Amid celebration, Thai divers who helped rescue soccer team trapped in cave mourn their friend

A member of the Royal Thai Navy carries a portrait of Saman Kunan, the former Thai Navy SEAL who died in the rescue mission for a soccer team trapped in a cave, during honors marking the arrival of Kunan's remains at a military base in Chon Buri province.

By Matt Blomberg

July 13, 2018 1:45 PM PT

Reporting from Mae Sai, Thailand — Jakkrawat Chansamot came out of his hotel room here the other day swilling a big brown bottle of beer. It was hard to tell if he was celebrating or mourning.

The retired Thai Navy SEAL had just helped pull off the year’s great escape — extracting a boys’ soccer team from a dark and flooded network of caves.

But in the process, he’d lost a good friend and colleague, Saman Kunan, who suffocated to death in the perilous cavity while placing air tanks along the escape route.

“Everybody was relieved after the mission was completed,” Jakkrawat, who goes by Ter, said Friday.

“Although it ended with both contentment and sorrow, I think we need to separate those two feelings and understand that no mission can be 100% successful.”

Ter and his fellow divers were preparing to head to Roi Et Province, where family and friends were preparing to cremate Kunan.

It would be a hero’s funeral. And as is tradition here, it would last several days.

Kunan, 38, has been eulogized as an adventurer, a helper, an achiever and the perfect husband.

For Ter and the 80-odd current and former Thai Navy SEALs who worked around the clock to free the boys trapped in the Tham Luang Nang Non caves, he is something more.

“SEALs are like brothers, from the same family,” Ter said. “We were trained as a team because a mission cannot be achieved by one person alone.”

In this instance, however, it appears that Kunan had gone his own way after hearing about the pending disaster here in the city of Mae Sai, a few miles from the Myanmar border in Thailand’s mountainous far north.

With monsoon rains forecast and experts on the scene fretting that the 12 members of the Wild Boars soccer team and their coach could be trapped inside the caves for months if they were not found and extracted soon, Kunan headed north from Bangkok, where he worked in airport security.

“Sam took leave to come here by himself,” said Mongkol Chankaew, another former Navy SEAL who works alongside Kunan and Ter at the airport. “When we learned that, we did not think it was a good idea.”

And so, a band of 10 brothers, now working at various airports but forever Navy SEALs, hightailed it after him.

“When we see a brother having a difficult time, we’ll come from every part of the country to help,” Ter said. “SEAL alumni headed toward the cave with no appointments.”

On the evening of July 5, security bosses from numerous airports agreed to release teams of former SEALs to the caves. The next morning, Ter was packing his bags, flight ticket in hand, when his phone flickered.

He opened a group chat and read a message that said his good friend was dead.

He put his phone in his pocket, finished packing his bags and proceeded to the airport. The men cried when they saw each other.

“We couldn’t let him die in vain,” Ter said. “We were discouraged, but we would never back out. We had to carry on his work.”

When they arrived at Mae Sai, the men were immediately put to work hauling equipment in and out of Chamber 3, a holding zone about a mile from the mouth of the cave — and the place where Kunan had died.

Kunan had lost consciousness much deeper in the cave when he ran out of oxygen and was brought back to Chamber 3, where a command center had been set up. Efforts to revive him failed.

There was no time to mourn. Thirteen more lives hung in the balance.

Wet and weary, the team worked almost nonstop for five days straight, ferrying diving gear, food and pumping equipment into the caves, where the boys were perched on a ledge.

More than 20 tons of gear was moved in and out over the course of the operation, according to an Australian police commander working on the mission.

Rescue divers from around the world described swirling muddy waters in the narrow and jagged passages, with floodwater rushing in as giant pumps worked to drag it out. Visibility underwater was almost nonexistent, and oxygen levels were dangerously low.

On each of the three evacuation days, the SEALs received the lost boys in Chamber 3 and carried them on stretchers to the cave’s mouth.

Each evening, they’d down a few beers and go to bed late, then wake up early and head back to what had become a sloppy, stinking hell.

Ter and Mongkol couldn’t reveal much about their jobs in the special forces, other than to say they had provided security to Thailand’s highly exalted monarchy and carried out “confidential missions.”

But Mongkol, who took the lead for the team of 10 that came to back up Kunan, gave an indication of just how taxing the cave rescue was on his men.

“This operation was far more difficult than any other mission,” he said Thursday before jumping into the driver’s seat of a silver van full of other SEALs headed to the funeral.

Blomberg is a special correspondent. Sasiwen Mokkhansen, a special correspondent, contributed to this report.