How WWII Frogmen Can Cure Modern Despair

And why modern despair is actually an opportunity to learn a crucial aspect of human nature

A UDT swimmer checks his fins and mask during UDT operations at Balikpapan, 3 July 1945. Photographed by Lieutenant Junior Grade C.F. Waters.

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My sense is that history can neither understand the present nor predict the future given today’s unprecedented rate of change. We must therefore rely on a deeper guide—human nature. And nowhere is human nature more on display than in hardship—and in war.

On June 14^th, 1944, the Frogmen of the Underwater Demolition Teams (forebears of Navy SEALs) crouched in black rubber rafts off the coast of Saipan. Merely twelve miles long and six miles wide, Saipan held over thirty thousand Japanese soldiers. The Frogmen were to swim within spitting distance of shore and detail reef positions, water depth, mines, barbed wire, and anything else that could block a massive Marine invasion.¹  

The swimmers wore black shorts, dive masks, canvas gloves, and knee pads. Skin painted blue from feet to hair, they were armed with nothing more than plexiglass slates, lead pencils, Ka-Bar knives, and the voices in their skulls. They were called “naked warriors” for a reason. Speeding through the chop in their tiny rafts, swim pairs slid off into the ocean to begin their hydrographic reconnaissance.

The most striking aspect of the entire mission is that despite swimming in broad daylight with naught but a knife towards thirty thousand enemy fighters armed with ninety millimeter mortars and seventy-five millimeter guns, there existed no despair. None.

This brings me to today. It is said that there is a crises of despair at present, as evidenced by a growing portion of the developed world heaving deep existential sighs and saying: “I do not feel a sense of awe,” or “I do not feel useful,” or “I do not feel as though I am in control of my life.”

This raises a pressing question: how can a Frogman swim a knife into a gun fight and not feel despair while more and more modern minds are racked by it? What does this say about despair? Our culture? Ourselves?

Let us put these questions to the test by joining the Frogmen in the surf.

Take awe: The Frogman swims underwater on breath holds and times his inhales for the troughs between waves as opposed to the peaks of swells to remain hidden from the shooters on shore. In this way he can fin to within thirty yards of the beach, which puts him within forty yards of the enemy rifle barrels. These are easy shots. The brain jarring blasts above water become eerily soothing thuds below, as the bullets traveling two-thousand-eight-hundred feet per second are halted by the sea. The Frogman might find beauty in the lead bullets gently falling through the lapis lazuli water like golden leaves in an autumn forest, holding out his open palm and catching the bullet as a souvenir.

This Frogman faces a dilemma: “If I scream “Oh God, why me?” then the bullets will still fall like golden leaves. If I do not, then the bullets will still fall like golden leaves. Why then despair?” Behold: awe.

Take usefulness: another Frogman glides through the water knowing that thousands of Marines will die if he fails. A tide of four-feet instead of four-feet six-inches would run a landing craft aground and meant death for Marines. A six foot wall would prevent tanks from rolling up the beach and meant death for Marines. A pillbox every fifty yards under camouflage netting meant death for Marines. Maybe this is why the Frogman could pause with his head above the surface and calmly scribbles the “depths and obstacles” on his plexiglass while thousands of enemy eyes lined up their sites to his bobbing blue head.  

This Frogman, too, faces a dilemma: “If I lament “Oh, what is the point of it all?” then there is zero chance the Marines will live. If I do not, then they might. Why then despair?” Behold: usefulness.

Take command: yet another Frogman discards what is not within his control – manic machine gun fire and screams above water, mortar rounds and sharks below water – and focuses his attention on what is within his control – savoring every cell and neuron united for the completion of his task. The enemy shooter on a beach forty yards away makes life clear. Desire is now subordinated to necessity. In this way, the Frogman slows his heart rate to stay beneath the waves a bit longer, get a little closer to shore, and note a few more pillboxes and mines for Navy ships and planes to blow to hell.

This Frogman also faces a dilemma: “Either I focus on what is within my control and live, or I focus on what is not and die. Why then despair?” Behold: command.

So much for the Frogmen of WWII.

It is a paradox that those living lives of endless opportunity can be racked with despair while those treading the waters of the River Styx can be free of it.   

The significant point is that we reach for flippers and knives when the future looks like bullets and bombs, and for pills and therapists when it looks like couches and computers. When phrased this way, how could it be otherwise? Who can picture a man watching molten lava eat the earth at his feet choosing to lay down in despair? Who can imagine a mother whose children are about to be mauled by a grizzly bear choosing to curl into a ball in despair?

What does this say about our culture of despair? That ease is a threat to mental health; that safety is a dream that can turn into a nightmare; that expecting reality to conform to desire is to come to hate life itself. A fateful truth of our culture is that it has forgotten the pain, suffering, and death that made safety and ease desirable in the first place; the fateful result may be a suicidal backslide into a tribalistic madhouse in an ironic attempt to stop the spread of despair.  

What then is despair? The standard definition—an utter loss of hope—is utterly misleading without defining hope. What then is hope? Hope is a “desire with expectation of obtainment or fulfillment.” Let us then restate the definition of despair: despair means no longer expecting life to magically fulfill itself. The Frogmen did not expect the Japanese to stop shooting bullets or for the coral to miraculously vanish from the ocean floor. Despair is actually a reminder of what is within our control and what is not. Despair, then, is not a curse but a blessing.

There are those who claim hope is what sustains us in hard times. Actually, hope is merely refusing to treat each waking moment as religiously as the Frogmen treated their naked swim towards thousands of enemy rifle barrels with naught but a knife. Hope is a luxury belief. Hope only exists when we have the ability to dream instead of do. Hope is expecting reality to be what it is not. Hope is madness.

Now we come to the big question: why is it so painful to lose hope while floating on a cloud of safety and ease, and, at the same time, for hope to be irrelevant in the salt water and cordite of combat? My hunch is that the crisis of despair is actually the dawning realization that the modern world has left something crucial to the human soul behind; that subconsciously we are realizing that we will not find fulfillment in worshipping the gods of safety and ease; that we were not wrought for ease.

I believe in my bones that without an external enemy, we make of ourselves an enemy. We were once trained to handle concrete threats: bullets and arrows. It seems we now need training to handle abstract threats: safety and ease.

What would Epictetus have us do? “Do not seek to have everything that happens happen as you wish, but wish for everything to happen as it actually does happen, and your life will flow well.”² He offers us a philosophy that bridges the gap between the life-and-death engagement we were built for and the wonders of the modern world we were not built for. He might have us find a sense of awe in each moment as if it were our last, a sense of usefulness in listening to someone we care about as if it were a matter of life and death, and a sense of command in devoting every cell and neuron to every inhale and exhale so that the crisis of despair becomes utterly irrelevant.

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1. Milligan, Benjamin H. By Water Beneath the Walls: The Rise of the Navy SEALs. First edition. New York, Bantam Books, 2021. All UDT details were pulled from this well-researched history of the Navy SEAL teams and how they came to be.

2. Epictetus. Enchiridion 8.