Speaker 1: Welcome to Veterans' Chronicles. I'm Greg Corumbus. Our guest in
Speaker 1: this edition is Kaj Larson. He served as a US
Speaker 1: Navy seal, eventually rising to the rank of Lieutenant commander.
Speaker 1: You may also know Larson from his many reporting roles
Speaker 1: for outlets like CNN, Current TV, and for hosting the
Speaker 1: award winning series Vice on HBO. Much of our conversation
Speaker 1: with Lieutenant Commander Larson will focus on the unparalleled experience
Speaker 1: that is Bud's training Basic Underwater Demolition Seal training. Larson
Speaker 1: will not only share his own experience from two thousand
Speaker 1: and one and two thousand and two, but offer some
Speaker 1: insights into why the extremely difficult training is structured the
Speaker 1: way it is, what his toughest moment was in training,
Speaker 1: and what is first combat deployment was like, and much more.
Speaker 1: CAJ Larson says his childhood on the California Coast was
Speaker 1: pretty much what you'd expect it to be, but by
Speaker 1: the time he was getting close to the end of
Speaker 1: high school, his biggest goal was on the East Coast.
Speaker 2: Nineteen ninety four, Coge Larson was a senior in high
Speaker 2: school in Santa Cruz, California, which is a sleepy little
Speaker 2: surfer town in northern California. I grew up surfing, spearfishing,
Speaker 2: being a general waterman. My first job was as an
Speaker 2: ocean lifeguard, and that path playing water polo competitively led
Speaker 2: me to apply to the US Naval Academy in nineteen
Speaker 2: ninety five.
Speaker 3: I was accepted to the US Naval Academy and.
Speaker 2: I reported as a fourth class midshipman at seventeen years
Speaker 2: old in July of ninety five to Annapolis.
Speaker 1: When a Navy Seals story starts with him getting admitted
Speaker 1: into the US Naval Academy, you might think it was
Speaker 1: a fairly straightforward path to becoming a candidate for the Seals.
Speaker 1: CAJ Larson took a very different path away from Annapolis
Speaker 1: to get to BUDS training.
Speaker 2: I spent two years at the Naval Academy and ended
Speaker 2: up leaving by my own choice, transferring playing water polo
Speaker 2: at the University of California, and I was a civilian.
Speaker 2: I was Joe civilian for two years, but I had
Speaker 2: decided that my legacy of service wasn't over. I still
Speaker 2: had that same desire to serve that led me to
Speaker 2: the Naval Academy in the beginning. So I re went
Speaker 2: into the Navy through Officer Candidate School, applied for a
Speaker 2: seal billet and got it, and in August of two
Speaker 2: thousand and one, I was on my way to seal training.
Speaker 1: Larson's path is an unusual one, as he explains, getting
Speaker 1: into buds training after leaving Annapolis is highly unlikely, even
Speaker 1: as an officer. But fortunately for Larson, real life intervened
Speaker 1: in a way that made it tough for the Navy
Speaker 1: to say no.
Speaker 2: The thing to understand about the seal pipeline is that there's,
Speaker 2: of course two pathways, just like everybody who enter a service.
Speaker 3: You can go the officer router, or you can go
Speaker 3: the enlisted route.
Speaker 2: I decided that I wanted to be a seal officer,
Speaker 2: and there's a finite number of Seal officer billets available
Speaker 2: every year. The Naval Academy has a certain apportionment somewhere
Speaker 2: between twelve and eighteen. ROTC Reserve Officer Training Corps has
Speaker 2: a similar allotment, and then there's about ten to fifteen
Speaker 2: billets a year for straight civilians who have graduated college,
Speaker 2: and those billets, because there's so few of them, tend
Speaker 2: to be extraordinarily competitive. I had a even further hurdle
Speaker 2: to get over in the fact that I had spent
Speaker 2: two years in an officer training pipeline. So the natural
Speaker 2: question is, why would we give you one of these
Speaker 2: very valuable and coveted civilian billets. I was actually when
Speaker 2: I applied to go back in to get a seal
Speaker 2: billet through Officer Candidate school, I was initially denied that billet,
Speaker 2: and I was ocean lifeguarding in my hometown of Santa
Speaker 2: Cruz at the time, and one of these strange twists
Speaker 2: of fate, there was a collusion of circumstances where a
Speaker 2: carge drove off a wharf at the pier that I
Speaker 2: was lifeguarding at, and I was able to go up
Speaker 2: and free dive down to the car, which was on
Speaker 2: its back forty feet down.
Speaker 3: Took me many many dives in many many minutes.
Speaker 2: But ultimately was able to pull the victim out of
Speaker 2: the car. That story became kind of known within the
Speaker 2: seal community, and the officer detailer at the time, the
Speaker 2: person who decides the billets, ultimately said, that's the kind
Speaker 2: of fighting spirit that we want in the seal teams,
Speaker 2: and he opened up a billet for me that year.
Speaker 1: Whether watching movies or hearing stories from other seals, many
Speaker 1: of us have some idea, at least we think we do,
Speaker 1: of what Bud's training is like, but we don't. Larson
Speaker 1: walks us through his thoughts as he rode onto the
Speaker 1: training ground in Coronado, California.
Speaker 2: The beginning of BUDS is not exactly what you imagine,
Speaker 2: and it's changed somewhat since my day. In my day,
Speaker 2: it was a little bit like throw you, like straight
Speaker 2: into the pit and get you going. But when you
Speaker 2: very first report to Coronado, California, to BUDS based underwater
Speaker 2: Demolition seal training, you're really kind of shocked at the contrast.
Speaker 2: Coronado is this idyllic community in San Diego. It's an
Speaker 2: island off the coast of San Diego, and so you're
Speaker 2: driving through this like very pristine, affluent community and then
Speaker 2: you cross the threshold onto the surf side of the
Speaker 2: base and you see the sort of ominous obstacle course
Speaker 2: and these you seal teams that are on the other
Speaker 2: side of the training facility. But you don't even really
Speaker 2: want to look in those directions because that is so
Speaker 2: far you have so many miles and so many logs
Speaker 2: to carry, and so many ocean swims to complete before
Speaker 2: you're even worthy of crossing the transom into those institutions.
Speaker 2: You're mostly hyper focused on this very dark and scary place,
Speaker 2: which is seal training. When you very first show up,
Speaker 2: there's a ramp up period they call it pTRR, and
Speaker 2: it's essentially a warm up for the when seal training
Speaker 2: really begins. When I first showed up at pTRR, everybody
Speaker 2: lives in this barracks called six' eighteen. I was thrown
Speaker 2: into a room with three other officers, so four officers total,
Speaker 2: two of whom were about to class up, and then
Speaker 2: myself and another officer who were waiting for our class
Speaker 2: to begin. So those early days of BUDS, when you're
Speaker 2: in pTRR, which is the phase before first phase, is
Speaker 2: sort of like getting to know the systems, like where
Speaker 2: is everything located? How do you organize your gear and equipment.
Speaker 2: They do some light PT sessions to kind of get
Speaker 2: you ramped up, and then once you class up, that's
Speaker 2: when all the fun games really begin.
Speaker 1: And once Buds train, he begins in earnest. Larson says
Speaker 1: there's no easing into the grueling weeks and months of
Speaker 1: intense testing. He says, from the very first moment of
Speaker 1: the very first day, he and all the other prospective
Speaker 1: Navy seals, we're facing something completely different than they ever
Speaker 1: experienced or even imagined.
Speaker 2: Day one week one of BUDS is just like getting
Speaker 2: smashed by a brick wall, Like there is no Once
Speaker 2: you class up and actually start, you are fully fully immersed.
Speaker 2: And that first morning of PT that starts at five
Speaker 2: am and you're on the grinder, which is this fabled
Speaker 2: cement spot where all of the physical training goes down
Speaker 2: and you're doing you know, hundreds and hundreds of pushups,
Speaker 2: and you're running back and forth and hitting the surf,
Speaker 2: and there's these inflatable boats that you have to jump in.
Speaker 3: You're just going through this.
Speaker 2: Day one week, one minute, one massive beatdown set by
Speaker 2: the instructors, designed and orchestrated to intimidate you and to
Speaker 2: cut the wheat from the chaff and to get the
Speaker 2: week to quit. It is a daunting and scary experience.
Speaker 2: It's pitch dark out. People are screaming, people are yelling,
Speaker 2: The bell is ringing because guys are quitting left and right.
Speaker 2: That's when you're like say to yourself, holy shit, Like
Speaker 2: what have I gotten myself into? Even though you know,
Speaker 2: I know, Actually it's a different experience to actually be there.
Speaker 1: Earlier in the podcast, you may have noticed Kaj Larson
Speaker 1: mentioned that he began Buds training in August of two
Speaker 1: thousand and one. The very next month, of course, America
Speaker 1: would change forever as a result of the nine to
Speaker 1: eleven terrorist attacks out at Coronado. Larson says it was
Speaker 1: strange to learn about such a huge and horrible event
Speaker 1: that could deeply impact their lives while he and others
Speaker 1: were completely immersed in their own world of Buds training.
Speaker 2: On nine to eleven, we had just finished a two
Speaker 2: mile ocean swim at the Budge Training compound in Cornado.
Speaker 2: So it was about six am, six thirty eight am
Speaker 2: our time. We had started our day at five am,
Speaker 2: as you always do. We had just finished this two
Speaker 2: mile ocean swim. We were changing out behind the barracks,
Speaker 2: switching over from our swim gear to our PT gear
Speaker 2: to do one of these mile long runs to the
Speaker 2: chow hal and people started whispering because there's other people
Speaker 2: roaming around besides just the instructors. There's the rollbacks who
Speaker 2: are hurt seals who are kind of help you and
Speaker 2: help your class move along, and different admin people, and
Speaker 2: they said something about a plane hitting the World Trade Center,
Speaker 2: but candidly, at first I thought it was like one
Speaker 2: of these tricks that the instructors are always playing to
Speaker 2: mess with you, like, oh, hurry up, you know, plane
Speaker 2: just hit the World Trade Center. And I think at
Speaker 2: that time it was very unclear, even though there was
Speaker 2: sort of little rumors circuling around and people were whispering.
Speaker 2: Then we did that mind run over to the chow
Speaker 2: haul and we saw the images on the television screen,
Speaker 2: and we knew the instructors weren't sophisticated enough to do that,
Speaker 2: and so then we knew it was really real and
Speaker 2: that we were under attack. And as a bud student,
Speaker 2: you're pretty dumb. You're just worry about surviving sometimes the
Speaker 2: next five minutes, or surviving getting through the day, and
Speaker 2: it's hard to assimilate these macro world events that are happening.
Speaker 2: You're locked in your own little world of trying to
Speaker 2: make it through. But the instructors, to their credit, had
Speaker 2: a lot more clarity. In fact, they had instant clarity,
Speaker 2: and so they sat us down as a class, and
Speaker 2: they said, like, gentlemen, we're going to war and we
Speaker 2: only want.
Speaker 3: The people who are supposed to be here.
Speaker 2: So we're going to beat you all day in till
Speaker 2: X number of people quit and we're going to see
Speaker 2: who really wants it. And so they beat us for
Speaker 2: hours and hours and hours until they hit their number
Speaker 2: certain number of people quit, heard the bell rang bim
Speaker 2: bing boman, and then once it was once they hit
Speaker 2: their number, they said, the day secured.
Speaker 3: Go home, call your families. And that was my nine
Speaker 3: to eleven.
Speaker 1: That's US Navy Lieutenant commander and US Navy Seal Kaj Larsen.
Speaker 1: Just ahead, Larson will share his insights into why the
Speaker 1: seal instructors are so tough on the men in training
Speaker 1: and why doing the training right matters personally to them.
Speaker 1: He will also tell us about Hell Week, the toughest
Speaker 1: moment he experienced in Bud's training, and his first combat
Speaker 1: deployment in the Global War on Terrorism. I'm Greg Corumbus
Speaker 1: and this is Veterans Chronicles.
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Speaker 1: This is Veterans Chronicles. I'm Greg Corumbus. Our guest in
Speaker 1: this edition is US Navy Lieutenant Commander and US Navy
Speaker 1: seal Kaj Larsen. You may also know him from his
Speaker 1: reporting at CNN, Current TV and elsewhere. We've been talking
Speaker 1: about the extreme difficulty of BUDS or seal training, but
Speaker 1: you've only heard the tip of the iceberg so far.
Speaker 1: BUDS training is divided into three phases, physical conditioning, diving,
Speaker 1: and land warfare. Together it lasts many months, but the
Speaker 1: most infamous stretch comes during the physical conditioning phase. It's
Speaker 1: called hell a week.
Speaker 2: People also don't realize that seal training is seven months long,
Speaker 2: and we like to say, anybody can do seal training
Speaker 2: for a day, but can you get up and consistently
Speaker 2: do it time and time again for seven months and
Speaker 2: maintain injury free and really be cognizant, especially when you
Speaker 2: get into the more complicated phases where you're doing mission
Speaker 2: planning and weapons.
Speaker 3: BUDS exposes every weakness. It is a.
Speaker 2: Challenge every day and the instructors will find something that
Speaker 2: tests your inner fortitude.
Speaker 3: Hell Week is distinct.
Speaker 2: From the rest of the phases of training, mostly because
Speaker 2: while yes, the physical intensity is ramped up, what's really
Speaker 2: really distinct is that you don't sleep right. So Hell
Speaker 2: week often starts on a Sunday night and end sometime
Speaker 2: on Friday, and during that course of that week you
Speaker 2: get only two to three hours of sleep at best.
Speaker 2: So you have to do things like run twenty miles
Speaker 2: with boats and logs on your head, but you're doing
Speaker 2: it in a sleep deprived state.
Speaker 3: And again the purpose of that.
Speaker 2: Is to as close as we can simulate conditions that
Speaker 2: you might see in combat. Truth is as hard as
Speaker 2: buds is, as terrible as Hell Week is. I was
Speaker 2: more cold, I was more tired. I was more scared
Speaker 2: in combat than I ever was in training. So the
Speaker 2: idea is, if you're the kind of guy who's just
Speaker 2: going to quit when you know there's a little water
Speaker 2: on your face in the Pacific Ocean on the Sandy
Speaker 2: Coronado beach, right, you're certainly not going to be able
Speaker 2: to hack it, like when we're in a firefight in
Speaker 2: Afghanistan and the stakes are real.
Speaker 1: Larson says the instructors see merciless during training, especially during
Speaker 1: Hell Week, and they largely are merciless, But he says
Speaker 1: there's a purpose for all of it.
Speaker 2: The first phase instructors have one mission and one mission only,
Speaker 2: and that is to test your mental fortitude the goal,
Speaker 2: in fact, the goal of the entire spectrum of training
Speaker 2: is pretty simple.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 2: There's all these evolutions, and there's all these different things
Speaker 2: that you do from diving to land warfare, right, but
Speaker 2: the essential goal of seal training is the same, is
Speaker 2: to determine whether you will or will not quit in combat.
Speaker 2: And what BUDS is is the closest approximation we can
Speaker 2: get to combat without actually throwing you into.
Speaker 3: A live combat situation.
Speaker 2: Right, So by approximating the intensity and the pressure and
Speaker 2: the fear that's associated with combat, we can determine who
Speaker 2: has the resiliency to make it eventually to the seal teams.
Speaker 2: So the first phase instructors are vicious. They are by
Speaker 2: design brutal. I mean, at the time, I thought they
Speaker 2: were essentially satis, right, because their goal was to inflict
Speaker 2: so much pain on you and to test your metal
Speaker 2: and see if you quit. That whole phase culminates in
Speaker 2: Hell Week, which is the hardest week of the hardest
Speaker 2: military training in the world, and that sort of epitomizes
Speaker 2: the entire phase of physical conditioning to really really see
Speaker 2: who's tough enough to make it once you get in
Speaker 2: the teams.
Speaker 1: And Larson says there is another important reason that the
Speaker 1: instructors are as tough as possible on Seal candidates. He says,
Speaker 1: they are not just thinking about the coming weeks and
Speaker 1: months of BUDS training, They also have the next several
Speaker 1: years in mind, as well as their own futures.
Speaker 3: They're not retired seals, they're not civilian contractors. They are active.
Speaker 2: Duty seals who are on a short tour from the
Speaker 2: Seal teams. So they've possibly done two, three, four seven
Speaker 2: combat deployments. It's their time to do a rotation back home,
Speaker 2: which is part of the bigger naval administration system, and they.
Speaker 3: Take that job very seriously.
Speaker 2: And part of the reason they take their charter so
Speaker 2: seriously to be the sort of vetting force for the
Speaker 2: entire community is because they know after their short tour,
Speaker 2: after their time back in Cornado at BUDS, they will
Speaker 2: rotate back into a Seal platoon and serve with the
Speaker 2: guys who they put through training. So I served in
Speaker 2: the Seal teams with many of my BUDS instructors, and
Speaker 2: so especially as an officer, there's an extra level of scrutiny.
Speaker 3: So you can.
Speaker 2: Imagine an instructor who is putting you through training, is
Speaker 2: not just looking at you for your individual skill set
Speaker 2: and is this guy tough enough to be a seal
Speaker 2: For an officer like myself, the instructors are evaluating would
Speaker 2: I let this man lead me in combat? And that
Speaker 2: is why they take their job so seriously. That's why
Speaker 2: they are the sort of final quality check and quality
Speaker 2: assurance for the entire seal community.
Speaker 1: That's Kaj Larson, a US Navy Lieutenant commander and a
Speaker 1: US Navy Seal. He's also an accomplished journalist. Still to come,
Speaker 1: Larson will tell us about his lowest moment during BUDS training,
Speaker 1: the accomplishment of becoming a US Navy seal, the evolution
Speaker 1: of seal gear in combat, and his first combat deployment.
Speaker 1: I'm Greg Corumbus and this is Veterans Chronicles. This is
Speaker 1: Veteran Chronicles. I'm Greg Corumbus. Our guest in this edition
Speaker 1: is US Navy Lieutenant commander and US Navy seal Caj Larson.
Speaker 1: Just a moment ago, Larson explained the different motivations that
Speaker 1: seal instructors have for being as hard as possible on
Speaker 1: the guys going through BUDS training. But while it's happening
Speaker 1: the seal candidates understandably have no appreciation for it at all.
Speaker 1: Larson shares his lowest moment during BUDS.
Speaker 2: I would say the most challenging moment for me was
Speaker 2: like a moment in Hell Week where there was an
Speaker 2: instructor who at the time really did not like me.
Speaker 3: Instructor Moffit J.
Speaker 2: Moffitt like absolute stud of a seal, but for whatever reason,
Speaker 2: he thought I was cocky and he decided somewhere around
Speaker 2: Wednesday night of Hell Week that he was going to
Speaker 2: like make sure that I understood my place in the
Speaker 2: pecking order. And so it was three am or something
Speaker 2: and he was missing me with a hose.
Speaker 3: After one of these PT.
Speaker 2: Sessions, and this is the middle of the night in Cornado,
Speaker 2: the temperatures dropped and my core body temperature just started
Speaker 2: to drop. So you know, the human body is essentially
Speaker 2: ninety eight point six degrees, right. You can imagine if
Speaker 2: you are sick and you have a fever, if you
Speaker 2: have a fever of like one oh two, one oh three, that.
Speaker 3: Would be a very high fever.
Speaker 2: You would feel terrible, right, So the temperature range of
Speaker 2: the human body is actually pretty fairly small. My body
Speaker 2: temperature started to drop in the opposite direction, and eventually
Speaker 2: I passed out on the cold cement.
Speaker 3: They take your core temperature.
Speaker 2: In two thousand and one, we didn't have all the
Speaker 2: sophisticated instrumentation that we have now today. I think now
Speaker 2: today's students can like swallow a pill that measures their
Speaker 2: core body temperature, and those in those days you got
Speaker 2: what's called the silver bullet, which is rectal temperature. Very accurate,
Speaker 2: also very embarrassing. Although I was passed out so I
Speaker 2: got the silver bullet, my core body temperature was eighty
Speaker 2: nine degrees. That's very very dangerous when you're that hypothermic.
Speaker 2: They have to not passively rewarm you, but actively rewarm you.
Speaker 2: So they put me in a hot tub, and I
Speaker 2: remember kind of coming to consciousness in the hot tub
Speaker 2: and my body temperature sort of coming back and coming up.
Speaker 2: I think it took me something like seventeen eighteen minutes
Speaker 2: to get actively rewarmed.
Speaker 3: They took me out.
Speaker 2: I think my core body tempature was back to like
Speaker 2: ninety six or ninety seven.
Speaker 3: These are oral thermometers.
Speaker 2: At this point, I remember they handed me a pair
Speaker 2: of dry camouflage uniform like just fresh out of the laundry,
Speaker 2: you know, like nice, nice smelling and everything. It was
Speaker 2: the first time in three days that I had had
Speaker 2: any dry clothing, the first time I had been dry
Speaker 2: in three days. I had been wet and sandy for
Speaker 2: the previous three days. I had just come out of
Speaker 2: like being passed out, you know, twenty minutes ago. And
Speaker 2: they handed me this dry, nice dry set of clothes,
Speaker 2: and they said, Okay, you can go rejoin your class.
Speaker 3: Go put on your clothes in the ocean.
Speaker 5: And it was just like at that moment, even though
Speaker 5: I but the consummate water mid spearfishers serveer groping cold water,
Speaker 5: I was like, I just don't want to get back
Speaker 5: in the ocean.
Speaker 3: But I did it.
Speaker 2: Sometimes, like we say in the teams, you don't have
Speaker 2: to like it, you just have to do it. So
Speaker 2: I like went back in the ocean, put on the clothes,
Speaker 2: and rejoined my class.
Speaker 1: But once the seven months of training concludes, the few
Speaker 1: left standing become Navy Seals, knowing that they passed the
Speaker 1: most demanding test of any service members anywhere in the world.
Speaker 1: Larson says the satisfaction and pride are immense, but he
Speaker 1: also says the work immediately continues.
Speaker 2: When when you graduate from Seal Training, it's obviously an
Speaker 2: extraordinary moment. And this has changed since my time going through.
Speaker 2: But when I went through in Class two three seven,
Speaker 2: the two hundred and thirty seventh Seal Training class, your
Speaker 2: family could come to graduation.
Speaker 3: That is no longer the case.
Speaker 2: The Special Operations community post nine to eleven, post of
Speaker 2: the two decades of war have changed a lot of
Speaker 2: policies and procedures because we've been so tip of the
Speaker 2: spear as a community. But then I had this moment
Speaker 2: where my friends and family were able to come and
Speaker 2: celebrate this milestone achievement.
Speaker 3: I think what people.
Speaker 2: Don't realize though, is that when you graduate BUDS like
Speaker 2: you could do a lot of push ups, you're real tough.
Speaker 2: You don't really know shit about being a seal, right,
Speaker 2: Buds is just the first step in a very long
Speaker 2: journey to becoming a combat operator. Post BUDS, you go
Speaker 2: to what's called SQT Seal Qualification Training. That's another three
Speaker 2: to five four months of advanced warfare skills, things like
Speaker 2: advanced parachuting, land warfare, combat medicine, all of these different
Speaker 2: skill sets, and so what you're doing there is you're
Speaker 2: starting to layer on these individual skills that will become
Speaker 2: valuable assets in a seal platoon. And even then you're
Speaker 2: well passed a year and change of investment into your
Speaker 2: individual skill set as a seal. Even then you show
Speaker 2: up at a seal team as a new guy, and
Speaker 2: you have to learn how to incorporate all these individual
Speaker 2: skills into the seal teams. So the entire training process
Speaker 2: in pipeline could be well into two years before you
Speaker 2: have the official hominist dominance of being able to operate
Speaker 2: within a seal team.
Speaker 1: As mentioned, Larson became a Seal during the early days
Speaker 1: of the Global War on Terrorism. Because of the nature
Speaker 1: of special operations, Larson cannot get into too many specifics.
Speaker 1: We do know that he led teams of covert operatives
Speaker 1: on missions overseas, including Afghanistan, serving as a detachment commander,
Speaker 1: but he did offer us some insights on the start
Speaker 1: of his time in combat. When you might assume Larson
Speaker 1: and his team were deployed to Afghanistan at first, they
Speaker 1: were actually sent to the Far East.
Speaker 2: Combat is this crazy thing where you sort of expect
Speaker 2: to feel one way, but all of this preparation and
Speaker 2: I think everybody reacts differently in combat. But I remember
Speaker 2: my very first combat experience, which was in a theater
Speaker 2: that people wouldn't really expect. It was in the Southern
Speaker 2: Philippines where we were deployed as part of Operation Enduring
Speaker 2: Freedom to help counter a bunch of Islamic terrorism threats
Speaker 2: that had emerged in this region of the world that
Speaker 2: nobody was paying attention to. So we were hunting these
Speaker 2: two groups of Bousef group and this other group named
Speaker 2: Jamah is lemia Ji. They were the ones who conducted
Speaker 2: these Bali bombings way back in two thousand and two.
Speaker 2: I think it was so my first time in combat
Speaker 2: was in a theater of operations and a part of
Speaker 2: the world that people didn't even know we were fighting it.
Speaker 3: They didn't even.
Speaker 2: Know that there was all of these like small, low
Speaker 2: intensity conflicts happening around the world because the light of
Speaker 2: Afghanistan and a rock like loomed so brightly. So my
Speaker 2: first time in combat was scary, of course because there's
Speaker 2: real bullets flying, but also exhilarating because this is like the.
Speaker 3: Job that we trained to do.
Speaker 2: And I always find it interesting for people who don't understand,
Speaker 2: like nobody wants to go to war sort of in
Speaker 2: an abstract sense. War is horrible, I especially like when
Speaker 2: you've seen it and you've lost friends, like so many friends.
Speaker 2: I've buried more of my friends than anybody at my
Speaker 2: age ever should have to do. At the same time,
Speaker 2: it's you spend so much time scrimmaging, so much time
Speaker 2: training that there's a party that wants to play in
Speaker 2: the game. And we did that, and my community, especially
Speaker 2: some much more than I did. We spent the last
Speaker 2: two decades at war, and I think that is it's
Speaker 2: fundamentally changed us, It's fundamentally changed the nation. But the
Speaker 2: initial combat moment is one of both, like fear and exhilaration.
Speaker 2: And what I say about combat is that you're never
Speaker 2: more alive as when you're that close to death. There's
Speaker 2: such a clear focus, right, you can't in not thinking
Speaker 2: about like all of these other things that are happening
Speaker 2: in the world, even like your family back home, Like.
Speaker 3: All of that melts away.
Speaker 2: And never in my life have I felt as much
Speaker 2: clarity of purpose and mission and like pure instinct, primal
Speaker 2: instinct for survival as when I'm in combat. So if
Speaker 2: I was a you know, whatever, biologist. I might talk
Speaker 2: about like the endorphins that come out of being in combat,
Speaker 2: but that shit is addictive, and that war high it's
Speaker 2: a real thing, and in fact, when I think about
Speaker 2: later in life, it is it is such a compelling.
Speaker 3: Part of your life.
Speaker 2: That there's some way that you're always kind of chasing
Speaker 2: that war high. You're always chasing for the rest of
Speaker 2: your life, a way of like feeling that alive again.
Speaker 3: And some.
Speaker 2: Veterans can channel that into positive energy, and some veterans
Speaker 2: are haunted by the ghosts of that feeling. And I
Speaker 2: think as I transitioned out of the seal teams, that
Speaker 2: is the great challenge for both myself and military folks.
Speaker 2: How do you maintain that same sense of purpose and
Speaker 2: clarity that you had when you were in service or
Speaker 2: in combat and translated into the next chapter of your life.
Speaker 1: Larson served five years as an active duty seal. Since
Speaker 1: then and throughout his journalistic career, he has remained in
Speaker 1: the US Navy reserves. In nearly a quarter century since
Speaker 1: joining the Navy and becoming a seal, Larson says he's
Speaker 1: seen a lot of changes, and he says the seals
Speaker 1: have done an excellent job of adapting to new technologies
Speaker 1: as well as the tactics of our enemies.
Speaker 2: I think of seal gear as an evolution. The equipment
Speaker 2: that I wore when I first got into the Seal
Speaker 2: Teams was so vastly different than this equipment that we
Speaker 2: evolved into and adapted too after two decades of war.
Speaker 2: When I first showed up in the Seal Teams, all
Speaker 2: of our lessons learned, all of our SOPs, our entire
Speaker 2: psyche kind of came from the Vietnam generation of Seals.
Speaker 2: They were the last real combat generation of Seals.
Speaker 3: So a lot of our tactics.
Speaker 2: And even the way we thought and interacted and moved
Speaker 2: came from the lessons learned in Vietnam. And then nine
Speaker 2: to eleven happened, and then we were in Afghanistan and Iraq,
Speaker 2: and those tactics and equipment had to evolve considerably. So
Speaker 2: I remember in the beginning we were quite heavy. I
Speaker 2: would wear, you know, twenty pound kit with twelve magazines,
Speaker 2: and this big old plate carrier and medkits and all
Speaker 2: of these things at some and sometimes a rucksack. And
Speaker 2: I always carried an M four and we and the
Speaker 2: SIG two to two six was our secondary weapon. In fact,
Speaker 2: in my first and I had an M two to three,
Speaker 2: which is a forty millimeter grenade launcher underneath my M four.
Speaker 2: At one point I carried the M seventy nine, which
Speaker 2: looks like it's from Vietnam, and that was it. I
Speaker 2: think in total, the gear sometimes weighed something like sixty
Speaker 2: seventy almost eighty pounds, and the sixty gunners or the
Speaker 2: sawgunners had even more because they had multiple rounds of
Speaker 2: ammunition distributed throughout their kit. Over time, as we took
Speaker 2: lessons even from the enemy and we were fighting Taliban
Speaker 2: fighters who sometimes had tires for sandals and nothing but
Speaker 2: black shirt on, you know, and no body arm or
Speaker 2: anything like that, we realized that sometimes mobility mattered more,
Speaker 2: and you saw our kit start to slim down. And
Speaker 2: as our tactics evolved, we started going much more to
Speaker 2: lower visibility, plate hangers, lower weight, and we started to
Speaker 2: slim that package down because we realized that we prized
Speaker 2: mobility over security, speed over security, So that evolved. Our
Speaker 2: tactics in terms of unmanned aerial systems using drones evolved
Speaker 2: and continues to evolve as those have become like essential
Speaker 2: tools on the battlefield.
Speaker 3: And I would say the primary, primary thing that.
Speaker 2: Has made US Navy Seals the most lethal fighting force
Speaker 2: the world has ever seen is that our communications technology evolved,
Speaker 2: so our ability to use the entire battle space to
Speaker 2: call a fast mover F eighteen overhead or an AC
Speaker 2: one point thirty gun ship while we're putting rounds down range,
Speaker 2: while we have a QRF Quick Reaction force in the waiting.
Speaker 2: Our ability to leverage all of these elements of national
Speaker 2: power and all of this lethality onto the enemy is
Speaker 2: what has really changed the game. And that's what kind
Speaker 2: of the premise of SOCOM Special Operations Command was in
Speaker 2: the beginning. How do you take all of these different
Speaker 2: assets and give them the ability to work together.
Speaker 1: Larson has achieved a great deal in his Navy career,
Speaker 1: and of course as a seal, but when asked what
Speaker 1: he's most proud of from all those years of service,
Speaker 1: a number of things quickly came to mind.
Speaker 2: To pair phrase President Kennedy, I am most proud that
Speaker 2: I served as an officer in the United States Navy.
Speaker 2: I am most proud that I led men into combat
Speaker 2: and I brought all of my men back home to
Speaker 2: their families, and I am the most proud that I
Speaker 2: got to serve my country in the highest fashion.
Speaker 1: That's Kaj Larson. He's a lieutenant commander in the US
Speaker 1: Navy and also a US Navy Seal. You may also
Speaker 1: know Kaj Larson from as many reporting roles or outlets
Speaker 1: like CNNA, Current TV, and for hosting the award winning
Speaker 1: series Vice on HBO. I'm Greg Corumbus and this is
Speaker 1: Veterans Chronicles. Hi, this is Greg Corumbus, and thanks for
Speaker 1: listening to Veterans Chronicles, a presentation of the American Veterans Center.
Speaker 1: For more information, please visit American Veteranscenter dot org. You
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Speaker 1: please join us next time for Veterans Chronicles