No Easy Day: The Firsthand Account of the Mission That Killed Osama Bin Laden

we understood that we had to sacrifice to do this job. Our families, like my father who hadn’t wanted this lifestyle for me, didn’t always understand.
    Just before my high school graduation in Alaska, I told my parents my plan to enlist. My parents weren’t pleased. My mother didn’t let me play with G.I. Joe or other military toys when I was younger because they were too violent. I still joke with my mother that had she let me play with action figures and get it out of my system I might not have joined the military.
    Before graduation, I sat in the kitchen and talked on the phone with recruiters. At first, I think my parents thought it was a phase. But soon they realized how serious I was about joining the Navy.
    My father sat me down to talk about my plans and about college.
    “I just don’t want you in the military,” he finally said.
    He wasn’t a pacifist by any means, but he’d grown up during Vietnam and knew how war impacted people. A lot of his friends had been drafted and hadn’t come back. He didn’t want his son to ever go to war. But I didn’t hear the concern in his voice or the nervousness about his only son putting himself in harm’s way. I just heard him tell me what I couldn’t do.
    “I’m doing it,” I said. “This is what I want.”
    My father never raised his voice. Instead, he reasoned with me.
    “Hear me out,” he said. “If you ever listen to anything I say, will you take one piece of advice from me? Try one year of college. If you don’t like it, you don’t have to go back.”
    My dad knew that I hadn’t seen much of the world growing up in a small village in Alaska. They were betting if they could talk me into going to school, I’d be exposed to so many new things that I wouldn’t pursue my dreams of becoming a SEAL.
    I was accepted to a small college in southern California.
    “OK, Dad,” I said. “One year.”
    One year turned into four, and with my degree I considered joining the Navy as an officer. I made friends with a former SEAL in school who advised me not to join as an officer. He told me I could always become an officer later, but the enlisted route meant more time as an operator and allowed me to stay in the fight. When I enlisted after college, my father had no objections.
    Like all of my teammates, I was driven to be a SEAL. And once I finished BUD/S, I was driven to be the best SEAL I could be. I wasn’t unique. There was a whole command of guys just like me. But like me, they all struggled with balance. We called it “the speeding train”; it was hard to get on, and it was hard to get off, but once you’re there you’d better hang on because you’re in for a ride.
    We really had two families: the guys at work and then family and loved ones left at home. I came from a tight family in Alaska. I felt the same way about them as I did about my teammates, like Phil, Charlie, and Steve.
    For a lot of guys, keeping the balance between work and family life was fleeting. Many of my teammates suffered through bitter divorces. We missed weddings, funerals, and holidays. We couldn’t tell the Navy no, but we could tell our families no. And we did, often. It was difficult to get time away. Work was always the number one priority. It took everything out of you and gave back very little.
    The funny thing was, even when we were on leave before a deployment, I’d see guys at work. We came in to work on gear, work out, or just take care of last-minute issues before we deployed.
    The dirty secret of it all is that everyone, including me, loved it. We wanted to get the call every time, which meant everything else in the world took a backseat.

    I was on my eleventh consecutive combat deployment in 2009. I had worked my way up from a new guy to being Phil’s number two. From 2001, the only break I had was Green Team, if you call that a break. That was eight years straight of either going on missions or training for them. By now, I was smarter and more mature. As I moved up, new guys came in behind me. The new guys now had more combat experience. They were certainly better than I was when I arrived at Green Team. The command as a whole was better. We were primarily focused on Afghanistan. Even with operations in Iraq winding down, our pace never lagged. We all wanted to work, but all of the senior guys were starting to feel the miles.
    Steve had moved up. He was in charge of one of the other teams in our troop. Charlie was an instructor in Green Team.
    It was a