of a Ravaged Army

We helped one another back over the sand dunes, picking up those who fell, supporting those who could barely walk...The baptism of fire that had reduced Class 226 by more than half was over...No one had ever dreamed it would be this bad.

We lined up outside the chow hall and hoisted the boats onto our heads. It was now apparent we would go nowhere without them. As bankers carry their briefcases, as fashion models walk around with their photograph portfolios, we travel around with our boats on our heads. It’s a Hell Week thing.

I have to admit that after the first straight thirty hours, my memory of those five days begins to grow a little hazy. Not of the actual events, but of the sequence. When you’re moving on toward forty hours without sleep, the mind starts playing tricks, causing fleeting thoughts suddenly to become reality. You jerk yourself awake and wonder where the hell you are and why your mom, holding a big, juicy New York sirloin, is not pulling the paddle right next to you.

It’s the forerunner to outright hallucination. Kind of semi-hallucinations. They start slowly and get progressively worse. Mind you, the instructors do their level best to keep you awake. We were given fifteen minutes of hard physical training both when we reached the chow hall and when we left. We were sent into the surf fast and often. The water was freezing, and every time we carried out boat drills, racing through the breakers with the four remaining teams, we were ordered to dump boat, pull that sucker over on top of us, then right it, get back in, and carry on paddling to our destination.

The reward for the winners was always rest. That’s why we all kept trying so hard. Same for the four-mile run, during which we got slower, times slipped below the thirty-two-minute standard, and the instructors feigned outrage as if they didn’t know we were slowly being battered to hell. By that first Monday evening, we’d been up for thirty-six hours plus and were still going.

Most of us ate an early dinner, looking like a group of zombies. And right afterward we were marched outside to await further orders. I remember that three guys had just quit. Simultaneously. Which put us down to six officers out of the original twelve.

Judging by the one guy I knew, I didn’t think any of the ones who quit were in much worse shape than they had been twelve hours before. They might have been a bit more tired, but we had done nothing new, it was all part of our tried-and-tested routines. And in my view, they had acted in total defiance of the advice handed to us by Captain Maguire.

They weren’t completing each task as it came, living for the day. They had allowed themselves to live in dread of the pain and anguish to come. And he’d told us never to do that, just to take it hour by hour and forget the future. Keep going until you’re secured. You get a guy like that, a legendary U.S. Navy SEAL and war hero, I think you ought to pay attention to his words. He earned the right to say them, and he’s giving you his experience. Like Billy Shelton told me, even the merest suggestion.

But we had no time to mourn the departure of friends. The instructors marched us down to an area known as the steel pier, which used to be the training area for SDV Team 1 before they decamped for Hawaii. It was dark now and the water was very cold, but they ordered us to jump straight in and kept us treading water for fifteen minutes.

Then they let us out back onto dry land and gave us a fierce period of calisthenics. This warmed us a bit. But my teeth were chattering almost uncontrollably, and they still ordered us straight back into the water for another fifteen minutes, the very limit of the time when guys start to suffer from hypothermia. That next fifteen minutes were almost scary. I was so cold, I thought I might pass out. There was an ambulance right there in case someone did.

But I held on. So did most of us, but another officer climbed out of the water early and quit. He was the best swimmer in the class. This was a stunning blow, both to him and the rest of us. The instructor let him go immediately and just carried on counting off the minutes the rest of us were submerged.

When we were finally back on shore, I was not really able to speak and neither was anyone else, but we did some more PT, and then they ordered us back into the water for another period, I forget how long. Maybe five, ten minutes. But time had ceased to matter, and now the instructors knew we were right on the edge, and they came around with mugs of hot chicken broth. I was shaking so much I could hardly hold the cup.

But nothing ever tasted better. I seem to remember someone else quit, but hell, I was almost out of it. I wouldn’t have known if Captain Maguire had quit. All I knew was, there were half as many still going as there had been at the start of Hell Week. The hour was growing later, and this thing was not over yet. We still had five boats in action, and the instructors reshuffled the crews and ordered us to paddle over to Turners Field, the eastern extension of the base.

There they made us run around a long loop, carrying the boat on our heads, and then they made us race without it. This was followed by another long period in the water, at the end of which this member of the crew of boat one, a tough-as-nails Texan (I thought), cracked up with what felt like appendicitis. Whatever it was, I was absolutely unreachable. I didn’t even know my name, and I had to be taken away by ambulance and revived at the medical center.

When I regained consciousness, I got straight out of bed and came back. I would not discuss quitting. I remember the instructors congratulating me on my new warm, dry clothes and then sending me straight back into the surf. “Better get wet and sandy. Just in case you forget what we’re doing here.”

Starting at around 0200, we spent the rest of the night running around the base with the goddamned boat on our heads. They released us for breakfast at 0500, and Tuesday proceeded much like Monday. No sleep, freezing cold, and tired to distraction. We completed a three-mile paddle up to North Island and back, at which time it was late in the evening and we’d been up for more than sixty hours.

The injury list grew longer: cuts, sprains, blisters, bruises, pulled muscles, and maybe three cases of pneumonia. We worked through the night, making one long six-mile paddle, and reported for breakfast again at 0500 on Wednesday. We’d had no sleep for three days, but no one else quit.

And all through the morning we kept going, swim-paddle-swim, then a run along the beach. We carried the boat to chow at noon, and then they sent us to go sleep. We’d have one hour and forty-five minutes in the tent. We had thirty-six guys left.

Trouble was, some of them could not sleep. I was one. The medical staff tried to help the wounded get back into the fray. Tendons and hips seemed to be the main problems, but guys needed muscle-stretching exercises to keep them supple for the day ahead.

The new shift of instructors turned up and started yelling for everyone to wake up and get back out there. It was like standing in the middle of a graveyard and trying to wake the dead. Slowly it dawned on the sleepers: their worst nightmare was happening. Someone was driving them forward again.

They ordered us into the surf, and somehow we fell, crawled, or stumbled over that sand dune and into the freezing water. They gave us fifteen minutes of surf torture, exercises in the waves, then ordered us out and told us to hoist the boats back on our heads and make the elephant walk to chow.

They worked us all night, in and out of the surf; they walked us up and down the beach for God knows how many miles. Finally, they let us sleep again. I guess it was about 0400 on the Thursday morning. Against many pessimistic forecasts, we all woke up and carried the boats to breakfast. Then they worked us without mercy, had us racing the boats in the gigantic pool without paddles, just hands, and then swimming them, one crew against the other.