Navy SEAL in Afghanistan: CDR Jon Macaskill

Ken Harbaugh:

I’m Ken Harbaugh, host of Warriors In Their Own Words. In partnership with the Honor Project, we’ve brought this podcast back at a time when our nation needs these stories more than ever.

Warriors in Their Own Words is our attempt to present an unvarnished, unsanitized truth of what we have asked of those who defend this nation. Thank you for listening, and by doing so, honoring those who have served.

Today, we’ll hear from Commander Jon Macaskill. Macaskill served as a Navy SEAL from 2003 to 2020, and deployed to Afghanistan in 2005.

CDR Jon Macaskill:
My name is Jon Macaskill. I retired in August of 2020 as an ‘05 in the Navy, a commander, and I retired from the Navy SEAL teams. I served in the SEAL teams from 2003 until 2020.

I started as an enlisted sailor. I enlisted in 1996. I was a parachute rigger, worked on ejection seats for the F-18s and then went from the enlisted ranks to the Naval Academy and graduated in May of 2001. So, August of 2001, we went out to Coronado and we started training at Basic Underwater Demolition SEAL training BUD/S, and we were there at training when the towers were hit and the Pentagon was hit. So, it wasn't that I chose after 9/11 to serve, but it was after 9/11 or during 9/11 that I knew that I was going to be serving in combat, in war very soon thereafter.

When you're in your freshman year, every third guy out of the class of about a thousand people, and about 750 men, every third guy says that they want to be a SEAL. And then the second year rolls around, sophomore year, junior year – junior year, you do this screener is what they call it. The screener is a long weekend that you have to sacrifice because you don't get to go and hang out with your friends or your family or anything. You spend that entire long weekend there at the academy on what we call the yard. And while you're at the yard for that long weekend, you’re actually going through some training with some SEAL instructors, some SEAL instructors are there that are on the academy. They are stationed there, and then they actually fly some out from Coronado to do the training in addition to some upperclassmen, some seniors. And they run you through essentially two or three days of BUD/S. It's the same kind of training, running around with boats on your head, doing a lot of pushups and flutter kicks, calisthenics, it's miserable. And then from there, you go into your senior year and you have an idea, you have a rough idea, like you said of who the top candidates are.

But in 2001, they were selecting 16 guys from each class. Now, I think they're selecting 35, 36, not because the Naval Academy guys are any better, but because they have a higher success rate due to the fact that they have been training with a cohort, if you will, of other guys who wanted to go. So, they've got the guys in their class that they've been supporting and being supported by the entire time that they're there, working out together, holding one another accountable, making sure that they get into the pool and run and do all this. But they've also got people who are ahead of them, 1, 2, 3 classes ahead of them that are kind of providing intel back to them about what to expect at BUD/S. Not just the physical side, but little tricks like what to do with your boots, what type of socks to wear. I mean, little things that you wouldn't even consider.

But yeah, by the time the second semester of senior year comes around, you've got it pretty narrowed down, and then you go and you do an interview board. I remember there being an admiral on my board and several SEAL lieutenants, and they asked us all the professional questions, and then I remember the admiral asking me, “If you had a choice of one animal that you could be, what would it be?” That was kind of a zinger that we didn't expect, but everybody got asked that same question. It was wild to hear the different answers. I said that I wanted to be a dolphin. I don't remember exactly why, but I think it was something to do with it looks like they always have a smile on their face and they love the water. So, I guess it landed well with that admiral, and then they selected from my class, there was about 50 guys who wanted to go, and they narrowed it down to the top 16.

Clearly, we're in our camouflage utilities most of the time, and then underneath those we have what are called UDT shorts, Underwater Demolition Team shorts. They're literally the type of shorts that the old Underwater Demolition Team guys used to run around in. They're just these little khaki shorts. And then underneath those, we have what are called tri shorts. Basically, the same type of shorts triathletes wear when they swim, and then they run and then they bike, except it doesn't have the padding that you would have for biking. And the way that you wear these, most people wear them the right side out. But with that, there's that seam on the shorts that collect salt and sand and salt water, and if you're running around with those things right side out, that seam is on the inside right along your groin, and it will tear you up, it will tear you up. So, we learned pretty quickly, hey, just flip those things out, like wrong side out, inside out, and I don't know if that's in any books, but I'll tell you that saved many a crotch.

So, 9/11 hits, I'm in what's called PTRR. I think that stands for (it's been a while since I've been there), pre-training and rest and recovery or rest and recuperation. So, it's the guys who haven't actually classed up yet, and it's the guys who have been injured in other classes and they've been rolled back to rest and recuperate. At that time, I was supposed to start BUD/S and BUD/S class 238, and I did. I started in 238. I literally did one day, and this was after 9/11 hits. I think it started at the beginning of October, so it's pretty fresh. 9/11 is still pretty fresh in our minds, and so did one day with 238, fell off one of the obstacles was coughing up blood, and then they ended up rolling me back to 239, which started in late January of 2002.

We were out there. We actually had run to the chow hall and as we're getting into the chow hall, the TV shows the fact that one of the towers has been hit by an aircraft, and while we're sitting there, we watched the other plane crash into the other building. So, at that time, we're like, “Okay, this is clearly not an accident or just a fluke. Something is awry here.” There was definitely a sense of shock amongst the whole group there, kind of silence. We had all tuned in to these TVs, and this is 2001, so there were these big giant boxes that are on the wall. Yeah, it hit very quickly that we were going to be going to war. We didn't know who the enemy was at the time, we just knew that we had been attacked, and that we knew we were going to go and avenge all those who had been lost.

I remember very clearly after being at the chow hall, we ran back and at BUD/S, there's this wooden podium that sits on the beach right in front of these ropes that we climb. The podium is normally for the instructor to stand on and run us through the physical training that we do daily. And one of our instructors, he jumps up there and he's like, “Hey boys, I got to tell you, people are comparing this to 9/11” or I’m sorry, “to Pearl Harbor.” And he's like, “I'll tell you what, Pearl Harbor doesn't have shit on this. We're going to be at war for the next 20 years.” This was on 9/11 that he said we're going to be at war for the next 20 years. And I remember I ran into this guy two years ago. I hadn't seen him really, maybe about once since then. I was like, “Do you remember that?” He's like, “I remember it like it was yesterday.” And he's like, “I wish I hadn't been so right.” 20 years, sure enough.

9/11 absolutely changed the intensity. It changed the intensity for all the classes there. They locked down BUD/S, the traffic was awful, just like was at every single military base trying to get into it. There was other SEALs that weren't SEAL instructors, they had just pulled them from the local SEAL teams, walking around the compound, fully locked and loaded, ready to go just in case. We just had no idea what was happening.

And then we, as multiple classes were talking about, “Hey, do you think they're going to accelerate our training? Do you think they're going to want more SEALs faster?” And one of the soft truths is that you can't mass produce special operators. So, that was one of the decisions, okay, “We are not going to push more people through this training, we're not going to eliminate training or shorten training in any shape, form or fashion. You guys are going to go through the full six months of training.”

But there was definitely a lot of, “Okay, what's next? What's next?” And then guys, so after BUD/S, there's SEAL qualification training, and you're friends with people 2, 3, 4 classes in front of you, and while you're still at SEAL qualification training, you'll be talking to guys that you're in maybe a class or two behind, and they're already at war. They get to the teams and they go to war. In previous years, they would get to the SEAL teams, they would go through their full 18-month training cycle, and then they would deploy, and sometimes they'd be deploying to Spain or these places where there was nothing really going on, or at least nothing relative to what we had going on in Afghanistan and then later in Iraq. So, there was definitely this, “Oh man, my buddy who I just went through some training with who was just at the Naval Academy with me is now at war, and I'm two months behind them.” So, it was a reality check for sure. A “Oh man, this is real,” so yeah, it was intense.

From BUD/S, I went out to SEAL qualification training, which is just the next level. It's kind of the gentleman's training, if you will. It gets everybody on the same page so that we can be essentially one SEAL from SEAL Team Five can replace a SEAL from SEAL Team Eight. We all have at least the very same basics that SEAL qualification training. And when I was at BUD/S opted to go to the SEAL Delivery Vehicle Team, the SDV, which is the miniature submersible, kind of a mini submarine that gets launched off the back of larger submarines, except when you're in it, you're wet and you're diving it. And I was one of the weirdos who actually signed up for that. Back then everybody's like, “I don't want to do SDV, I want to go to Iraq, I want to go to Afghanistan.” And here I am signing up for SDV, which is fairly unique in that that is the one mission that SEALs and SEALs only do. Direct assault, unconventional warfare, parachuting, sniping, all this stuff, special forces do it, marine snipers or MARSOC, the Raiders, there's so much overlap between all the different units within special operations. This is the one thing that SEALs and SEALs only do, is the SEAL Delivery Vehicle mission. And then we have divers supporting us, and I was like, “Man, this is such a cool mission. I want to do this.”

I did the joint combined exercises for training, I went out to Panama, went out to the UAE, I did all these exercises with our foreign partners, but I wasn't boots on ground for war until April of 2005.

When I arrived in Afghanistan in 2005, I was initially an LNO, liaison officer. So, again, I'd come from the SDV team. I went out there with SEAL Team 10, I got attached to SEAL Team 10. Now, one of the things that is the bread and butter of the SDV teams is surveillance and reconnaissance. So, that's one thing that we go out normally in a group of four or five, and we observe a target for anywhere between 24 and 72 hours, sometimes longer, and we provide actionable intelligence back to the assault element. When I was not in the capacity of a liaison officer, which is not what guys go through BUD/S to be – the liaison officer is literally somebody who sits in the joint operation center or the CJSOTF, sort of the Combined Joint Special Operations Task Force behind a computer, behind radios talking to higher ups, basically trying to do exactly what the name implies, liaise between all the different elements to make sure that the operations go off well.

When I was not doing that, then I was helping to lead surveillance and reconnaissance missions out there to support SEAL Team 10. I went on a few direct-action missions with them, but primarily, my mission was to lead surveillance and reconnaissance missions with my guys. And then there was a parallel element out there.

So, Michael Murphy and those guys from SDV Team One and myself, we had gone out on simultaneous missions multiple times to observe targets, and then provide that actionable intel back to SEAL Team 10 to mount the assault. This particular mission for those guys, they only sent four guys out on the ground, and that four-man element was actually a mix between the SDV Team One guys, and the SDV Team Two guys. So, Danny Dietz from my platoon went out. He was one of the guys, for your listeners who are not familiar with that operation, that four-man element that was doing surveillance and reconnaissance got compromised by some goat herders, then there was a big ethical dilemma. “What do we do? We can't kill them because that’s against all sorts of war regulations. That would be a war crime because they’re noncombatants. We can't tie them up because that's essentially giving them a death sentence in the mountains of Afghanistan”. So they let them go. These goat herders go down the mountain, report to this village that there's soldiers up the hill, and they send a bunch of Taliban up the hill, massive firefight ensues. Three of the four guys on the ground get killed. So, that's Matt Axelson, Michael Murphy, and Danny Dietz, and then Marcus Luttrell is the lone survivor from that group. But before Michael Murphy got killed, he called in a quick reaction force, ended up sending out two MH-47 helicopters with more SEALs and army night stalkers flying those, and the first one leveled out to let our guys fast rope out the back, and it got shot down by an RPG.

So, that one particular mission, I don't know whether you can say I lucked out or what you want to call it. But for that particular mission, we only sent four guys out and not the two surveillance from reconnaissance mission groups that we had been sending out. I don't know if that was right or wrong, but it is what it is.

When I was going through training, I remember instructors saying, “This will not be your toughest day in the SEAL teams.” And I remember thinking to myself, “Whatever, you're full of shit, there's no way a day in the SEAL teams can be this difficult.” And granted, I wasn't running around with logs or running around with boats, but I was much colder in the SEAL teams than I ever was at BUD/S. I remember, I think the coldest I've ever been, aside from Alaska where you're doing winter warfare training and you're getting into literally freezing cold water – I think the coldest I've ever been was on an operation in Afghanistan in a helicopter with the windows open, sitting with my feet hanging out the side, and I don't know, it must have been 11,000 feet or something. I don’t know, I'm just throwing that out there, but it was high enough to where it was cold. It was April in Afghanistan, and the rotors from the helicopter are making it that much colder sitting in the door. And I was like, “Holy shit, I'm pretty sure this is the coldest I've ever been.” And then we got inserted to do a mission, so that was difficult.

And then again, for right or wrong, I remember when I first got there, SEAL Team Eight was on the ground, SEAL Team 10 was there doing the replace in place, and the guys from SEAL Team Eight were like, “There's no way you can go out with your body armor on.” And I was like, “What are you talking about? How can you go out without your body armor on?” He's like, “When you're running up and down the mountains, you're going to die if you have your body armor on, having your body armor on is actually more of a risk than not.” Which in hindsight, talking about that one operation with the guys with Operation Red Wings, maybe if they had had their body armor on, I don't know, probably they would've moved a lot slower. But we ditched our body armor and running around even without our body armor at 9, 10,000 feet uphill multiple times, that was exhausting, and there was no training that I had done. I mean, we came from Virginia Beach, sea level, Virginia Beach is flat. There's no mountains, and here we are suddenly in Afghanistan running up and down these hills. And yeah, I ditched my body armor. I'm not proud to say it, but I had to because that was the only way that I could do what needed to be done.

That was my first deployment, I was a lieutenant junior grade ‘02, and that was my real first leadership experience. TI had some at the Naval Academy – the Naval Academy has a leadership laboratory, but still, everything was somewhat sterile. Now, we're thrown out into the mountains of Afghanistan, and yeah, there was definitely a part of me that wants to complain about my circumstances, but as Tom Hanks says in Saving Private Ryan, “You don't gripe down, you only gripe up.” And so, I would try to practice that. And I remember thinking on the side of a mountain when we were there on a surveillance and reconnaissance mission, I was like, “Man, I want to tell these guys how bad this sucks.” But I was like, “Nope, Tom Hanks wouldn't let me do it.” He was like the little angel on my shoulder telling me what I can and can't do.

But yeah, you have to think about you're there responsible for yourself, yes, but you're also responsible for your men's livelihood, your men's wellbeing. You want to get them home to their families, their wives, their children. You got to get them back home because you want to get them back out on another mission. So, there was definitely this kind of split, almost like two personalities: one of them that just wants to coddle the men and just take care of them and not put them in harm's way in any way. And then the other one's like, “These guys are warriors, and we came here to fight a war, we trained to fight the enemy.” So, at the same time as you want to kind of coddle them and keep them out of harm's way, at the same time, you're constantly looking for the next op and you're basically selling your guys. You're selling them and their capabilities and abilities so that they can go out and do what they've trained to do. And that's an interesting dichotomy of leadership. Not to use Jocko's, name of his book, but it is – it's a dichotomy of leadership. There is what do you do and when do you do it, when do you do what? And the bottom line is you always have to take care of your people, whatever that looks like. And sometimes, taking care of your people does include taking care of them while you're putting them in harm's way.

Like Danny Dietz, again, he was my guy. I was the officer from SDV Team Two out there. I had senior officers in my platoon, but they were in Iraq. I was in Afghanistan, and I put Danny on that mission. There was an opportunity to be like, “Hey, you know what, Danny's not ready for this mission,” although he was. He was fully ready, but there was an opportunity for me to say, “You know what, I don't want to send Danny, let's send somebody else.” And I sent Danny and he ended up dying. And there still is a big question in my mind, “Did I do the right thing? Did I do right by Danny?” And funny enough, I live in Colorado Springs, Danny's from Littleton. I'm really good friends with his mom now. And I went to dinner with her, I don't know, two months ago. And she has never, ever, ever held me personally responsible for what happened, which was a relief, to say the least.

One, I want to put this out there, is that I did not see near as much combat as many SEALs, but I will say one of my upperclassmen at the Naval Academy, his name's Nate Boaz, he went into the Marine Corps and he recently wrote this memoir, I think it's Into the Fire, is the name of the book, a fantastic read. And there's a part in the book where he talks about how beautiful war is, how beautiful combat is. And I remember reading that and in it, in that book, he says, “This is very weird to write, but war and combat are beautiful.” And I reached out to him, I was like, “Nate, you're spot on.” Because in those moments, there is nothing else in your mind. You are 100% focused on survival and beating the enemy. And not just your own survival, but the survival of your men or those next to you if you have women in combat with you. And the things that people do on the battlefield, they're superhuman; what they're capable of doing and what they're willing to do to save others on the battlefield. And in that sense, yes, war and combat are beautiful, which you are whittled down to the most primal beams that you possibly can be. Nothing else matters in that time. It's like the old Metallica song, Nothing Else Matters, man. And in that sense, yes, you are more alive than you will ever be at any other time, but I've never actually thought about having guilt for experiencing that.

But now that I say that and I've got three young kids hanging outside the door, they ever listen to this interview, they’re going to be like, “Why weren't you more alive when I was born?” I’m like, “Well, I didn't have to worry about dying.” I think that's the thing is that's why there's so many people who are extreme athletes, I think that's why they crave that adrenaline. That's why they crave that fear is the sitting on the edge of death. It makes you feel alive.

I miss the teams, I miss the brotherhood, I miss the comradery, I miss the adrenaline. But as amazingly alive as I felt on the battlefield, I would not want that again. And honestly, I don't know that I would wish it on anyone as beautiful and primal as combat is, there's also the flip side of that exact same coin, and it is very, very ugly and primal in another way where it's just violent. When you're young and you think about people dying, you're like … when people die, it's kind of clean and neat, and maybe it's like Die Hard, the movie’s where it's kind of glorified – it's not. And when you're on the side of a weapon and somebody else is on that business side of that weapon and you are taking their life, and one, it's violent, there's lots of grotesque things that happen in shooting someone.

And then two, when you take a step back for even a split second, you're like, “That person is a person. They're fighting for their ideals and values, and they have a family.” My guys that I've just defended, they're going to return to their families. That person whose life I just took, they're not. So, yeah, again, an interesting dichotomy is how beautiful and ugly war can be at the same time. And I think ultimately, I do not miss that. I miss the guys, I miss training for the mission, I miss the team as a whole, but yeah, combat, I'm okay if I never go back to combat, which I won't, I won't ever go back.

So, I've got young kids, I've got a 7-year-old, a 5-year-old, and a 3-year-old, two little girls and a little boy in the middle. And when my 7-year-old was five, she had a library day for kindergarten, and she went to the library and came back with this book called Navy SEALs, and she's like, “Dad, I got this book because these guys look like they do cool work.” And I was like, “Well, it just so happens that's what daddy used to do. I used to be a Navy SEAL,” and she went through and looked at the pages. This is like a Vietnam era book, it's old. So, the pictures are all dated and there's nothing from current combat or current training, but she was in awe, and that was the last time she's asked me about that.

So, my wife and I were both service members. My wife was in the Navy with me and as a matter of fact, we met at SEAL Team 10 in Afghanistan. Well, technically, we met prior to deploying, but we ended up having a Verboort in Afghanistan, romance. And our kids will often say, “Mommy, daddy, is this what leads us to war?” Which is the current political situation and other things that are out there, my 7-year-old will ask that kind of question. And you're like, “Holy shit, these kids have some depth,” but it's also really hard to answer that question.

Now, sitting here in Colorado Springs surrounded by beautiful mountains, and I'm able to go to Starbucks in the morning and get my caffe latte, meanwhile, there's still defenders of freedom out there doing what they need to do. And not to get too far to one side, but there's a lot of uncertainty in the world right now in our political system, political set up, and that's scary. And for my 7-year-old to ask that question, that makes me even that much more scared.

I think what I'd like to close with is two things. I am a leadership consultant these days, I do consulting and executive coaching. And so, much of the time, I am teaching “leaders” what leadership truly means. And that means taking care of your people and enabling them to do the job that they're trained to do. So many leaders get that wrong and believe that their people work for them. As leaders, we work for our people, and if you're not doing that, you're not a leader.

The same time, kind of a similar tangent to that is there are leaders who have to tell people that they are the leaders. And I've always felt if you are a leader and you have to tell people you're in charge, then you're not in charge. You're not a leader. So, those are two things and then the last one is integrity.

I learned at a very early age what integrity was. I remember I ran track and cross country when I was younger, and we would race on Saturday and on Sunday, I would go get the newspaper to see what my race time was and where I racked and stacked in the state relative to other people who had been in other races. And I remember one time I had a really good race, and my dad drove me to Walmart where there was a newspaper stand. This is back in the day when you put a single quarter in and kind of the honor system, you open the thing up, where I put a single quarter in, opened it up, and I grabbed 10 copies, at least 10 copies of this paper, and I walked back to my car. I climb in the passenger side door, and I look at my dad and he's looking at me, and he's like, “What did you just do?” I said, “I bought a newspaper.” He's like, “You bought a single newspaper. How many do you have there?” And I remember counting, and I had like 10, and he got up out of the car and he went and put 10 more quarters in, or nine more quarters in. And he came back, he's like, “That's integrity is doing the right thing even when people aren't looking.” And this is, I don't know, 1992, 93, and that lesson has carried forward with me for the rest of my life. Here I am 47-years-old, and that is the single most important lesson as far as integrity goes, and I carry that forward. If you're a leader and you are doing the wrong thing when people aren't looking, then you're sacrificing your integrity and then you're not a leader. So, those to me are the big three that I'd like to leave you guys with.

Ken Harbaugh:

That was Commander Jon Macaskill.

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Warriors In Their Own Words is a production of Evergreen Podcasts, in partnership with The Honor Project.

Our producer is Declan Rohrs. Brigid Coyne is our production director, and Sean Rule-Hoffman is our Audio Engineer.

Special thanks to Evergreen executive producers, Joan Andrews, Michael DeAloia, and David Moss.