LCDR Kaj Larsen, U.S. Navy SEAL, BUD/s Training, War on Terrorism

Welcome to Veterans' Chronicles. I'm Greg Corumbus. Our guest in this edition is Kaj Larson. He served as a US Navy seal, eventually rising to the rank of Lieutenant commander. You may also know Larson from his many reporting roles for outlets like CNN, Current TV, and for hosting the award winning series Vice on HBO. Much of our conversation with Lieutenant Commander Larson will focus on the unparalleled experience

Nineteen ninety four, Coge Larson was a senior in high school in Santa Cruz, California, which is a sleepy little surfer town in northern California. I grew up surfing, spearfishing, being a general waterman. My first job was as an ocean lifeguard, and that path playing water polo competitively led me to apply to the US Naval Academy in nineteen ninety five.

I was accepted to the US Naval Academy and.

I reported as a fourth class midshipman at seventeen years old in July of ninety five to Annapolis.

When a Navy Seals story starts with him getting admitted into the US Naval Academy, you might think it was a fairly straightforward path to becoming a candidate for the Seals. CAJ Larson took a very different path away from Annapolis to get to BUDS training.

I spent two years at the Naval Academy and ended up leaving by my own choice, transferring playing water polo at the University of California, and I was a civilian. I was Joe civilian for two years, but I had decided that my legacy of service wasn't over. I still had that same desire to serve that led me to

Larson's path is an unusual one, as he explains, getting into buds training after leaving Annapolis is highly unlikely, even as an officer. But fortunately for Larson, real life intervened in a way that made it tough for the Navy to say no.

The thing to understand about the seal pipeline is that there's, of course two pathways, just like everybody who enter a service.

You can go the officer router, or you can go the enlisted route.

I decided that I wanted to be a seal officer, and there's a finite number of Seal officer billets available every year. The Naval Academy has a certain apportionment somewhere between twelve and eighteen. ROTC Reserve Officer Training Corps has a similar allotment, and then there's about ten to fifteen billets a year for straight civilians who have graduated college, and those billets, because there's so few of them, tend

Took me many many dives in many many minutes.

But ultimately was able to pull the victim out of the car. That story became kind of known within the seal community, and the officer detailer at the time, the person who decides the billets, ultimately said, that's the kind of fighting spirit that we want in the seal teams, and he opened up a billet for me that year.

Whether watching movies or hearing stories from other seals, many of us have some idea, at least we think we do, of what Bud's training is like, but we don't. Larson walks us through his thoughts as he rode onto the training ground in Coronado, California.

The beginning of BUDS is not exactly what you imagine, and it's changed somewhat since my day. In my day, it was a little bit like throw you, like straight into the pit and get you going. But when you very first report to Coronado, California, to BUDS based underwater Demolition seal training, you're really kind of shocked at the contrast.

And once Buds train, he begins in earnest. Larson says there's no easing into the grueling weeks and months of intense testing. He says, from the very first moment of the very first day, he and all the other prospective Navy seals, we're facing something completely different than they ever experienced or even imagined.

Day one week one of BUDS is just like getting smashed by a brick wall, Like there is no Once you class up and actually start, you are fully fully immersed. And that first morning of PT that starts at five am and you're on the grinder, which is this fabled cement spot where all of the physical training goes down and you're doing you know, hundreds and hundreds of pushups, and you're running back and forth and hitting the surf, and there's these inflatable boats that you have to jump in.

You're just going through this.

Day one week, one minute, one massive beatdown set by the instructors, designed and orchestrated to intimidate you and to cut the wheat from the chaff and to get the week to quit. It is a daunting and scary experience. It's pitch dark out. People are screaming, people are yelling, The bell is ringing because guys are quitting left and right. That's when you're like say to yourself, holy shit, Like

Earlier in the podcast, you may have noticed Kaj Larson mentioned that he began Buds training in August of two thousand and one. The very next month, of course, America would change forever as a result of the nine to eleven terrorist attacks out at Coronado. Larson says it was strange to learn about such a huge and horrible event that could deeply impact their lives while he and others were completely immersed in their own world of Buds training.

On nine to eleven, we had just finished a two mile ocean swim at the Budge Training compound in Cornado. So it was about six am, six thirty eight am our time. We had started our day at five am, as you always do. We had just finished this two mile ocean swim. We were changing out behind the barracks, switching over from our swim gear to our PT gear to do one of these mile long runs to the chow hal and people started whispering because there's other people

The people who are supposed to be here.

So we're going to beat you all day in till X number of people quit and we're going to see who really wants it. And so they beat us for hours and hours and hours until they hit their number certain number of people quit, heard the bell rang bim bing boman, and then once it was once they hit their number, they said, the day secured.

Go home, call your families. And that was my nine to eleven.

That's US Navy Lieutenant commander and US Navy Seal Kaj Larsen. Just ahead, Larson will share his insights into why the seal instructors are so tough on the men in training and why doing the training right matters personally to them. He will also tell us about Hell Week, the toughest moment he experienced in Bud's training, and his first combat deployment in the Global War on Terrorism. I'm Greg Corumbus and this is Veterans Chronicles.

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This is Veterans Chronicles. I'm Greg Corumbus. Our guest in this edition is US Navy Lieutenant Commander and US Navy seal Kaj Larsen. You may also know him from his reporting at CNN, Current TV and elsewhere. We've been talking about the extreme difficulty of BUDS or seal training, but you've only heard the tip of the iceberg so far. BUDS training is divided into three phases, physical conditioning, diving, and land warfare. Together it lasts many months, but the

People also don't realize that seal training is seven months long, and we like to say, anybody can do seal training for a day, but can you get up and consistently do it time and time again for seven months and maintain injury free and really be cognizant, especially when you get into the more complicated phases where you're doing mission planning and weapons.

BUDS exposes every weakness. It is a.

Challenge every day and the instructors will find something that tests your inner fortitude.

Hell Week is distinct.

From the rest of the phases of training, mostly because while yes, the physical intensity is ramped up, what's really really distinct is that you don't sleep right. So Hell week often starts on a Sunday night and end sometime on Friday, and during that course of that week you get only two to three hours of sleep at best. So you have to do things like run twenty miles with boats and logs on your head, but you're doing it in a sleep deprived state.

And again the purpose of that.

Is to as close as we can simulate conditions that you might see in combat. Truth is as hard as buds is, as terrible as Hell Week is. I was more cold, I was more tired. I was more scared

Larson says the instructors see merciless during training, especially during Hell Week, and they largely are merciless, But he says there's a purpose for all of it.

The first phase instructors have one mission and one mission only, and that is to test your mental fortitude the goal, in fact, the goal of the entire spectrum of training is pretty simple.

Right.

There's all these evolutions, and there's all these different things that you do from diving to land warfare, right, but the essential goal of seal training is the same, is to determine whether you will or will not quit in combat. And what BUDS is is the closest approximation we can get to combat without actually throwing you into.

A live combat situation.

Right, So by approximating the intensity and the pressure and the fear that's associated with combat, we can determine who has the resiliency to make it eventually to the seal teams. So the first phase instructors are vicious. They are by design brutal. I mean, at the time, I thought they were essentially satis, right, because their goal was to inflict so much pain on you and to test your metal

And Larson says there is another important reason that the instructors are as tough as possible on Seal candidates. He says, they are not just thinking about the coming weeks and months of BUDS training, They also have the next several years in mind, as well as their own futures.

They're not retired seals, they're not civilian contractors. They are active.

Duty seals who are on a short tour from the Seal teams. So they've possibly done two, three, four seven combat deployments. It's their time to do a rotation back home, which is part of the bigger naval administration system, and they.

Take that job very seriously.

And part of the reason they take their charter so seriously to be the sort of vetting force for the entire community is because they know after their short tour, after their time back in Cornado at BUDS, they will rotate back into a Seal platoon and serve with the guys who they put through training. So I served in the Seal teams with many of my BUDS instructors, and so especially as an officer, there's an extra level of scrutiny.

So you can.

Imagine an instructor who is putting you through training, is not just looking at you for your individual skill set and is this guy tough enough to be a seal For an officer like myself, the instructors are evaluating would I let this man lead me in combat? And that is why they take their job so seriously. That's why they are the sort of final quality check and quality assurance for the entire seal community.

That's Kaj Larson, a US Navy Lieutenant commander and a US Navy Seal. He's also an accomplished journalist. Still to come, Larson will tell us about his lowest moment during BUDS training, the accomplishment of becoming a US Navy seal, the evolution of seal gear in combat, and his first combat deployment. I'm Greg Corumbus and this is Veterans Chronicles. This is Veteran Chronicles. I'm Greg Corumbus. Our guest in this edition is US Navy Lieutenant commander and US Navy seal Caj Larson.

I would say the most challenging moment for me was like a moment in Hell Week where there was an instructor who at the time really did not like me.

Instructor Moffit J.

Moffitt like absolute stud of a seal, but for whatever reason, he thought I was cocky and he decided somewhere around Wednesday night of Hell Week that he was going to like make sure that I understood my place in the pecking order. And so it was three am or something and he was missing me with a hose.

After one of these PT.

Sessions, and this is the middle of the night in Cornado, the temperatures dropped and my core body temperature just started to drop. So you know, the human body is essentially ninety eight point six degrees, right. You can imagine if you are sick and you have a fever, if you have a fever of like one oh two, one oh three, that.

Would be a very high fever.

You would feel terrible, right, So the temperature range of the human body is actually pretty fairly small. My body temperature started to drop in the opposite direction, and eventually I passed out on the cold cement.

They take your core temperature.

In two thousand and one, we didn't have all the sophisticated instrumentation that we have now today. I think now today's students can like swallow a pill that measures their core body temperature, and those in those days you got what's called the silver bullet, which is rectal temperature. Very accurate, also very embarrassing. Although I was passed out so I got the silver bullet, my core body temperature was eighty nine degrees. That's very very dangerous when you're that hypothermic.

They took me out.

I think my core body tempature was back to like ninety six or ninety seven.

These are oral thermometers.

At this point, I remember they handed me a pair of dry camouflage uniform like just fresh out of the laundry, you know, like nice, nice smelling and everything. It was the first time in three days that I had had any dry clothing, the first time I had been dry in three days. I had been wet and sandy for the previous three days. I had just come out of

Go put on your clothes in the ocean.

And it was just like at that moment, even though I but the consummate water mid spearfishers serveer groping cold water, I was like, I just don't want to get back in the ocean.

But I did it.

Sometimes, like we say in the teams, you don't have to like it, you just have to do it. So I like went back in the ocean, put on the clothes, and rejoined my class.

But once the seven months of training concludes, the few left standing become Navy Seals, knowing that they passed the most demanding test of any service members anywhere in the world. Larson says the satisfaction and pride are immense, but he also says the work immediately continues.

When when you graduate from Seal Training, it's obviously an extraordinary moment. And this has changed since my time going through. But when I went through in Class two three seven, the two hundred and thirty seventh Seal Training class, your family could come to graduation.

That is no longer the case.

The Special Operations community post nine to eleven, post of the two decades of war have changed a lot of policies and procedures because we've been so tip of the spear as a community. But then I had this moment where my friends and family were able to come and celebrate this milestone achievement.

I think what people.

Don't realize though, is that when you graduate BUDS like you could do a lot of push ups, you're real tough. You don't really know shit about being a seal, right, Buds is just the first step in a very long journey to becoming a combat operator. Post BUDS, you go

As mentioned, Larson became a Seal during the early days of the Global War on Terrorism. Because of the nature of special operations, Larson cannot get into too many specifics. We do know that he led teams of covert operatives on missions overseas, including Afghanistan, serving as a detachment commander, but he did offer us some insights on the start of his time in combat. When you might assume Larson and his team were deployed to Afghanistan at first, they were actually sent to the Far East.

Combat is this crazy thing where you sort of expect to feel one way, but all of this preparation and I think everybody reacts differently in combat. But I remember my very first combat experience, which was in a theater that people wouldn't really expect. It was in the Southern Philippines where we were deployed as part of Operation Enduring Freedom to help counter a bunch of Islamic terrorism threats that had emerged in this region of the world that

They didn't even.

Know that there was all of these like small, low intensity conflicts happening around the world because the light of Afghanistan and a rock like loomed so brightly. So my first time in combat was scary, of course because there's real bullets flying, but also exhilarating because this is like the.

Job that we trained to do.

And I always find it interesting for people who don't understand, like nobody wants to go to war sort of in an abstract sense. War is horrible, I especially like when you've seen it and you've lost friends, like so many friends. I've buried more of my friends than anybody at my age ever should have to do. At the same time, it's you spend so much time scrimmaging, so much time training that there's a party that wants to play in the game. And we did that, and my community, especially

All of that melts away.

And never in my life have I felt as much clarity of purpose and mission and like pure instinct, primal instinct for survival as when I'm in combat. So if I was a you know, whatever, biologist. I might talk about like the endorphins that come out of being in combat, but that shit is addictive, and that war high it's a real thing, and in fact, when I think about later in life, it is it is such a compelling.

Part of your life.

That there's some way that you're always kind of chasing that war high. You're always chasing for the rest of your life, a way of like feeling that alive again.

And some.

Veterans can channel that into positive energy, and some veterans are haunted by the ghosts of that feeling. And I think as I transitioned out of the seal teams, that is the great challenge for both myself and military folks. How do you maintain that same sense of purpose and clarity that you had when you were in service or in combat and translated into the next chapter of your life.

Larson served five years as an active duty seal. Since then and throughout his journalistic career, he has remained in the US Navy reserves. In nearly a quarter century since joining the Navy and becoming a seal, Larson says he's seen a lot of changes, and he says the seals have done an excellent job of adapting to new technologies as well as the tactics of our enemies.

I think of seal gear as an evolution. The equipment that I wore when I first got into the Seal Teams was so vastly different than this equipment that we evolved into and adapted too after two decades of war. When I first showed up in the Seal Teams, all of our lessons learned, all of our SOPs, our entire psyche kind of came from the Vietnam generation of Seals. They were the last real combat generation of Seals.

So a lot of our tactics.

And even the way we thought and interacted and moved came from the lessons learned in Vietnam. And then nine to eleven happened, and then we were in Afghanistan and Iraq, and those tactics and equipment had to evolve considerably. So I remember in the beginning we were quite heavy. I would wear, you know, twenty pound kit with twelve magazines, and this big old plate carrier and medkits and all of these things at some and sometimes a rucksack. And I always carried an M four and we and the

And I would say the primary, primary thing that.

Has made US Navy Seals the most lethal fighting force the world has ever seen is that our communications technology evolved, so our ability to use the entire battle space to call a fast mover F eighteen overhead or an AC one point thirty gun ship while we're putting rounds down range, while we have a QRF Quick Reaction force in the waiting. Our ability to leverage all of these elements of national power and all of this lethality onto the enemy is

Larson has achieved a great deal in his Navy career, and of course as a seal, but when asked what he's most proud of from all those years of service, a number of things quickly came to mind.

To pair phrase President Kennedy, I am most proud that I served as an officer in the United States Navy. I am most proud that I led men into combat and I brought all of my men back home to their families, and I am the most proud that I got to serve my country in the highest fashion.

That's Kaj Larson. He's a lieutenant commander in the US Navy and also a US Navy Seal. You may also know Kaj Larson from as many reporting roles or outlets like CNNA, Current TV, and for hosting the award winning series Vice on HBO. I'm Greg Corumbus and this is Veterans Chronicles. Hi, this is Greg Corumbus, and thanks for listening to Veterans Chronicles, a presentation of the American Veterans Center.