THE FIRST SEAL

How a Brooklyn hell-raiser crashed through Navy tradition, rewrote the rules of unconventional warfare, and dragged the SEALs into existence through sheer force of will.

“He’ll be a hero… or end up dead.”

By the time Roy Boehm turned seventeen, the world was already tilting toward war—and so was he.

He’d grown up in a hard corner of Brooklyn, the son of a World War I veteran and a mother who told him with brutal honesty:

“You’re just like your father.
You’ll grow up a hero—or you’ll end up dead or in prison.”

There was no middle path for the Boehm men.

The Great Depression had ground down everyone around him, but even in that gray, hungry world, Roy’s imagination lived at sea. He wandered the waterfront, watching ships push beyond the horizon, dreaming of war before war even arrived.

When his parents divorced in 1941 and asked him who he’d live with, he told them:

“Neither. I’m joining the Navy.”

On April 10th—one day after his seventeenth birthday—he walked into a recruiting office and signed his life over.

Eight months later, the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor.

Roy wasn’t chasing adventure anymore.

He was chasing survival.

Into the Tomb of the USS Arizona

After basic training, Boehm was assigned to USS Griffin, then USS Alcor, and finally to a brand-new destroyer at Pearl Harbor.

But before he ever saw open water, he was given a task straight out of myth and nightmare:

diving into the wreck of the USS Arizona.

Thirty feet down, the battleship still lay in her grave, whole but dead.
Twisted steel hung like ribs from the hull.
Clouds of fish moved like ghosts in the torchlight.

When Boehm cracked open a watertight hatch and drifted into a compartment, the current stirred the dead.

Bodies drifted toward him in slow motion.

He recoiled so hard he smashed his head against the hatch, nearly blacking out. His bravado dissolved in a cloud of panic as he tore out of the ship, vomiting into his mask.

He surfaced shaking, humbled.

The ocean had shown him its teeth.

He would never forget them.

Baptism at Cape Esperance

USS Duncan was a fresh destroyer when she sailed into the Solomon Islands. She wouldn’t stay that way for long.

On the night of October 11, 1942, the Battle of Cape Esperance opened like a steel trap.

Japanese cruisers unloaded salvo after salvo—
58 shells smashed into Duncan in minutes.

Shrapnel tore into Boehm’s skull and arms, but adrenaline kept him upright.
Duncan began listing, aflame, sinking.

Boehm found a wounded seaman—Stanley Dubiel—dragged him from the burning powder room, strapped a life jacket on him, and hurled him overboard before leaping into the dark sea himself.

When he grabbed onto a floating plank, he realized someone else was clinging to the other end:

a Japanese sailor, soaked and terrified.

They stared at each other, both too exhausted to kill.

Then they pushed apart, choosing life over hatred.

Boehm swam for hours, dragging Dubiel, until sharks rose from the deep.

He watched helplessly as the largest tore Dubiel away screaming into the dark.
Salt water burned his eyes.
His lungs were fire.

He kicked until dawn.

A Marine rescue boat found him—bloated, bleeding, alive.

Sharks, shells, drowning—none of it had taken him.

The war wasn’t done with him.

A Career Built on Combat

Roy fought across the Pacific:

Coral Sea

Bougainville

Saipan

Tinian

Guam

Kerama Retto

Okinawa

He supplied Filipino guerrillas.
He fought in the surf and in jungles.
He learned every dirty trick war had to teach.

After the war, he tried civilian life.

It didn’t take.

He reenlisted.

Then Korea erupted, and Boehm was back in the storm—covering the landing at Inchon, firing through the frozen hell of Chosin Reservoir, learning firsthand what mountains, cold, and guerrilla tactics did to conventional forces.

He began asking questions no one else in the Navy was asking:

What if we needed sailors who could fight like commandos?
What if the next war wouldn’t look like the last one?
What if small teams could do what fleets and divisions couldn’t?

Seeds were planted.

They’d grow into something the Navy had never seen before.

Becoming the First SEAL

By 1955 Boehm was thirty-one—too old, most said, to apply for Underwater Demolition Team (UDT) training.

He applied anyway.

He passed.

Where younger men struggled in frigid waters and panicked in blackness, Boehm flowed through the surf like someone born to it. Years of combat had inoculated him against fear. Once you’ve fought sharks after your ship sank under you, simulated emergencies feel like drills.

His ability caught the attention of Navy researchers.

They used him to test experimental diving rigs, swimmer-delivery vehicles, underwater gear no fleet sailor had ever touched.

But Boehm’s mind was already beyond UDT.

UDT blew obstacles and scouted beaches.

He wanted something more.

A different breed of naval warrior.
Someone who could infiltrate, sabotage, spy, fight, swim, shoot, adapt.
Sea. Air. Land.

In 1960 the Navy gave him that chance:

Build the first SEAL team.

He became the first man officially assigned to what would become SEAL Team Two.

And immediately, he made enemies.

A Rogue With a Vision

Boehm’s SEALs learned everything:

Shooting

Demolitions

Parachuting

Combat diving

Martial arts

Photography

Intelligence

Sailing

Covert movement

He sent his men to prisons to learn lock-picking, safecracking, and hot-wiring from real criminals.

He bought AR-15s on the civilian market.

He modified Navy equipment without permission.

He threw a non-swimming engineer—fully clothed—into a training pool for ignoring his gear requirements.

He was hit with five Boards of Inquiry.

The Navy brass wanted him gone.

But the world had changed.

And one man in Washington was watching.

The President and the Rogue

John F. Kennedy believed the Cold War would be won by small, elite units operating in shadows.

When he heard about Boehm, he didn’t see insubordination—

he saw exactly what America needed.

He visited Little Creek.
Watched the SEALs emerge from the water like ghosts.
Watched them hit targets with uncanny precision.
Watched them disappear again without a sound.

He summoned Boehm to Washington.

Boehm, never losing his edge, opened with:

“Mr. President, I didn’t vote for you… but I’d die for you.”

Kennedy grinned.

“We need more men like that.”

What happened next saved the SEALs before they were even born:

Kennedy gave Boehm “Presidential Priority.”

Carte blanche.

Unlimited authority to buy, modify, requisition, or invent anything his men needed—no bureaucracy, no delays, no permission slips.

All five Boards of Inquiry evaporated.

The SEALs were officially unleashed.

Into Castro’s Cuba

Their first real test came in 1962.

Kennedy needed intelligence on Cuba’s coastline—
information that could decide future operations.

Boehm led a six-man team from the submarine USS Threadfin.

They swam in darkness toward hostile shores, barely avoiding patrol boats, fixing malfunctioning gear underwater while Cuban missile boats prowled above.

They reached land.
Mapped beaches.
Counted obstacles, gradients, positions.
Returned undetected.

The mission revealed the beaches were unsuitable for invasion—
but the SEALs themselves had proven something else:

The new commandos could go anywhere.
See anything.
Survive everything.

Boehm refused medals for the mission.

He said the team needed equipment, not awards.

He received neither.

War Again — and the Shadow Campaigns

Boehm trained forces in the Dominican Republic.
Neutralized double agents.
Worked alongside CIA operatives in the gray world of Cold War espionage.

Then Vietnam called.

He trained South Vietnamese frogmen to fight like SEALs:

Deep reconnaissance

Ambushes

Raids

Unconventional warfare

He personally led amphibious assaults.
Destroyed junks.
Survived firefights in mangrove swamps.
Earned a Bronze Star.

Vietnam aged him.
Burned him.
Broke his knee.
Gave him hepatitis.

He left the battlefield behind…

…but not the mission.

He wrote the Navy’s first counterinsurgency course.
Created the doctrine of riverine warfare.
Trained the men who would command in the Mekong.

Meanwhile, his SEALs—the ones he had handpicked, molded, fought bureaucracy for—became legends.

“The men with green faces.”

Eight platoons.
Hundreds of decorations.
Thousands of enemy combatants neutralized.

The most decorated small unit per capita in the entire war.

His vision, born from decades of combat, had become reality.

The Final Chapter

On August 1, 1971, after thirty years of service, Roy Boehm retired as a Lieutenant Commander.

He had entered the Navy as a seventeen-year-old diver.

He left it as the founding father of the Navy SEALs.

He moved to Florida.
Flew planes.
Powered paragliders.
Chased wind and danger the way other men chased comfort.

On December 30, 2008, he died at home at age 84.

No ceremony.
No obituary.
No final salute.

He didn’t want any.

He had built his legacy into the bones of a force that would outlive him.

Richard Marcinko—another SEAL legend—summed him up:

“He always performed the mission first
and took care of his men above all else.
His only standing order was to
pass on everything you can
to those who care to learn.”

And that’s exactly what he did.