Charles Prouty enlisted in the Navy at age 17 while he was still in high school. His plan was to get into the Naval Academy through the fleet, which he did, and graduated in 1967. After completing BUD/S training in 1968, he led a 14-man SEAL platoon, which trained together before being deployed to Vietnam in 1969. Prouty describes his adventures as a SEAL platoon commander with SEAL Team 1, operating off of SEA FLOAT in Nam Can, including the time his team went deep behind enemy lines to find and retrieve an enemy medical cache, which they did, but also found themselves surrounded by two Viet Cong companies. Incidentally, he was awarded a Silver Star medal for his valor and “calmness in the face of overwhelming odds” in that action, which he humbly never bothered to mention in this interview. He also recounts a fascinating “small world” story, recalls getting dressed down for allowing his team to waterski behind the SEAL support craft, and losing his corpsman to an errant blade in a helicopter crash he survived with just a broken collarbone. On his second tour in 1972, he was the officer in charge of training the Vietnamese SEALS in Da Nang, where he had three SEALS and three Force Recon Marines as part of his staff.