BE INPIRED: CLAY PENDERGRASS

TEAM SOCOM

BY CRAIG COLLINS

HIS DISTINGUISHED CAREER AS A NAVY SEAL BEGAN IMMEDIATELY AFTER CLAY PENDERGRASS – TEAM SOCOM’S CAPTAIN FOR THE 2019 WARRIOR GAMES – GRADUATED FROM C.E. BYRD HIGH SCHOOL IN SHREVEPORT, LOUISIANA, IN 1989. HE ENLISTED IN THE NAVY AND GRADUATED FROM BASIC UNDERWATER DEMOLITION/SEAL TRAINING IN 1990, AND IN HIS FIRST ASSIGNMENT, WITH SEAL TEAM 3, HE COMPLETED TWO DEPLOYMENTS IN AND AROUND THE PERSIAN GULF.

His service earned him selection for an ROTC scholarship, and Pendergrass reported to the University of San Diego in 1995, graduated three years later with a degree in foreign affairs, and was commissioned an ensign in 1998. Ensign Pendergrass reported to SEAL Team 2, where he deployed as liaison officer for the Marine Amphibious Ready Group (MARG) and the assistant officer in charge of platoons for the European Command. His next assignment was at Naval Special Warfare Unit 2 as the Future Operations and Maritime Craft Air Delivery System (MCADS) officer.

After his service with SEAL Team 2, Pendergrass reported to the Defense Language Institute in Monterey, California, where he learned French, and then completed his tour as platoon officer in charge, SEAL Team 1, with a deployment to Iraq that ended in 2008. His next assignment, with SEAL Team 17, saw him completing tours as the operations and executive officer from August 2008 to May 2012.

Pendergrass then deployed to Afghanistan as the current operations officer for the Special Operations Task Force – Afghanistan (SOJTF-A) that was formed in the summer of 2012 and became fully operational in July 2013. After completing this assignment, he reported to U.S. Special Operations Command (SOCOM) headquarters in Tampa to serve as director of operations for the J3-AFG – the general staff for Joint Operations in Afghanistan.

“I’ve deployed to both coasts, on multiple teams, and deployed overseas a number of times,” Pendergrass said. “In fact, I’ve deployed to every theater – to CENTCOM, EUCOM, PACOM, SOUTHCOM, and AFRICOM. So I guess I’m a jack of all trades, master of none.”

Before you’re tempted to believe Pendergrass mastered no trades as a special operations warrior, consider that his personal decorations have included the Defense Meritorious Service Medal, the Bronze star (with valor), the Navy Commendation Medal, the Navy Achievement Medal, and the Combat Action Ribbon.

A new phase of his career began in 2012, when Pendergrass, now holding the rank of commander, took command of the Naval Small Craft Instruction and Technical Training School (NAVSCIATTS) at the John C. Stennis Space Center, Mississippi, northeast of New Orleans. According to Pendergrass, the school, which has evolved from a Coast Guard command established in the Panama Canal Zone in 1961, probably needs a new name. “A better way to understand it,” he said, “is to think of it as our Special Operations International Training Command. It’s the only command in the Department of Defense that is 100 percent focused on training our partners.”

NAVSCIATTS instructors include SEALs, Navy civil engineers, and Special Warfare Combatant-craft Crewmen.

In his current assignment, which he undertook in 2017, Pendergrass works from SOCOM headquarters in Tampa to achieve the broader goal of Security Force Assistance – organizing, training, equipping, evaluating, and advising partner-nation military forces. The logistics of setting up and delivering training can be difficult in overseas theaters, such as in Africa, he said: “It’s often very complex and very time-consuming, and adds more burden on the force. So I was brought in to look at a different way to include CONUS – continental United States – locations to train partners, as opposed to us always deploying forward and do training in austere environments, often without ideal platforms.”

Nobody understands more acutely than Pendergrass why it’s so important for partner nations to share the burden of special operations. Life as a SEAL has taken a toll on his body, from the time he injured his knee during training to last year’s spinal infection, which put him in the hospital for more than three months. In his 30 years of service, he’s undergone 24 surgical procedures. “Five in the left shoulder,” he recounted. “Three knee surgeries. Three elbows. Four on the back, two on my neck, three on my face. I’m probably forgetting some.” In March 2008, when he was in the desert northeast of Ramadi, Iraq, a suicide bomber blew Pendergrass into the side of a Humvee. Two surgeries followed: the insertion of an artificial disc, in 2009, and a spinal fusion of the 6th and 7th vertebrae in 2010.

That was rough, Pendergrass said – but training can be just as rough on the body. His initial knee and shoulder injuries happened during workups. “There is just a ton of wear and tear on the body,” he said, “and it’s not just SOF. I’ll pick up for any infantryman or -woman, Marine or Army: Anybody who has been ground-pounding for 20 years, I guarantee they’ve got bad back and bad knees. It’s just part of the gig.”

The wound that ultimately led Pendergrass to SOCOM’s Care Coalition and adaptive sports occurred last year in the hospital, where he underwent another spinal fusion operation to address 12 years of back issues. After the procedure, a spinal infection caused nerve damage in both legs. He can’t move his right foot very well, and will probably never run normally again – but is eager to point out that plenty of people are a lot worse off than he is. “I want to be clear,” he said. “I’m not complaining. No one made me do it. I volunteered. I’m not upset about it. It’s part of life, certainly part of a life that I’ve chosen. So if anybody’s to blame, it’s me.”

In working with the Care Coalition and learning adaptive sports, Pendergrass has made several discoveries: Though the Warrior Games are competitive – “the inside joke here,” he said, “is that everything in SOF is a competition” – adaptive sports, for him, are about rediscovery. Now 47 years old, with a wife and three sons waiting for him at home, Pendergrass is learning ways to thrive despite his new reality. “Training for the Warrior Games,” he said, “is an amazing way for us to reconnect with our families and society, and to find mechanisms for healing.”

Pendergrass just recently discovered, for example, that despite his injuries, he can ride a bicycle, and his first thought was that it was an activity he could do with his boys, now aged nine, eleven and fourteen. “Going out for a run or throwing or kicking the ball around,” he said, “is a bonding thing, a very powerful one. I’ve had

aspirations of being a good dad, and that’s involved discovering activities I can do with them. What I thought I was going to be able to do 10 years ago, I just can’t, because of age and injuries and wear and tear.” Military adaptive sports has been a mechanism, he said, for awakening a new sense of possibility. “A lot of people don’t see that these people playing wheelchair basketball, or swimming – it’s life-changing. It brings you back to remind you of who you are.”

Pendergrass trains not only to find things to do with his boys, but also to give himself goals to work toward and milestones to pass. “When people don’t have that, that’s when you see them get really depressed,” he said. “It’s not just the injury itself. It’s being unable to adapt to the injury, to be the person you still want to be. And that’s where things like the Warrior Games are critical. The injury itself, or multiple injuries over time, are difficult. What’s more difficult, in my opinion, is finding you again through those injuries.”

He’s a relative newcomer to adaptive sports – he was able just a few months ago to walk without a cane – so Pendergrass didn’t discover cycling in time to try out for this year’s games. He’ll be competing in swimming and archery. He’s not exactly sure why he was selected to be SOCOM Team Captain, but if he had to guess, Pendergrass would say it’s because his interactions with the Care Coalition and other warriors have made him an outspoken advocate for restoring not only physical but neurological and even spiritual health to warriors who, like him, were deployed for years without taking time to restore themselves.

Like many 2019 competitors, Pendergrass is interested in seeing if he might qualify for next year’s Invictus Games – but mostly as a means for him to push himself to improve his own performance. Right now, he’s simply thrilled to be a part of Team SOCOM. “What I love about this team,” he said, “is that they look like a bunch of warriors, every one of them. Every single person on our team has deployed for SOF in a combat zone. I look at them and think, ‘Man, this is a crew you don’t want to meet in a dark alley.’ I love it. But when you talk to them, everybody is so positive and giving and wanting to help each other. Emotionally, it’s really been a great thing to be a part of.”

Being constantly wired for battle, Pendergrass said, takes its own toll on the body’s sympathetic nervous system – its “fight or flight” response – to a point where it becomes difficult to slow down and interact normally with the world. “Over time we become unhealthy, I think,” he said, “in the sense that we’re always over on the sympathetic side. And we need to maybe rethink our approach to recovery, to become better at parasympathetic things, with activities like meditation, art, yoga, music. When you just keep training, you keep deploying, you stay in fight-or-flight mode and then your body can’t heal, because the body doesn’t heal when it’s over in the sympathetic state.”

He’s also aware that events such as the Warrior Games and competitive athletics depend to a large extent on public support. “Americans are the greatest people on the planet,” he said. “They give, give, and give. Supporting things like adaptive sports is huge. My message to the public would be that whatever it is you love to do – golf, archery, fishing, biking – whatever it is, if that’s something you’re really passionate about, find an event or organization that will help you share that with veterans. Those are the kinds of things that help pull people back into their communities once they retire from active duty and need to find new things to do.”