In June of 2000, RD completed and published a book titled "To Be Someone Special - The Story of UDTra Class 29". It had been in the making for about a year. and is all about his Underwater Demolition Team Training Class #29 in the winter of 1962, Coronado, California.
After
training the frogmen were assigned to either UDT 11, UDT12, or SEAL
Team One, west coast Teams. They rotated from
advanced training to deployments in Vietnam over the course of their
enlistments.
RD's book is
about their shared experience in training, not about their time in
Vietnam. In the 1960s the UDTs and newly formed SEAL Teams were secretive
by design. The mystique of "The Men With Green Faces" had a huge role in their
success. Nowadays with all the movies, books, and even video games about
Navy SEALs the public doesn't realize the UDT/ SEAL Teams operated as a
clandestine force, a secret weapon in Vietnam.
The book is heavily illustrated with photographs, charts, artwork, and even poems. As RD received each story from a classmate we filed it in a separate folder then searched for appropriate photographs to accompany the story. RD's memories of training, already vivid and accurate, were stimulated by what his teammates wrote. For months he re-lived and breathed his UDT training experiences in his head and his fitful sleep.
Finally, in June of 2000, we took the finished manuscript, created on our home PC, to Kinkos, ordered fifty copies of the 180 pieces of paper, most printed on both sides, brought those back home where we formed an assembly line on the big flat surface of a bed, and walked up and down with armloads of papers, making RD's book. We hadn't numbered any of the pages for a couple of reasons so it was essential we not make mistakes in the page order as we assembled fifty books. Then back to Kinkos to have them bound with coil binding and clear plastic front and back covers.
This was a huge undertaking by RD, born of love for the Teams and his desire to share his memories with his classmates, let them know what they meant to him. He never intended to make the book available to the public therefore most people don't know about this creative project of RD's. The books were well received by his classmates, treasured even, well...except for one. One of RD's closest friends in Class 29 was married to a woman who insisted he walk away from his experience in the Teams and not look back. She was offended by the booklet RD sent out, a preview of the book, with Team art included, a humorous thing. Perhaps she had her husband's best interests at heart. We'll never know. It was she who wrote to RD and told him to stop corresponding with her husband. It made him angry and broke his heart but he did what she asked, no, she demanded. And he made the offhand comment to me that the guy always did have a problem with the women in his life.
Throughout this class's training RD's boat crew excelled but it was during Hell Week they really pulled ahead, so much so the instructors suspected that somehow they had sneaked in an outboard motor. But no, they truly were an exceptional crew with six enlisted men and ENS William T. White III as coxswain. RD tried to explain the dynamics of that to me several times but I didn't really understand. I came away with this...Mr. White knew the water, the waves, and how to read them from his experience surfing all his life and his crew trusted him completely. They won Hell Week and secured early, a big thing. RD was surprised to learn that thirty-eight years later Jack Sudduth still believed Boat Crew 6 must have cheated. No, they were really that good!
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