But that wasn’t my path. It was time for me to cross the water and enter Coronado, where the Amphibious base was, for the first time. I was done with the gray Navy of big ships and slow days. It was time to attend BUD/S.
CHAPTER 5
BUD/S AND THE BEGINNING OF A SEAL
The lack of ligaments in my knee concerned the doctors at BUD/S. They wanted me to know that there would be a lot of soft sand running in the course and that my knee might not take it. If I was hit the wrong way, I would walk with a cane for the rest of my life.
All I wanted was a shot. My old football injury hadn’t given me any trouble since the surgery, and I had followed the doctor’s advice since then. They told me I had my shot, and I entered the BUD/S compound.
I arrived in July, just in time to miss Class 100, which had just started training. So instead of going into BUD/S directly, I went into pretraining. Personally, I thought missing the class was an advantage. Having just come out of boot camp and then Boatswain’s Mate school, I hadn’t been exercising as much as I should have. Even with the extra attention I had been given, I wanted to be in better shape before starting the most physically demanding course in the U.S. military.
Some of the instructors gave me immediate close attention, so I received a good indoctrination into what BUD/S would be like. While in the Army, I had gotten a tattoo on my arm that said “God is my Jumpmaster.” Now my name was soon forgotten, but not me. Instead of “Chalker” being called out, it was “Where’s God is my Jumpmaster?”
A group of us students were run through PT every day, and we did whatever other jobs the staff needed done. The PT and the running did me some good when it finally came time to class up.
Class 101 was a winter class at Coronado. We classed up in September for the six-month-long training course. Instructor Harry Kanakua, a big Hawaiian, was our class proctor. He was a well-rounded and experienced SEAL himself and he motivated us well. The class started off with three officers and soon dropped down to two, ensigns Ralph Penney and Robert Anderson, who entered Hell Week with us.
Boat Crew One was my first assignment, and Penney was the coxswain. Penney was the smallest guy in the crew, the rest being at least six feet tall. Lining up all the beef guys, we had John Shellnut, Bob Youngblood, John Hancock, James Lusher, and Mike Reiter along with Penney and me.
BUD/S had a lot to do with tradition. And one of the first traditions was the haircut party. There was a keg of beer, and everyone shaved everyone else’s hair. You were going to be a Team, and no one was going to touch a Teammate’s hair but one of his own. Besides, why pay a barber?
Some of the people who had been at BUD/S before I arrived were a little more knowledgeable and helped push us to do the right thing to start out. My Army time helped me remain motivated. I was an E-3, almost the lowest rank you could hold, but even so, I had a contribution to make to my class and my boat crew.
Then training began, and it was everything it was supposed to be. We were cold and we were wet. When we weren’t cold and wet, it was because we were sandy, cold, and wet. The times we were dry were only spaces between wettings. And that was just the first week.
We were taught to prep our gear for a swim or an operation. And we learned how important it was to prepare properly for an evolution. An evolution is a problem, something you have to do. It can be as simple as a beach run or as difficult as a combat patrol. But every evolution has to be completed. Of course it was difficult to prep your gear with an instructor screaming down your neck. And any mistakes caused you to get cold, wet, and sandy again. Rolling in the sand when you were wet all over created the sugar cookie effect, a favorite among BUD/S instructors.
The sugar cookie effect is hard to describe, and harder to forget. Imagine a cookie in a jar, all covered with sugar. As it settles into the jar it rubs against the sugar from the other cookies until it starts to pick up that sugar too. Soon the cookie is covered all over—even in spots where the sugar shouldn’t be. Now imagine the same situation, only the cookie is your skin and the sugar is nice abrasive sand. The top layer of your skin soon disappears, and then there’s the soft, tender, sensitive new layer all ready for a good sandy rubbing. Believe me, it’s a bitch to patch a rubber boat when you’ve become a sugar cookie.
When the sand gets into your ears, knocking it out won’t work. And it doesn’t feel very good. It doesn’t taste good grinding between your teeth, or smell good as it clogs up your nose. The eyes more or less wash themselves out, but the irritation is still there. It’s because of the sugar cookie effect that most frogmen and SEALs hold a lifelong aversion to wearing underwear. During BUD/S, you quickly learned that underwear just gave the sand someplace to hide.
The other thing at BUD/S is the water, the cold sea water. It covers you in the morning, wets you in the afternoon, and keeps you moist in the evening. When you aren’t swimming in it, you’re crawling into or out of it. And then there’s traveling on top of it.
Surf passage, or IBS (inflatable boat, small) appreciation, is another rite of passage at BUD/S. You have an inflated rubber boat and a paddle. On your head is a soft cap. And when you leave that water, you better have everything you went into it with still on you, so the cap is tied to your uniform with a piece of line. And you had better secure everything, because during surf passage you will be tossed from the boat, you will get wet, and the waves will see to it that these things happen over and over.
They made us turn our belt buckles inward to keep from scratching the boat. Buttons had to be buttoned and covered for the same reason. The heavy canvas kapok life jackets went on top of everything else. I hated those jackets. They could be like wearing a neck brace, which was helpful during Hell Week. Otherwise, they dig under your armpits, and the straps pull at your crotch and grind the sand into you. A number of SEALs, myself included, still have scars in our groins from those damned kapok straps.
Finally we got to hit the waves. We figured we’d have a nice sunny day. This was an exercise to give us an appreciation of the boats. They had to give us a chance to learn about them and get used to them, didn’t they?
This is one of those evolutions where all you can do is look out at the ocean and think, “Oh, my god!” As we walked from the grinder—the exercise yard in the center of the compound—we could hear the crunching of those big kahuna waves pounding on the shore. The sound of those crunchers smacking down on the shore could be heard throughout the compound, like a cross between distant thunder and a volcano erupting somewhere behind the barracks. The surf seemed to call out to the instructors, “Time for surf passage!” Apparently, an eight-to twelve-foot sea condition is considered excellent for learning to appreciate how much fun it is to push a boat through those waves with just muscle power.
When you saw that white foaming surf in the morning, the curling waves and rips flowing out, you knew it was time for a light breakfast. Going to chow that morning, you just knew it would be a good idea not to eat too much. Because coming back from chow, you would get the boats ready, march off to the ocean, and let the instructors see just how many students could be flung from their boats.
The boats would bend as we struggled to paddle them out to sea. When the boat folded in half, the trainees at the rear of the boat would have their heads shoved between their crewmates in the front of the boat as the two ends met. The men in the middle would be covered by a rubber canopy filled with struggling flesh. Then when the boat suddenly snapped open, all that could be seen from shore were little trainees flying into the water.
When the inevitable happened and your crew went flying from your boat, it was time to struggle against the water to try and save your life, while at the same time making sure your swim buddy was somewhere on top of the water as well. You had to swim hard and scramble fast to get back on board your boat before the situation got worse. If you landed on shore, things automatically got worse because the instructors would punish you before sending you out again.
We quickly learned that t
iming was everything in getting through the waves. One guy had to call the cadence so that we all paddled at the same time. Otherwise we would turn sideways and broach against the waves.
Finally we learned the timing of the surf, what the instructors had told us we would have to do to get through the evolution. But it was a very tough learning experience. Then we learned that coming back was even harder. This time we were turned completely upside down. It was fun in its own way. But then we had to do the same thing at night.
Once you finally got the hang of moving a boat through the surf, you found out that it wasn’t so bad. In fact, you kind of liked it when you finally timed it right on a good curl. There wasn’t any feeling quite the same as sitting on top of a fifteen-foot wave and riding it in to shore just like the champion surfers.
And when your boat made it to shore correctly, the instructors would come up to you with grins on their faces and say, “Boat Crew One, good job. Now go back out and do it again.”
And with big grins on our faces, we would all shout out, “Hoo yah, Instructor!”
A full day and night of that kind of training can be rough on you, and it was too rough for some of the guys. All you had to do to make it all stop was quit. There was a brass ship’s bell that you could ring standing at the corner of the grinder. Three rings of that bell and you were done. Instantly you were back in the fleet and at the mercy of the regular Navy, but at least you were warm, dry, and clean again.
Hearing that bell ring meant that someone had “volunteered out” of the program. As the course went on, the ring of the bell got more common. It was unfortunate for that individual, but it also meant that someone had quit and you were still there. That could give your morale a boost, and sometimes you needed that.
During PT, I figured that if I was doing the exercise right, the instructors would leave me alone. Wrong. The Teams are called that because they work as a unit. And during training you learn that rule because you work as a Team and are punished as a Team. When one man did an exercise wrong, the whole class had to run into the surf zone and get wet. Then we would run back to the grinder to continue PT. If another man did an exercise wrong, we went into the surf followed by a roll in the sand to get a sugar cookie. Another mistake would move us to the sand to continue PT. A last error and we moved into the surf zone itself to complete our PT. Our first couple of weeks, we got very well acquainted with the feel, taste, and smell of the ocean.
We ended up swimming three or four times a week as training went on, with swim fins and without them, in the pool and in the ocean. You had to earn your face mask before you could wear one. That required a half-mile swim in under a certain time. You earned your swim fins with a one-mile timed swim. And finally, you earned the top of your wet suit with another, longer swim. The wet suit top was all the cold protection we were given against the water in those days.
One of the instructors had his own way of increasing your tolerance for working in the ocean. He would spit a wad of chewing tobacco into your face mask and then tell you he wanted the chaw back after your swim. Once you’ve swum with a big wad of used chewing tobacco in your mask, you can do an op through a floating mass of rotten whales and not get the pukes.
Games were played with you on a constant basis. And the training increased in difficulty too. We were getting ready for Hell Week, but first came rock portage. This evolution was like a killer version of surf passage. Down by the Hotel Del Coronado huge piles of rocks had been built up to protect the sand beach from erosion. The rubber boats had to be landed on these rocks safely and securely. During the day it was bad, but we did it. But this was a very dangerous technique, and an important one, so of course we also had to do it at night.
Fortunately, we managed to hit just the right wave at the right time and landed our boat smoothly the first time. This was great—we did it right and were going to get a break. Nope. They turned us around and sent us back out. I was the bow man and had to jump out onto the rocks each time and secure the line. During one of our attempts, our boat got completely turned around and I was sure we were all goners.
With our boat crew leader as the coxswain, calling out orders and trying to steer the boat with his paddle, we all dug in hard and dragged the boat around through the water. The bow was pointed toward shore as the waves rushed us straight at the sharp, jagged rocks. We paddled for all we were worth to get on top of the surf and use its speed.
Timing things as closely as we could in our exhausted condition, the coxswain called out for me to jump and I leaped out onto the slippery rocks. Smashing down on the stones, I ignored everything but scrambling across them and getting into a braced position. Leaning back, I took a strain to the line I held. The rest of the boat crew could now come over the sides of the boat, grab hold, and help me pull her in.
My shins were black and blue, I was pounded all over from the waves and rocks, and I was sure I had broken something. But we kept at it. We did our rock portage about four times. We finally got the technique down and were able to land the boat without any major injuries. The instructors deserve a lot of the credit. They made sure we knew what we had to do and gave us a break when they could see we were getting it together.
The expression at BUD/S is “It pays to be a winner.” If you come out ahead, you’ll be rewarded. We had to learn to be a team, and it was as a team that we received these rewards. They could be as little as a slight break before we had to continue with another evolution. Those breaks were going to be real important during Hell Week.
Outsiders tend to settle on Hell Week as the most important part of training. That’s not necessarily true. But it is the most memorable single week of that twenty-six-week course. We received motivational talks and other incentives to try and help us get through that week. But when it gets down to it, all you can do is reach way down inside yourself and just keep going.
Your Teammates help; no one gets through BUD/S alone. But it’s the heart, the “fire in the gut,” that keeps you moving forward. Breakout was Sunday morning, and I have no idea exactly when it started. Suddenly M80 firecrackers were going off, M60 machine guns were firing blanks over our heads, and all the instructors seemed to be shouting at once. Confusion ruled, which was exactly the effect they were trying for.
Hell Week is intended to simulate as closely as possible the fear, confusion, and exhaustion of a major battle. That fact was impressed on me by a SEAL I spoke to years later. Joe DiMartino was one of the original members of SEAL Team Two. He was one of the few SEALs I ever heard of who didn’t do a Hell Week. During World War II, Joe D was one of the Navy sailors who worked with the Naval Combat Demolition Units, the men who went on to become the UDTs. He helped blow open the beaches of Normandy on D-Day. Joe D would say that his Hell Week was June 6, 1944, and absolutely no one would argue that point.
So Hell Week was supposed to be a simulation of D-Day. For the whole week we only got a few hours’ sleep. It wasn’t long before we were shaky, cold, wet, and tired.
We hit the surf in the middle of that first night and did surf passage by moonlight. Then we brought the boats in and did another kind of surf passage. The instructors had the whole class link arms and move out into the water. We went out from shore until the chill water was about waist deep, then we sat down. The lighter surf was breaking over our heads, the waves having calmed down from earlier. We had to stay linked arm in arm for safety. Constantly we were told, “Don’t lose your swim buddy.” Getting separated from your swim buddy in some circumstances could mean the death of you both. That was another rule we were learning.
The cold was sapping our strength, and I started shaking. That shivering was something I had to overcome. Finally the instructors pulled us out of the water and had us take our shirts off. Then we went right back in. Taking us out of the water soon became the worst thing the instructors could do because the chill hit you, and then you had to go back in.
The whole line was shaking now. I could feel it through the men my arms were l
inked with. Looking up at the moon, I started thinking about the sun. Right there is the sun, I thought. And I started thinking about the Caribbean island that sun would be shining on. And I started to hum.
When the guys next to me asked what I was doing, I told them about the sun. Then they looked up and started to hum as well. Soon the whole line was humming. That really irked one of the instructors. He was shouting at us to stop humming. What was he going to do, punish us by making us cold?
But between breakout and that evolution, we had lost a large number of our people. The class was getting smaller, and we were getting more and more dingy. By Tuesday, most of us were so dingy we didn’t know what evolution it was. Later in the week, when the hallucinations started, they couldn’t hurt us much anymore. Sitting out in the boat on an evolution, I could see the lights of Coronado melting.
To bring us out of this, the instructors played games with our heads and bodies. They ran us through competitions that really woke everyone up. Everything was done as a team; none of the competitions were individual against individual. We did boat races as a crew, paddling all out against other crews over measured distances. We did relay races with the boat crews running along carrying their boats. Then we had to crawl through thick mud while explosions rang out all around us. Finally we heard the unbelievable words “Secure from Hell Week.” We had made it.
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