News

By Steve Liewer

Comforted by her friend with a caress on the shoulder, a red-haired woman wiped away tears as a bell tolled 11 times: once for each of the Navy SEALs who died a year ago.

More than 300 sailors, veterans and family members gathered yesterday at the Naval Amphibious Base in Coronado to dedicate a memorial plaque and a tree to the 11 SEALs killed June 28, 2005, on a combat mission in Afghanistan. Eight Army special forces helicopter crew members also died in the incident.

The loss rocked the tight-knit SEAL community, which numbers barely 2,000 active-duty sailors and considers the Coronado training base to be its home. Not since the landing at Normandy on D-Day in World War II had so many naval special forces died in one day, said Rear. Adm. Joseph Maguire, commander of the Coronado-based Naval Special Warfare Command.

“I don't think there's anyone here who will forget where they were that day, one year ago, at about this time, when we heard of what happened,” Maguire said. “For a community of this size, 11 is a staggering number.”

SEALs, along with other special forces, have borne a heavy load in the wars that have followed the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Sixteen SEALs have been killed and 90 wounded in action. In nearly five years of combat, most SEALs have served at least three tours, Maguire said, and some have served as many as seven.

HOWARD LIPIN / Union-Tribune
The plaque lists the casualties.
“This war is on our shoulders,” he said. “We are in the thick of it.”

Never more so, Maguire said, than last June 28, the day a four-man SEAL reconnaissance team was dropped in heavy forest high in Afghanistan's Hindu Kush mountains to look for Taliban fighters.

These SEALs quickly encountered an enemy force much larger than they anticipated. The Taliban surrounded the SEALs and pinned them down with rifle fire, mortars and grenades as their commanders watched from an unmanned aircraft circling overhead.

Lt. Michael Murphy, 29; Petty Officer 2nd Class Danny Dietz, 25; Petty Officer 2nd Class Matthew Axelson, 29; and a fourth SEAL whose identity remains secret fought back for hours.

A quick-reaction team of SEALs from Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, climbed aboard two helicopters on a high-risk mission to extract the four men. As the rescue SEALs approached their trapped comrades, a Taliban grenade hit the lead aircraft. It landed on a nearby ledge and rolled over a cliff. The other helicopter, unable to set down, returned to its base.

The 16 dead in the lead helicopter included eight SEALs: Lt. Cmdr. Erik Kristensen, 33; Lt. Michael McGreevey, 30; Senior Chief Petty Officer Daniel Healy, 36; Chief Petty Officer Jacques Fontan, 36; Petty Officer 1st Class Jeffrey Taylor, 30; Petty Officer 1st Class Jeffery Lucas, 33; Petty Officer 2nd Class Eric Patton, 22; and Petty Officer 2nd Class James Suh, 25.

On the ground, Murphy, Dietz and Axelson died of their wounds. The fourth SEAL survived with the aid of an Afghan shepherd who protected him until U.S. forces could rescue him. Dietz, Axelson and the fourth SEAL earned the Navy Cross, the service's second-highest award for valor.

“When the day was done, these men had gone to their reward,” Maguire said. “Rather than think about how they died, we should thank God for how they lived.”

He said anonymous donors contributed the plaque, a stone monument and the golden medallion tree, which has large yellow flowers that bloom each year in late June. The memorial is outside the Special Warfare Command headquarters. It is the Coronado base's first memorial dedicated to fallen SEALs, said Lt. Taylor Clark, a spokesman for the command.

Yesterday's ceremony struck a personal chord for Scott Ellison, 36, a recently retired SEAL who knew two of the June 28 victims and grew up with one of them in rural Maryland.

“For me, it's knowing these guys, where they're buried,” Ellison said. “Everybody's going to kind of grieve in their own way.”

The secrecy surrounding members of the special forces can make public expressions of grief difficult. Although there is a special forces monument at MacDill Air Force Base in Florida, SEALs have few memorials where they can commemorate their dead, aside from individual grave sites.

Now, they have a place to remember the victims of that terrible day.

“I buried every one of these men,” Maguire said. “We won't forget them.”