 These men are members of one of the most unique military organizations in history. Behind these green faces are men who have accepted the challenge of some of the most daring assignments given to American fighting men. These are the Navy's SEALs. SEAL teams were organized at the suggestion of President John Kennedy, who realized that it would take special operations to win special kinds of war. For years, the existence of these teams was a Defense Department secret. Now parts of their story can be told. In an age when most military engagements have become distant and impersonal, SEALs operate in the midst of the enemy. Their purpose is to disrupt his supply lines, choke his communications, learn his secrets. If you really want some exciting work, come to SEAL Team and you'll be involved in it. We're more or less of an unsung soldier in a lot of respects because they can't write up a lot of the things we do, but I say that within yourself you'll know, you'll have this person of pride that know you was there and you did the job. After the war they'll probably write about it, but if you're in here for just getting the brown star and your name on the front page, no you won't because they don't put our name on the front page. Well, you'll know within yourself and you'll know what your buddies have done. You'll know our record and you'll know what a great unit we are. You'll be there. All our volunteers from the famed Frogmen of the Navy's underwater demolition team, but once out of water, most similarity with Frogmen end. We are basically an intelligence gathering unit. We gather every bit of information that's possible, whether it be a small piece of paper with some Vietnamese writing on it, or trails, both traffic, anything that might be of real significant value to your intelligence officer when you get back. Every man has got to have the physical strength to get through the mission and the mental strength, not the waiver when the going gets rough and it gets pretty rough pretty regularly. You've got to want it inside of here gentlemen, I told you that. We throw things at you rather fast. You've got to react immediately. Later on, if you don't react immediately, you will be a casualty and you're doing us no good. We have to put you in an old pine box because you didn't use your noodle. You'll be exposed to pain and punishment and other little devices that we'll think of for one reason and one reason only. To make you the type of person we need to get the job done, no matter what the job is. These men are preparing for the grim reality of a personal war. Counter guerrilla jungle fighting and rugged hand-to-hand combat lies ahead. For this, they must stay in prime physical condition. Those who can't take it would be a liability in combat. In UDT training, they very definitely push you to your limits. In fact, beyond what you thought was your limit, it's an eye-opener. It was an eye-opener for me and I'm sure it was for most people. What training does for us is it gives us a stamina, teaches us to know ourselves. To know that we could if we had to run for three hours, 18 miles, so we could move across 600 meters of mud on our stomachs and be ready to fight when we get there. It's not a breeze, but I think it's more of a mental problem than it is physically. I mean, if it's a normal, average, athletic type person that has nothing physically wrong with him, then it's all up to him. If he wants UDT bad enough, he can endure the runs. They don't punish you to where you can't walk again or you don't have to swim so far that you're going to cramp up and drown. Get up. Straighten your legs. Adams, lock your knees. You can get a great deal of confidence out of some of these obstacles over there. Physical training, certainly. You work different parts of the body on different obstacles. You work coordination, as a matter of fact, and a great deal of confidence in yourself. It's just that, well, I want UDT and I can do all these things, and then you get a positive attitude about the training, and there's nothing they can do to make you quit. You can endure all the extra push-ups and the instructors hollering at you and just take it with a grain of salt and just say, well, that's part of the program. Or just think ahead, well, in another hour this problem is going to be over and I'll be back in the bags in the hot shower and a hot meal. The temperature in the shade is 193. There isn't any water and there isn't any grass. All there is is cactus and it sticks you in there. Glorious, glorious, one gig of beer for the four of us. Sing in glory to God that there are no more of us, for one of us could drink it all along damn near. Hooyah! Hooyah! Hooyah! Hooyah! Hooyah! SEALs are specialists in being where they are least expected. Getting to the job may mean jumping out of a boat, a helicopter, or an airplane. You have to want this type of duty in order to survive this training. Some people, I suppose, want to prove something to themselves. Some people, maybe they want to prove something to somebody else. I think it's the psychological aspect, the hardship while you're doing all this. In other words, you think about things a little bit differently. You start realizing that probably one of the greatest things you ever had was just sitting in a warm room with a cup of coffee. You just don't know how much you can appreciate something like that. It prepares you well for when you go in combat. You learn that a little rain's not going to hurt you. A little mud's not going to hurt you. You don't like it, but you learn that you can live with it. Okay, this morning, gentlemen, we're going to take up what was known in the teams as an Emerson scuba rig. This means that it is a self-contained underwater breathing apparatus. This rig is used any type of clandestine or sneak attack operations. It is desirable for this use because of the fact that there are no bubbles coming out of this rig when it is submerged. We can have you step up here, sir. We'll slip you into it. SEALs must be able to turn off physical discomfort, but their minds must be in top working order. Few jobs in the Navy require more mature judgments to be made almost instantaneously. In a combat zone, these decisions can mean the difference between the success and failure of a mission. Between life and death. Our type of training now, of course, includes diving and demolition work and parachuting. Very extensive weapon training and tactics training, so our people are well-qualified, or maybe even the most qualified troop there is. When you put that shoe down, your stomach starts getting hard. Your first jump especially. When you say, look up, check static line, check your equipment. The word comes to stand in the door, and I was scared. It was a thrill. It was challenging. It's not everybody going to get up and jump out of a perfectly good plane. Why? I don't know. Every SEAL is trained in parachuting. Floating down from the sky is a good way of getting to a patrol area unannounced. SEALs learn jump techniques with Army paratroops at Fort Benning, Georgia. Pull that deep one. He's coming down, he's coming down like a feather. What is he? Jump on arm four, prepare for a normal slip to your front. To your front four. Your other front four. Drop four. Jump on arm three, prepare for a normal slip to your front four. You get to the door and you leave. It's one motion as opposed to being there for a couple of minutes. You exit. You can feel the chute coming out of the bag off my back, the pack. Then as the prop blast hits the chute, you can really feel the tug. You look up if your risers aren't crossed. If they're crossed, you've got to uncross them by pulling them apart. The harness which is uncomfortable as anything can be when you're wearing it on the ground is like a chair in the sky. And you just float down. Once you leave the door and you're out in the air then, it's the greatest thing in the world because you know you've done it, you know that you didn't have to be pushed out the door. You did this thing on your own. You're still apprehensive of every jump because those thoughts always run through my mind. What am I doing up in this airplane? Why do I want to jump out of this airplane when I know it's going to land? But then once it's time to hook up and go, then it's just, hell, I love it. As you approach the ground, there's a man in a bullhorn saying, take a pair of land attitude. Grab your risers, take a slip into the wind so you're trying to stand still. Now bend your knees, point your toes, chin up, eyes in the horizon. After your first one, you're ready to jump the next four. The seals call this halo. High altitude, low opening. For seals, a means of silent entry to the enemy's territory. Before deployment to a combat zone, seal squads practice together the way it will be over there. You never say anything on patrol. From the time you leave that boat or the helicopter or however you're getting inserted, to the time you get back, you don't even open your mouth. We teach them hand and arm signals in cadre training. It doesn't make any difference what type of signal you do use as long as everybody knows it. To bring back information that will help reveal the enemy's story, seals must be alert every minute. An intelligence officer can do so much more with little facts than you have any idea of. If he can find out, for instance, that there is large amounts of rice being moved down a river, then he knows there are either people down there needing food or that there will be people down there soon. When he adds this to other bits of information he's found out, well, a pattern of enemy activity begins to develop. All the techniques they have learned are brought to bear in this realistic training. As individuals, they learn to function together. They become a team. Well, there's a certain amount of romance to it. There's a certain amount of glamour to being a member of what we consider without question the best troops in the country has. I think we're such a highly specialized group of people that we're in great demand. There's just not enough of us to go around. I think our record speaks for itself. 70 or 80 bronze stars and numerous purple hearts and silver stars. A couple of those in Legion of Merits and the wards have been just numerous. As far as I'm concerned, each and every one of them are highly deserved. I think it comes from teamwork togetherness. The thing that motivates a lot of people is that, again, it is a challenge to a young man. It is we feel and we are proud of the fact that we're one of the most highly trained and efficient small units that there is in any service. And I think it's the pride factor that motivates kids to volunteer for Stilton. It's just knowing that they're going to be in one of the most specialized trained units there is. This is my own personal feeling. That's the reason why I stay here. I have another eight years here in the Navy and I'm going to spend it in Stilton. Working on the land in other lands means using another language. For men who go to Southeast Asia, the Vietnamese language is a necessity. Today we're going to learn Vietnamese. Excuse me, ma'am. Yes? Today is very beautiful. Yes, today is very beautiful. Which country are you from? Yes, there are many Southeast Asian countries. Yes, today is very beautiful. Well, our primary job is to gather intelligence. We don't go in to kill Charlie, we go in to capture him. Well, we always tell him in his own language with a few words that we know in Vietnamese. Things like stop, surrender, come here, get your hands up, you're surrounded, this type of thing. See, the three short phrases that we use are Dong Lai, which means stop, Lai De, which means come here, and Didi, which is sort of a slang Vietnamese phrase that means get the hell out of here, move out. As often as possible, forays on the ground are planned with a look from above. The war in Southeast Asia is an unusual kind of war. There are no front lines here. The elusive enemy can appear as villagers or farmers. To find out what is going on in unfriendly territory, it takes men on the ground. Okay, men, this is the warning order for tonight's mission. The mission tonight is going to be an ambush. Careful consideration of every eventuality has led to a specific plan for this patrol. Every phase of the mission has been thought through. That platoon leader has a tremendous amount of load on his back. A lot of people think, well, the squad leader, he's just a man that gives orders. But while everybody else is sitting around shooting a bull and that man's getting the mission order, he's got four or five hours of work to do. He's got to coordinate everything, his artillery, his airstrikes. What kind of support is he going to have available? He gets it all set up. He works four or five hours before the people even get the word on it. It's just done as a warning order. The one primary danger area which we know about is this bridge. You can see what it looks like here. It's just a wooden bridge, hard top. And our actions at this danger area will be as follows. We will come to this point. We'll be patrolling down here on our file. We will stop, shore to the bridge. We had the capabilities being inserted from everything from submarines to fixling aircraft. But essentially the terrain is going to tell you whether or not you're going to use a helicopter or a TBR. Most of the men feel that the named SEAL team carries a real reward. You can give them a medal out for 50, 60% of the missions we go on. Since you can't have that many medals, the value of being a SEAL I think is what they're really concerned with. The natural medal they present to you at the end of a tour is more of a token value I think. If you don't have the element of surprise, you're lost and you won't come out of the mission. You have to have the element of surprise all the time. As soon as you're compromised, as soon as they know you're there, you're in trouble and you have to be on the way out. If you've got a long way to go, in a particularly hostile area, you won't make it out. You're swimming across streams very frequently. On long patrol you might swim 15 streams or more. It's not unusual at all. And these don't range anywhere from a few feet to maybe 50 yards. This is carrying all of your weapons and ammunition. And it can become somewhat of a trouble, especially for a radio miner or machine gunner. There's quite a few guys that like the element of danger, the element of surprise. In fact, the only thing that really limits us is the imagination on a part of the people that assign us targets. The philosophy I use is there isn't an impossible mission, really. I think people just want to be with the best group. They've already made it to UDT and they know that if they have the mental attitude, they can be SEALs and be right with the top doing the most exciting things and be treated as the elite. I think a lot of people join the SEAL team to be with a group that can fight well and still be part of the Navy. What it is, I guess, is a prestige of being the top man. You know all the time you're going to be called to do the hardest job. The job that nobody else will take. We insist on very physically fit people. Also, a person that is mentally stable to be able to do the things we do because everything we do has a certain amount of risk involved in it. And it has to be a person that accepts it. It's not a thrill-seeker, not just a young kid that wants a bunch of thrills of jumping out of an airplane or this type of thing, but one that expects danger and knows how to handle it and how to live with it. Because it's the old thing you do, live with danger as part of your life. In Vietnam, SEALs have learned that prisoners are a good source of information on the enemy's situation and intentions. One prisoner can provide information that may lead to the capture of many more. There's a shore, mud-solt SEALs relax. New information will be pieced together with existing intelligence. The pattern of enemy activity brought up to date. Often a SEAL patrol returns with word of unsuspected enemy activity, the location of new campsites, or knowledge of enemy movement on an infiltration route. Troops are alerted. Both loads move up the river to strike back. Armed Navy patrol boats and gunship helicopters answer the challenge. Many military engagements are based on information the SEALs have brought back. Continuing the tradition of bold men who go behind the enemy's lines, SEALs work as they say in Charlie's backyard. Their success depends on their being where they are not expected. For their dedication to duty, SEALs have become some of the most decorated fighting men in history. The award citations retell some of their exploits. On one occasion, while conducting a clandestine combat patrol through hostile terrain, the mission was to capture Viet Cong in order to gain intelligence on enemy supply movements in the area. The patrol stopped while the forward security element was sent out to reconnoiter a bridge the patrol would cross. A Viet Cong ambush team had moved in to set an ambush at the crossing point. The point man sensed it and charged their position, repeatedly moving without cover, leaving himself vulnerable to enemy fire. His aggressiveness and quick thinking saved his patrol from suffering heavy casualties. Ribbons and medals represent the accomplishment of exceptional deeds. But awards are not the reason for performance and combat. What these men are and what they represent has sustained them and given them their purpose.