be Marcus Latrell, and uh, I forgot who
it was so sex to me. I was like, dude, is that
Marcus? And they're like, no, dummy, that forgot. Marcus had
a twin brother, Morgan. He's like, it's Morgan. He's gonna be
one of the oics in your troop. And I was like, oh,
And just I was, you know again going back full sir, like just
humbled to be there, to be a part of anything surrounding these guys,
you know, like there's this thing like uh and the teams like we walk
like a monkst giants are just surrounded by all these legends and stuff like that.
And again, I very humbling and that'll be a theme that you constantly
hear me mention because there's no place on earth that humbles you the way you
know our community does. And so got to the seal team there, walk
into the space and at the time that unit had just conduct did the longest
NSW deployment like in history. I think it was eleven months because typically teams,
depending on the team, but typically it's eighteen months of training, six
months to deploy, eighteen months of training six months, so two year turnaround.
But that's what makes our units so efficient and effective at everything we do
because we know each other in and out. We're not deploying with strangers.
We know what we smell like, what we like to eat, like,
what that dude snores like. It's very uh, we know each other very
intimately and so but that translates into the battlefield and into our work. So
that's what makes us so effective. So they had just done the longest deployment
because they were supposed to come back something happened with commands. They wanted to
basically recycle the teams in a certain way, and the way they had to
do that was whoever was already for deployed, which at the time was ten
and seven. They had to like stand fast, so they basically had to
another six months. They ended up doing five months. At the end of
that five months, we my specific unit lost Caleb Nelson, And so when
I walked into the team space, you know, seeing his gear, seeing
his helmet, it just again humbled at the sacrifices that this community, you
know, inevitably has to give. That's US Navy Seal Chris Alvarez. Still
to come. Alvarez tells us about his service in Afghanistan and Latin America.
But up next buds Training. Alvarez tells us what it took to become a
US Navy Seal. I'm Greg Corumbus and this is Veterans Chronicles sixty Seconds of
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great veteran stories, just go to National Defense Network dot com. This says
Veterans Chronicles. I'm Greg Corumbus. Our guest in this edition is US Navy
Seal turned actor Chris Alvarez. You've heard about his journey to pursue military service
and to become a Navy Seal. But then he had to deal with reality,
surviving and passing buds training to become a US Navy Seal. Yeah,
so go it in. I mean, the kids nowadays it's crazy with all
the you know, information age, so they definitely have a leg up in
terms of kind of figuring out like what's what and things like that. But
when I went in, I did read Rogue Warrior by Richard Marsenko, which
that was another book I read that was like, you know, I'm gonna
go be a seal. I think at the time Discovery Channel had done like
a special on seal training called Bud's Class two, three four or something.
So I watched that and it was very entertaining. I still watched some of
that to this day, showing some of the students because some of those it
just never gets told, like the training lessons and things like that. And
so I had to like this image of like, oh, okay, there's
what the beach looks like, and like a really known spot is like the
condominiums, like you could just see them, and you see the corn out
of bridge like everywhere. And so I had what I thought was a picture
of Buds in my head, and then when I showed up, it was
completely like just huh, Like that's the beat, that's the water that looks
so much closer than how far I thought it was, and things like that,
and so it definitely wasn't what I was expecting in my head, and
you know, you read a book and you imagine the characters and stuff like
that, and somebody makes a series or something and they're like, oh,
that's not the way I pictured that gal at all or that dude. It
Also when I got there, I went down to Imperial Beach and jumped in
the water just to see what it was like, you know, and I
was like, Ah, this ain't so bad. Yeah, well definitely it
sucked. What's the most challenging part for you? Was it the physical exhaustion,
Was it the sleep deprivation or something else? You know, like there's
For me, it's the grind. There's not like this one thing that really
is this like giant nightmare, right, Like everybody wants to be a team
guy. When it's sunny outside and it's Friday and you're hanging out and the
weekends coming and you get to just work out and everybody can be you know,
can do it for a day, two days. It's the repetitiveness that
every day you wake up at four o'clock, you're gonna be wet, you're
gonna be sandy. That wind cuts worse than the water does, the water's
warmer than the wind, and then that little piece of cloth, that uniform
you where it doesn't touch your skin, and then all of a sudden you
move, it touches you and it just shocks your body and it's just like
over and over and over and over, and then you know there's just you
have the instructor staff, depending on what phase you're in, that are just
chomping at the bit to you know, lead you to your next evolution,
to push you to stretch your your rubber band of limits a little further than
before, and to open your mind into what is possible, especially not by
yourself, all right, but with your teammates. The biggest thing there is
teamwork. You know, you show up, there's a sign that says abandon
self, embrace team. There's no individuals in the Seal teams. Like,
we couldn't do what we do as individuals. You know, we depend and
we gain strength from our teammates to our left and right of us, and
that's what gives us the confidence to climb whatever mountain or go through whatever obstacle
to achieve. Like whatever said objective is for the mission, you catch out
of that pretty quick in buds training or is it something you appreciate after the
fact, you can add it all up, it's eighty percent attrition rate,
like it's going to happen. Sometimes you have with some hard classes, meaning
there's just candidates that are just more mentally tough that show up. They just
have a little bit more individuals. Then you might get like seventy something percent
attrition rate. But then you might have a class where you have eighty eight
percent attrition rate. So it ebbs and flows with the candidate pool coming in.
From my experience of being there and training candidates, I would say that
the biggest trait, and I think most team guys would agree, is like
here, it's your mental toughness. I mean you three months, I can
train anybody to be physically fit enough to survive buds. It's not it's nothing
crazier, you know, it's not insane, just to be prepared for it.
But it's I can't get you to cross that mental threshold. I can
push you right to that point, and if you have it, you have
it, and if you don't, it will come out because that place.
The great thing about our program and our pipeline is that it makes you question,
like why am I here? Like why what is the reason for your
existence here, Why this unit, Why this group of men? Like why
and if anything in your answer to that involves I and me and it doesn't
ring true to the mission, it'll be found out like you're gonna go away,
and you will go away voluntarily because again you will have that existential question
of like just self reflecting of like, man, is this really worth it?
And for the guys at stay, it is. And you see it,
right, you see it in the seal teams, the missions that they've
completed, sacrifices that have been paid because they believe every bit of it and
are willing to sacrifice theirselves, their lives and not to mention like you know,
like yeah, my brothers, I miss him, teammates, you know,
whether I knew him personally or I'm one friend away from knowing that guy.
Like it's a small community I really feel for, you know, the
families. It's the sons, the daughters, the wives. They're the ones
that really pay because even for the guys that are still around, you know,
we're gone all the time, Like Daddy's not home, Like it's kind
of like a high five for a couple of weeks and then we're gone for
months. So I'd say that families definitely bear the burden of our selfish desires
of being in the Saltines and serving our country. Women are tough, though,
oh they are. They truly are the heroes because if we're overseas doing
our job, we got to focus on that. If you focus on anything
besides that, if you slip up, you could be gone. I could
be gone. Okay, cool, I'm gone. Worst case scenario, my
teammate's gone. So you got to stay sharp. And our wives or our
families, like, we have very strong families at home, and that allows
us the bandwidth to go and execute our job to our full capability. And
we know when we get back everything's good and it's all well, But there's
a price, there's a toll. You know. You can do that for
so long, but eventually, you know, you will drop a water in
a cup every day eventually to overfill. So not only are you gone a
lot, but you really can't tell them where you are what you're doing.
Sometimes yeah, sometimes you can't, depending on the mission set, what unit
you're with, and they know you're gone in the Middle East, but they
don't know what you're doing there. They don't they know you're gone to Europe
or say South America or some other plays, but they don't know what you're
doing there. It comes with it, and that's the way it should be.
You know. Luckily though, I got to benefit when I was in
the teams from you know, it's it's two thousand and nine, but it's
like the future there was, you know, sat phones, there is an
over internet. You know, you can you can kind of talk back home.
I man, I think about the individuals, like for the World War
two vets that I've met throughout this whole thing, and the Vietnam guys,
and I like it was just spy and nothing for years. A letter maybe
maybe Yeah, I'm those that generation by all it means, that's why they
call the Greatest generation. But yeah, I was lucky enough to have that
stuff. Like it's still communicating every now and then, but and that's even
more so nowadays it's way more secure. That's US Navy Seal Chris Alvarez.
Now that you know the story of how he became a Navy seal, you'll
next learn about his service in Afghanistan. I'm Greg Corumbus, and this is
Veterans Cris. This is Veterans Chronicles. I'm Greg Corumbas. Our guest in
this edition is US Navy Seal Chris Alvarez. Still ahead in this edition,
we'll hear about his return to BUDS training as an instructor, and his service
in US Southern Command in Latin America. But first, Chris Alvarez and Seal
Team ten are off to Afghanistan. So at the time war had already been
going on. It kicked off with Afghanistan and then obviously into Iraq. And
so two thousand and eight we had a president, Barack Obama got elected.
We were in the point of when I deployed, it was I believe it
was the sequester where they're like cutting funding to the military and some things like
that. And at that point in Afghanistan, we were at basically turning over
operations to the partner force that we've you know, that we've been building and
developing with over the course of the years. So basically the American service member
was kind of taken like a back seat, so to speak, with let's
say, like when we were there, the Afghan Special Forces, So we
were letting them kind of take a lead on an operation, and we were
kind of just piggybacking kind of like training, you know, some somebody in
a sport. You know, you train them how to play baseball, how
to play football, and you're just making sure they're doing everything correctly and to
the you know, the best of their capability, and sticking within the roes
to US standards and all that stuff. So when I went, it wasn't
like, hey, early on, where it's like the wild West and there's
stuff going on everywhere. It was more we'd already shaped the battlefield at that
point, and we were turning it over to the Afghans, and so at
that time it was a village stability operations. We'd go basically live amongst like
a village, and we were kind of just pretty much like a almost like
a I wouldn't say a police station, but just like a security checkpoint in
case something happens in the area. We could go with our partner for us
and deal with whatever was going on and prosecute the problem, so to speak.
So we were more in a back seat kind of thing. It was
amazing being out There's beautiful country. When I first got there, I just
remember landed and turned out and just seeing the mountains and the heat just hit
you and just looking and being like holy shit, like I'm here. This
is what I've dreamed like, this is what I've thought about since I was
a kid, Like the opportunity to serve my country, and it's here,
Like I remember always jokingly like looking up at the stars, like sneaking around
the woods, and I was I'd tell my best friend. I was like,
dude, who's actually he's a team guy too, by the way,
Like, dude, one day we're going to look up, just like we're
looking now, look down and instead of seeing like our little hometown of Cluis
in Florida, We're going to see like, you know, some other part
of the world. It's going to be fifteen years in the future and we're
going to be we're gonna be working for our country. And he was just
like yeah, And so I kind of had that moment to myself there like
that I had thought about when I was a kid, and yeah, it
was uh, it's crazy. So then did the Afghanistan deployment or part of
Afghanistan were you in? So turn cout and then we pushed out to I
think it was called Mary vsp Mary. So the place that we ended up
going to taking over. There was an Army Special Forces team that was there
prior to us. It was the first like co inhabited spot that I think
NSW had with a partner force. So basically there was a lot of green
on blue happening at the time, So everybody was kind of on edge in
terms of working with partner forces because you know, an afghanage just turned around
and shoot an American, like a lot of that was kind of happening.
So we were very not on guard, but just vigilant about anybody we were
working with obviously, and our job was just to maintain stability operations there in
that area vsp MARY and then also train up like the local police. So
we did a lot of training Afghan local police and things like that, and
we'd have the Afghan Special Forces who were co inhabited the area with us.
We'd watch them lead the training and we would just basically advise, you know,
how to properly like teach them how to do this. This, This
all our remaining vigilant, So it was unique in that it was co inhabited.
That being said, like anytime you went to use a bathroom like anywhere,
I mean, you walked everywhere on the compound with like strapped with something
because you just never knew, you know, the militants Taliban give you a
lot of trouble. So at the time, my unit had conducted like couple
ground clearance operations. They had a couple of key leader engagements. They went
out to local areas and basically had a meeting so with like the local elder
so to speak, just kind of building relations and things like that. At
the time, again, we're like in this when we deployed, Afghanistan's got
a fighting season and like a non fighting season because the winter comes, the
mountains freeze over and then the passes the fighters can't get through. So when
we deployed, its typically starting to be like fighting season. We didn't have
too many issues. There's a couple of times on the attacked, like a
couple of the checkpoints, like where we're at, there's checkpoints around each of
the VSO sites that Afghan local police or SF would be monitoring, and so
we had like a camera system on a big tower that we kind of just
look out for, you know, miles and we just kind of check on
those dudes here and there. And then there's a couple of times, Like
one day we went out and we cut our unit in half, kind of
like a Blue and Gold or Alpha Bravo for the big things, the big
clearances. Our leadership did a good job of, you know, organizing the
platoon and who's going, who's staying back, and switching guys in and out.
But then we had a blue and gold like if something popped up,
who's going on a quick notice, right, and we would just switch off
on and off every night. So we went out to go look for this
I. We had been trying to track this id ball maker for a while.
One night, I think we ended up getting close to him. We
found out after the fact he was hiding in like the where the other waste
goes, the human waste. He was hiding in one of those apparently,
and we missed him. But since our Afghans were like our rules of engagement,
like, we weren't allowed to do the clearance primarily right, we had
to take a back seat due to policy X, Y or Z or whatever
our strategy was at the time from higher up. So we like missed this
dude on a couple of occasions. We went out one day, I think
we're going after the same guy. It had been a long, long night,
got nothing out of it, just went to a couple of different spots,
met with some couple of human intelligence assets, and then still got nothing.
So then we come back to the hooch, and I remember just being
tired from writing in the Matt v's and the rg's as things are amazing,
but sucks like riding in them on you're for a long time, you know,
got back in art just smear of being so tired. I laid my
head down, just took my gear off, laid down, and then as
soon as I closed my eyes, it was like just this giant and I
was like, WHOA, what the was that? You know? So I
jump up, I grab my gun, I throw my kid on going out
because it just sounded like something just like we just got hit like big time.
But what had happened was we had a little spot next to our hooches,
probably like twenty yards maybe thirty where we would do our artillery from.
So one of our guys was trained up on that, went to an army
school to learn that just for the deployment, and so he was actually launching
these big rounds over to loom rounds over to a checkpoint that was being attacked
by the Taliban, So the other team that had been staying, you know,
they had to suit up and go out, and then we just stayed
back, were on alert for anything going on in our area. And I'm
just like great, because I'm you know, just been up for twenty four
hours essentially. Now, I mean, thank god we weren't getting attacked there.
I mean, that big boom sure tricked me, you know, in
the beginning, but then you could see the Taliban over the over the camera
system like heading out towards that spot. So the guys suited up quick,
and then they got on their vehicles and we saw coup of individuals, like,
you know, their snipers over. I don't want to go into too
many of technology and things we used, but there was someone giving away our
position and then our snipers dropped them. And then there's another vehicle kind of
moving an aggressive manner towards the same thing, and those dudes got eliminated as
well. And then by the time our guys got to said checkpoint, the
Talban already scored it out of there because they knew we were coming. So
that was like one of the big things on a different opp that I wasn't
on this one. I knew my unit was. They went out to do
a village clearance and they got pinned down on a mountaintop and they were taking
PKM fire from different fighting positions. But those guys like they use, they
use our rules against us, our rules of engagement against us. And so
this dude was firing on the platoons position and surrounding himself with kids, so
our snipers, I mean, they could hit a dime like extremely good shots.
At the time, with the rules of engaging and everything, they were
not authorized to take that shot. And even though the guy's trying to kill
my whole all my buddies. So then he would just unleash, like they
got pinned on a hilltop, and then he would just pick up kids,
move to a different fortified position, and he'd start unleashing again. They ended
up eventually like returning fire and like breaking contact and moving some other spot.
But they definitely knew what they were doing in terms of using are rules of
engagement against us when that was happening. I was actually for that first month
of deployment, I was over in a turned count, which is like a
a big base and we were co located with the Australian Sas guys who were
phenomenal. Dudes are amazing. And so I was there working in the jock,
just kind of seeing like the bigger picture, so to speak, what
goes into an operation like and so it's just, you know, as a
new guy, seeing all those TV screens with all the different drone footage.
It's a different equipment that we used to monitor the battlefield, was like,
holy smoke, like this is why, like we crush like this, which
is great. So while I was there, you know, that's when that
recent engagement happened with my my my platoon and at the time when I went
to Afghanistan Seal Team four, like we relieved them and they had lost a
couple guys, Matthew Cantor being the last one killed on a Ka Lee engagement
and my best friend that I talked to you about earlier, so he was
in that platoon and so same thing, Gold Blue and Gold Alpha, Bravo.
It sucks like that we lost one of our own, but that would
have been my best friend's position in the patrol during said mission, you know,
and he would have been Matt instead and and that's fine, it's the
job, and you know, nobody wants anyone to pass obviously, but it
just kind of brings you closer to like, damn dude. So they had
went into a KLA lee they were leaving, and as they were leaving,
the engaged, you know, they opened fire on the on the unit,
killing Matthew. So they had lost Matthew and another operator and unfortunately the commanding
officer committed suicide because of it. So when we checked in, I checked
into that base and all that was going on. So that was really humbling.
You know, we just got to keep moving forward because the enemy's not
going to rest. And yeah, again just learning from mistakes and growing from
whatever failures may come. So that being said, as I was while I
was there, I got to watch our sister platoon, which was Morgan's.
Like what I mentioned earlier, they went out and luckily during one of their
operations they got the guy that was responsible for killing matt And so there's a
little bit of you know, light at the end of the tunnel. How
many deployments did you go on overall? Just the Sat Calm deployment and then
the deployment over to South compas is just too And then so I was there
at ten from two thousand and I think ten or eleven when I got there,
all the way to twenty sixteen. And then basically when we got back
from the second deployment, you have to like basically before you go on deployment,
you have to pick like what you're gonna do next, just forward projecting
for the headshut and the word on the street was to do a third platoon
was going to be like near impossible just in terms of just staying at the
team, just going for another rotation, and I didn't want to. So
you have the seal teams, and then you have what's called a training detachment
or we call trade. Basically there's other seals that train each of the teams,
right and they hit all their wickets and their checkmarks for whatever kind of
operations they're responsible to do, make sure they can execute them to the to
our capability, you know, check in the box, go down and range,
go do your thing. So it's kind of like everything, there's always
a process. So I even if you get to trade, it like you're
gonna be gone, like from your family. If I was going to be
gone, I wanted to be like at a platoon doing the act work.
I didn't want to go to trade it because I'm gonna be gone. I'm
not going to get to go out for whatever may happen, right, Like
you know, guys like call it chasing the dragon. Like you can chase
the dragon, but the dragon will find you. If it does. Then
you know, it's better to be a warrior in a garden than a gardener,
you know, in a war, right, So you know, and
I think every special operator, not just in my community, but you know,
SF guys in the Army, the raiders and Mark, like we trained
to do a job and hopes that we get to do our job. You
know, I always want peace, but if you want to mess around,
then we'll be ready. So after that second deployment, I was like,
I didn't want to be gone, so I just put my name in the
hat for Bud's duty. I'm glad I did. I would have liked to
have done a third platoon, but I got so much out of being over
at the schoolhouse. A lot of professional development, leadership, just intangibles that
you know, you just pick up from being surrounded by you know, the
best and the brightest and So it was funny though, because when I was
talking to my buddies afterwards, you know, word gets around the team sometimes
it's like, oh, this is gonna happen, and it's like, Nope,
it's nowhere near close to happening. And so that I guess said ended
up being bad word Like, dude, you could have stayed for a third
platoon. We were hurting on bodies. It's like, what like everybody said,
it was impossible, No regrets, Like, you know, I went
over to BUDS and checked in. In twenty sixteen for instructor duty, that's
US Navy seal turned actor Chris Alvarez. When we come Back, Alvarez describes
his service as a seal in Latin America and eventually coming back to Coronado as
a Seal instructor. I'm Greg Corumbus and this is Veterans Chronicles. This is
Veterans Chronicles. I'm Greg Corumbus. Our guest in this edition is US Navy
Seal Chris Alvarez. We've covered his decision to join the military and become a
US Navy Seal, what it took to successfully complete BUDS training, and his
service with Seal Team ten in Afghanistan. In a moment, it's back to
buds training as an instructor. But first Alvarez shares what he can about serving
with US Southern Command in Latin America. So you always try to like outwork
whoever's in charge of you. Like we always say, hey, man,
like you should be trying to outwork me and take my job, you know.
And it's that mindset of like next man up, next man up,
next man up. Right, leaders, lead your leaders like they're in our
ethos. There's this thing and I rinse and repeat this over and over.
I try to get this instilled in Kansas brains, like in the absence of
leadership, like take charge. We're all leaders, you know we are.
You just have to make the decision. Like leadership's of behavior, you know,
It's not a position, it's a behavior. It's something that you do
right, and if you do it right, your men will follow. That
being said, coming back from that Middle East deployment, now I'm getting ready
for my second deployment. We have new guys coming in. Now I'm in
a more of a leadership position, so to speak, because we have new
guys. And the thing we always tell guys is like Hey, find someone
that you think is doing it right and just mirror them. And I think
during my definitely during my second platoon, I did that with an individual who's
just phenomenal. He should know who he is, but he's I mean,
he's the man, and I just I watched him diligently, like, all
right, he's doing it like this, I'm gonna do it like this.
And I just from a distance, just watching, observing, learning, trying
to just learn through seeing it done right. I think it paid off.
I think it definitely influenced me definitely throughout that deployment. You know, that
was a different kind of to Southcomb. I can't get into any of the
details of what we were doing down there, however, it was definitely different.
It wasn't like a deployment with like twenty five guys. It was just
four of us, some very intimate, really small. We get to play
with a lot of different partner forces and see what was happening down there at
the time. At the time, Columbia obviously Narco, you know, drugs,
the farc, things like that were happening down there, and there's a
lot of Middle East traffic down there as well. That deployment was different and
I learned a lot from it because it wasn't like the Afghanistan or you know,
typical what you see like oh going on, I rager doing this Like.
It was completely different and but good in its own way. And again
I learned a ton because you know, I was with three good dudes.
And then I checked in the buds after that. So my mindset there was
you know, I thought back to every instructor I ever had, and you
know there's one lesson that you know, to this day, I tell the
students like, uh, and it stuck with me at the time. His
name was, uh, what's call him? Instructor Vargas. All the guys
know this dude is, but he and he was tough as nails and you're
just constantly seeking like his approval because he's just so such a hard dude.
And I remember we were putting out during an evo and we won, Like
you try to win everything in buds because if you don't, you just get
smashed. And uh, you get small victories wherever you can, and you
enjoy them for those two minutes or three minutes and then you move on.
But there was this one night where we there's two boat crews actually, and
we kept up and uh while the rest of the class was just getting smashed
remediated uh for not winning and not putting out learning valuable life less that the
battlefield does not have any kind of sympathy for you. It doesn't care if
you're tired, it doesn't care if you're bleeding. Like if you don't take
control of it, it's gonna destroy you. Right. So you know,
in training, we can't actually put dudes in a war zone, right,
but we can definitely try to simulate the stress of it with the exercises and
things like that. So we're kind of getting the old boy, like at
a boy kind of speech. But coming from him, it was just like
holy crap, Like this is Vargus analysis, you know. And he I
remember he looked at us and he said, basically gives an out of boy.
But then he said, make no mistake, there will be blood,
and he's just like paused, And I remember he was so like intense when
he was doing it, and he's like, I want you to think about
that. Look to your left and look to your right, like what you're
doing right now, like someone here is probably not gonna be around in a
couple of years, and we were just kind of like again just trying to
sink in the lesson of you know, the reality of work. Right it's
a very unpredictable space. And so I just remember that resonated with me at
the time, and so when I was there as an instructor, I tried
to basically mirror the best aspects of you know, I had so many good
instructors and I mean just literally just legends that I got to just learn from.
And I'm completely grateful and humbled that they were there to teach us those
lessons, whether how hard they were or not. Like we all appreciate it.
And it's like people always say like, oh, training's too tough.
No, it's not like you know, we're warriors. It's what we're training
to be at least, right, be capable. The worst thing you could
do is be like incapable of doing like your job. So in the teams,
it's like you're either an asset or you're a liability. And when you're
a liability, you know if other times undefeated, it's time to go and
that's okay. Or if you're there as a bud student and you're in a
boat crew, and we're supposed to be lifting all of this together, but
you're not meeting your end of the bargain. Remember, it's not about you,
it's about them. And if you can't meet your end of the deal,
this probably is not the place for you. You'd probably do amazing things
somewhere else, you know, And it's just the balance of that. Lessons
learned. Things that I learned, Like my goal, my hope, what
I wanted to achieve while I was there is if I can just pass one
thing on to one of these young candidates going through to not make a mistake
that I did, Like, then that was a win. I thoroughly enjoyed
my time there and getting to mentor those guys and you know, put them
through the fire eventually doing that. At the time, I was, uh,
I had plenty of injuries throughout my you know, the again, the
teams are just a meat grinder, just the work. You know, it
just crushes you. Guys have bad knees or they got bad elbows, it's
their neck, it's their back, like just something. It's a bag of
worms. At the time, I was kind of wrestling with like my injuries
and things that had going on. I was thinking about going into the DEA
because when I was down in Colombia, those guys are amazing. I was
kind of wrestling with that whether you know, to continue or whatever. And
then once I was at BUDS and doing my thing and leading all these dudes
through the phases and stuff and seeing they just like re again, like reignited
the fire of just I want to serve with these guys. I want to
lead these guys. I want to be in a platoon with all these animals
that I just you know what I mean, Like it's just it's inspiring when
you see that switch go off in their brain. And uh so I was
I did well enough in my job that they gave me a spot like to
go to o CS. So I started that process because the skipper gets like
basically a you shall go to o CS kind of free pass, you know,
like a couple year or something like that. So I earned one of
them. I started my OCS stuff to go be an officer, and then
they knew. They do a whole head to toe assessment when they do that,
and they're like, dude, like you're too messed up, like you're
not deployable from your injuries, and I was like, dang it. And
so a long story short, and that led to a medical board and my
medical retirement out of the teams, which is fine. You know, you
try to serve in a different way, shape form, try to do something,
you know, to benefit the community and the UH and those families and
so, you know, I try to do that every day. It's about
a minute left, but you're here as part of the American Veteran Center Annual
Conference. What does it mean to you to partner with the American Veterans Center
to honor special operators. I'm grateful for, you know, being invited to
come participate in this event. It's been again the theme humbling to be around
so many patriotic you know people seeing all the cadets from the different RTC programs
that come here to listen to the greatest generation of patriots, Like it's amazing.
There's nothing short of that. And you know, I'm nothing special.
I'm just ordinary guy. At some point was capable of extraordinary thing, which
was you know, buds and completing and being a seal. But grateful to
be here. I love just the atmosphere. I think we need more patriotism
and I think this entry really needs us to rejuvenate moving forward, because you
know, if we don't, it's it's going to be called upon. You
know, there's a saying hard men create good times. Good time create soft
men. Soft men bring hard times. I think we're kind of at an
inflection point right now and it's inspiring to see this. It's motivating and just
to glad to be a part of it. Chris, thank you so much
for your time today. We're glad you're here, and thank you most of
all for your service to our country. And thank you. Chris Alvarez is
a retired US Navy seal. You also know I'm as an actor from the
hit series The Terminalist and General Hospital. 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 org. You can also follow the American Veterans Center on Facebook
and on Twitter. We're at AVC update. Subscribe to the American Veterans Center
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