Coronado, like New York, is a city that never sleeps. Those instructors are out there patrolling the corridors of our barracks by night into the small hours. One of them once came into my room after I’d hot mopped it and high polished the floor till you could almost see your face in it. He dropped a trickle of sand onto the floor and chewed me out for living in a dust bowl! Then he sent me down to the Pacific, in the company of my swim buddy and of course himself, to “get wet and sandy.” Then we had to go through the decontamination unit, and the shrieking of those cold hydraulic pipes and the ferocious jets of water awakened half the barracks and nearly sent us into shock. Never mind the fact that it was 0200 and we were due back under those showers again in another couple of hours.
I think it was that time. I can’t be absolutely sure. But my roommate quit that night. He went weak at the knees just watching what was happening to me. I don’t know how the hell he thought I felt.
One time during Indoc while we were out on night run, one of the instructors actually climbed up the outside of a building, came through an open window, and absolutely trashed a guy’s room, threw everything everywhere, emptied detergent over his bed gear. He went back out the way he’d come in, waited for everyone to return, and then tapped on the poor guy’s door and demanded a room inspection. The guy couldn’t work out whether to be furious or heartbroken, but he spent most of the night cleaning up and still had to be in the showers at 0430 with the rest of us.
I asked Reno about this weeks later, and he told me, “Marcus, the body can take damn near anything. It’s the mind that needs training. The question that guy was being asked involved mental strength. Can you handle such injustice? Can you cope with that kind of unfairness, that much of a setback? And still come back with your jaw set, still determined, swearing to God you will never quit? That’s what we’re looking for.”
As ever, I do not claim to quote Instructor Reno word for word. But I do know what he said, and how I remember it. No one talks to him and comes away bemused. Trust me.
Thus far I’ve only dealt with that first two weeks of training on the land and in the pool, and I may not have explained how much emphasis the instructors put on the correct balanced diet for everyone. They ran classes on this, drilling into us how much fruit and vegetables we needed, the necessity for tons of carbohydrates and water.
The mantra was simple — you take care of your body like the rest of your gear. Keep it well fed and watered, between one and two gallons a day. Start no discipline without a full canteen. That way your body will take care of you when you begin to ask serious questions of it. Because there’s no doubt in the coming months you will be asking those questions.
This was an area, I remember, where there were a lot of questions, because even after those first few days here, guys were feeling the effects: muscle soreness, aches and pains in shoulders, thighs, and backs where there had been none before.
The instructor who dealt with this part of our training warned us against very strong drugs like Tylenol, except for a fever, but he understood we would need ibuprofen. He conceded it was difficult to get through the coming Hell Week without ibuprofen, and he told us the medical department would make sure we received a sufficient amount to ease the pain, though not too much of it.
I remember he said flatly, “You’re going to hurt while you’re here. That’s our job, to induce pain; not permanent injury, of course, but we need to make you hurt. That’s a big part of becoming a SEAL. We need proof you can take the punishment. And the way out of that is mental, in your mind. Don’t buckle under to the hurt, rev up your spirit and your motivation, attack the courses. Tell yourself precisely how much you want to be here.”
The final part of Indoc involved boats — the fabled IBS (inflatable boat, small) or, colloquially, itty-bitty ship. These boats are thirteen feet long and weigh a little under 180 pounds. They are unwieldy and cumbersome, and for generations the craft has been used to teach BUD/S students to pull a paddle as a tight-knit crew, blast their way through the incoming surf, rig properly, and drag the thing into place in a regimented line for inspection on the sandy beach about every seven minutes. At least that’s how it seemed to us.
At that point we lined up in full life jackets right next to our boats. Inside the boat, the paddles were stowed with geometric precision, bow and stern lines coiled carefully on the rubber floor. Inch perfect.
We started with a series of races. But before that, each of our teams had a crew leader, selected from the most experienced navy personnel among us. And they lined up with their paddles at the military slope-arms position, the paddles resting on their shoulders. Then they saluted the instructors and announced their boat was correctly rigged and the crew was ready for the sea.
Meanwhile, other instructors were checking each boat. If a paddle was incorrectly stowed, an instructor seized it and hurled it down the beach. That happened on my first day, and one of the guys standing very near to me raced off after it, anxious to retrieve it and make amends. Unhappily, his swim buddy forgot to go with him, and the instructor was furious.
“Drop!” he yelled. And every one of us hit the sand and began to execute the worst kind of push-up, our feet up on the rubber gunwales of the boats, pushing ’em out in our life jackets. The distant words of Reno sung in my ears: “Someone screws it up, the consequences affect everyone.”
We raced each other in the boats out beyond the surf. We raced until our arms felt as if they might fall off. We pulled, each crew against the rest, hauling our grotesquely unstreamlined little boats along. And this was not Yale versus Harvard on the Thames River in Connecticut, all pulling together. This was the closest thing to a floating nuthouse you’ve ever seen. But it was my kind of stuff.
Boat drill is a game for big, strong guys who can pull. Pull like hell. It’s also a game for heavy lifters who can haul that boat up and run with their team.
Let me take you through one of these races. First, we got the boat balanced in the shallows and watched the surf roll in toward us. The crew leader had issued a one-minute briefing, and we all watched the pattern of those five- to six-foot breakers. This part is called surf passage, and on the command, we were watching for our chance. Plainly, we didn’t want to charge into the biggest incoming wave, but we didn’t have much time.
The water was only a fraction above sixty degrees. We all knew we had to take that first wave bow on, but we didn’t want the biggest, so we waited. Then the crew leader spotted a slacker one, and he bellowed, “Now! Now! Now!” We charged forward, praying to God we wouldn’t get swept sideways and capsize. One by one we scrambled aboard, digging deep, trying to get through the overhanging crest, which was being whipped by an offshore breeze.
“Dig! Dig! Dig!” he roared as we headed for two more incoming walls of water. This was the Pacific Ocean, not some Texas lake. Close to us, one of the nine boats capsized, and there were paddles and students all in the water. You could hear nothing except the crash of the surf and shouts of “Dig! Stroke! Portside...starboard...straighten up! Let’s go! Go! Go!”
I pulled that paddle until I thought my lungs would burst, until we had driven out beyond the breakers. And then our class leader yelled, “Dump the boat!” The bow-side men slipped overboard, the others (including me) grabbed the strap handles fixed on the rubber hull, stood up, and jumped over the same side, dragging the boat over on top of us.
As the boat hit the water, three of us grabbed the same handles and climbed back on the upturned hull of the boat. I was first up, I remember. Weightless in the water, right? Just give me a chance.
We backed to the other side of the hull and pulled, dragging the IBS upright, flipping it back on its lines. Everyone was aware that the tide was sweeping us back into the breakers. Feeling something between panic and frenzy, we battled back, grabbed our paddles and hauled out into flatter water and took a bead on the finish line. We paddled like hell, racing toward the mark, some tower on the beach. Then we dumped the boat again, grabbe
d the handles, carried it through the shallows onto the beach, and hauled it into a head carry.
We ran up the dunes around some truck, still with the boat on our heads, and then, as fast as we could, back along the beach to the point where we had started, and the instructors awaited us, logging the positions we finished and the times we clocked. They thoughtfully gave the winning crew a break to sit down and recover. The losers were told to push ’em out. It was not unusual to complete six of these races in one afternoon. By the end of Indoc week two, we had lost twenty-five guys.
The rest of us, somehow, had managed to show Instructor Reno and his colleagues we were indeed fit and qualified enough to attempt BUD/S training. Which would begin the next week. There would be just one final briefing from Reno before we attacked BUD/S first phase.
I saw him outside the classroom, and, still with his sunglasses on, he offered his hand and smiled quietly. “Nice job, Marcus,” said Reno. He had a grip like a crane. His hand might have been bolted onto blue twisted steel, but I shook it as hard as I could, and I replied, “Thank you, sir.”
We all knew he’d changed us drastically in those two weeks in Indoc. He’d showed us the depth of what we must achieve, guided us to the brink of the forthcoming unknown abyss of BUD/S. He’d knocked away whatever cocksure edges we might still have possessed.
We were a lot tougher now, and I still towered over him. None-theless, Reno Alberto still seemed fifteen feet tall to me. And he always will.
4
Welcome to Hell, Gentlemen
Battlefield whistle drills were conducted in the midst of high-pressure water jets, total chaos, deafening explosions, and shouting instructors...“Crawl to the whistle, men! Crawl to the whistle! And keep your goddamned heads down!”
We assembled in the classroom soon after 1300 that last afternoon of Indoc. Instructor Reno made his entry like a Roman caesar, head held high, and immediately ordered us to push ’em out. As ever, chairs scraped back and we hit the floor, counting out the push-ups.
At twenty, Reno left us in the rest position and then said crisply, “Recover.”
“Hooyah, Instructor Ree-no!”
“Give me a muster, Mr. Ismay.”
“One hundred and thirteen men assigned, Instructor Reno. All present except two men at medical.”
“Close, Mr. Ismay. Two men quit a few minutes ago.”
All of us wondered who they were. My boat’s crew members? Heads whipped around. I had no idea who had crashed at the final hurdle.
“Not your fault, Mr. Ismay. You were in the classroom when they quit. Two-two-six will class up in BUD/S first phase with a hundred and eleven men.”
Hooyah!
I realized we had been losing guys fairly steadily. But according to these numbers, Class 226 had had 164 men assigned on the first day, and we’d lost more than fifty of them. I know a few never showed up at all, mostly through sheer intimidation. But the rest had somehow vanished into the void. I never saw any of them leave, not even my roommate.
And I still cannot work out quite how it happened. I guess they just reached some type of breaking point, or maybe they anguished for days over their own inability to cut the mustard. But gone is gone in this man’s navy. I did not entirely comprehend it at the time, but me and my 110 cohorts were witnessing the ruthless elimination process of a U.S. fighting force that cannot tolerate a suspect component.
Instructor Reno now spoke formally. “You’re on your way to first phase BUD/S. And I want each and every one of you to make me proud. Those of you who survive Hell Week will still have to face the pool competency test — that’s in second phase — and then the weapons practicals in third phase. But I want to be at your graduation. And right there I want to shake your hand. I want to think of you as one of Reno’s warriors.”
The Hooyah, Instructor Ree-no! with our clenched fists in the air could have lifted the roof off the classroom. We loved him, all of us, because we all sensed he truly wanted the best for us. There was not a shred of malice in the guy. Neither was there a shred of weakness.
He repeated the orders he had been giving us for two weeks. “Stay alert. Be on time. And be accountable for your actions at all times, in and out of uniform. Remember, your reputation is everything. And you all have a chance to build on that reputation, beginning right here on Monday morning, zero five hundred. First phase.
“For those of you who make the teams, remember you’re joining a brotherhood. You’ll be closer to those guys than you ever were to friends in school or college. You’ll live with them...and, in combat, some of you may die with them. Your family must always come first, but the brotherhood is a privileged place. And I don’t want you ever to forget it.”
And with that, he left us, walked away and slipped out of a back entrance, leaving behind a very long shadow: a bunch of guys who were revved up, gung ho, and ready to give everything to pass the challenging tests ahead. Just the way Reno wanted it.
Enter Instructor Sean Mruk (pronounced MUR-rock), ex-SEAL from Team 2, veteran of three overseas deployments, native of Ohio, a cheerful-looking character we had not encountered during Indoc. He was assistant to our new proctor. We heard him before we saw him, his quiet command, “Drop and push ’em out,” before he had even made his way to the front of the classroom.
In the following few minutes he ran through the myriad of tasks we must complete after hours in first phase. Stuff like preparing the boats and vehicles, making sure we had the right supplies. He told us he expected 100 percent at all times, because if we did not put out, we’d surely pay for it.
He made sure we had all moved from our Indoc barracks, behind the grinder, over to the naval special warfare barracks a couple of hundred yards north of the center. Prime real estate on the sandy beach, and it’s all yours — just as long as you can stay on the BUD/S bandwagon and remain in Class 226, the numbers of which will shortly be blocked in stark white on either side of your new green phase one helmet. Those numbers stay with you as long as you serve in the Navy SEALs. My class’s three white-painted numbers would one day become the sweetest sounds I ever heard.
Instructor Mruk nodded agreeably and told us he would be over to the new barracks at 1000 Sunday to make sure we knew how to get our rooms ready for inspection. He gave us one last warning: “You’re an official class now. First phase owns you.”
And so to the cloudless Monday morning of June 18, all of us assembled outside the barracks two hours before sunrise. It was 0500 and the temperature not much above fifty degrees. Our new instructor, a stranger, stood there silently. Lieutenant Ismay reported, formally, “Class Two-two-six is formed, Chief. Ninety-eight men present.”
David Ismay saluted. Chief Stephen Schulz returned the salute without so much as a “Good morning” or “How y’doing?” Instead, he just snapped, “Hit the surf, sir. All of you. Then get into the classroom.”
Here we went again. Class 226 charged out of the compound and across the beach to the ocean. We floundered into the ice-cold water, got wet, and then squelched our way back to the classroom, freezing, dripping, already full of apprehension.
“Drop!” ordered the instructor. Then again. Then again. Finally, Ensign Joe Burns, a grim-looking SEAL commander, took his place in front of us and informed us he was the first phase officer. A few of us flinched. Burns’s reputation as a hard man had preceded him. He later proved to be one of the toughest men I ever met.
“I understand you all want to be frogmen?”
Hooyah!
“I guess we’ll see about that,” said Ensign Burns. “Find out how bad you really want it. This is my phase, and these are my staff instructors.”
Each of the fourteen introduced himself to us by name. And then Chief Schulz, presumably terrified we’d all go soft on him after an entire two minutes of talk, commanded, “Drop and push ’em out.” And again. And again.
Then he ordered us out to the grinder for physical training. “Move! Move! Move!”
And finally we
formed up, for the first time, on the most notorious square of black tarmac in the entire United States Armed Forces. It was 0515, and our places were marked by little frog flippers painted on the ground. It was hardly worth the visit.
“Hit the surf. Get wet and sandy!” yelled Schulz. “Fast!”
Our adrenaline pumped, our legs pumped, our arms pumped, our hearts pumped. Every goddamn thing there was pumped as we thundered off the blacktop, still dressed in our squelching boots and fatigue pants, went back down to the beach, and hurled ourselves into the surf.
Jesus, it was cold. The waves broke over me as I struggled back into the shallows, flung myself onto the sand, rolled over a couple of times, and came up looking like Mr. Sandman, except I wasn’t bringing anyone a dream. I could hear the others all around me, but I’d heard Schulz’s last word. Fast. And I remembered what Billy Shelton had taught: pay attention to even the merest suggestion...and I ran for my goddamned life straight back to the grinder, right up with the leaders.
“Too slow!” bellowed Schulz. “Much too slow...drop!”
Schulz’s instructors roamed among us, berating us, yelling, harassing us as we sweated and strained to make the push-ups...“Like a goddamned fairy.” “Get a grip on yourself.” “For Christ’s sake, look as if you mean it.” “C’mon, let’s go! Go! Go!” “You sure you wanna be here? You wanna quit right now?”
I learned in the next few minutes there was a sharp difference between “get wet and sandy” and just plain “get wet.” Parked at the side of the grinder were two of the inflatable boats, laden to the gunwales with ice and water. “Get wet” meant plunge over the bow, under the water, under the rubber seat struts, and out to the other side. Five seconds, in the dark, in the ice, under the water. A killer whale would have begged for mercy.