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Page 4: More war stories

I selected another name from the roster and talked with Gary "Bones" Bonnelli, who is now communications director for the San Diego Association of Governments. Gary was a reluctant interview for a communications director, but at least he returned my call.

Got any good Jim "the Dirty" Janos stories for me?

"C'mon, Bill. I mean, I didn't know Jim as well as his brother, Jan. Jan and I were running mates. Jim didn't report aboard until more than a year after Jan."

No stories, huh?

"I'll tell you this. Jim said more within 15 minutes of crossing the quarterdeck than Jan did his entire time in 12."

Were you in Nam with Jim?

"No. I was in the Nam Can. I think he was floating around with the Marines on the ARG in the South China Sea. Maybe he did some admin recons."

Was he ever in SEAL One?

"No."

To get a little more depth and check out my take on Jesse's book, I dropped by the Amphib Base to talk with retired SEAL Master Chief Dick Ray, who had been a legendary BUD/S instructor during the '70s. Before that, Dick had been assigned to my det in Nam as a cover for his work with the CIA in their notorious Phoenix program. I gave Dick his paycheck every month, ran some interference for him with the Plumbers, and wrote the obligatory messages after he was hospitalized with an assfull of VC scrap metal. He got the Silver Star for that op and a one-way ticket home.

We talked in his office, where he's toiled for many years as the assistant athletic director. I showed Dick I Ain't Got Time to Bleed and asked what he knew of Jesse. "I may have put him through training, but not if he graduated in '70. I didn't become an instructor until '71. Now, I knew a guy in UDT 11 or 12 who was named Janos. But this was a scrawny kid whose claim to fame was he could ejaculate while doing one-armed pull-ups."

I asked Dick if he'd ever heard of a "flapper." "A flapper valve? Yeah, that's the rubber valve on an open-circuit regulator. Keeps the water out when you breathe." I said that's not the flapper I meant and told him the story about the instructor ripping the flesh away from a trainee's hand. I asked if he'd ever done that. He laughed and said: "You shittin' me? I left blisters to corpsmen. I never touched a trainee. Hell, you didn't have to. Mostly I just played with their minds. Of course, every once in a while I'd put them in the hurt locker. But all you needed for that was a cold ocean and a beach full of soft sand."

I asked if he knew the instructor and if the instructor had ever been a SEAL in Nam.

"I knew him. He was never in Nam as a SEAL that I heard of."

I showed Dick a photo in Jesse's chapter "Navy SEALs," of men in wet suits about to drop through an opening in the floor of a helicopter. Jesse had captioned the photo: "SEAL operation. That's me on the right." 

I asked Dick if this was a SEAL op. "Nope. That's a UDT swimmer cast through the hellhole of an H-46 Sea Knight."

I asked Dick about the different NECs for UDT and SEALs. He didn't pause: "5321 for UDT, 5326 for SEALs. Anyone who'd only served in UDT before the Teams combined in 1983 couldn't truthfully claim to have been a SEAL."

I told Dick that Jesse had left active duty in 1974.

"Couldn't have been a SEAL, then."

I thanked Dick for his time and left.

Although Jesse will talk incessantly about everything else, he is curiously closed-mouthed when it comes to his experience in Nam as either a SEAL or a frog. He usually claims he took a vow when he returned from Southeast Asia never to speak of what he'd done. Sometimes he invokes his dead father's memory to justify his silence. His father was a decorated WWII veteran, but Jesse says he never knew this until after his father had died.

During his controversial Playboy interview - littered with SEAL but not UDT references - Jesse flat stonewalls questions of his wartime experience:

Playboy: You've never talked about what you did as a SEAL overseas. Did you do anything you're ashamed of?
Ventura: No.

Playboy: Would you like to talk about it?
Ventura: No.

Playboy: Have you ever killed anyone?
Ventura: You don't ask a question like that - it's inappropriate.

Consider the obvious: Jesse may not talk about what he did as a SEAL in Nam because he doesn't have anything to talk about. Why does the media let Jesse get away with this?

Sycophantic old SEALs and frogs have quite likely thrown the media off the scent. These Team guys attended his inaugural and have appeared on the platform with him at other public events. They speak of his duty as a SEAL, however cautiously, on TV.

I saw an example of how old SEALs cover for Jesse when I recently watched his biography on the Arts and Entertainment Network. One of my contemporaries, inaccurately identified as Jesse's former commanding officer, was practicing the art of the conditional on Jesse's behalf, talking about what Jesse would have done in Vietnam: "When he deployed with his platoon to Vietnam he would have gone out with the intent of doing
grievous harm to the enemy. He would have gone to set ambushes, he would have gone to extract villagers for intelligence purposes, for interrogation."

As Jesse's so-called commanding officer listed all the things Jesse would have done, film footage of SEALs in the bush rolled across the screen, contributing to the misleading impression Jesse had been a "SEAL warrior."

As I watched and listened, I thought: that's right, mate. If Jesse had been a SEAL he would have done those things. But he wasn't a SEAL. He's just a great pretender with the help of sycophants like you.

Time now to hear from Ed Gill, the UDT 12 officer who had his platoon shot out from under him within one week of reporting aboard for duty as a SEAL in Det Golf. Ed and the few remaining SEALs able to function after the VC ambushed their boat on the Vam Sat River cleared the kill zone and lived to fight another day. Ed and Chief Petty Officer Herb Ruth received Silver Stars for their heroism and Hearts for their wounds. As for the rest of the platoon, they had altogether too much time to bleed. Three of Ed's 12 men died.

"I had no idea," Ed said as we talked about the ambush and Jesse not long ago, "of what was going on. We were hardly off the airplane at Tan Son Nhut when an officer who'd been in-country several months told me to jock up for a patrol. I'd played football with the guy at the Academy and knew him then as very aggressive.

"He was in charge of the mike boat and the operation. We inserted about noon along the Vam Sat. On the way to the insertion point, I noticed the river was heavily bunkered, but we didn't draw fire. If we had, we were pretty well armed: machine guns along each side of the boat, a Honeywell 40-millimeter grenade launcher on the coxswain's station, a 60 mortar and a 57 recoilless rifle on the stern. Boat was really slow with all that armament. Could make maybe six knots max.

"We inserted and hadn't patrolled more than 100 yards from the boat before the VC started sniping at us. Officer on the boat said to move forward. We did. Then someone got hit, not bad, and we retreated to the boat.

"We went out the same way we came in, and the VC really slammed it to us from those bunkers. We returned fire. The noise was like nothing I've ever heard before or since.

"We somehow managed to clear the ambush with only a few more wounded. Then my teammate from the Academy decided to go back in and duke it out. That's when we got butchered. I was hit in the chin with shrapnel; the corpsman hauled me down behind the gunwale to stop the bleeding. Dan Mann, my assistant platoon leader, took my place and commenced firing. Next thing I know Dan tumbles down beside me dead. Shot through the ear, it looked like. I used to think he took the bullet meant for me. I don't think about that so much anymore.

"A B-40 or maybe a round from our 60 exploded overhead. I looked up at Herb Ruth on the Honeywell. His face had been scorched raw by flame, but he kept on grinding out the 40 mikemikes.

"We were able to break contact and call in dust-offs. One of my men, Don Boston, was dead and another, Bobby Neal, died a few days later. The rest of us were wounded in one way or another. Those of us who recovered and continued to operate for the next seven months got some payback, but nothing could ever make up for what happened to us on the Vam Sat. We just weren't prepared. I got almost nothing out of UDT training that helped. All the muscles in the world wouldn't have saved us. I felt so frustrated I ordered the Marine Corps platoon leaders correspondence course. Later on, we did some decent SEAL ops, but not in the beginning. Hell, a Marine sergeant knew more about leading a patrol in Nam than I did at the beginning."

The talk turned to Jesse. I asked Ed if he'd heard of "the Body."

"Yeah, I've seen him on TV. Quite a guy. I like his politics and I understand he was a SEAL. I didn't know him. Did you?"

I told him what I knew of Jesse. "I am sorry to hear that. If he was only in UDT 12, he sure as hell wasn't a SEAL. Big difference between being in UDT 12 and SEAL One."

I asked Ed if he thought Jesse could have received a transfer from UDT 12 to SEAL One during the war.

"Sure. Could probably have put his chit in at morning quarters and been standing tall on the SEAL grinder by afternoon quarters."

Quite by chance, I recently happened upon another old SEAL in a downtown deli. We'd been in Nam together and in UDT 11 after the war. He was one of several former SEALs who came to UDT 11 while I commanded the Team during the late '70s. Some of these SEALs referred to themselves as "the Junkyard Dogs." Not a sun-worshiper or bodybuilder in the bunch. But lots of Navy Crosses, Silver and Bronze Stars, and Purple Hearts - none cheap.

My friend, whom I'll call Jake, is active in the retired community and said Jesse had been the main topic of discussion during a recent meeting of an organization called Old Frogs and SEALs.

"Guys are of two minds," Jake said. "Some don't think he should be holding himself out as a SEAL, while others think it's okay. Say it's good publicity."

What do you think?

"I think the Teams got all the publicity they need. Don't need any more. I'm reading a book, Stolen Valor, that exposes men who lie or exaggerate about having fought in Nam with elite units. That's what Jesse's doing when he claims to have been a SEAL. He's trading on the valor of others. He hasn't earned the right to call himself a SEAL."

So there it is. Does Jesse trade on the valor of others when he pretends to have been a SEAL? He styles himself an honest, uncomplicated man: what you see is what you get. He should set the record straight. Hell, nothing to be ashamed of about having been a frog. UDTs have a noble tradition. When Jesse was a frog, they jumped out of airplanes, locked out of submarines, and blew shit up. But frogs didn't often fight and die like SEALs did in Nam. 34:1.

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© Bill Salisbury, used with permission.