Quote · The Shawn Ryan Show
#313 Eric Frohardt - DEVGRU Gold Squadron Sniper and Assaulter
Where this was said
Guam Deployment, 9/11, and First Combat: Kuwait Shipboardings
At 1:55:34 · chapter starts 1:27:40
Frohardt's first deployment was supposed to be a PACOM tour — Australia, Philippines, Thailand — but 9/11 changed everything. He watched the second plane hit from a team hallway in Guam, and by the time the intel briefings mounted, the platoon was flying toward Kuwait to replace a Team 3 element doing VBSS. He ended up logging 20+ real-world non-compliant shipboardings, including one night lead climb on a moving vessel into Iranian waters where the grappling hook was barely hooked on a lip and he went up alone. A second memorable boarding involved cutting a reinforced steel door with an oxygen torch while standing in rising ankle-deep water, getting partial voltage from the torch battery through a metal lifeline, and then — on the same night — watching his radioman Jack Carr, weighed down by a radio, slip off the Mark V and fall into the Northern Arabian Gulf. Carr survived; his strobe lit him up through the team's night-vision goggles.
Navy doctors told Frohardt his kidney stone pain was IBS and gave him laxatives. He spent Hell Week with both conditions simultaneously — shitting himself and passing stones while in the Pacific Ocean. He still didn't quit.
Frohardt endured Hell Week with what he is 99% certain was a kidney stone, misdiagnosed as IBS, and was given laxatives — compounding his suffering.
