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shore, the trooper told me that a driver passing by said someone had just jumped off the bridge, thinking I was committing suicide. No wonder: that bridge was pretty high—probably above seventy-five feet. The trooper told me to knock it off and go home. I did, but on that day in Grenada it turned out to be a useful skill.
    Meanwhile, I saw that the two soldiers were in serious trouble and one was clearly not a good swimmer, so I told my team leader to get word to the battalion that I was going to help them, and to summon additional help.
    I jumped off the cliff—about a forty-foot jump into the swirling waters off the southern tip of the airfield—and swam to the two soldiers. I told them to hold on to the raft, which was deflated and no longer providing the necessary flotation to support them.
    I told them I would bring each of them to the side of the cliff and place them on a ledge that we could see from the water. I decided to take one at a time and started with the weaker swimmer first. I swam each about fifty meters to the base of the cliff and, using the tide and the waves breaking up on the cliffs, pushed them to a place where they could sit and wait for more help.
    There was no way that either of these guys could have made it back to shore on their own; they didn’t have the swimming capability, both were very tired, and the currents were powerfully churning around the back side of the island.
    I had managed to get both of them on a ledge where they were out of the water and able to get themselves composed. I stayed in the water the whole time and treaded water until more help came, while darkness was closing in.
    At about sunset, a helicopter arrived to rescue the three of us. Appropriately enough, both of the soldiers were from the helicopter unit that pulled all of us out of that spot.
    Since I was in the water, I was pulled up first, then the incredibly brave pararescue crewman went back down two more times to pull up the other two soldiers. This process took about thirty minutes. Once we were all on board safely, they took us over to the airfield and we then went into a medical tent and were tended to.
    I had a couple of black sea urchin needles taken out of my feet, was given some vinegar to reduce the pain, bandaged them up, put my boots back on, walked over to the two soldiers I had just helped pull out of the ocean, and asked if they were okay. They both thanked me and I then headed back down to my LLVI team’s position at the end of the airfield. I arrived there about 22/2300 hours; it had been a long day.
    OC showed up early the next morning and asked me to walk him through what had happened (he apparently tracked it on one of the division’s nets). Good to know our guys were keeping track of us!
    We continued to operate for the next few days until, as quickly as the division was deployed, and in a far more orderly fashion, we flew home.
    My entire time on the island lasted about a month. The operation itself was a mess, but demonstrated how badly our military needed to get better at joint operations.
    I learned a lot:
    •   How little intelligence was paid attention to during this type of operation;
    •   If you’re going to do this sort of operation, you either have to be overwhelming or stay home;
    •   Joint operations are very messy. We even had our own command and control problems within the 82nd Airborne, one of our best;
    •   Soldiers will rely on themselves and their leaders if they trust them. We were fortunate to have strong trust within our platoon.
    I also learned to try to be patient and understanding with my colleagues. It’s not so easy, but whenever I’m tempted to come down hard on someone who seems to have screwed up, I take a deep breath and think back to Lieutenant Colonel O’Connell in 1983. When I heard from OC about how my deployment was reported to him (that I had just jumped on the plane with no orders to do so), he could have relieved me on the spot.