“Everyone ready for Hell Week?” he asked us cheerfully.

Hooyah!

“Excellent,” he replied. “Because you are about to experience a very searching and painful test. Each one of you is going to find out what you are really made of. And every step of the way, you will be faced with a choice. Do I give in to the pain and the cold, or do I go on? It will always be up to you. There’s no quotas, no numbers. We don’t decide who passes. You do. But I’ll be there on Friday when Hell Week ends, and I hope to shake the hand of each and every one of you.”

We all stood in some awe for the exit of Captain Maguire, the quintessential Coronado man, who understood the pride of achievement at having scaled the heights and who knew what really counted, in the SEALs and beyond. He was the everlasting chief.

They briefed us about what to bring to class on Sunday — our gear, equipment, change of clothes, dry clothes, and some off-duty clothes, which would be placed in a paper bag so the successful guys would have something to wear when it was all over. Guys who went DOR (dropped on request) would also have dry clothes available anytime during the week when they prepared to leave.

Our instructor told us to eat plenty, right through the weekend, but not to worry about sleep gear on Sunday afternoon, during which time we would be incarcerated in the classroom. “You’ll be too keyed up to sleep,” he added brightly. “So just get in here and relax, watch movies, and get ready.”

On the notice board was the official doctrine of the U.S. Navy SEALs, week five, first phase: “Students will demonstrate the qualities and personal characteristics of determination, courage, self-sacrifice, teamwork, leadership, and a never-quit attitude, under adverse environmental conditions, fatigue, and stress through-out Hell Week.”

That’s laying it on the line, right? Almost. Hell Week turned out to be a lot worse than that.

We spent the weekend organizing ourselves, and we assembled in the classroom at noon on Sunday, July 18. Two dozen in-structors from all over the compound, guys we’d never even met before, were in attendance. It takes that many to get a class through Hell Week, plus attending medics and support and logistics guys. I guess you need a full staff to march men into the ultimate physical tests of the navy’s warrior elite.

This is known as the Hell Week Lockdown. No one leaves; we sit and wait all afternoon; we have our seabags; and the paper bags with our dry clothes are lined up, our names written on the outside in black marker. They served us pizza, a whole stack of it, in the late afternoon.

And outside you could sense it was quiet. No one passed by, no patrols, no wandering students. Everyone on the base knew that Hell Week for 226 was about to begin. It was not exactly respect for the dead, but I guess you understand by now more or less what I mean.

I remember how hot it was, must have been ninety degrees in the room. We’d all been goofing off, wearing Sunday casuals most of the day, and we all knew something was going to happen as the evening wore on. Some movie was running, and the hours ticked by. There was an atmosphere of heightened tension as we waited for the starter’s pistol. Hell Week begins with a frenzy of activity known as Breakout. And when it came for us, there were a lot more guns than the starter’s.

I can’t remember the precise time, but it was after 2030 and before 2100. Suddenly there was a loud shout, and someone literally kicked open the side door. Bam! And a guy carrying a machine gun, followed by two others, came charging in, firing from the hip. The lights went off, and then all three gunmen opened fire, spraying the room with bullets (blanks, I hoped).

There were piercing blasts from whistles, and the other door was kicked open and three more men came crashing into the room. The only thing we knew for sure right now was when the whistles blew, we hit the floor and took up a defensive position, prostrate, legs crossed, ears covered with the palms of the hands.

Hit the deck! Heads down! Incoming!

Then a new voice, loud and stentorian. It was pitch dark save for the nonstop flashes of the machine guns, but the voice sounded a lot like Instructor Mruk’s to me — “Welcome to hell, gentlemen.”

For the next couple of minutes there was nothing but gunfire, deafening gunfire. They were certainly blanks, otherwise half of us would have been dead, but believe me, they sounded just like the real thing, SEAL instructors firing our M43s. The shouting was drowned by the whistles, and everything was drowned by the gunfire.

By now the air in the room was awful, hanging with the smell of cordite, lit only by the muzzle flashes. I kept my head well down on the floor as the gunmen moved among us, taking care not to let hot spent cartridges land on our skin.

I sensed a lull. And then a roar, plainly meant for everyone. “All of you, out! Move, you guys! Move! Move! Move! Let’s go!”

I struggled to my feet and joined the stampede to the door. We rushed out to the grinder, where it was absolute bedlam. More gunfire, endless yelling, and then, again, the whistles, and once more we all hit the deck in the correct position. In barrels around the grinder’s edge, artillery simulators blasted away. I didn’t know where Captain Maguire was, but if he’d been here he’d have thought he was back in some foreign battle zone. At least, if he’d shut his eyes, he would have.

Then the instructors opened fire for real, this time with high-pressure hoses aimed straight at us, knocking us down if we tried to get up. The place was awash with water, and we couldn’t see a thing and we couldn’t hear anything above the small-arms and artillery fire.

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!”

Some of the guys were suffering from mass confusion. One of ’em ran for his life, straight over the beach and into the ocean. He was a guy I knew really well, and he’d lost it completely. This was a simulated scene from the Normandy beaches, and it did induce a degree of panic, because no one knew what was happening or what we were supposed to be doing besides hitting the deck.

The instructors knew this. They understood many of us would be at a low ebb. Not me. I’m always up for this kind of stuff, and anyway I knew they weren’t really trying to kill us. But the instructors understood this would not be true of everyone, and they moved among us, imploring us to quit now while there was still time.

“All you gotta do is ring that little bell up there.”

Lying there in the dark and confusion, freezing cold, soaked to the skin, scared to stand up, I told one of them he could stick that little bell straight up his ass, and I heard a loud roar of laughter. But I never said it again, and I never let on it was me. Until now, that is. See that? Even in the chaos, I could still manage the smart-ass remark.

By now we were in a state of maximum disorientation, just trying to stay on the grinder with the others. The teamwork mantra had set in. I didn’t want to be by myself. I wanted to be with my soaking wet teammates, whatever the hell it was we were supposed to be doing.

Then I heard a voice announcing we were a man short. Then I heard another voice, sharp and demanding. I don’t know who it was, but it was close to me and it sounded like the Biggest Bossman, Joe Maguire, with a lot of authority. “What do you mean? A man short? Get a count right now.”

They ordered us to our feet instantly, and we counted off one by one, stopping at fifty-three. We were a man short. Holy shit! That’s bad, and very serious. Even I understood that. A party was dispatched immediately to the beach, and that’s where they found the missing trainee, splashing around out in the surf.