September 24, 2025 • 35 mins
Ed Hiner had no intention of joining the military until a friend's father forced him to help a military family in need. During that experience, Hiner met a Navy SEAL, learned about what the SEALs do, and immediately knew that's what he wanted to do with his life. Hiner joined the Navy, qualified for BUD/s training, and was one of just 10 SEAL candidates in his class to graduate.
In this edition of Veterans Chronicles, Hiner takes us through BUD/s training - from how his life abruptly changed the moment he arrived at Coronado to the mental toughness required to survive to his absolute refusal to quit.
Hiner shares stories from his deployments to Iraq, including a high-profile mission thrust upon him as soon as he arrived and capturing the notorious "Butcher of Ramadi."
He also talks about the value of restraint in combat and why not using lethal force often saved a lot of lives and trouble.
In this edition of Veterans Chronicles, Hiner takes us through BUD/s training - from how his life abruptly changed the moment he arrived at Coronado to the mental toughness required to survive to his absolute refusal to quit.
Hiner shares stories from his deployments to Iraq, including a high-profile mission thrust upon him as soon as he arrived and capturing the notorious "Butcher of Ramadi."
He also talks about the value of restraint in combat and why not using lethal force often saved a lot of lives and trouble.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:11):
Welcome to Veterans Chronicles. I'm Greg Corumbas. Our guest in
this edition is retired US Navy Lieutenant Commander Ed Heiner.
Commander Heiner spent all twenty years of his service in
Naval special Warfare, more commonly known as the US Navy Seals.
He served many deployments following the nine to eleven terrorist attacks.
(00:33):
Ed Heiner enlisted in the Navy in April of nineteen
ninety two, more than nine years before nine to eleven.
He was in his early twenties and had never previously
been interested in military service, but he says all of
that changed while living in Virginia when a friend's dad
made him help a military wife in need.
Speaker 2 (00:51):
That's a very strange one because I turned down scholarships
that some schools are looking at me. I'm like, I'd
never thought about the military. Long story short about in
the first golf period, a friend of mine, we're in
Virginia Beach, Virginia, and his father had retired and was
now running a storage unit and had a small house.
(01:11):
My buddy and I've been out on and I get loopy.
He drags us up at like six o'clock in the
morning or whatever time was id. Hey, and his dad
has a huge heart. He's like, hey, we got this
lady here. She's her husband's on some ship out in
the middle of the golf and uh, she's got like
three kids and she's getting evicted out of her place.
So my buddy Tom and I got a truck, got
some boxes, went to her house, and I used to
(01:33):
packed this woman's stuff up. In the first trip we
were taking to the storage unit, this guy beside me.
I started just started talking to a big, buffed up dude.
I was like, I told him the story. He goes,
I'm in a navy, I'm on leave. I'll help you.
And for twenty four hours we moved this woman's furniture.
He was a seal. I didn't even know what a
seal was like what And I just couldn't believe what
(01:54):
he told me about what his life was, what he did.
So I immediately hitchhiked back from Virginia Beach to Richmond, Virginia,
where I was living. It's time and I went to
the recruiter and I actually listed, So I was primal
listed on a Mustang.
Speaker 1 (02:09):
Heiner enlisted with his eyes firmly set on qualifying for
Basic Underwater Demolition Seal Training better known as BUDS. But
first he had to prove himself in basic training, which
took place in Great Lakes, Illinois, and like most new recruits,
Heiner had his moments of realization that he really was
in the military.
Speaker 2 (02:29):
I realized what I kind of like, I think every
person that joins the military says, at one point, what
did I do?
Speaker 3 (02:35):
Right?
Speaker 2 (02:35):
Like, Wow, it's real, this is real. You know, you
got eighteen years because I was already twenty three, almost
twenty four years old. You got eighteen year old kids
had never been away from home. They're crying all night.
So I'm like a big brother deal and they will
now find myself like consoling them in the racks. I'm like, dude.
So it was shocking. Plus, you know, I mean, you
(02:56):
learn to take orders. That's what you do. You learned to,
you know, kind of conform to what the military And
that's not brainwashing, it's just you know, you have to conform.
You're part of this team.
Speaker 1 (03:05):
Beyond the initial culture shock, Heiner says he immediately saw
beneficial aspects of the military that had not been part
of his life before joining the Navy.
Speaker 2 (03:15):
I like the discipline. I like the commonader who liked
the sense of family. I missed that. I really missed
that part of it, just the sense of as odd
as you think at the time when you're doing it,
sometimes you like, ah, the government's on my ass, and
but at the same time, it's like having a parent
on you. It's like having a family network no matter what.
(03:36):
You know. Even my wife she'll she'll always tell us
stories like no matter what, Like if I was gone,
she could call anyone at any moment and they'd be
at the house, like, Okay, what do you need right now,
you know, with the kids, anything, you know. So, yeah,
that sense of family, that purpose had driven kind of understanding.
Not everybody's the same, but we have the same mission,
(03:58):
so to speak, and we just have kind of like
a you know, that bond at Brotherhood. People talk about that.
It's really really hard to replicate in life.
Speaker 1 (04:08):
But Heiner was keeping his eyes firmly on the prize.
He wanted to qualify for BUDS training, and doing well
in basic training was the quickest way to get there.
Speaker 2 (04:18):
The whole system's different now, but in nineteen ninety two
ninety three kind of time period you had to compete
at boot camp to get to a Sealed Billy, So
you had no idea coming in, so you were just
throwing the dice on the table. But it was you know,
from what the recruiters tell you is that if you
do well, you'll get accepted, which I did, so I
(04:38):
went straight into Buds right in August. I got out
of a school because we used to have to go
to like an apprentice type school. I was a machinist
mate at first, and then went to BUDS starting class
one eighty nine, finished nine ten of us.
Speaker 1 (04:52):
Finally, Heiner had his opportunity to make his dream come true.
He knew he was in for a very difficult six months.
What he wasn't ready for was how difficult life got
thus second he arrived at Seal training in Coronado, California.
Speaker 2 (05:08):
I remember showing up in like a dress uniform and
before like a lot of the rules were in place,
and I just remember like the chaos of it all
because you walk in, you got your uniform, you get
your little like envelope, you know, because way before smartphones
are any that Internet, and it's just immediately they just
get up your ass and they're yelling screaming you're don't
(05:30):
push ups like wait, I mean dress uniform like what
you know that it's just just mayhem. And I think
that was kind of the purpose, Like yeah, welcome to it.
Speaker 1 (05:40):
Heiner says there is a reason for every painful and
exhausting challenge. First, he says you may enter Seal training
without knowing your weak spots, but he says BUDS will
definitely find them.
Speaker 2 (05:52):
I think Budget is very special in the sense what
every person. I don't care if you're an Olympic athlete,
a superstar, something's going to get you and something eventually
will trigger you. You'll have a bad day. Boom six
months you have a bad day. The instructors are on you.
You know you have a weakness whatever that is. You know,
because we've had Olympic swimmers come and fail out quit
(06:13):
this couldn't take it because they like they're failing stuff.
It's like, yeah, you're going to fail a bunch of
different things. It's just I think every person, it just
it does test you pretty well. Are you willing to
just you know, not quit, not give up.
Speaker 1 (06:27):
Despite all the legendary stories of the physical demands of
BUDS training, especially during Hell week, Heiner says the intensity
of the training is actually testing and forging something far
more important for naval special warfare.
Speaker 2 (06:41):
It's between the years. It's it. I mean, it was
almost Maybe it's advanced a little bit since I've been retired,
not much, but that first six months is just an
indoctrination for mental toughness. It's getting more sophisticated. But there's logs,
there's cold water, there's sand, and that's it. And people
to come to this. Now we built a billion dollar
(07:02):
I think facility outs are now, But people used to
come in and they were like, is this it?
Speaker 3 (07:07):
Like?
Speaker 2 (07:07):
This is it? The water's cold, the air is cold,
the logs are heavy.
Speaker 1 (07:12):
And part of that mental toughness involves following the rules
and dealing with the consequences after breaking them. For Heiner,
it was trying to make a phone call, which was forbidden.
Speaker 2 (07:22):
This got Bill Wilson was the commanding off. He was
the OICA, which he ended up being a captain. I
didn't work for him my last job, but he he
was so pissed off that I would any of us
would disobey that rule even though we're all doing we're
all doing it. All these officers are doing for I
think it was almost a complete week. I was wet,
(07:44):
so meaning two o'clock in the morning, the guard would
come get me, go hit the surf. Hit I go
back in bed, lay in the wet four o'clock hit surf.
They would take on on the gun ranges. They had
this big, huge, massive trough. We call it slushy. You
fill it up with the ice. All the students would
fill it up with the license you garden knows it. So
it's full and you have like a snorkel. You're like, oh,
(08:07):
slush you get in there. So you go into water,
breathing and slushy. So I did that for almost a
week straight. And that's where they say, oh, you got
a temper because I was. It was pretty close.
Speaker 1 (08:20):
As miserable as that punishment was, it was nothing new.
Heiner lets us in on a simple fact of Bud's training.
Speaker 2 (08:27):
Well, Admiral's love of Coronado. No. No, the cold water
gives you an advantage that other things don't give you. Know,
you can because people think California like, oh, it's sunny
this like yep, that water's fifty five to sixty five
degrees depending air temperatures forty some at night and the
Bud student's always wet. One thing about budget are never dry.
Speaker 1 (08:49):
But despite the mental and physical toll inflicted by Bud's training,
Heiner says he never once thought about quitting. He had
a goal and nothing short of a bad injury was
going to stop him from achieving.
Speaker 2 (09:00):
Yet I knew I was not going to quit. Everybody,
because a lot of seals that I talked to you
and they're like, oh man, everybody talks about quitting. Like
to me, there was no option. I didn't have a
plan B. That's probably the perfect plan. Like if people
have like I don't know if most people don't know this,
but right now in the seal teams, there's a thousand
people get accepted every year to try out enlisted, right
and only about twenty maybe twenty five of those. We
(09:22):
can't come from the military. They have to be Sedaians
because we don't want them to have a plan B.
You know, because you're like, ah, I had a nice
job on that ship. You know, the drop ratio was higher.
But you get these guys that come in they're like, hey,
this is all I want to do with my life,
you know, like Okay, that's the guy. That's the guy
we want. So I didn't think about quitting. There were
(09:44):
times I fantasize. I'm probably prayed heavily, you know, like
everybody does, because we would run across the Coronado Road
there to go eat chow. Because you run with this
two hund pound boat on your head. Six dudes, it's awful, right,
It's absolutely awful. And he was like, maybe a car
will just run me over. Is there a pothole I
(10:07):
can just step in and break my leg? You know,
they got those thoughts go through your head because I
was like, this is it sucks? Yeah.
Speaker 1 (10:13):
Years later, Heiner was on the other side as a
seal instructor. He says he took a calmer approach to
seal candidates who tapped out then some of the other instructors.
Speaker 2 (10:23):
I did two years of hell weeks. I've ran all
the hell weeks. I was a third phase officer. I
loved it. I was like usually midnight to eight in
the morning because there's three shifts and all of them
would quit and it would come to me, and I'm like,
send them to me because someone like I saw God,
I don't want to kill people. Blah. Blah, my shut up,
why'd you quit? Water's cold?
Speaker 3 (10:44):
Got it?
Speaker 2 (10:44):
And then I would take them in and then basically
it's like an interview is like, look, dude, this is
an interview process. You came here. Don't be ashamed. You
decided this is not for you. That's it, and you know,
best of luck. I mean I never held it against
any of them. They quit. I mean just wasn't for them.
It's like any kind of job interview, right, you go, yeah,
it's not for me. Some instructures took it differently, be like, no,
(11:06):
that's not the way we should take it here. Because
these guys showed up. They put enough on the line
to put their name on the Navy for four or
five years. They're committed. Now they're in the Navy and
just didn't work out for him.
Speaker 1 (11:19):
That's retired US Navy seal Ed Heiner, still ahead nine
to eleven, his first mission and his most famous mission
in Iraq, and much more. I'm Greg Corumbus and this
is Veterans Chronicles.
Speaker 2 (11:33):
Sixty Seconds of Service.
Speaker 4 (11:35):
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(12:10):
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(12:30):
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Speaker 1 (12:34):
This says Veterans Chronicles. I'm Greg Corumbus. Our guest this
week has retired US Navy Lieutenant Commander Ed Heiner. A
moment ago, we tracked Heiner's journey from unlikely Navy recruit
to a young man determined to become a seal, regardless
of what he had to do to achieve it. After
all the pain, sleep deprivation, and mental toughness, those who
(12:57):
survive seal training graduate and move on to actual seal teams.
Graduation is one of the greatest accomplishments of a seal's life,
but oddly, Heiner says, he and the others who made
it through didn't actually do much celebrating. It was onto
their seal assignment, gelling with the existing members of that
seal team and getting ready to deploy wherever they were needed.
(13:21):
But despite all of that professionalism, don't think for a
second that the established seals didn't have a little fun
with the new guys.
Speaker 2 (13:29):
I kind of showed up at Shill Team fourth nineteen
August nineteen ninety three, right after jump school. I was
the first new guy there. Because they have cycles, the
detail of brings in cycles, everybody else took leave. I didn't.
I didn't want to take I was like, no, I'm going, man,
this is you know, I'm getting after this checked in
and I won't go through the stories of what happened,
but this is say I was indoctrinated. The first week,
(13:52):
I was a brand new guy. I remember my chief
Mullback was that his name. He's a kind of a
smart ass, and he's like, ah, I don't know, guy,
He's like, clean all the heads. So basically I went
through the whole building clean, all the showers, all the heads,
all everything. Even though we had janitors they were like,
look at it like crazy. And he was like, I
(14:13):
came back in the week on a chief. I got
it done. He's like, you actually did it. It was
kind of like a hazing promce for us, you know.
But yeah, I was the first new guy there. Another
friend of mine show will he'll be very famous. He's
a congressman right now. He showed up, almost got kicked out.
I'll let him tell that story.
Speaker 1 (14:32):
Though, for seals, getting familiar with their gear is another
major component of writiness. Heiner says he was not as
much of a gear guy as some other seals, but
he still knows every piece of it inside and out.
Speaker 2 (14:45):
Well. The gear is a big issue that if there's
anything I still have dreams about, it's my gear. It's
almost constant in my life. My gun, my gear, my gun,
like always parent because the gear is a big thing.
You could tell a lot about a person, but how
he takes care of what he has, you know, what
he's doing. And pre nine eleven was a little bit different.
We were coming out of that Vietnam era. You know,
the money wasn't there and stuff. After nine eleven, it
(15:06):
is just money slung everywhere. I mean there are times
you walk into buildings there's stocks of equipment, like with
your name on. It was like, I don't even know
what this is. I got fifty holsters, I got this
and buy it. Yeah, I mean it was just it
was kind of crazy. I wasn't really necessary a gearhound.
Some guys are, they love that stuff, but yeah, I
mean just watching the progression of all of them, all
(15:26):
the equipment that we got after nine eleven was like,
it was just it was pretty damn amazing. Warfare change,
I mean in our tactics change, Our warfare changed, how
we conducted ourselves changed, how we structured ourselves changed. And
you know, obviously the gear. You got to use your gear,
you know, as much as you can.
Speaker 1 (15:42):
Heiner served as a seal for more than eight years
before nine to eleven. Most of his deployments during those
years focused on drug trafficking in Latin America, but of
course the world changed on September eleventh, two thousand and one.
Commander Heiner remembers the day vividly and how quickly changed
the mission for his seal team.
Speaker 2 (16:03):
I was in a place called the Post of California.
It's forty five miles east of San Diego. It's where
we have like a rifle range, pistol range. We have
kill houses, you know, where we do a lot of
our training. And I was a third phase officer buds. See.
I just got just literally taken over four months earlier.
I just got them off to the deployment. I slept
(16:23):
outside because we were we all camp kind of camped
there and slept out. Was like it was a beautiful day.
We got this just a wonderful time. And the team room,
we have a team room, were all our guns and
ammon and all that kind of stuff is just stashed
in there. We have CNN on just like a satellite,
and I here's some nice man. I could hear people
(16:44):
talking and screaming, so I'm like going in. I'm like, oh,
I'm just assuming they were going to hammer some bud students, right,
I'm like, oh, they're just you know, getting them up,
beating them, you know, kind of getting on them. And
I'm like, what the hell are y'all looking at? And
it was like we had to speak screen. It's like,
what's the dude, you know, all the guys like airplane
just hit that building. I'm like what. So we're watching
(17:06):
it and then'm like is that taped? And I watched
the second one? Oh my god. Then you know, then
it was recall. So I went back to San Diego. Yeah,
pretty much for us, it was his full called press
because we it was such a you know, kind of
obviously for the world is shock and all. But I
went back to my old commanding officer and I was like, hey,
(17:28):
I just got back. My guy's already ready. We got
all our equipment, we're already sustained. You know, we don't
need any training. I want to be the first wave
to go to Afghanistan. He's like deal. So we were
manning up for that and then I remember Tom. His
name is Tom Deets, good, good, good, good guy. He
h A couple of weeks later, we're like gearing up
for this. He's like, yeah, we're here and it's not
(17:50):
really going to be a sprint, and it's gonna be
a marathon. Don't worry, You're going to get part of
it because you know all of us. You know, you're
seals like playing, you know, if you're a football player,
you want to play Sundays, right, you want to set
to bench, you want to eat. Hey, this is time
to go. This is our moment, and this is our history.
And yeah, it was a marathon. Little did we know,
as you mean an ultra marathon.
Speaker 1 (18:09):
That's Ed Heiner, who served twenty years as a US
Navy seal. In a Moment, Heiner takes us on his
first deployment to Iraq, where he was thrust into a
high profile operation almost as soon as he landed. He
also tells us about capturing the famed butcher of Ramadi
and the odd experience of being deployed without having very
(18:30):
specific objectives in Ramadi. He'll also explain why there are
heroes who deserve more recognition for the lethal actions they
did not take, and how those turned out to be
very good decisions under tremendous stress. All of that is
straight ahead. I'm Greg Corumbus and this is Veterans Chronicles.
(18:52):
This is Veterans Chronicles. I'm Greg Corumbus. Our guest has
retired US Navy seal and Lieutenant Commander Ed Heiner. After
years of being a seal and intense preparation for war
in the Middle East, Heiner and his seal team deployed
to Iraq, and we begin that portion of Heiner's story
with his unlikely first mission in Iraq.
Speaker 2 (19:13):
First missions, I was with an organization called Task Force Black.
I was with the British Special Forces. Brits are weird,
as most people know. I've been with him in a while,
and I was going to be an element leader in
this Task Force Black. And I know we were took
us like two or three days to get in, as
you know, back in two thousand and four, and we
were just hanging out trying to get into the country,
(19:35):
low flying in then slept like two or three days.
We landed and Baghdad Helos forty sevens picked us up
Schnooke's and brought us into which was called the Green
Zone at the time. It's kind of a semi safe place.
It was still kind of bad guys, still gunfights happening
inside and stuff. So we had had a compound there
(19:57):
and the Brits were weird because they don't let you
travel armed up, even though you're going to the war zone.
You don't you don't have like full on magazines and
gun you're not tooled up as well with weapons. So
as soon as I got there, the Sas, SBS, s
A S, they're kind of counterparts like Sheals and Delta.
The Sas were leaving their squadron and they're like, hey man,
(20:19):
before we take off, we're going to do you know,
like a I guess you call a base tour, like
show you where not to go. If you go outside
of this, you're in no man's land. And uh so
they were taking him out and I was like, no, no, no, man,
I'm good. Someone sitting there jamming my magazines, putting my
good aids in and get my like stuff all dolled in.
(20:40):
It was only four of us and this guy s I,
s M I six or whatever it is. It's midday.
It's like twelve o'clock. I'm completely exhausted. And it was
I think it was four of us total in the
compound and this SI this their intelligence officer, came in
AND's like, hey man, we've been searching for this dude,
this Syrian money whatever whatever, he was for a long
(21:04):
time and we got his ass. It's high noon, like
so like I've still senior guys. I'm like, all right,
hadn't man, which was spooky because at the time, you know,
the gpss were kind of new. We just had like
GPS is in our dash. We had civilian cars. We
weren't drying humbies, you know. So man, a couple of
dudes drove downtown bag down. Have you ever seen the
(21:26):
movie Black hawk Down. We had been watching that damn movie,
so it it reminded me exactly black I'm like, oh
my god, it's high noon. There's thousands of people around me,
a couple of dudes, civilian clothes, no black op, we
had no no QRF. So we stormed into uh we
(21:47):
stormed into a building, hit the wrong room. But yeah,
the guy at the front, we didn't speak Arabic much,
we didn't have an interpreter, he knew we were there
for and uh so we hit the wrong damn room.
Hit the wrong room because I think they was like
I figured how it works, but like you know, zero
floors one floor and one floor is too. It was weird,
(22:08):
but anyway, we hit the wrong one, came back you
obviously putting a gun in his face, like hey dude.
He took us up to the right room.
Speaker 3 (22:14):
We hit this.
Speaker 2 (22:15):
Uh hit this room. This is like this flimsy ass
hotel door. Yeah, captured this dude. It was they were
looking for it for a long time. He had his
weapons and stuff, you know, didn't shoot him and beat
him up a little bit. But the strange part of
it is that there was a woman with him and
she's like screaming, like yelling and cussing and Arabic and like, ah,
(22:41):
A paid her. She was a hooker. So my first
experience with al Qaeda the extremist was basically paying off
of she was a hooker. He was in town. So
all these extremists, all these like fundamentals, people talk like
they're full of shit. Yep, booze and women they all
like it.
Speaker 1 (23:00):
But one of the strangest developments for Heiner was being
in Ramadi without a very clear game plan for the deployment.
He says, the team quickly adapted to the situation and
actually started to take on a different mindset to their
work as time went on.
Speaker 2 (23:15):
As a seal team, I think personally, I think we
started to really grow because before it was, uh, it
was just direct action. We just shoot kill people. But
you know that that kind of mindset. And I went
out there. I actually went out there in money and
no five without a mission statement. I just got actually
say this for the record, you still owed me money.
(23:35):
I was the first seal to ever be promoted for combat.
Didn't get the credit and didn't get the money, but
they still owed me. So basically my mission was to
go out there just like we don't know what you're
gonna do, you tell us. And it was the first
time because normally like, hey, we have these mission sets,
we're going to hit you. So so I went there
a couple weeks early with a bunch of other people
(23:58):
and we started working with the locals, and we knew
the government was basically telling us, you know, General Casey
at the time I think was it was like you
cannot do unilateral das anymore, meaning seals, you can't go
out in the middle night shoot people, right, that's over.
You have to take a rakis with you. So we're like, well,
we don't know anything about that. That's green Berets types stuff.
(24:21):
We learned quickly we're like, okay, okay, how do we
do this? And so we actually set it up within
a few weeks. I kind of figured out work with
some other people, obviously not me, but to work with
the conventional forces before because our compounds are outside of
all the conventional forces and normally we never mix companies.
You know a lot of times special forces are going
(24:42):
to do stuff into side of cities and just hit
targets and kill a shake or whatever they could do,
and then it messes up the whole battle space, and
you know, it was going back and forth something like
I think we were probably the first unit to get
on board with a battlespace commander say hey, we're together.
I'm here to help you do your mission. And we
(25:03):
ended up taking over instead of having we had a
fifty man special mission unit that rackies that we kind
of recruited for and uh, I'm like, well we could
do more than that. So what we actually did is
took on uh when one when seven when they won nine?
So so like a brigade rakis, so there's three battalions.
We're like, hey, here's what we're going to do. And
(25:24):
I sent it up to my boss, like here's how
we're going to do this. We're gonna split our whole
force open. And we had like literally like the Sixes
in charge of hundreds and hundreds of Rakies and the missions.
It was incredible. It's like, but divided them up where
they could split the missions up and train train them
with the Army was doing all the training, which we
(25:45):
were happy and the Armies happy to train them because
they're like, hey, we'll stay here and do that training.
Uh is to is to get them up and running,
because you know, we can play that wackamo game we
call it wakama like boom, shoot that guy. Good good,
that's great. But if you don't win something, if you
don't hold ground, we win nothing. So I think our
(26:05):
guys in that truth, I think really started to develop
that mindsets like yeah, I see what you know. Evolution
of all forces changes over the time, and it's like, look,
I don't pick the mission, it picks me, you know, right,
I mean I don't pick the fight, you know, I
go to it. And that's kind of our mentality is like, hey,
if we have to walk around dressed up, is Mickey
(26:26):
Mouse handing out soccer balls, We'll do that and I
think my guys, you know, the guys was you know,
I was in charge of kind of they adjusted to that.
I was like, you understand what I'm saying. I'm like
that we're here to win, because now I want to
go into this long thing because you know there's Navy
seal ethos, right two thousand and five we fought, but
the ethos. One of the battles was island off the
(26:49):
coast of California, San Clemente Island. For like a week,
fifty some seals gallop pole. They did all the surveys
and what does it mean to be a Navy seal?
And there's a one page doc out there right now.
It gets updated a little bit. But in one of
the battles that it was happening was and it was
probably a good time two thousand and five is that
the battle was between the word destroy or defeat, and
(27:13):
defeat side, which I was on, was more of the
kind of the strength or guile right like cleverness, like
you know, we don't have to go and put the
hammer down every single time. You just create more enemies.
And then we had half the people around the destroy side.
It never made it never made to eat this nobody
could decide, but it was an interesting brain concept of
(27:35):
how seals started to evolve. I think we started to
evolve into doing different things. And you talk to a
young seal now, I was like, ah, this is the
way we've all be done. I'm like, no, it wasn't.
Speaker 1 (27:46):
One of the most famous events of his time in
Ramadi was nabbing the notorious Butcher of Ramadi.
Speaker 2 (27:52):
I think one of the biggest one, the funniest one,
because we got to the butcher of Ramani. Finous was
his name. You can see it on TV like they
talked about it. White House came out and talked about it.
Fanos was the butcher. The American sniper actually claims he
got him. Like, no, you didn't.
Speaker 3 (28:07):
I did.
Speaker 2 (28:07):
But we hit this hit hit this al Kaita cell.
They'd come in and uh, we'd hit it. Long story short,
and we got everyone in that whole damn group but him,
the butcher himself. But we had never been in that
part of the city, and that's part of the city
had never really experienced like explosive breaching. They're like, okay,
(28:32):
So one day, I think it was like three days later,
the base commander calls me. It's like, hey, we got
the butcher, Like, what are you talking about? Long story
is the one of the shakes that the village elder
drives up to one of the gates opened, like I
was trying to, you know, wave the guard down. They
got his guards, Like with the fifty cow, he's opens
(28:56):
up the trunk and there he is the butcher, taped up,
beat up, and you know, obviously through interpretation with the
base commander stuff, I guess they worked it out. And
shake was like, listen, I don't know who came here
and did what they did, but if they promised never
to come again, we'll never let these people in there.
They're like, okay, that was pretty cool because he came
out in the army got like the army came out.
(29:17):
It's like, we got the United the bunch. I'm like, yeah,
you sort of did.
Speaker 1 (29:21):
Heiner also came to appreciate the wisdom and courage needed
to not take lethal action when the conditions were uncertain.
He says General Stanley McCrystal originally advocated for a courageous
restraint metal and Heiner loves that idea. He shares a
critical moment where Americans had every reason to open fire,
but have heded a massive problem by trusting their instincts.
Speaker 2 (29:44):
It was December fifteenth whatever Ramani, in the city of
Ramani was We were the first task unit sealed task
unit on the ground out there. It was right building
up to the big battle and they were having the
first elections right so it was critical that these elections
have I know, you could see it. You know, the
White House was talking about it there. Everybody was talking about, Hey,
these elections need to happen because at that point, General
(30:06):
i think it was General Casey was like, hey, if
you if the West doesn't get something done here pretty
soon in your deployment type conte and it's going to
collapse back to back dead wors group. So we were like, hey,
we have to have these elections. We pretty much took
every seal We had everybody that was pretty much a
shooter and spread out throughout the cities, throughout the city
(30:28):
and the city had a curfew and then the battlespace man,
not the colonel at the time, it was like this
is uh, you know, everybody is restricted. Everybody knew it.
The streets are dead. Anybody in the battle space is
bad clear hot. So Okay, so we were We're all
over the place and we're getting reports back. All of
(30:51):
a sudden, well, this guy, one of my sniper teams
calls in like, hey, I got four dudes. Man, and
they got weapons the arm to the teeth, and they
were like two hundred meters away from they're at the
polling booth. Okay, hang on, hang on, so called in
a battle space commander. Battle space commander is like, hey, dude,
there was no friendly forces out there. Man, clear hot,
(31:13):
and like they clear hot. But he didn't shoot them,
and it was weird and he reported back. He goes, eh,
they're not moving like they're bad. And if you'll give
you his first name, he's George was his first name.
And I say what he's like because he'd been around
the horn, He's like, no, they act like they belong there.
(31:34):
As soon as the sun came up that day, it
started to come up where he could get glass on them.
Not the night vision boom was a rocky police They
had escaped out of their base and they were protecting
their own polling with which had he not done that,
he could have killed all four of them. Been a hero,
and God only knows what political ramplication was falling out,
(31:57):
but George made the right decision. He said, mature, trustworth,
good person.
Speaker 1 (32:01):
Despite the reputation that seals and other special operators developed
through TV and the movies, Heine says serving as a
seal was actually a humbling experience.
Speaker 2 (32:11):
I think doing all that humbled me. Not in an
arrogant humble way, but like actual humble, like you know,
because look, I mean, seals are well known in the
world and whatnot. But you know, I remember watching on
that because I worked with regular army marines and stuff,
and I'll give the most almost all the credit to them,
(32:32):
be honest with you, because I watched them. These I
wouldn't call them kids, but you know, nineteen twenty whatever.
They are National Guard, they didn't have any money, they
didn't expect to go to war, and here they are
doing crazy stuff. And I was just watching them, man,
because I mean, it's one platoon I worked with over
and over, and they looked at us like gods, like
oh my god, you guys are maybe seals. Like I
think every one of them had been wounded at least once,
(32:53):
and they had been there with like fourteen months. Today.
I think they stayed at fourteen fifteen months and I
think we met them they were like eight nine months in.
They were just like zombies. They were just hardened, and
God Almighty, that was humbling. Man. I think you see
that and you're just as scared as that kid is.
You know, I think people with the military service, I mean,
(33:16):
I mean, we're not perfect, and nobody's perfect to it,
but we have some really really good people that do it,
and you do it for the right reasons. They believe
in something.
Speaker 1 (33:24):
And what exactly does he want people to know about
the Navy Seals.
Speaker 2 (33:28):
There's a lot of things I'd want people to know
about the Seals, and not just what they would see
in the movies, what they would hear in interviews, you know,
just the people that don't speak out, the people that
do their job, and really, I mean, they're good human
beings mostly. I'm not saying it perfect, but they really
believe in something. You know, it's to me again out
(33:49):
you know, in the civilan world, when you get out
and you realize it's not always the case. You know,
people don't always have that belief in something. It's contagious
when you're around people like that.
Speaker 1 (33:59):
When I asked what he was I was proud of
from his service. Ed Heiner reflected back to the value
of restraint.
Speaker 2 (34:05):
I think I never intentionally hurt someone less I had to.
And now it sounds kind of a strange thing to say,
but I've thought about that a lot. I'm like, you know,
I never actually did something that I didn't have to
do and diyeah, I think my son, hoping my son
can be proud of that.
Speaker 1 (34:23):
That's retired US Navy Lieutenant Commander Ed Heiner, who served
for twenty years as a US Navy seal and went
on multiple deployments during the War on Terrorism. I'm Greg
Corumbus and this is Veterans Chronicles. Hi, this is Greg Corumbus,
(34:49):
and thanks for listening to Veterans Chronicles, a presentation of
the American Veterans Center. For more information, please visit American
Veteranscenter dot org. You can also follow the American Veterans
Center on Facebook and on Twitter. We're at AVC update.
Subscribe to the American Veterans Center YouTube channel for full
(35:10):
oral histories and special features, and of course, please subscribe
to the Veterans Chronicles podcast wherever you get your podcasts.
Thanks again for listening and please join us next time
for Veterans Chronicles,
Welcome to Veterans Chronicles. I'm Greg Corumbas. Our guest in
this edition is retired US Navy Lieutenant Commander Ed Heiner.
Commander Heiner spent all twenty years of his service in
Naval special Warfare, more commonly known as the US Navy Seals.
He served many deployments following the nine to eleven terrorist attacks.
(00:33):
Ed Heiner enlisted in the Navy in April of nineteen
ninety two, more than nine years before nine to eleven.
He was in his early twenties and had never previously
been interested in military service, but he says all of
that changed while living in Virginia when a friend's dad
made him help a military wife in need.
Speaker 2 (00:51):
That's a very strange one because I turned down scholarships
that some schools are looking at me. I'm like, I'd
never thought about the military. Long story short about in
the first golf period, a friend of mine, we're in
Virginia Beach, Virginia, and his father had retired and was
now running a storage unit and had a small house.
(01:11):
My buddy and I've been out on and I get loopy.
He drags us up at like six o'clock in the
morning or whatever time was id. Hey, and his dad
has a huge heart. He's like, hey, we got this
lady here. She's her husband's on some ship out in
the middle of the golf and uh, she's got like
three kids and she's getting evicted out of her place.
So my buddy Tom and I got a truck, got
some boxes, went to her house, and I used to
(01:33):
packed this woman's stuff up. In the first trip we
were taking to the storage unit, this guy beside me.
I started just started talking to a big, buffed up dude.
I was like, I told him the story. He goes,
I'm in a navy, I'm on leave. I'll help you.
And for twenty four hours we moved this woman's furniture.
He was a seal. I didn't even know what a
seal was like what And I just couldn't believe what
(01:54):
he told me about what his life was, what he did.
So I immediately hitchhiked back from Virginia Beach to Richmond, Virginia,
where I was living. It's time and I went to
the recruiter and I actually listed, So I was primal
listed on a Mustang.
Speaker 1 (02:09):
Heiner enlisted with his eyes firmly set on qualifying for
Basic Underwater Demolition Seal Training better known as BUDS. But
first he had to prove himself in basic training, which
took place in Great Lakes, Illinois, and like most new recruits,
Heiner had his moments of realization that he really was
in the military.
Speaker 2 (02:29):
I realized what I kind of like, I think every
person that joins the military says, at one point, what
did I do?
Speaker 3 (02:35):
Right?
Speaker 2 (02:35):
Like, Wow, it's real, this is real. You know, you
got eighteen years because I was already twenty three, almost
twenty four years old. You got eighteen year old kids
had never been away from home. They're crying all night.
So I'm like a big brother deal and they will
now find myself like consoling them in the racks. I'm like, dude.
So it was shocking. Plus, you know, I mean, you
(02:56):
learn to take orders. That's what you do. You learned to,
you know, kind of conform to what the military And
that's not brainwashing, it's just you know, you have to conform.
You're part of this team.
Speaker 1 (03:05):
Beyond the initial culture shock, Heiner says he immediately saw
beneficial aspects of the military that had not been part
of his life before joining the Navy.
Speaker 2 (03:15):
I like the discipline. I like the commonader who liked
the sense of family. I missed that. I really missed
that part of it, just the sense of as odd
as you think at the time when you're doing it,
sometimes you like, ah, the government's on my ass, and
but at the same time, it's like having a parent
on you. It's like having a family network no matter what.
(03:36):
You know. Even my wife she'll she'll always tell us
stories like no matter what, Like if I was gone,
she could call anyone at any moment and they'd be
at the house, like, Okay, what do you need right now,
you know, with the kids, anything, you know. So, yeah,
that sense of family, that purpose had driven kind of understanding.
Not everybody's the same, but we have the same mission,
(03:58):
so to speak, and we just have kind of like
a you know, that bond at Brotherhood. People talk about that.
It's really really hard to replicate in life.
Speaker 1 (04:08):
But Heiner was keeping his eyes firmly on the prize.
He wanted to qualify for BUDS training, and doing well
in basic training was the quickest way to get there.
Speaker 2 (04:18):
The whole system's different now, but in nineteen ninety two
ninety three kind of time period you had to compete
at boot camp to get to a Sealed Billy, So
you had no idea coming in, so you were just
throwing the dice on the table. But it was you know,
from what the recruiters tell you is that if you
do well, you'll get accepted, which I did, so I
(04:38):
went straight into Buds right in August. I got out
of a school because we used to have to go
to like an apprentice type school. I was a machinist
mate at first, and then went to BUDS starting class
one eighty nine, finished nine ten of us.
Speaker 1 (04:52):
Finally, Heiner had his opportunity to make his dream come true.
He knew he was in for a very difficult six months.
What he wasn't ready for was how difficult life got
thus second he arrived at Seal training in Coronado, California.
Speaker 2 (05:08):
I remember showing up in like a dress uniform and
before like a lot of the rules were in place,
and I just remember like the chaos of it all
because you walk in, you got your uniform, you get
your little like envelope, you know, because way before smartphones
are any that Internet, and it's just immediately they just
get up your ass and they're yelling screaming you're don't
(05:30):
push ups like wait, I mean dress uniform like what
you know that it's just just mayhem. And I think
that was kind of the purpose, Like yeah, welcome to it.
Speaker 1 (05:40):
Heiner says there is a reason for every painful and
exhausting challenge. First, he says you may enter Seal training
without knowing your weak spots, but he says BUDS will
definitely find them.
Speaker 2 (05:52):
I think Budget is very special in the sense what
every person. I don't care if you're an Olympic athlete,
a superstar, something's going to get you and something eventually
will trigger you. You'll have a bad day. Boom six
months you have a bad day. The instructors are on you.
You know you have a weakness whatever that is. You know,
because we've had Olympic swimmers come and fail out quit
(06:13):
this couldn't take it because they like they're failing stuff.
It's like, yeah, you're going to fail a bunch of
different things. It's just I think every person, it just
it does test you pretty well. Are you willing to
just you know, not quit, not give up.
Speaker 1 (06:27):
Despite all the legendary stories of the physical demands of
BUDS training, especially during Hell week, Heiner says the intensity
of the training is actually testing and forging something far
more important for naval special warfare.
Speaker 2 (06:41):
It's between the years. It's it. I mean, it was
almost Maybe it's advanced a little bit since I've been retired,
not much, but that first six months is just an
indoctrination for mental toughness. It's getting more sophisticated. But there's logs,
there's cold water, there's sand, and that's it. And people
to come to this. Now we built a billion dollar
(07:02):
I think facility outs are now, But people used to
come in and they were like, is this it?
Speaker 3 (07:07):
Like?
Speaker 2 (07:07):
This is it? The water's cold, the air is cold,
the logs are heavy.
Speaker 1 (07:12):
And part of that mental toughness involves following the rules
and dealing with the consequences after breaking them. For Heiner,
it was trying to make a phone call, which was forbidden.
Speaker 2 (07:22):
This got Bill Wilson was the commanding off. He was
the OICA, which he ended up being a captain. I
didn't work for him my last job, but he he
was so pissed off that I would any of us
would disobey that rule even though we're all doing we're
all doing it. All these officers are doing for I
think it was almost a complete week. I was wet,
(07:44):
so meaning two o'clock in the morning, the guard would
come get me, go hit the surf. Hit I go
back in bed, lay in the wet four o'clock hit surf.
They would take on on the gun ranges. They had
this big, huge, massive trough. We call it slushy. You
fill it up with the ice. All the students would
fill it up with the license you garden knows it. So
it's full and you have like a snorkel. You're like, oh,
(08:07):
slush you get in there. So you go into water,
breathing and slushy. So I did that for almost a
week straight. And that's where they say, oh, you got
a temper because I was. It was pretty close.
Speaker 1 (08:20):
As miserable as that punishment was, it was nothing new.
Heiner lets us in on a simple fact of Bud's training.
Speaker 2 (08:27):
Well, Admiral's love of Coronado. No. No, the cold water
gives you an advantage that other things don't give you. Know,
you can because people think California like, oh, it's sunny
this like yep, that water's fifty five to sixty five
degrees depending air temperatures forty some at night and the
Bud student's always wet. One thing about budget are never dry.
Speaker 1 (08:49):
But despite the mental and physical toll inflicted by Bud's training,
Heiner says he never once thought about quitting. He had
a goal and nothing short of a bad injury was
going to stop him from achieving.
Speaker 2 (09:00):
Yet I knew I was not going to quit. Everybody,
because a lot of seals that I talked to you
and they're like, oh man, everybody talks about quitting. Like
to me, there was no option. I didn't have a
plan B. That's probably the perfect plan. Like if people
have like I don't know if most people don't know this,
but right now in the seal teams, there's a thousand
people get accepted every year to try out enlisted, right
and only about twenty maybe twenty five of those. We
(09:22):
can't come from the military. They have to be Sedaians
because we don't want them to have a plan B.
You know, because you're like, ah, I had a nice
job on that ship. You know, the drop ratio was higher.
But you get these guys that come in they're like, hey,
this is all I want to do with my life,
you know, like Okay, that's the guy. That's the guy
we want. So I didn't think about quitting. There were
(09:44):
times I fantasize. I'm probably prayed heavily, you know, like
everybody does, because we would run across the Coronado Road
there to go eat chow. Because you run with this
two hund pound boat on your head. Six dudes, it's awful, right,
It's absolutely awful. And he was like, maybe a car
will just run me over. Is there a pothole I
(10:07):
can just step in and break my leg? You know,
they got those thoughts go through your head because I
was like, this is it sucks? Yeah.
Speaker 1 (10:13):
Years later, Heiner was on the other side as a
seal instructor. He says he took a calmer approach to
seal candidates who tapped out then some of the other instructors.
Speaker 2 (10:23):
I did two years of hell weeks. I've ran all
the hell weeks. I was a third phase officer. I
loved it. I was like usually midnight to eight in
the morning because there's three shifts and all of them
would quit and it would come to me, and I'm like,
send them to me because someone like I saw God,
I don't want to kill people. Blah. Blah, my shut up,
why'd you quit? Water's cold?
Speaker 3 (10:44):
Got it?
Speaker 2 (10:44):
And then I would take them in and then basically
it's like an interview is like, look, dude, this is
an interview process. You came here. Don't be ashamed. You
decided this is not for you. That's it, and you know,
best of luck. I mean I never held it against
any of them. They quit. I mean just wasn't for them.
It's like any kind of job interview, right, you go, yeah,
it's not for me. Some instructures took it differently, be like, no,
(11:06):
that's not the way we should take it here. Because
these guys showed up. They put enough on the line
to put their name on the Navy for four or
five years. They're committed. Now they're in the Navy and
just didn't work out for him.
Speaker 1 (11:19):
That's retired US Navy seal Ed Heiner, still ahead nine
to eleven, his first mission and his most famous mission
in Iraq, and much more. I'm Greg Corumbus and this
is Veterans Chronicles.
Speaker 2 (11:33):
Sixty Seconds of Service.
Speaker 4 (11:35):
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Speaker 3 (11:50):
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(12:10):
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(12:30):
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Speaker 1 (12:34):
This says Veterans Chronicles. I'm Greg Corumbus. Our guest this
week has retired US Navy Lieutenant Commander Ed Heiner. A
moment ago, we tracked Heiner's journey from unlikely Navy recruit
to a young man determined to become a seal, regardless
of what he had to do to achieve it. After
all the pain, sleep deprivation, and mental toughness, those who
(12:57):
survive seal training graduate and move on to actual seal teams.
Graduation is one of the greatest accomplishments of a seal's life,
but oddly, Heiner says, he and the others who made
it through didn't actually do much celebrating. It was onto
their seal assignment, gelling with the existing members of that
seal team and getting ready to deploy wherever they were needed.
(13:21):
But despite all of that professionalism, don't think for a
second that the established seals didn't have a little fun
with the new guys.
Speaker 2 (13:29):
I kind of showed up at Shill Team fourth nineteen
August nineteen ninety three, right after jump school. I was
the first new guy there. Because they have cycles, the
detail of brings in cycles, everybody else took leave. I didn't.
I didn't want to take I was like, no, I'm going, man,
this is you know, I'm getting after this checked in
and I won't go through the stories of what happened,
but this is say I was indoctrinated. The first week,
(13:52):
I was a brand new guy. I remember my chief
Mullback was that his name. He's a kind of a
smart ass, and he's like, ah, I don't know, guy,
He's like, clean all the heads. So basically I went
through the whole building clean, all the showers, all the heads,
all everything. Even though we had janitors they were like,
look at it like crazy. And he was like, I
(14:13):
came back in the week on a chief. I got
it done. He's like, you actually did it. It was
kind of like a hazing promce for us, you know.
But yeah, I was the first new guy there. Another
friend of mine show will he'll be very famous. He's
a congressman right now. He showed up, almost got kicked out.
I'll let him tell that story.
Speaker 1 (14:32):
Though, for seals, getting familiar with their gear is another
major component of writiness. Heiner says he was not as
much of a gear guy as some other seals, but
he still knows every piece of it inside and out.
Speaker 2 (14:45):
Well. The gear is a big issue that if there's
anything I still have dreams about, it's my gear. It's
almost constant in my life. My gun, my gear, my gun,
like always parent because the gear is a big thing.
You could tell a lot about a person, but how
he takes care of what he has, you know, what
he's doing. And pre nine eleven was a little bit different.
We were coming out of that Vietnam era. You know,
the money wasn't there and stuff. After nine eleven, it
(15:06):
is just money slung everywhere. I mean there are times
you walk into buildings there's stocks of equipment, like with
your name on. It was like, I don't even know
what this is. I got fifty holsters, I got this
and buy it. Yeah, I mean it was just it
was kind of crazy. I wasn't really necessary a gearhound.
Some guys are, they love that stuff, but yeah, I
mean just watching the progression of all of them, all
(15:26):
the equipment that we got after nine eleven was like,
it was just it was pretty damn amazing. Warfare change,
I mean in our tactics change, Our warfare changed, how
we conducted ourselves changed, how we structured ourselves changed. And
you know, obviously the gear. You got to use your gear,
you know, as much as you can.
Speaker 1 (15:42):
Heiner served as a seal for more than eight years
before nine to eleven. Most of his deployments during those
years focused on drug trafficking in Latin America, but of
course the world changed on September eleventh, two thousand and one.
Commander Heiner remembers the day vividly and how quickly changed
the mission for his seal team.
Speaker 2 (16:03):
I was in a place called the Post of California.
It's forty five miles east of San Diego. It's where
we have like a rifle range, pistol range. We have
kill houses, you know, where we do a lot of
our training. And I was a third phase officer buds. See.
I just got just literally taken over four months earlier.
I just got them off to the deployment. I slept
(16:23):
outside because we were we all camp kind of camped
there and slept out. Was like it was a beautiful day.
We got this just a wonderful time. And the team room,
we have a team room, were all our guns and
ammon and all that kind of stuff is just stashed
in there. We have CNN on just like a satellite,
and I here's some nice man. I could hear people
(16:44):
talking and screaming, so I'm like going in. I'm like, oh,
I'm just assuming they were going to hammer some bud students, right,
I'm like, oh, they're just you know, getting them up,
beating them, you know, kind of getting on them. And
I'm like, what the hell are y'all looking at? And
it was like we had to speak screen. It's like,
what's the dude, you know, all the guys like airplane
just hit that building. I'm like what. So we're watching
(17:06):
it and then'm like is that taped? And I watched
the second one? Oh my god. Then you know, then
it was recall. So I went back to San Diego. Yeah,
pretty much for us, it was his full called press
because we it was such a you know, kind of
obviously for the world is shock and all. But I
went back to my old commanding officer and I was like, hey,
(17:28):
I just got back. My guy's already ready. We got
all our equipment, we're already sustained. You know, we don't
need any training. I want to be the first wave
to go to Afghanistan. He's like deal. So we were
manning up for that and then I remember Tom. His
name is Tom Deets, good, good, good, good guy. He
h A couple of weeks later, we're like gearing up
for this. He's like, yeah, we're here and it's not
(17:50):
really going to be a sprint, and it's gonna be
a marathon. Don't worry, You're going to get part of
it because you know all of us. You know, you're
seals like playing, you know, if you're a football player,
you want to play Sundays, right, you want to set
to bench, you want to eat. Hey, this is time
to go. This is our moment, and this is our history.
And yeah, it was a marathon. Little did we know,
as you mean an ultra marathon.
Speaker 1 (18:09):
That's Ed Heiner, who served twenty years as a US
Navy seal. In a Moment, Heiner takes us on his
first deployment to Iraq, where he was thrust into a
high profile operation almost as soon as he landed. He
also tells us about capturing the famed butcher of Ramadi
and the odd experience of being deployed without having very
(18:30):
specific objectives in Ramadi. He'll also explain why there are
heroes who deserve more recognition for the lethal actions they
did not take, and how those turned out to be
very good decisions under tremendous stress. All of that is
straight ahead. I'm Greg Corumbus and this is Veterans Chronicles.
(18:52):
This is Veterans Chronicles. I'm Greg Corumbus. Our guest has
retired US Navy seal and Lieutenant Commander Ed Heiner. After
years of being a seal and intense preparation for war
in the Middle East, Heiner and his seal team deployed
to Iraq, and we begin that portion of Heiner's story
with his unlikely first mission in Iraq.
Speaker 2 (19:13):
First missions, I was with an organization called Task Force Black.
I was with the British Special Forces. Brits are weird,
as most people know. I've been with him in a while,
and I was going to be an element leader in
this Task Force Black. And I know we were took
us like two or three days to get in, as
you know, back in two thousand and four, and we
were just hanging out trying to get into the country,
(19:35):
low flying in then slept like two or three days.
We landed and Baghdad Helos forty sevens picked us up
Schnooke's and brought us into which was called the Green
Zone at the time. It's kind of a semi safe place.
It was still kind of bad guys, still gunfights happening
inside and stuff. So we had had a compound there
(19:57):
and the Brits were weird because they don't let you
travel armed up, even though you're going to the war zone.
You don't you don't have like full on magazines and
gun you're not tooled up as well with weapons. So
as soon as I got there, the Sas, SBS, s
A S, they're kind of counterparts like Sheals and Delta.
The Sas were leaving their squadron and they're like, hey man,
(20:19):
before we take off, we're going to do you know,
like a I guess you call a base tour, like
show you where not to go. If you go outside
of this, you're in no man's land. And uh so
they were taking him out and I was like, no, no, no, man,
I'm good. Someone sitting there jamming my magazines, putting my
good aids in and get my like stuff all dolled in.
(20:40):
It was only four of us and this guy s I,
s M I six or whatever it is. It's midday.
It's like twelve o'clock. I'm completely exhausted. And it was
I think it was four of us total in the
compound and this SI this their intelligence officer, came in
AND's like, hey man, we've been searching for this dude,
this Syrian money whatever whatever, he was for a long
(21:04):
time and we got his ass. It's high noon, like
so like I've still senior guys. I'm like, all right,
hadn't man, which was spooky because at the time, you know,
the gpss were kind of new. We just had like
GPS is in our dash. We had civilian cars. We
weren't drying humbies, you know. So man, a couple of
dudes drove downtown bag down. Have you ever seen the
(21:26):
movie Black hawk Down. We had been watching that damn movie,
so it it reminded me exactly black I'm like, oh
my god, it's high noon. There's thousands of people around me,
a couple of dudes, civilian clothes, no black op, we
had no no QRF. So we stormed into uh we
(21:47):
stormed into a building, hit the wrong room. But yeah,
the guy at the front, we didn't speak Arabic much,
we didn't have an interpreter, he knew we were there
for and uh so we hit the wrong damn room.
Hit the wrong room because I think they was like
I figured how it works, but like you know, zero
floors one floor and one floor is too. It was weird,
(22:08):
but anyway, we hit the wrong one, came back you
obviously putting a gun in his face, like hey dude.
He took us up to the right room.
Speaker 3 (22:14):
We hit this.
Speaker 2 (22:15):
Uh hit this room. This is like this flimsy ass
hotel door. Yeah, captured this dude. It was they were
looking for it for a long time. He had his
weapons and stuff, you know, didn't shoot him and beat
him up a little bit. But the strange part of
it is that there was a woman with him and
she's like screaming, like yelling and cussing and Arabic and like, ah,
(22:41):
A paid her. She was a hooker. So my first
experience with al Qaeda the extremist was basically paying off
of she was a hooker. He was in town. So
all these extremists, all these like fundamentals, people talk like
they're full of shit. Yep, booze and women they all
like it.
Speaker 1 (23:00):
But one of the strangest developments for Heiner was being
in Ramadi without a very clear game plan for the deployment.
He says, the team quickly adapted to the situation and
actually started to take on a different mindset to their
work as time went on.
Speaker 2 (23:15):
As a seal team, I think personally, I think we
started to really grow because before it was, uh, it
was just direct action. We just shoot kill people. But
you know that that kind of mindset. And I went
out there. I actually went out there in money and
no five without a mission statement. I just got actually
say this for the record, you still owed me money.
(23:35):
I was the first seal to ever be promoted for combat.
Didn't get the credit and didn't get the money, but
they still owed me. So basically my mission was to
go out there just like we don't know what you're
gonna do, you tell us. And it was the first
time because normally like, hey, we have these mission sets,
we're going to hit you. So so I went there
a couple weeks early with a bunch of other people
(23:58):
and we started working with the locals, and we knew
the government was basically telling us, you know, General Casey
at the time I think was it was like you
cannot do unilateral das anymore, meaning seals, you can't go
out in the middle night shoot people, right, that's over.
You have to take a rakis with you. So we're like, well,
we don't know anything about that. That's green Berets types stuff.
(24:21):
We learned quickly we're like, okay, okay, how do we
do this? And so we actually set it up within
a few weeks. I kind of figured out work with
some other people, obviously not me, but to work with
the conventional forces before because our compounds are outside of
all the conventional forces and normally we never mix companies.
You know a lot of times special forces are going
(24:42):
to do stuff into side of cities and just hit
targets and kill a shake or whatever they could do,
and then it messes up the whole battle space, and
you know, it was going back and forth something like
I think we were probably the first unit to get
on board with a battlespace commander say hey, we're together.
I'm here to help you do your mission. And we
(25:03):
ended up taking over instead of having we had a
fifty man special mission unit that rackies that we kind
of recruited for and uh, I'm like, well we could
do more than that. So what we actually did is
took on uh when one when seven when they won nine?
So so like a brigade rakis, so there's three battalions.
We're like, hey, here's what we're going to do. And
(25:24):
I sent it up to my boss, like here's how
we're going to do this. We're gonna split our whole
force open. And we had like literally like the Sixes
in charge of hundreds and hundreds of Rakies and the missions.
It was incredible. It's like, but divided them up where
they could split the missions up and train train them
with the Army was doing all the training, which we
(25:45):
were happy and the Armies happy to train them because
they're like, hey, we'll stay here and do that training.
Uh is to is to get them up and running,
because you know, we can play that wackamo game we
call it wakama like boom, shoot that guy. Good good,
that's great. But if you don't win something, if you
don't hold ground, we win nothing. So I think our
(26:05):
guys in that truth, I think really started to develop
that mindsets like yeah, I see what you know. Evolution
of all forces changes over the time, and it's like, look,
I don't pick the mission, it picks me, you know, right,
I mean I don't pick the fight, you know, I
go to it. And that's kind of our mentality is like, hey,
if we have to walk around dressed up, is Mickey
(26:26):
Mouse handing out soccer balls, We'll do that and I
think my guys, you know, the guys was you know,
I was in charge of kind of they adjusted to that.
I was like, you understand what I'm saying. I'm like
that we're here to win, because now I want to
go into this long thing because you know there's Navy
seal ethos, right two thousand and five we fought, but
the ethos. One of the battles was island off the
(26:49):
coast of California, San Clemente Island. For like a week,
fifty some seals gallop pole. They did all the surveys
and what does it mean to be a Navy seal?
And there's a one page doc out there right now.
It gets updated a little bit. But in one of
the battles that it was happening was and it was
probably a good time two thousand and five is that
the battle was between the word destroy or defeat, and
(27:13):
defeat side, which I was on, was more of the
kind of the strength or guile right like cleverness, like
you know, we don't have to go and put the
hammer down every single time. You just create more enemies.
And then we had half the people around the destroy side.
It never made it never made to eat this nobody
could decide, but it was an interesting brain concept of
(27:35):
how seals started to evolve. I think we started to
evolve into doing different things. And you talk to a
young seal now, I was like, ah, this is the
way we've all be done. I'm like, no, it wasn't.
Speaker 1 (27:46):
One of the most famous events of his time in
Ramadi was nabbing the notorious Butcher of Ramadi.
Speaker 2 (27:52):
I think one of the biggest one, the funniest one,
because we got to the butcher of Ramani. Finous was
his name. You can see it on TV like they
talked about it. White House came out and talked about it.
Fanos was the butcher. The American sniper actually claims he
got him. Like, no, you didn't.
Speaker 3 (28:07):
I did.
Speaker 2 (28:07):
But we hit this hit hit this al Kaita cell.
They'd come in and uh, we'd hit it. Long story short,
and we got everyone in that whole damn group but him,
the butcher himself. But we had never been in that
part of the city, and that's part of the city
had never really experienced like explosive breaching. They're like, okay,
(28:32):
So one day, I think it was like three days later,
the base commander calls me. It's like, hey, we got
the butcher, Like, what are you talking about? Long story
is the one of the shakes that the village elder
drives up to one of the gates opened, like I
was trying to, you know, wave the guard down. They
got his guards, Like with the fifty cow, he's opens
(28:56):
up the trunk and there he is the butcher, taped up,
beat up, and you know, obviously through interpretation with the
base commander stuff, I guess they worked it out. And
shake was like, listen, I don't know who came here
and did what they did, but if they promised never
to come again, we'll never let these people in there.
They're like, okay, that was pretty cool because he came
out in the army got like the army came out.
(29:17):
It's like, we got the United the bunch. I'm like, yeah,
you sort of did.
Speaker 1 (29:21):
Heiner also came to appreciate the wisdom and courage needed
to not take lethal action when the conditions were uncertain.
He says General Stanley McCrystal originally advocated for a courageous
restraint metal and Heiner loves that idea. He shares a
critical moment where Americans had every reason to open fire,
but have heded a massive problem by trusting their instincts.
Speaker 2 (29:44):
It was December fifteenth whatever Ramani, in the city of
Ramani was We were the first task unit sealed task
unit on the ground out there. It was right building
up to the big battle and they were having the
first elections right so it was critical that these elections
have I know, you could see it. You know, the
White House was talking about it there. Everybody was talking about, Hey,
these elections need to happen because at that point, General
(30:06):
i think it was General Casey was like, hey, if
you if the West doesn't get something done here pretty
soon in your deployment type conte and it's going to
collapse back to back dead wors group. So we were like, hey,
we have to have these elections. We pretty much took
every seal We had everybody that was pretty much a
shooter and spread out throughout the cities, throughout the city
(30:28):
and the city had a curfew and then the battlespace man,
not the colonel at the time, it was like this
is uh, you know, everybody is restricted. Everybody knew it.
The streets are dead. Anybody in the battle space is
bad clear hot. So Okay, so we were We're all
over the place and we're getting reports back. All of
(30:51):
a sudden, well, this guy, one of my sniper teams
calls in like, hey, I got four dudes. Man, and
they got weapons the arm to the teeth, and they
were like two hundred meters away from they're at the
polling booth. Okay, hang on, hang on, so called in
a battle space commander. Battle space commander is like, hey, dude,
there was no friendly forces out there. Man, clear hot,
(31:13):
and like they clear hot. But he didn't shoot them,
and it was weird and he reported back. He goes, eh,
they're not moving like they're bad. And if you'll give
you his first name, he's George was his first name.
And I say what he's like because he'd been around
the horn, He's like, no, they act like they belong there.
(31:34):
As soon as the sun came up that day, it
started to come up where he could get glass on them.
Not the night vision boom was a rocky police They
had escaped out of their base and they were protecting
their own polling with which had he not done that,
he could have killed all four of them. Been a hero,
and God only knows what political ramplication was falling out,
(31:57):
but George made the right decision. He said, mature, trustworth,
good person.
Speaker 1 (32:01):
Despite the reputation that seals and other special operators developed
through TV and the movies, Heine says serving as a
seal was actually a humbling experience.
Speaker 2 (32:11):
I think doing all that humbled me. Not in an
arrogant humble way, but like actual humble, like you know,
because look, I mean, seals are well known in the
world and whatnot. But you know, I remember watching on
that because I worked with regular army marines and stuff,
and I'll give the most almost all the credit to them,
(32:32):
be honest with you, because I watched them. These I
wouldn't call them kids, but you know, nineteen twenty whatever.
They are National Guard, they didn't have any money, they
didn't expect to go to war, and here they are
doing crazy stuff. And I was just watching them, man,
because I mean, it's one platoon I worked with over
and over, and they looked at us like gods, like
oh my god, you guys are maybe seals. Like I
think every one of them had been wounded at least once,
(32:53):
and they had been there with like fourteen months. Today.
I think they stayed at fourteen fifteen months and I
think we met them they were like eight nine months in.
They were just like zombies. They were just hardened, and
God Almighty, that was humbling. Man. I think you see
that and you're just as scared as that kid is.
You know, I think people with the military service, I mean,
(33:16):
I mean, we're not perfect, and nobody's perfect to it,
but we have some really really good people that do it,
and you do it for the right reasons. They believe
in something.
Speaker 1 (33:24):
And what exactly does he want people to know about
the Navy Seals.
Speaker 2 (33:28):
There's a lot of things I'd want people to know
about the Seals, and not just what they would see
in the movies, what they would hear in interviews, you know,
just the people that don't speak out, the people that
do their job, and really, I mean, they're good human
beings mostly. I'm not saying it perfect, but they really
believe in something. You know, it's to me again out
(33:49):
you know, in the civilan world, when you get out
and you realize it's not always the case. You know,
people don't always have that belief in something. It's contagious
when you're around people like that.
Speaker 1 (33:59):
When I asked what he was I was proud of
from his service. Ed Heiner reflected back to the value
of restraint.
Speaker 2 (34:05):
I think I never intentionally hurt someone less I had to.
And now it sounds kind of a strange thing to say,
but I've thought about that a lot. I'm like, you know,
I never actually did something that I didn't have to
do and diyeah, I think my son, hoping my son
can be proud of that.
Speaker 1 (34:23):
That's retired US Navy Lieutenant Commander Ed Heiner, who served
for twenty years as a US Navy seal and went
on multiple deployments during the War on Terrorism. I'm Greg
Corumbus and this is Veterans Chronicles. Hi, this is Greg Corumbus,
(34:49):
and thanks for listening to Veterans Chronicles, a presentation of
the American Veterans Center. For more information, please visit American
Veteranscenter dot org. You can also follow the American Veterans
Center on Facebook and on Twitter. We're at AVC update.
Subscribe to the American Veterans Center YouTube channel for full
(35:10):
oral histories and special features, and of course, please subscribe
to the Veterans Chronicles podcast wherever you get your podcasts.
Thanks again for listening and please join us next time
for Veterans Chronicles,
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