Written by SEAL Captain Michael Slattery

[trident86]

Immortalized in a frame on the wall at SEAL Delivery Vehicle Team ONE.......


Up the stone staircase* from the rotunda at the center of the Naval Academy’s massive Bancroft Hall lies Memorial Hall*. This hallowed place honors the memory of Academy graduates who gave their lives defending the Nation against its enemies.
Qualification for this honor is demanding- as it should be.
But one name nevertheless is missing from Memorial Hall’s honored dead… that of:
If the Navy was ever going to select a SEAL admiral from the class of ‘68, it would have been Spence Dry, hands down. At the Naval Academy he had a superior academic record, a great sense of humor, and was well liked by his classmates.
He was smart, articulate and a natural combat leader.
Spence* had demonstrated those very traits throughout basic SEAL training and
subsequent combat deployments to Vietnam with Underwater Demolition Team-13 and SEAL Team One.

So as we stood at attention at “officer’s call” on a bright Coronado morning in SEAL Team One's compound during early June, 1972, the news that Lt Spence Dry had been killed during a “training accident” somewhere off the coast of Vietnam felt like a cold shot of winter surf.

We had heard from Spence in a letter not more than a few weeks before his death. In it he told us that he was finally getting to do some “really neat stuff.” Spence and I frequently competed to get assigned and deployed for any kind of SEAL Team’s “neat stuff,”
… and I envied his good fortune.

Such opportunities were becoming rare as the Vietnam War appeared to wind down. Nixon’s Vietnamization program had ended all the routine SEAL platoon deployments. All that was left in Vietnam for us relatively new guys were one year tours as
*SEAL advisors,
and on exceptional occasions, a tailored mission deployment for a specific purpose or classified contingency. Spence was leading such a deployment when he was killed.
Although Spence and I were classmates at the Naval Academy we really didn’t get to know each other well until the shared struggle* of surviving BUD/S…
Basic Underwater Demolition/SEAL training.

Training that included (among other things) a cold winter Hell Week*, seemingly endless formation runs in soft sand, long cold ocean swims, and small rubber boat
(or IBS) rock portages * at night through plunging surf … during Pacific winter storms.
Getting to know your future teammates well was a very big part of that experience. Starting in December ’69 we began as a winter class of 12 officers and well over 100 enlisted. *By graduation in June’70 we were down to a hard core of 5 officers & 22