Some SOF careers are extraordinary in one direction. Former DEVGRU and Delta Force operator Kevin Hollandโs is extraordinary in just about every direction.
He graduated from West Wilkes High School in North Carolina in 1988 and went straight into the Navy. By 1990 he was deploying into Desert Storm with a SEAL platoon doing deep reconnaissance and sniper work in northern Iraq, barely 20 years old.
Identified as being in the top 1 percent of Navy SEALs, he was invited to screen for DEVGRU, the Navyโs Tier 1 counterterrorism unit. He served there until he separated from the Navy in 1995.
What he did next is what makes the career impossible to invent. He went home to North Carolina and became a Wildlife Enforcement Officer for the state Resources Commission. For seven years he patrolled the woods of Wilkes County, supplementing his income by teaching survival and land navigation to platoons of SEALs and civilian classes. A Tier 1 trident hanging in a hunting cabin somewhere.
September 11 changed that. He re-enlisted, this time in the Army. From 2001 to 2013 he served as a Green Beret and then an operator with 1st SFOD-D (Delta Force). The only man publicly known to have served as a fully badged operator at both DEVGRU and Delta.
On the night of 13 December 2003, Operation Red Dawn. Task Force 121โs C Squadron Delta element and ISA closed on Ad-Dawr in northern Iraq. They found a small spider hole in the ground covered by debris. Holland was part of the small team that reached in and pulled Saddam Hussein out by his hair and his scraggly beard. Someone yelled โgun.โ Holland put his rifle on the deposed dictatorโs chest with the safety off. Seeing no weapon, he flicked it back to safe. The Ace of Spades was in custody.
In 2011 he suffered a severe combat injury. He retired in 2013.
SEAL. Wildlife Officer. Delta Force. The man who pulled Saddam out of the hole. A career that, in any other context, would sound made up. It isnโt.