Warrior Soul: The Memoir of a Navy SEAL (6 page)

The master chief spit a wad of Red Man chewing tobacco off the dais. His voice was clipped. “On behalf of the director, gentlemen, it is my privilege to welcome you to Basic Underwater Demolition, SEAL training. No one invited you here. No one requested that you attend this course. You volunteered. And you may volunteer to leave us anytime you wish. Seven days a week, twenty-four hours a day.” The master chief pointed to a brass bell hanging in front of the first-phase office. “Just ring that bell over there three times, and you’re free to go. No questions asked. No prejudicial comments will be placed in your records. You will be free to go back to doing whatever fucked-up shit you were into before you came here. It’s that easy.”

The class stood at attention; the only sound was the booming of the surf behind the compound. The master chief continued, hands on his hips. “In the next twenty-six weeks, we’re not going to try to train you. We’re going to try to kill you. You will be asked to do things you’ll think are beyond the limits of your endurance. You will run faster, swim farther, and dig deeper than you thought humanly possible. When you are tired, you will be pushed. When you are hungry, you will go without food. When you are cold, the wind will be your blanket. You will suffer, you will sweat, and you will bleed.

“One hundred and forty-five men comprise this class. In the next six months, approximately seventy-five of you will ring that bell, ring out—simply quit. Fifteen to twenty of you will receive significant injuries during the course of training and will request to be medically dropped.”

The master chief worked the Red Man, shifting the lump in his cheek from right to left. I would never see Dick Roy without a plug of tobacco in his mouth, not during exercises, not on ocean swims, not on ten-mile runs. He was probably born with a chaw tucked into his cheek.

“If you came here to prove something to your daddy or your girlfriend, if you came here to find yourself, if you came here because you love America and you wanna be a coe-man-doe, do yourself a favor, do my instructors a favor: Ring out now.”

The master chief looked us over. “Maybe ten or fifteen of you clowns will make it. The rest of you will quit, flunk out academically, or be injured seriously. The men who remain at graduation will receive additional specialized training and go on to become members of the smallest and most elite spec-ops unit of the United States military: the operational SEAL Teams. This is the first and only pep talk you will receive at this command. Whether or not you graduate is entirely up to you.” He spit another glob of Red Man. This one landed within six inches of my left boot.

“Good luck,” he said.

By eight o’clock that morning we had done maybe seven hundred push-ups, run four miles in the sand, and performed an hour of calisthenics. Stragglers had been made to hit the surf, then roll in wet beach sand to make themselves into “sugar cookies.” Sugar cookies went on exercising in wet, sandy uniforms. But the day was still young.

BUD/S students do not march; they run, everywhere. After our predawn PT session, the formation double-timed across the amphibious base, where we reperformed the physical screening test, doing push-ups, sit-ups, pull-ups, a four-hundred-yard swim, and another run in long pants and combat boots. After lunch we were introduced to the obstacle course and got to carry telephone poles around for a while. Six guys had fallen out of formation by the time the class ran the mile to the chow hall for dinner. The three round trips to the mess hall for meals amounted to six additional miles a day, every day. Vomit spattered the pavement as the formation returned to the barracks long after dark.

If the instructors were trying to get my attention, they’d succeeded. Looking back, that first day of training would be the easiest day we’d ever have. On the wall of the BUD/S compound is painted one of the SEALs’ favorite mottoes: “The only easy day was yesterday.” As I collapsed into my bunk that night, even my ears hurt. That night I made up my own motto: All I had to fear was hope itself.

I’d survived my first day of BUD/S, but hundreds of thousands of push-ups, hundreds of miles of sand runs, and countless hours in the cruel sea remained between me and graduation. The following morning eight helmets were lined up under the bell in front of the first-phase office. Overnight eight of our classmates had taken the master chief’s advice and quit. The helmets were how the instructors counted coup; each day the row would get longer as more students were injured, flunked out, or came to the realization that they wanted to be SEALs, but not this bad.

BUD/S training is broken into three phases, each of eight weeks’ duration. First phase is devoted almost exclusively to physical conditioning—and weeding out students. For twelve to twenty hours a day, trainees run, swim, paddle inflatable boats, navigate the obstacle course, then run some more. As often as the students are kept wet, they are just as often kept sandy. Chafing and blisters can quickly become ulcerous, infected sores. Other common first-phase injuries include joint inflammation and stress fractures of the lower legs. Twisted knees, ankles, and injuries from falls are also routine.

A major enemy is hypothermia. When most people think of San Diego, they think of sun-drenched beaches and palm trees. A BUD/S student will remember the cold. The water in San Diego is seldom above 60 degrees and is often much colder. A human being’s core temperature is about 98 degrees—well, you can do the math. BUD/S students are kept constantly wet, in the water and in the wind. Hours of exposure can result in mind-numbing, teeth-chattering hypothermia. There is not a BUD/S student who can’t tell you about muscle cramps and hallucinations. Instructor Ocean was one bad dude, and he was always available to provide negative reinforcement. In an event called a “surf torture,” instructors have the class link arms and sit down in the pounding shore break behind the compound. Plunging waves beat on the formation. Smashed and rolled by the breakers, the class struggles to keep hold of one another in the icy water. The megaphone would blare: “We’re going to stay here until someone quits.”

Sooner or later, somebody always would.

Nor is there much rest for the wicked. The running is all done in combat boots—a sore ankle will not get better banging six miles to and from the mess hall each day. Longer runs, called “conditioning hikes,” are pounded out on miles of soft beach sand. The most a BUD/S student will run in a day is approximately twenty miles, with most days averaging between eight and fifteen. Gangs of instructors lead and follow each run, harrying the class formation like wolves after a herd of migrating caribou.

On a long run, the faster runners move toward the front as the lame, tired, and out of condition fall back. The formation is not allowed to straggle. On each outing, instructors separate the last 20 percent from the main body. This group is called the “goon squad,” and they are singled out for special attention. That means at least an extra half hour out on the sand, running in circles, doing push-ups, rope climbs, or carrying telephone poles out into the surf zone. The weakest and slowest are the ones who get screwed the hardest. During first phase, the goon squad contributes the majority of the helmets under the bell.

For every student, the push-ups are uncountable. Any breach of decorum, military etiquette, or operational procedure earns the transgressor fifty push-ups. Any time a class member superior in rank to you is “dropped,” everyone in the unit does push-ups as well. When a boat-crew leader is made to do push-ups, his boat crew does them with him. When the class leader is dropped, the entire class does push-ups. It’s an effective way to teach accountability.

It isn’t just the instructors who are sons of bitches. Another nemesis is the obstacle course. Scattered across a couple hundred yards of sand are two dozen contraptions made from telephone poles, hawser, cargo net, and barbed wire. Obstacles with names like the Belly Robber, the Dirty Name, and the Slide for Life teach balance, physical technique, and confidence to students who will later scale embassy walls, climb offshore oil rigs, and pull themselves down lines attached to submerged submarines. Each time a student runs the O-course, his completion time is expected to improve. If it does not, the student can enjoy a refreshing dip in the Pacific, a bracing roll in beach sand, and the opportunity to run the O-course one more time. Wet.

Another first-phase pastime is boat work. The class is broken into seven-man boat crews and each is assigned to an IBS, or inflatable boat, small. Dressed in kapok life jackets, the boat crews paddle through the surf zone for hours in a series of races and long-distance paddles. Although boats are frequently swamped and run ashore by gigantic surf, and hands are rubbed raw from miles and miles of paddling, the surf zone offers some relief: It’s the only place in first phase where the instructors can’t scream in your face.

At an Olympic-sized pool reserved for SEALs, students learn Red Cross lifesaving and drown-proofing, a technique that allows individuals to stay afloat and swim without the use of their arms and legs. In the drown-proofing practical, students are thrown in the pool, hands and feet tied together with parachute cord. They have to swim four hundred yards, retrieve a face mask from the bottom of the deep end with their teeth, then “tread water” for forty minutes—all of this while trussed up like Esther Williams in bondage.

Between runs, swims, and surf work, first-phase students take academic classes in advanced first aid, the history of naval special warfare, communications, beach reconnaissance, and cartography. Any grade below 3.0 is considered failing. Exhausted students who fall asleep during lectures are splashed awake with a wastebasket full of seawater and have a tear-gas grenade placed in their hands. The instructor then pulls the pin, requiring the sleepy student to keep his hand tightly on the grenade, holding the safety handle down to prevent the tear gas from going off.

The fourth week of first phase is Hell Week, which begins around midnight on Sunday and ends sometime the following Saturday. The first event is “Break Out,” a daunting affair in which students are rousted from the barracks by instructors armed with concussion grenades, artillery simulators, and M-60 machine guns. Students rush about while smoke grenades billow, machine guns are fired, and a fire hose sprays water. Explosions rip the night as a contradictory series of orders and uniforms are announced. The net result is that students begin their weeklong ordeal with every piece of equipment and every scrap of uniform wet, sandy, and scattered in heaps. The event is designed to disorient, and it does. While explosions rock the formation, the bell clangs as shell-shocked students begin to quit.

During Hell Week, students are allowed from zero to three hours of sleep—the entire week. Events continue twenty-four hours a day for six days. Students run, swim, paddle, and generally get fucked about by three shifts of instructors who rotate in around the clock.

The class is again broken up into boat crews, and every event, called an “evolution,” is a race. Students drag three-hundred-pound IBSs with them everywhere they go. It pays to be a winner: Boat crews who win an evolution such as the paddle around Coronado Island might be allowed a cup of coffee, chow earlier, or a twenty-minute nap on their boat. Those who finish last must do the evolution over again. Like the denizens of the goon squad, losing boat crews are hammered by the instructors.

The boats must constantly be ready for sea, that is, be in perfect operational order. Likewise the students. The task is nearly impossible; the instructors can always find a twisted life-jacket strap or an unbuttoned pocket. Then it’s hammer time.

The constant running, paddling, and cold-water immersions require huge amounts of energy. Students burn upward of five thousand calories a day and are fed four meals: breakfast, lunch, dinner, and a midnight meal called “mid-rats.” Students are not allowed to talk or doze off during meals. It is not unusual to watch students pass out facedown in their oatmeal. Those who face-plant are tossed out of the chow hall and into the surf zone.

With lack of sleep come hallucinations, and tempers and judgment fray. This is part of the process. Instructors watch carefully, pressing officers to lead and boat crews to work together. Lack of organization is not tolerated.

Each time a boat-crew member quits, his mates are left to pull his load, humping the three-hundred-pound boat through the evolutions with one fewer person. Everyone works harder to make up for the lost man, but the boat is slower, and that makes the instructors very cross. It’s easy to see how the loss of a single individual could lead to an entire crew washing out. Hell Week is an object lesson in teamwork.

It is not unheard of for a class to lose 60 percent of its members during Hell Week alone. Very few classes come through the entire week without losing a single individual. These classes are awarded a “No Bell Prize,” and their class number is engraved on a plaque on the BUD/S quarterdeck. As I write this, that plaque has perhaps four class numbers carved into it—out of the 280 classes that have graduated.

Of all the experiences a student will have at BUD/S, Hell Week is probably the most crucial. Students emerge with the realization that the human body is capable of ten times the output previously thought possible. There are few limits and no limitations to what a determined individual can accomplish. After Hell Week, the class is allowed to commission a T-shirt emblazoned with the logo of the Naval Special Warfare Training Command and the class number. If you can survive Hell Week, you’ll probably survive the remainder of training.

After Hell Week injuries are feared more than the instructors. Little provision is made for the wounded, and there is no convalescent leave. Nor is the medical attention particularly fawning. Advice from the corpsmen in sick bay is usually “Take an aspirin and run on it.” More than once that advice has been given to a student with a broken leg.

Those who survive Hell Week embark on the second phase of training, land warfare. Stopwatches tick as blindfolded students strip and reassemble a dozen varieties of pistol, assault rifle, and machine gun. Instruction in marksmanship is intense, and students learn long-distance shooting as well as quick kill, fire and maneuver, and counterambush. Hand-to-hand combat, the use of a knife, garrote, and sentry stalking are taught by men who have done it for real. Students study land navigation, small-unit tactics, briefing techniques, and hydrographic and land reconnaissance.