CMC Harold “Dog” Underdown
U.S. Navy – Ret. (SEAL) Command Master Chief
ST-1, NSWDG, ST-4
Haiti, Afghanistan, Iraq
May 1987 – May 2015
U.S. Navy – Ret. (SEAL) Command Master Chief
ST-1, NSWDG, ST-4
Haiti, Afghanistan, Iraq
May 1987 – May 2015
Harold Underdown was born in Gastonia, North Carolina in October of 1961. Harold and his brother Mike grew up in Mount Holly, North Carolina, about 10 miles South of Charlotte, NC. The family lived in a small house on Hickory Grove Road in a nice neighborhood where there were lots of kids to play with. “Of course, you know, back then we were running around all over the place”. “We would leave the house and not come home until dark”. His parents both worked in McAdenville which is known as Christmas Town USA. “They light everything up at Christmas”.
Harold’s mom worked in a cotton mill and his father worked in a utility plant. Harold described his father as a “Master-of-All-Trades, jack of none. If it was broke, he could fix it.” Harold’s mom retired as Harold and Mike got older. At East Gaston High School Harold was very athletic. He played baseball and wrestled, but his first love was football. He played defensive back and slot receiver. “I loved it, but I probably took too many shots (to the head). Back then nobody was talking about concussions. I loved it. It was fun”.
Growing up, Harold had an encounter with the North Carolina Highway Patrolman that made a lasting impression on him. One morning while waiting for the school bus, Harold and his friends were standing behind a row of tall bushes. One of his buddies says to him, ‘I dare you to light this firecracker and throw it onto a car’ as it passes by. Well, having been legally dared, the only thing Harold could do was accept the dare. As a car approached, Harold lit the fuse, and he threw it over the top of the bushes just as the car passed by. Harold scored a direct hit to a North Carolina Highway Patrol Car.
Sensing the severity of the situation, Harold’s friends quickly abandon him like rats off a sinking ship. Harold beat a hasty retreat into the nearby woods and hid behind a tree. Harold reviewed the situation in his head. “Nothing happened. No wreck occurred. I’m good”. The trooper turned the corner onto 2nd Street blocking Harold’s exit to his house on 3rd Street. The trooper got out of his car and could clearly see Harold. “He looked right at me. He had that Smokey Bear hat on. He pointed at me and made a hand gesture to come out”. Faced with the choice of running and becoming the youngest fugitive from justice or to step out of the woods and face the music, Harold chose the latter.
“Did you throw that firecracker?” “Yes sir.” “You know that’s dangerous, right”? “Yes sir”. The trooper said, “You know, there are two ways this can go. I can load you into the car and take to your mom and dad and talk this out. Or, you can have this as a life lesson and not ever do that again.” Harold said, “I’m very sorry. I know it’s dangerous”. The trooper said, “OK. Have a nice day” and he drove off. Right then Harold knew he wanted to be a State Trooper. “How he treated me. How sharp he was dressed in the uniform and that Smokey Bear Hat”.
When Harold graduated from high school in 1979, he and a few friends joined the Army National Guard, “just to get out of town…and see some things”. Harold headed to boot camp at Fort Sill in Oklahoma and was assigned to an artillery unit in North Carolina. He served in the Guard unit for four years and during that time Harold earned his basic EMT Certification and his Criminal Justice degree at the local community college, all while working at the local UPS distribution center. “It took me six years to get it, but I got it”.
Harold then applied to the North Carolina Highway Patrol. He took the physical tests and written exams and passed. While he was waiting to be selected to attend the Highway Patrol Academy, he received a letter advising him there was a hiring freeze. This really got to him because he really wanted to go to the academy. While Harold was waiting on the State Troopers he finished four years with the Army National Guard and switched over to the Air National Guard. The Air National Guard had C-130’s and those aircraft required a flight medic in the back.
As luck would have it, Harold saw the magazine section of the local newspaper with a photo of a young man who was all ‘wet and sandy’ crawling under barbed wire with the caption, ‘Navy SEALS. The toughest Men Alive.’ “Whatever it was, it drew me to that”.
It was May 1987, and Harold was deciding between joining the Navy and becoming a SEAL or joining the Army and becoming an Apache Helicopter pilot. The Army recruiter couldn’t promise him a spot in Flight School. When he talked to the Navy recruiter, the only question of Harold was, ‘can you swim’? Harold signed with the Navy and headed off to bootcamp at the Naval Station in Great Lakes, Illinois.
Harold was in good physical condition and bootcamp was not much of a strain. “We would do pushups and other PT exercises. I was in really good shape”. Harold went through the prequalification for SEAL BUD/S (Basic Underwater Demolition/SEAL Training) which involved meeting the minimum standard in pushups, sit-ups, pullups, running and swimming in the pool. Harold passed that and received orders to BUD/S.
Harold ‘classed up’ with BUD/S Class 151 with 120 candidates in the class. BUD/S is considered to be among the toughest military training programs in the world if not the toughest. “It’s like a buzz saw”. The first phase is physical conditioning. The men are organized into teams and are challenged physically with ever increasing numbers of various calisthenics (pushups, flutter kicks, burpees, etc.), swimming and running. The instructors put as much mental strain as possible on the candidates while they are physically exhausted and sleep deprived. The end of this evolution ends with Hell Week. For five days the men are subjected to surf torture, running with a boat on their head or caring a log the size of a phone pole. Everyone needs to work together because if the team fails everyone fails and is rewarded with extra running or exercise. Here the SEALs say, “it pays to be a winner”.
Phase Two is Combat diving in a pool where the men must prove competency in being buoyant, holding their breath, floating treading water and “drown proofing”. All of this is done under constant mental stress. Water is the great equalizer, and it causes many candidates to quit. This phase is looking for candidates that can learn to feel comfortable in the water in life threatening situations. In Drown Proofing Training the candidate has his wrists tied behind his back and his ankles tied together and he must bob up and down in the water 20 times. If your wrists or ankles slip out of the rope, you fail. Two fails and you are “rolled back” to the next class.
Quitting is a big part of BUD/S. The exhaustion, mental pressure and the relentless verbal barrage by the instructors is designed to drive candidates to their breaking point. The average BUD/S class graduates are less than 25%. When someone quits, they must walk to the front of the class and ring a bell three times. They are then placed in a truck, taken away and reassigned based on the needs of the Navy.
Phase Three is Land Warfare Training and focuses on mastering basic weapons, demolition land navigation, fast roping, marksmanship and small team tactics. Part of the training is conducted on San Clemente Island off the coast of San Diego.
Harold made it through Phase I, but Phase II was a problem. Harold wasn’t able to quiet his mind and remain calm during drown proofing and as a result his hands slipped out of the ropes twice. Two fails meant he was rolled back into Class 152.
There was a six week wait until Class 152 began. Harold used his time wisely and practiced the drown proofing and becoming more comfortable in the water. “I told all my friends back in North Carlina, I was going to be a Navy SEAL. So, I was all in! I would go to the swimming pool on base on the weekends and tie myself up and jump in. There was an old Master Chief watching me and he said Harold, I can’t let you do that. You’re going to get me fired’. Charlie and Harold worked things out and Harold kept training and finally mastered drown proofing.
Harold entered Class 152, and he successfully completed BUD/S In August 1988. He wasn’t considered a SEAL, and he didn’t receive his Trident until he went through additional training in the SEAL Team he was assigned to. Harold received orders to SEAL Team ONE in Coronado, California.
Harold checked in to SEAL Team ONE. He found “a lot of hard-core operators he learned a lot from. I had a lot of good mentors”. The military has a knack for finding nicknames or call signs for everyone. Harold’s contemporaries all grew up in the 1960’s and 70’s when a popular television cartoon of the time was Underdog. It wasn’t too hard to go from Underdown to Underdog to just Dog. The name stuck.
Harold was assigned to be the team machine gunner. The leadership of Team 1 saw Harolds extensive medical background and told him he would be going to Corpsman School in Balboa, California. He graduated and went on to three deployments with Team 1. His first two deployments were to the Philippines. “We did a lot of training for real world missions”. This included training with live ammunition, lots of jumping from aircraft and “a lot of water work” which included jumping from C-130’s, C-141’s, and US Army CH-47’s with Zodiac boats. “We would jump in after the boats, get in the boat and drive the boats to a beach. Go conduct the mission, come back to the Zodiacs, go back out to sea and get picked up by a US Submarine or a Surface Vessel”.
Deploying from a submarine or being retrieved by a submarine is a good example of the difficult missions the SEALs conduct. When deploying from a submarine the SEALs deploy in scuba gear and release the Zodiac boat while underwater. The boat inflates on the way to the surface and the engine is sent to the surface in a waterproof bag as protection from the corrosive seawater. In a submarine rendezvous, the submarine will surface, and the SEALS are responsible for deflating the Zodiac, packing it up and loading it on the submarine.
His third deployment was to Guam. They did a lot of training as they did in the Philippines. Although Guam was an island and limited places to go on liberty. The island had beautiful beaches, and the SEALs spent a lot of their free time on those beaches. “Beautiful water”. On one of those trips to the beach Harold met Lisa Heck, an American. “You don’t see too many…American…women in Guam. Lisa was a Seattle Seahawks cheerleader and was in Guam working with the family business. She instantly caught Harold’s eye, and he went over and struck up a conversation. Harold mentioned he was a SEAL, but Lisa didn’t know anything about the US Navy SEALs and “she kind of blew me off”. SEALS never quit, so eventually he developed a friendship with Lisa that grew into a romance. “We saw a couple of concerts together and we ended up dating and hanging out…then it was pretty much on from there”.
When Harold returned to the states from his deployment two big changes were in store for him. Lisa also returned to the United States and Harold and Lisa were married shortly thereafter in August 1993. Professionally, Harold had screened for Development Group, also known as DEVGU. This is a Tier 1 asset. While all of the SEAL teams are filled with exceptional, highly trained and extraordinarily capable SEALs, DEVGRU is comparable to moving from a AAA baseball team to the major leagues. Tier 1 assets are trained for counterterrorism, unconventional warfare and high profile, high stakes missions. Some high-profile missions conducted by DEVGRU that received a lot of media attention include killing Ossama Bin Laden, rescuing Captain Phillips of the Maersk Alabama, rescuing American soldier Jessica Lynch and killing ISIS terrorist Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi to name a few. There are many other high-profile missions that the American public never hears about.
Selection for DEVGRU began in January 1994, also known as Green Team. “That’s another gut check”. The rigorous training lasted until June of ’94. “You’ve been a SEAL for say five years or six years and you’ve done three deployments and you’ve done all of the training, now you’re getting ready to experience the Major League Baseball Training, which is at a much higher (level) and a higher quality of individuals”.
“Of course, the standards are really high, and we hold that sacred…. the safety is very high. It’s a nervous situation because at any time you could be cut, right”. Harold was 32 years old at the time and in the prime of his SEAL career and his maturity helped him successfully complete the training. After completing DEVGRU training the men were sent to Florida to a two-week course obtain their U.S Coast Guard Captain’s license qualifying them to operate a 100-ton vessel. This is normally a six-month long course.
Harold was an Independent Duty Corpsman (IDC) and he attended a highly advanced yearlong medical training program at the Portsmouth Naval Hospital in Portsmouth, VA. He learned advanced pharmacy and how to administer many drugs while understanding the side effects and how they interact with other drugs. He had to learn to administer emergency drugs and handle anaphylaxis shock. He learned to put in a chest tube. If the SEALs are in a fire fight and a man gets shot and it’s “a sucking chest wound”, the corpsman needs to be able to insert a chest tube to save the injured SEAL. He learned to insert chest tubes during extensive field medical training.
The SEALS attended numerous schools which may include, Jumpmaster School, Sniper School, Breacher School, and others. SEALs are the jacks of all trades, master of some. “You have to be engaged mentally” at all times. “You need to be capable of sucking in all of this information” in a condensed period of time knowing that if you fail in the field, you could be dead.
Harold made it through Green Team and his first assignment was security and protection for former President George H. W. Bush at his home in Kennebunkport, Maine. The SEALS had to keep inquisitive tourist in their boats away from the Bush Compound on Walker’s Point. One particular day there was a wedding, and the SEALs had to keep people away. Harold was on his radio and received a call from one of his men asking what to do if a high-speed boat approached. “You got a weapon. Smoke it". Unknown to Harold the President could hear the radio chatter and said, “you hear that? The SEALS are going to smoke something’. That’s why they’re here. I feel safe”.
On September 11th, 2001, Harold recalled being in a classroom for a public speaking course. They were alerted of a problem and they all moved into an operational room where there was big screen TVs. They watched the tragedy unfold. “In two weeks, we had boots on the ground”. However, Harold was on hold for deployment.
In December of 2002 Harold received orders to be a training instructor with Training Detachment Two. (Tradet-East). He was really hoping to deploy to Afghanistan, but “orders are not an invitation”. As luck would have it, the corpsman slated to deploy with the Team to Afghanistan was injured. Team leaders lobbied for Harold, and he was chosen to deploy with them. This would be Harold’s first opportunity since joining the Teams 14 years earlier, to experience live combat. “I got to go into the arena…was in a couple of gunfights…that kind of helped to validate…I was willing to step into the arena”.
It was January 2002 and the Team landed in Kandahar, Afghanistan and then shifted up to Bagram. The operating tempo was very high with all of the missions being conducted at night. Over the next 100 days the Team was “chasing around bomb makers and bad guys”. Harold mentioned that the deployments were scheduled for 90 to 100 days to keep everyone mentally fresh.
The SEALS owned the night. “We were Vampires”. Each night the team would be given Intel packages outlining where the enemy was. They would board helicopters and head for the objective. They traveled on Chinook helicopters, and they were big and easy to hear. Sometimes they would exit the helicopter and hike to the target. Sometimes circumstances dictated they fast rope into the target. Harold said the Taliban would often flee when they saw the SEALS coming. “We’d find them and if they were shooting at us, they’re not going to last too long”. They would retrieve whatever intel they could find and return to base. Find it, fix it, return, repeat.
What goes through the mind of an assault team member during transit to the target? Harold talked about reviewing the mission in his head. “Where are you going? Security always, right? 360-degree security”. Some men would establish the perimeter while the others would assault the target. Communication was key to a successful mission. Communication could be through radios or hand gestures. The team had worked together so long they knew exactly where everyone should be at every point of the assault. If the SEALS got into a tough situation they could call on the air assets, “that were triple stacked” over the battlefield. Predator drones, gunships and jet fighters were some of the assets they could call upon to “rain down all the munitions that we’d need”.
“We lost several of our guys and I worked on them… and that was very difficult. If you’re a four-man team, or in a larger team, the medic will be toward the back. I still have security because…it’s not like it was back in Vietnam or World War II where they are wearing a big red cross” and not carrying a weapon. If someone is injured the medic will provide aid when a defensive perimeter is established.
After his deployment ended, he received orders to Training Detachment (Tradet) in Little Creek, Virginia. Harold was promoted to Senior Chief in Charge of the assault cell. There he was an instructor of CQC (Close Quarters Combat), MOUT (Military Operations in Urban Terrain) and VBSS (Vessel Boarding Search and Seizure). This was a two-year assignment.
Harold next received orders to SEAL Team FOUR as the Command Master Chief. Before joining the Team, he was sent to Rhode Island to attend Command Master Chief, Chief of the Boat School. After completing the school, he went to SEAL Team 4 as the Command Master Chief and deployed to Iraq in late 2004. In Iraq Harold was the Command Master Chief in charge of Force Protection. They had the mission of protecting the Iraqi government officials, ministers and President. “We were the Secret Service for those nine people. General McCrystal visited the compound one day and told the SEALS, This is a no fail mission. We cannot have a scratch (on these guys)’. Each day they would wake the officials up, take them to work in the Green Zone (which was considered safe), guard them at work and return them to the compound outside the Green Zone. “We had to protect their families too. So, it was fun. Challenging but fun”.
About 75% of the way through that deployment Harold was called back to the states to rebuild SEAL Team 4 with new graduates from BUDS and other teams. Team 4 went back to Iraq and Harold’s role was equivalent to the role of the COO of Team 4. The team was based in Bagram and their mission was to go on nightly mission looking for bomb makers. Harold went on a handful of missions, but he spent most of his time in the TOC (Tactical Operations Center) observing the nightly assaults. He was also responsible to coordinate all of the human assets assigned under the SEAL Team 4 umbrella. That was a six-month deployment. “We had a great deployment”.
Harold received orders to SOCSOUTH (Special Operations Command South) located in Homestead Florida. He was assigned as the J-3 Operations Master Chief, and he and his J-3 Commander were deployed to support a humanitarian mission in Haiti after an earthquake. He worked with a variety of non-governmental organizations. He learned of the difficulties of distributing rice and other food to the citizens. The difficulties were caused by gangs. Harold was there for 50 days.
He returned to the states in 2012 and received orders as the Operations Master Chief. After 18 months he was assigned to the Advanced Training Command as the Senior Enlisted Advisor. This group was responsible for developing and teaching advance training throughout the East coast SEAL teams. This included sniper training, breacher training, jumpmaster training, etc. that was Harold ‘s twilight tour and he retired in 2015.
Harold successfully transitioned from the Teams into the Civilian sector. He spent three and a half years at a security company deeply involved in the operations. For a security company, its operations are largely it’s people and managing those assets. As an SVP Harold had 50,000 unarmed security officers to manage. Harold worked directly for the CEO and set up training programs and ways to measure the performance of and increase the retention of the security personnel. He devised a system of stars to reward the Security professionals for completing the various training programs the company offered. It was a big hit with the Security personnel and Harold spent a lot of time in the field presenting the star awards and it really built moral. “The reason I could do it was because I was a Master Chief for 13 years. I was a chameleon with people. You just have to love people
The company was acquired, and they decided Harold was too expensive. Harold spent the next year deciding what to do next while they paid out his one-year contract. As luck would have it, he received a phone call from a friend from his military days. He wanted Harold to help him managing the restoration of the Bakers Bay resort in the Abaco’s of the Bahamas. Harold was involved with that for a little over three years and met Mike Trott, a retired Air Force veteran, and Rick Franco, a retired Marine.
They started talking about bourbon and buying a barrel of bourbon. That morphed into creating a bourbon to honor all of the unsung heroes in the military and the brotherhood of sacrifice. Rick started the bourbon company to honor his friend, Greg Wright, a Marine who made the ultimate sacrifice in Iraq. Mike Trott joined the company and then they called Harold. The three veterans represented three branches of the service. They decided to add one more veteran from the Army and call the bourbon, Four Branches. RJ Casey was a mutual friend and former Green Beret, and they invited him to join.
For the past two years the four veterans have been building the company and the brand. They designed the logo and bottle, established a relationship with a distiller in Kentucky, worked on getting the mash bill just right, established distribution and of course, marketing and getting the word out.
Harold is living his best life. He speaks on motivation and leadership. He received a phone call from the Virginia Highway Patrol. They had heard him on a podcast and heard the story of Harold’s run in with the North Carolina Highway Patrol. They invited him to speak.
He and Lisa are working on 30+ years of marriage with three children. Two sons have continued the military tradition. Harold refers to Lisa as the Homeland Admiral. “My wife stood by my side during all those deployments. She said, ‘I’m proud of you. Don’t worry about anything back here. I got this’.”
Harold looked back on his time in the Teams and had some very good insights.
“I was a good listener. I could listen. I wasn’t the smartest guy in the room by no means. But I understood the SEAL Teams. It’s about being loyal and when you say something, you mean it. Your handshake goes a long way”.
“There’s no place like the SEAL Teams for reputation. You are graded on your reputation. Your reputation is going to precede you”.
“We chose that job (SEAL Teams) so we go and do it to the best of our abilities…I hope the people out there understand what freedom costs. We just need to understand the military’s mission is to keep us safe…sometimes you have to send us, let us do our jobs because there are a lot of bad actors out there…in our world today. Hey, you know, we don’t need to be crazily divided in our country, whether your Democrat, Republican or Independent”.
Harold was the corpsman wherever he went. Not every SEAL he worked on had a serious injury. For those who needed a little direction to suck it up and get back to work, Harold would say, “Dog aint’ got nuthin’ for you”.
Harold, thank you for the countless hours of training, facing down evil actors and the sacrifices you and your family made to protect our nation. Because of you and others like you our nation can post the sign, Caution. Beware of Dog.
Harold’s mom worked in a cotton mill and his father worked in a utility plant. Harold described his father as a “Master-of-All-Trades, jack of none. If it was broke, he could fix it.” Harold’s mom retired as Harold and Mike got older. At East Gaston High School Harold was very athletic. He played baseball and wrestled, but his first love was football. He played defensive back and slot receiver. “I loved it, but I probably took too many shots (to the head). Back then nobody was talking about concussions. I loved it. It was fun”.
Growing up, Harold had an encounter with the North Carolina Highway Patrolman that made a lasting impression on him. One morning while waiting for the school bus, Harold and his friends were standing behind a row of tall bushes. One of his buddies says to him, ‘I dare you to light this firecracker and throw it onto a car’ as it passes by. Well, having been legally dared, the only thing Harold could do was accept the dare. As a car approached, Harold lit the fuse, and he threw it over the top of the bushes just as the car passed by. Harold scored a direct hit to a North Carolina Highway Patrol Car.
Sensing the severity of the situation, Harold’s friends quickly abandon him like rats off a sinking ship. Harold beat a hasty retreat into the nearby woods and hid behind a tree. Harold reviewed the situation in his head. “Nothing happened. No wreck occurred. I’m good”. The trooper turned the corner onto 2nd Street blocking Harold’s exit to his house on 3rd Street. The trooper got out of his car and could clearly see Harold. “He looked right at me. He had that Smokey Bear hat on. He pointed at me and made a hand gesture to come out”. Faced with the choice of running and becoming the youngest fugitive from justice or to step out of the woods and face the music, Harold chose the latter.
“Did you throw that firecracker?” “Yes sir.” “You know that’s dangerous, right”? “Yes sir”. The trooper said, “You know, there are two ways this can go. I can load you into the car and take to your mom and dad and talk this out. Or, you can have this as a life lesson and not ever do that again.” Harold said, “I’m very sorry. I know it’s dangerous”. The trooper said, “OK. Have a nice day” and he drove off. Right then Harold knew he wanted to be a State Trooper. “How he treated me. How sharp he was dressed in the uniform and that Smokey Bear Hat”.
When Harold graduated from high school in 1979, he and a few friends joined the Army National Guard, “just to get out of town…and see some things”. Harold headed to boot camp at Fort Sill in Oklahoma and was assigned to an artillery unit in North Carolina. He served in the Guard unit for four years and during that time Harold earned his basic EMT Certification and his Criminal Justice degree at the local community college, all while working at the local UPS distribution center. “It took me six years to get it, but I got it”.
Harold then applied to the North Carolina Highway Patrol. He took the physical tests and written exams and passed. While he was waiting to be selected to attend the Highway Patrol Academy, he received a letter advising him there was a hiring freeze. This really got to him because he really wanted to go to the academy. While Harold was waiting on the State Troopers he finished four years with the Army National Guard and switched over to the Air National Guard. The Air National Guard had C-130’s and those aircraft required a flight medic in the back.
As luck would have it, Harold saw the magazine section of the local newspaper with a photo of a young man who was all ‘wet and sandy’ crawling under barbed wire with the caption, ‘Navy SEALS. The toughest Men Alive.’ “Whatever it was, it drew me to that”.
It was May 1987, and Harold was deciding between joining the Navy and becoming a SEAL or joining the Army and becoming an Apache Helicopter pilot. The Army recruiter couldn’t promise him a spot in Flight School. When he talked to the Navy recruiter, the only question of Harold was, ‘can you swim’? Harold signed with the Navy and headed off to bootcamp at the Naval Station in Great Lakes, Illinois.
Harold was in good physical condition and bootcamp was not much of a strain. “We would do pushups and other PT exercises. I was in really good shape”. Harold went through the prequalification for SEAL BUD/S (Basic Underwater Demolition/SEAL Training) which involved meeting the minimum standard in pushups, sit-ups, pullups, running and swimming in the pool. Harold passed that and received orders to BUD/S.
Harold ‘classed up’ with BUD/S Class 151 with 120 candidates in the class. BUD/S is considered to be among the toughest military training programs in the world if not the toughest. “It’s like a buzz saw”. The first phase is physical conditioning. The men are organized into teams and are challenged physically with ever increasing numbers of various calisthenics (pushups, flutter kicks, burpees, etc.), swimming and running. The instructors put as much mental strain as possible on the candidates while they are physically exhausted and sleep deprived. The end of this evolution ends with Hell Week. For five days the men are subjected to surf torture, running with a boat on their head or caring a log the size of a phone pole. Everyone needs to work together because if the team fails everyone fails and is rewarded with extra running or exercise. Here the SEALs say, “it pays to be a winner”.
Phase Two is Combat diving in a pool where the men must prove competency in being buoyant, holding their breath, floating treading water and “drown proofing”. All of this is done under constant mental stress. Water is the great equalizer, and it causes many candidates to quit. This phase is looking for candidates that can learn to feel comfortable in the water in life threatening situations. In Drown Proofing Training the candidate has his wrists tied behind his back and his ankles tied together and he must bob up and down in the water 20 times. If your wrists or ankles slip out of the rope, you fail. Two fails and you are “rolled back” to the next class.
Quitting is a big part of BUD/S. The exhaustion, mental pressure and the relentless verbal barrage by the instructors is designed to drive candidates to their breaking point. The average BUD/S class graduates are less than 25%. When someone quits, they must walk to the front of the class and ring a bell three times. They are then placed in a truck, taken away and reassigned based on the needs of the Navy.
Phase Three is Land Warfare Training and focuses on mastering basic weapons, demolition land navigation, fast roping, marksmanship and small team tactics. Part of the training is conducted on San Clemente Island off the coast of San Diego.
Harold made it through Phase I, but Phase II was a problem. Harold wasn’t able to quiet his mind and remain calm during drown proofing and as a result his hands slipped out of the ropes twice. Two fails meant he was rolled back into Class 152.
There was a six week wait until Class 152 began. Harold used his time wisely and practiced the drown proofing and becoming more comfortable in the water. “I told all my friends back in North Carlina, I was going to be a Navy SEAL. So, I was all in! I would go to the swimming pool on base on the weekends and tie myself up and jump in. There was an old Master Chief watching me and he said Harold, I can’t let you do that. You’re going to get me fired’. Charlie and Harold worked things out and Harold kept training and finally mastered drown proofing.
Harold entered Class 152, and he successfully completed BUD/S In August 1988. He wasn’t considered a SEAL, and he didn’t receive his Trident until he went through additional training in the SEAL Team he was assigned to. Harold received orders to SEAL Team ONE in Coronado, California.
Harold checked in to SEAL Team ONE. He found “a lot of hard-core operators he learned a lot from. I had a lot of good mentors”. The military has a knack for finding nicknames or call signs for everyone. Harold’s contemporaries all grew up in the 1960’s and 70’s when a popular television cartoon of the time was Underdog. It wasn’t too hard to go from Underdown to Underdog to just Dog. The name stuck.
Harold was assigned to be the team machine gunner. The leadership of Team 1 saw Harolds extensive medical background and told him he would be going to Corpsman School in Balboa, California. He graduated and went on to three deployments with Team 1. His first two deployments were to the Philippines. “We did a lot of training for real world missions”. This included training with live ammunition, lots of jumping from aircraft and “a lot of water work” which included jumping from C-130’s, C-141’s, and US Army CH-47’s with Zodiac boats. “We would jump in after the boats, get in the boat and drive the boats to a beach. Go conduct the mission, come back to the Zodiacs, go back out to sea and get picked up by a US Submarine or a Surface Vessel”.
Deploying from a submarine or being retrieved by a submarine is a good example of the difficult missions the SEALs conduct. When deploying from a submarine the SEALs deploy in scuba gear and release the Zodiac boat while underwater. The boat inflates on the way to the surface and the engine is sent to the surface in a waterproof bag as protection from the corrosive seawater. In a submarine rendezvous, the submarine will surface, and the SEALS are responsible for deflating the Zodiac, packing it up and loading it on the submarine.
His third deployment was to Guam. They did a lot of training as they did in the Philippines. Although Guam was an island and limited places to go on liberty. The island had beautiful beaches, and the SEALs spent a lot of their free time on those beaches. “Beautiful water”. On one of those trips to the beach Harold met Lisa Heck, an American. “You don’t see too many…American…women in Guam. Lisa was a Seattle Seahawks cheerleader and was in Guam working with the family business. She instantly caught Harold’s eye, and he went over and struck up a conversation. Harold mentioned he was a SEAL, but Lisa didn’t know anything about the US Navy SEALs and “she kind of blew me off”. SEALS never quit, so eventually he developed a friendship with Lisa that grew into a romance. “We saw a couple of concerts together and we ended up dating and hanging out…then it was pretty much on from there”.
When Harold returned to the states from his deployment two big changes were in store for him. Lisa also returned to the United States and Harold and Lisa were married shortly thereafter in August 1993. Professionally, Harold had screened for Development Group, also known as DEVGU. This is a Tier 1 asset. While all of the SEAL teams are filled with exceptional, highly trained and extraordinarily capable SEALs, DEVGRU is comparable to moving from a AAA baseball team to the major leagues. Tier 1 assets are trained for counterterrorism, unconventional warfare and high profile, high stakes missions. Some high-profile missions conducted by DEVGRU that received a lot of media attention include killing Ossama Bin Laden, rescuing Captain Phillips of the Maersk Alabama, rescuing American soldier Jessica Lynch and killing ISIS terrorist Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi to name a few. There are many other high-profile missions that the American public never hears about.
Selection for DEVGRU began in January 1994, also known as Green Team. “That’s another gut check”. The rigorous training lasted until June of ’94. “You’ve been a SEAL for say five years or six years and you’ve done three deployments and you’ve done all of the training, now you’re getting ready to experience the Major League Baseball Training, which is at a much higher (level) and a higher quality of individuals”.
“Of course, the standards are really high, and we hold that sacred…. the safety is very high. It’s a nervous situation because at any time you could be cut, right”. Harold was 32 years old at the time and in the prime of his SEAL career and his maturity helped him successfully complete the training. After completing DEVGRU training the men were sent to Florida to a two-week course obtain their U.S Coast Guard Captain’s license qualifying them to operate a 100-ton vessel. This is normally a six-month long course.
Harold was an Independent Duty Corpsman (IDC) and he attended a highly advanced yearlong medical training program at the Portsmouth Naval Hospital in Portsmouth, VA. He learned advanced pharmacy and how to administer many drugs while understanding the side effects and how they interact with other drugs. He had to learn to administer emergency drugs and handle anaphylaxis shock. He learned to put in a chest tube. If the SEALs are in a fire fight and a man gets shot and it’s “a sucking chest wound”, the corpsman needs to be able to insert a chest tube to save the injured SEAL. He learned to insert chest tubes during extensive field medical training.
The SEALS attended numerous schools which may include, Jumpmaster School, Sniper School, Breacher School, and others. SEALs are the jacks of all trades, master of some. “You have to be engaged mentally” at all times. “You need to be capable of sucking in all of this information” in a condensed period of time knowing that if you fail in the field, you could be dead.
Harold made it through Green Team and his first assignment was security and protection for former President George H. W. Bush at his home in Kennebunkport, Maine. The SEALS had to keep inquisitive tourist in their boats away from the Bush Compound on Walker’s Point. One particular day there was a wedding, and the SEALs had to keep people away. Harold was on his radio and received a call from one of his men asking what to do if a high-speed boat approached. “You got a weapon. Smoke it". Unknown to Harold the President could hear the radio chatter and said, “you hear that? The SEALS are going to smoke something’. That’s why they’re here. I feel safe”.
On September 11th, 2001, Harold recalled being in a classroom for a public speaking course. They were alerted of a problem and they all moved into an operational room where there was big screen TVs. They watched the tragedy unfold. “In two weeks, we had boots on the ground”. However, Harold was on hold for deployment.
In December of 2002 Harold received orders to be a training instructor with Training Detachment Two. (Tradet-East). He was really hoping to deploy to Afghanistan, but “orders are not an invitation”. As luck would have it, the corpsman slated to deploy with the Team to Afghanistan was injured. Team leaders lobbied for Harold, and he was chosen to deploy with them. This would be Harold’s first opportunity since joining the Teams 14 years earlier, to experience live combat. “I got to go into the arena…was in a couple of gunfights…that kind of helped to validate…I was willing to step into the arena”.
It was January 2002 and the Team landed in Kandahar, Afghanistan and then shifted up to Bagram. The operating tempo was very high with all of the missions being conducted at night. Over the next 100 days the Team was “chasing around bomb makers and bad guys”. Harold mentioned that the deployments were scheduled for 90 to 100 days to keep everyone mentally fresh.
The SEALS owned the night. “We were Vampires”. Each night the team would be given Intel packages outlining where the enemy was. They would board helicopters and head for the objective. They traveled on Chinook helicopters, and they were big and easy to hear. Sometimes they would exit the helicopter and hike to the target. Sometimes circumstances dictated they fast rope into the target. Harold said the Taliban would often flee when they saw the SEALS coming. “We’d find them and if they were shooting at us, they’re not going to last too long”. They would retrieve whatever intel they could find and return to base. Find it, fix it, return, repeat.
What goes through the mind of an assault team member during transit to the target? Harold talked about reviewing the mission in his head. “Where are you going? Security always, right? 360-degree security”. Some men would establish the perimeter while the others would assault the target. Communication was key to a successful mission. Communication could be through radios or hand gestures. The team had worked together so long they knew exactly where everyone should be at every point of the assault. If the SEALS got into a tough situation they could call on the air assets, “that were triple stacked” over the battlefield. Predator drones, gunships and jet fighters were some of the assets they could call upon to “rain down all the munitions that we’d need”.
“We lost several of our guys and I worked on them… and that was very difficult. If you’re a four-man team, or in a larger team, the medic will be toward the back. I still have security because…it’s not like it was back in Vietnam or World War II where they are wearing a big red cross” and not carrying a weapon. If someone is injured the medic will provide aid when a defensive perimeter is established.
After his deployment ended, he received orders to Training Detachment (Tradet) in Little Creek, Virginia. Harold was promoted to Senior Chief in Charge of the assault cell. There he was an instructor of CQC (Close Quarters Combat), MOUT (Military Operations in Urban Terrain) and VBSS (Vessel Boarding Search and Seizure). This was a two-year assignment.
Harold next received orders to SEAL Team FOUR as the Command Master Chief. Before joining the Team, he was sent to Rhode Island to attend Command Master Chief, Chief of the Boat School. After completing the school, he went to SEAL Team 4 as the Command Master Chief and deployed to Iraq in late 2004. In Iraq Harold was the Command Master Chief in charge of Force Protection. They had the mission of protecting the Iraqi government officials, ministers and President. “We were the Secret Service for those nine people. General McCrystal visited the compound one day and told the SEALS, This is a no fail mission. We cannot have a scratch (on these guys)’. Each day they would wake the officials up, take them to work in the Green Zone (which was considered safe), guard them at work and return them to the compound outside the Green Zone. “We had to protect their families too. So, it was fun. Challenging but fun”.
About 75% of the way through that deployment Harold was called back to the states to rebuild SEAL Team 4 with new graduates from BUDS and other teams. Team 4 went back to Iraq and Harold’s role was equivalent to the role of the COO of Team 4. The team was based in Bagram and their mission was to go on nightly mission looking for bomb makers. Harold went on a handful of missions, but he spent most of his time in the TOC (Tactical Operations Center) observing the nightly assaults. He was also responsible to coordinate all of the human assets assigned under the SEAL Team 4 umbrella. That was a six-month deployment. “We had a great deployment”.
Harold received orders to SOCSOUTH (Special Operations Command South) located in Homestead Florida. He was assigned as the J-3 Operations Master Chief, and he and his J-3 Commander were deployed to support a humanitarian mission in Haiti after an earthquake. He worked with a variety of non-governmental organizations. He learned of the difficulties of distributing rice and other food to the citizens. The difficulties were caused by gangs. Harold was there for 50 days.
He returned to the states in 2012 and received orders as the Operations Master Chief. After 18 months he was assigned to the Advanced Training Command as the Senior Enlisted Advisor. This group was responsible for developing and teaching advance training throughout the East coast SEAL teams. This included sniper training, breacher training, jumpmaster training, etc. that was Harold ‘s twilight tour and he retired in 2015.
Harold successfully transitioned from the Teams into the Civilian sector. He spent three and a half years at a security company deeply involved in the operations. For a security company, its operations are largely it’s people and managing those assets. As an SVP Harold had 50,000 unarmed security officers to manage. Harold worked directly for the CEO and set up training programs and ways to measure the performance of and increase the retention of the security personnel. He devised a system of stars to reward the Security professionals for completing the various training programs the company offered. It was a big hit with the Security personnel and Harold spent a lot of time in the field presenting the star awards and it really built moral. “The reason I could do it was because I was a Master Chief for 13 years. I was a chameleon with people. You just have to love people
The company was acquired, and they decided Harold was too expensive. Harold spent the next year deciding what to do next while they paid out his one-year contract. As luck would have it, he received a phone call from a friend from his military days. He wanted Harold to help him managing the restoration of the Bakers Bay resort in the Abaco’s of the Bahamas. Harold was involved with that for a little over three years and met Mike Trott, a retired Air Force veteran, and Rick Franco, a retired Marine.
They started talking about bourbon and buying a barrel of bourbon. That morphed into creating a bourbon to honor all of the unsung heroes in the military and the brotherhood of sacrifice. Rick started the bourbon company to honor his friend, Greg Wright, a Marine who made the ultimate sacrifice in Iraq. Mike Trott joined the company and then they called Harold. The three veterans represented three branches of the service. They decided to add one more veteran from the Army and call the bourbon, Four Branches. RJ Casey was a mutual friend and former Green Beret, and they invited him to join.
For the past two years the four veterans have been building the company and the brand. They designed the logo and bottle, established a relationship with a distiller in Kentucky, worked on getting the mash bill just right, established distribution and of course, marketing and getting the word out.
Harold is living his best life. He speaks on motivation and leadership. He received a phone call from the Virginia Highway Patrol. They had heard him on a podcast and heard the story of Harold’s run in with the North Carolina Highway Patrol. They invited him to speak.
He and Lisa are working on 30+ years of marriage with three children. Two sons have continued the military tradition. Harold refers to Lisa as the Homeland Admiral. “My wife stood by my side during all those deployments. She said, ‘I’m proud of you. Don’t worry about anything back here. I got this’.”
Harold looked back on his time in the Teams and had some very good insights.
“I was a good listener. I could listen. I wasn’t the smartest guy in the room by no means. But I understood the SEAL Teams. It’s about being loyal and when you say something, you mean it. Your handshake goes a long way”.
“There’s no place like the SEAL Teams for reputation. You are graded on your reputation. Your reputation is going to precede you”.
“We chose that job (SEAL Teams) so we go and do it to the best of our abilities…I hope the people out there understand what freedom costs. We just need to understand the military’s mission is to keep us safe…sometimes you have to send us, let us do our jobs because there are a lot of bad actors out there…in our world today. Hey, you know, we don’t need to be crazily divided in our country, whether your Democrat, Republican or Independent”.
Harold was the corpsman wherever he went. Not every SEAL he worked on had a serious injury. For those who needed a little direction to suck it up and get back to work, Harold would say, “Dog aint’ got nuthin’ for you”.
Harold, thank you for the countless hours of training, facing down evil actors and the sacrifices you and your family made to protect our nation. Because of you and others like you our nation can post the sign, Caution. Beware of Dog.