What Combat Can Teach Us About Suffering Beautifully
Or the Stoic roots at the core of Frogman Rule #61
Stoicism came into being as the State grew to such a size that the individual increasingly no longer mattered. When our impact and control on the “outside” world diminished, the Stoics turned to the “inside” world.
In doing so they articulated the most fundamental form of human freedom, a form that all those who have been in life-or-death situations know all too well.
I hope to shed some light on that freedom here.
Rule #61 for the Frogman (old school term for Navy SEALs) seeking mastery of his craft goes as follows: “Sometimes it is not what you do, but how you look and sound.” Let us extract the Stoic lessons from this rule.
A Frogman has many skills, and one these skills may include directing combat aircraft to drop their bombs on and shoot their guns at enemy combatants. It is not uncommon for a Frogman to find himself with his back rounding and molding to exploit every millimeter of the bottom of a trench, automatic machine gun rounds cratering the earth several inches above his head and launching tiny puffs of dirt and dried goat feces into the air.
In life-and-death situations like these, a universe of random thoughts flood the mind within a microsecond. A Frogman in combat will take the white balls of flame from mortar rounds exploding nearby, the snapping sounds of bullets, and the calm hollering of orders in his right hand, and in his left hand he will take hold of the mildly observed revelation that if he lifts his head three inches higher a bullet will shatter his skull, and then he calmly places all of this into a tiny box. He then puts this box in the back of his mind, a thing to be opened and contemplated at a later date.
The Frogman is then able to take a deep inhale. He steadies his voice, calms his eyes, and presses his forefinger to the button on his radio handset to speak with the A-10 Warthogs flying low overhead. “Hog one one, Oxblood zero one.” With the hands of a surgeon in the operating room, he manipulates his GPS, map, and compass, calculating the enemy positions he wants the A-10 Warthog – a plane built around its gatling style machine gun – to riddle with 30mm rounds.
It is here that we can propose several hypotheticals to get to the core of Rule #61.
The Frogman may deliver the most clear instructions (called a nine-line) of his life, but if his voice is shaking, the pilot may grow concerned about friendly fire and decide not to engage, which means 30mm rounds will not tear the space between earth and heaven in two with a long brrrt sounding gun run. If his posture is slumped and his eyes are wide and stunned, he may lose the trust of the ground force commander and fail to receive approval, which again means no gun runs.
If he is not, in other words, in control of how he looks and how he sounds, the three part echo of 30mm gun runs – the brrrt from the rounds exploding out of the barrels of the A-10, the brrrt from the rounds cracking through the air overhead, and the brrrt of the rounds uniting the enemy and the earth into a cloud of red and brown – will not echo through the ancient river valleys and his brothers might die in a ditch.
What then? The essence of a Frogman’s training is founded on the truth of Epictetus’s proclamation from one thousand nine hundred years ago: “Some things are under our control while others are not under our control.”1
Frogmen in combat place everything that is not under their control into a box: worries from back home, the A-10’s getting shot down, or mortar rounds landing in the ditch they are huddled in and blowing them all to bits. They then assume command of what is under their control: how they look and how they sound. And this may be all it takes to win the fight and be their brother’s keeper.
I used the box in my first firefight. I used it in all of them, but the first was unique in that I spent the next several nights in my tent pulling it out and opening it, lifting the things I had stored away for the sake of the fight and holding them up to my eyes one by one to learn what they were made of.
Like a dozen television screens playing at the same time in my minds eye, I watched how the metal of rocket propelled grenades could have been molded into the metal beams of a hospital. I watched how the blood that turned the dirt and sand into a semi-solid sludge once pumped through the veins of a brother. I watched how many of the things I had craved and avoided and sacrificed for my entire life as if they were worth a damn were exposed as petty and worthless. I watched as so many other beautiful and ugly truths were revealed to me as utterly outside of my control at that precise moment in time when all that mattered was my absolute adherence to Rule #61 and Epictetus’s dictum. Theory had met reality, and it was proven valid.
These are the sorts of things that belong inside the box, fit only for some safe moment of contemplation well behind the fighting lines where I could then do something about them, if even then.
I became mindful that to the aircraft flying above the missions that turned violent, the substance of my musings on life and my concerns on death meant nothing, and that to the sun, the moon, and the stars flying even higher, they meant even less than nothing. All that mattered was what I did, as well as how I looked and sounded. I realized that what lay beneath the pain, uncertainty, and doubt that had to be jettisoned in combat is what I can only describe as divine.
Loss of life and limb is horrific and terrifying, but there is a bit of divinity in life-and-death situations. I feel a sense of the divine during A-10 gun runs. The brrrt of the 30mm cannons is divine. When the rounds shatter the atmosphere and hammer the earth, I know that I am a delicate sack of skin and bones on a rock in the cosmos. Just so with ambush. Just so with war. Just so with car crash and illness and every single other life-and-death challenge we may face in our lives.
War made me feel small, but not in an insignificant way. It was due to this smallness that I felt free. I was able to shrug off everything outside of my control, and the true nature of freedom became clear to me. It is the same hardcore, unbreakable, last resort freedom Epictetus dedicated his entire life to teaching. “The man over whom pleasure has no power, nor evil, nor fame, nor wealth, and who whenever it seems good to him can spit his entire wretched body into some tyrants face and die – whose slave can he any longer be, whose subject?”2
There are times when all that is left is to spread our arms at whatever may come and lean into it with a savage contentment.
We find the same divinity in the animal kingdom. What does the bull do when the wolves emerge from the high grass with hungry, yellow eyes? What else can one bull do to withstand a dozen wolves than paw the dirt with his forefeet, flare his broad muscles to appear larger, and hold his ground? If his body language could speak, it might say, “Come if you must. I will not make this easy for you. I will not lie down. I will not stop breathing until I knock your jaws from your skulls in defense of my herd. I am their shepherd. Come if you must.” What is left? Nothing. What other options does he have? None. Yet looking and sounding in command of himself and of his space may be enough to save his herd.
When the voices of the mind swarm and complain about what is not under our control, it is within our control to sit with each and calmly put it to the test. “My nostrils are filled with goat feces launched into the air by rocket propelled grenade blasts.” You can still slow your speech and stand your ground. “I am one man or woman, and the bullets – or wolves, or attackers, or errands, or cares – are too many.” You can still savor the articulation of each word you speak and set your shoulders back. “I am afraid and my legs are trembling.” You can still, at the very least, stand tall on your trembling legs and own your space.
This is enough. And it is divine.
Thank you for reading What then?
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See you for the next essay on Tuesday.
Epictetus. Enchiridion 1
Epictetus. 3.24.71
" ...whose slave can he any longer be, whose subject?”
So many people almost eagerly accept someone else's yoke. It feels comfortable to them.
Another good lesson and reminder “Sometimes it is not what you do, but how you look and sound.” Fortunately or unfortunately I can only relate that to the business world. Long time ago I was trying to close a deal (computer system) with a younger prospect. The young lady was taking over her father’s business and was “difficult”. Towards the end of the meeting, her dad comes over, shakes my hand and says you have the deal. I had to ask for the reason and he says your polished shoes - it means you will take care of us. My father taught me “spit and polish” his officers boots after WW2.