Noel Benadom - CTO3 1996-1999

The CT rating was never on my radar. All through high school I was determined to be a SEAL. In the 90’s when I signed up for DEP, there was a program for EOD/ SEAL called DIVEFARE that I signed up for with the source rating HM. I passed all the prelims and spent my whole senior year doing the same workouts as pBUD/s, under the direction of one of the SEAL detailers.

I went to Great Lakes as part of Div 96-324, and had a great time. A few days after we all got our shots, our RDC came into berthing and said “alright… who all are signed up, wanting to be Billy Badass?” Nobody knew what he meant till he pretty much spelled it out for us. Those of us who were trying out for DIVEFARE and other special programs went down to special physicals. I have an allergy to tetanus shots that temporarily affects my inner ear, and it was still going on when I went for my physical. Instantly DQ’d because of inner ear pain right then and there. I was crushed.

They sent me to another room where a navy career counselor was looking over my ASVAB scores, and I had 5 choices: undesignated, TM, FC, Nuke, and CTO. I knew what the others were about, but not CTO, so I asked “what’s a CTO?” His answer was “I don’t know…. Some top secret shit.” So I said, let’s do that. The rest is history.