THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, August 14, 1995 TAG: 9508130106
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E1 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Column
SOURCE: Larry Maddry
LENGTH: Long : 117 lines
UNTIL HIS RETIREMENT, Roy Boehm, 71, might have been the wildest hair in the, uh, scalp of the U.S. Navy.
He was here to speak at the Game Wardens of Vietnam Association meeting in Virginia Beach.
He sat on a bed in the Lake Wright Hotel, a short, feisty man with stocky legs poking from his walking shorts. Long scars were beneath his kneecaps.
``I had artifical knees put in,'' he explained. ``My knees took too much pounding over the years.''
Some of the pounding came when - in 1964 - he was advising Vietnam frogmen and bailed out of a plane at an altitude of only 800 feet. ``My chute twisted and I landed hot (fast and hard) into a rice paddy,'' he said.
``I was wearing a cast on my leg at the time,'' he informed. ``When I landed, it crushed the cast. You could hear me screaming for miles.''
I told you he was a wild hair. And tougher than the leather collar on the Navy goat. He rose to the enlisted rank of chief petty officer before becoming an officer. The sailor's slang term for such men is Mustangs, for the wild horse, not the hair.
Brooklyn born, Boehm enlisted in the Navy in 1941. He later saw combat in almost every bloody battle in the Pacific theater.
By the early 1960s, Boehm was not only one of the toughest hombres in the Navy but had the credentials to prove it. He had unlimited qualifications for deep sea diving. He had survived airborne and Ranger training. He was an underwater demolition expert and had done experimental and salvage diving including a stint as a test diver for underwater swimmer propulsion units.
According to Boehm, President Kennedy, a former naval officer, wanted the U.S. Navy to have a commando-type unit.
``I was the executive officer for Bill Hamilton who was commander of underwater demolition training for the Atlantic Fleet. He said we were going to form a unit which could do anything, go anywhere, and at any time.''
Until that time, underwater demolition teams were engaged in some commando-like activities. ``But frogmen couldn't go past the high water line with their operations. We were going to have a lot more versatility and flexibility than that.''
Hamilton asked Boehm to develop training techniques for SEALs and told him to pattern the SEALs after the Dirty Dozen made famous in the film by that name.
``He wanted people who could break locks, steal cars and bust out of jail,'' Boehm said.
So how do you pick a lock? Or break out of jail?
``I didn't know, either,'' he said. So I sent the trainees to federal prisons all over the East Coast to learn. Had 'em learn how to pick locks from prisoners - the ones who knew how.''
In time, Hamilton was promoted and bumped upstairs. ``They put me in charge of SEAL Team Two. I guess I was chosen because I was loud, dumb and obnoxious. We were based at Little Creek Amphibious Base and - with only a few exceptions - what we were doing wasn't known.''
He began with a team of 37 underwater demolition team experts, including 10 officers.
He received complaints from superior officers - most of whom were unaware of the SEAL mission - for spending so much money on a project they believed to be of doubtful value.
To prove what the SEALs could do, Boehm had SEALs break into the office of an officer at the amphibious base and photograph his records.
What about guards outside the building?
``We stole a bus on base,'' he said. ``We told the guards they were going to have to attend a recruiting lecture. We marched them onto the bus and took them to a quonset hut we had broken into. . . . That's where we held the phony lecture.''
When he produced photographs of the contents of the officer's office and the guards attending the bogus lecture, his critics were temporarily silenced, he said.
But not for long.
``I stayed in trouble,'' he conceded. ``At one time there were five court martial charges against me.''
For what? ``You name it,'' he said. ``For modifying a high altitude parachute to make it suitable for opening at low altitudes, for purchasing weapons on the open market rather than going through the bureau of weapons, for modifying diving rigs. . . things like that.''
The modifications and weapon purchases were necessary for the specialized and varied work the SEALs were doing.
As criticism mounted, Boehm was called into the office of Vice Admiral Edmond B. ``Whitey'' Taylor, who headed the Fifth Naval District. He asked the wild hair if he owned a civilian dress suit.
``I told him I had a Sears Roebuck suit and a fedora with a snappy band and a red feather,'' he recalled.
He said the admiral told him to forget the fedora. Taylor explained that they would be flying to Washington together the next day.
``I didn't know what the hell that was all about,'' he confided.
When they arrived in D.C., the admiral told Boehm they were going to meet the president.
``President Kennedy asked me if I knew what a `presidential one' priority was. I told him it was something that was supposed to cut through military red tape. Then he said we were going to get one.''
The court martial investigations were dropped shortly after that, he recalled.
Boehm has a trunk full of medals and citations, but nothing makes him prouder than his work as a founding father of the SEALs.
``I never minded trouble-makers because I was one myself,'' he noted. ``A trouble-maker is usually someone who is thinking. I didn't want conformists. I wanted creative thinkers.''
The old salt, who retired as a lieutenant commander, now lives the nonconformist life in Punta Gorda, Fla., with his wife, Susan.
Boehm said they were married in an Indian ceremony after ``all of my body hair was shaved and I was painted purple.''
His wild hair grew back after that shave, Susan said.
To nobody's surprise. ILLUSTRATION: [Color Photo]
TAMARA VONINSKI/Staff
Roy Boehm talks about his experiences as the Navy's first SEAL team
leader as his wife, Susan, listens in the background.
KEYWORDS: PROFILE INTERVIEW by CNB