Most of us had lost a lot of condition at boot camp because the weather was so bad. You couldn’t just jog outside and go for a run because of the blizzards and the deep snow. Perhaps you remember that very brave guy who made the journey to the South Pole with the Royal Navy officer, Robert Falcon Scott, in 1912. He believed he was hindering the entire team because of his frostbite. Captain Oates was his name, and he crawled out into a raging blizzard one night with the immortal words, “I am going outside now. I may be gone for some time.”
They never found his body, and I have never forgotten reading his words. Guts-ball, right? Well, going outside at Great Lakes would have been a bit like that, and almost as brave. Unlike the gallant captain, we stayed by the heater.
And now we were going for runs along the beach, trying to get in shape for the first week of Indoctrination. That’s the two-week course known as Indoc, where the SEALs prepare you for the fabled BUD/S course (Basic Underwater Demolition/-SEALs). That one lasts for seven months and is a lot harder than Indoc. But if you can’t get through the initial pretraining endurance test, then you ought not to be in Coronado, and they don’t want you anyway.
The official navy literature about the reason for Indoc reads: “To physically, mentally and environmentally prepare qualified SEAL candidates to begin BUD/S training.” Generally speaking, the instructors do not turn on the pressure during Indoc. You’re only revving up for the upcoming trial by fire.
But they still make it very tough for everyone, officers and enlisted men alike. The SEAL programs make no distinction between commissioned officers coming in from the fleet and the rest of us. We’re all in it together, and the first thing they instill in you at Indoc is that you will live and train as a class, as a team. Sorry. Did I say instill in you? I meant, ram home with a jack-hammer. Teamwork. They slam that word at you every other minute. Teamwork. Teamwork. Teamwork.
This is also where you first understand the concept of a swim buddy, which in SEAL ethos is an absolutely gigantic deal. You work with your buddy as a team. You never separate, not even to go to the john. In IBS (that stands for “inflatable boat, small”) training, if one of you falls over the side into the freezing ocean, the other joins him. Immediately. In the pool, you are never more than an arm’s length away. Later on, in the BUD/S course proper, you can be failed out of hand, thrown out, for not staying close enough to your swim buddy.
This all comes back to that ironclad SEAL folklore — we never leave a man behind on the battlefield, dead or alive. No man is ever alone. Whatever the risk to the living, however deadly the opposing fire, SEALs will fight through the jaws of death to recover the remains of a fallen comrade. It’s a maxim that has survived since the SEALs were first formed in 1962, and it still applies today.
It’s a strange thing really, but it’s not designed to help widows and parents of lost men. It’s designed for the SEALs who actually do the fighting. There’s something about coming home, and we all want to achieve that, preferably alive. But there is a certain private horror about being killed and then left behind in a foreign land, no grave at home, no loved ones to visit your final resting place.
I know that sounds kind of nuts, but nonetheless, it’s true. Every one of us treasures that knowledge: No matter what, I will not be left behind, I will be taken home. We are all prepared to give everything. And in the end it does not seem too much to ask in return, since we fight, almost without exception, on the enemy’s ground, not our own.
That World War I English poet and serving soldier Rupert Brooke understood the Brits do not traditionally bring home their war dead. And he expressed it right: “If I should die, think only this of me: That there’s some corner of a foreign field That is forever England.” There’s not a Navy SEAL anywhere in the world who does not understand those lines and why Brooke wrote them.
It’s a sacred promise to us from our high command. That’s why it gets drummed into us from the very first day in Coronado — you are not going to be alone. Ever. And you’re not going to leave your swim buddy alone.
I suffered a minor setback in the early part of that summer when I was in Class 226. I managed to fall from about fifty feet up a climbing rope and really hurt my thigh. The instructor rushed up to me and demanded, “You want to quit?”
“Negative,” I responded.
“Then get right back up there,” he said. I climbed again, fell again, but somehow I kept going. The leg hurt like hell, but I kept training for another couple of weeks before the medics diagnosed a cracked femur! I was immediately on crutches but still hobbling along the beach and into the surf with the rest of them. Battle conditions, right?
Eventually, when the leg healed, I was put back and then joined BUD/S Class 228 in December for phase two. We lived in a small barracks right behind the BUD/S grinder. That’s the blacktop square where a succession of SEAL instructors have laid waste to thousands of hopes and dreams and driven men to within an inch of their lives.
Those instructors have watched men drop, watched them fail, watched them quit, and watched them quietly, with ice-cold, expressionless faces. That’s not heartless; it’s because they were only interested in the others, the ones who did not crack or quit. The ones who would rather die than quit. The ones with no quit in them.
It was only the first day of Indoc, and my little room was positioned right next to the showers. Showers, by the way, is a word so polite it’s damn near a euphemism. They were showers, okay, but not in the accepted, civilized sense. They were a whole lot closer to a goddamn car wash and were known as the decontamination unit. Someone cranked ’em up at around 0400, and the howl of compressed air and freezing cold pressurized water forcing its way through those pipes sounded like someone was trying to strangle a steam engine.
Jesus. First time I heard it, I thought we were under attack.
But I knew the drill: get into my canvas UDT swim trunks and then get under those ice-cold water jets. The shock was unbelievable, and to a man we hated it, and we hated it for as long as we were forced through it. The damn thing was actually designed to power wash our sand-covered gear when we returned from the beach. The shock was reduced somewhat then because everyone had just been in the Pacific Ocean. But right out of bed at four o’clock in the morning! Wow! That was beyond reason, and I can still hear the sound of those screaming, hissing water pipes.
Freezing cold and wet, we reported to the training pool to roll and stow the covers. Then, shortly before 0500, in the pitch dark, we lined up on the grinder and sat in rows, chest to back, very close, to conserve body heat. There were supposed to be 180 of us, but for various reasons there were only 164 of us assigned.
We had a class leader by now, Lieutenant David Ismay, a Naval Academy man and former Rhodes Scholar who’d had two years at sea and was now a qualified surface warfare officer. David was desperate to achieve his lifelong dream of becoming a SEAL. He had to do this right. Officers only got one shot at BUD/S. They were supposed to know better than to waste anyone’s time if they weren’t up to it.
The man we all awaited was our proctor. That’s the instructor assigned to guide us, teach us, torture us, observe us, and get rid of us, if necessary. He was Instructor Reno Alberto, a five-foot-six man-mountain of fitness, discipline, and intelligence. He was a ruthless, cruel, unrelenting taskmaster. And we all grew to love him for two reasons. He was scrupulously fair, and he wanted the best for us. You put out for Instructor Reno, he was just a super guy. You failed to give him your absolute best, he’d have you out of there and back to the fleet before you could say, “Aye, aye, sir.”
He arrived at 0500 sharp. And we’d have a ritual which was never broken. This was how it went:
“Feet!” shouted the class leader.
“Feet!” An echoing roar ripped into the still night air as nearly 164 of us responded and jumped to our feet, attempting to move into ranks.
“Instructor Ree-no!” called the class leader.
“Hooyah, Instructor Ree-no!” we b
ellowed as one voice.
Get used to that: hooyah. We don’t say yes, or right away, or thanks a lot, or understand and will comply. We say hooyah. It’s a BUD/S thing, and its origins are lost in antiquity. There’s so many explanations, I won’t even go there. Just so you know, that’s how students respond to an instructor, in greeting or command acceptance. Hooyah.
For some reason, Instructor Reno was the only one who was unfailingly addressed by his first name. All the others were Instructor Peterson or Matthews or Henderson. Only Reno Alberto insisted on being called by his first name. I always thought it was good they didn’t call him Fred or Spike. Reno sounded good on him.
When he walked onto the grinder that morning, we could tell we were in the presence of a major man. As I mentioned, it was pitch dark and he was wearing sunglasses, wraparound, shiny black. It seemed he never took them off, night or day. Actually, one time I did catch him without them, and as soon as he saw me, he reached into his pocket and immediately put ’em on again.
I think it was because he never wanted us to see the expression in his eyes. Beneath that stern, relentless exterior, he was a superintelligent man — and he could not have failed to be amused at the daily Attila the Hun act he put on for us. But he never wanted us to see the amusement in his eyes, and that was why he never showed them.
On this dark, slightly misty morning he stood with his arms folded and gazed at the training pool. Then he turned back to us and stared hard.
We had no idea what to expect. And Instructor Reno said without expression, “Drop.”
“Drop!” we roared back. And we all struggled down to the concrete and assumed a position for push-ups, arms extended, bodies outstretched, rigid.
“Push ’em out,” said Reno.
“Push-ups,” snapped the class leader.
“Push-ups,” we responded.
“Down.”
“One.”
“Down.”
“Two.”
We counted out every one of the twenty push-ups in the set then returned to the rest position, arms outstretched. The class leader called out, “Instructor Ree-no.”
“Hooyah, Instructor Ree-no,” we roared.
He ignored us. Then said quietly, “Push ’em out.” As he did twice more, at which point he left us with muscles on fire in the straight-arm, outstretched rest position. He actually left us there for almost five minutes, and everyone’s arms were throbbing. Eighty push-ups and now this new kind of agony, which ended only when he said, very slowly, very quietly, “Recover.”
We all yelled, “Feet!” in response, and somehow we stood up without falling over. Then David Ismay called out the wrong number of men present. Not his fault. Someone had simply vanished. Reno was onto young Dave in a flash. I don’t quite remember what he said, but his phrase contained the loud pronunciation of the word wrong.
And he ordered Lieutenant Ismay and our leading petty officer student, “Drop, and push ’em out.” I remember that first day like it happened this week. We sat and watched Dave complete his push-ups. And when they’d done it, damn near exhausted, they called out, “Hooyah, Instructor Reno!”
“Push ’em out,” said Reno softly. And, somehow, they set off on twenty more repetitions of this killer discipline. Finally they finished, doubtless wondering, like the rest of us, what the hell they had let themselves in for. But I bet they never called out the wrong number of men present ever again.
I now understand that SEAL ethos — every officer, commissioned or noncommissioned, must know the whereabouts of every single one of his men. No mistakes. At that early stage in our training, our class leader, David Ismay, did not know. Reno, who’d only been with us for about fifteen minutes, did.
Again, he surveyed his kingdom and then spoke flatly. “Most of you aren’t going to be here in a couple of months,” said Instructor Reno. And, as if blaming each and every one of us individually for the wrong head count, he added, “If you guys don’t start pulling together as a team, none of you will be here.”
He then told us we were again about to take the basic BUD/S screening test. I graphically recall him reminding us we’d all passed it once in order to make it this far. “If you can’t pass it again this morning,” he added, “you’ll be back in the fleet as soon as we can ship you out.”
At this stage, no one was feeling…well…wanted. In fact, we were beginning to feel abandoned in this world-renowned military coliseum — a coliseum where someone was about to bring on the lions. Before us was the five-point screening test:
1. A 500-yard swim, breaststroke or sidestroke, in 12 minutes, 30 seconds
2. A minimum of 42 push-ups in 2 minutes
3. A minimum of 50 sit-ups in 2 minutes
4. A minimum of 6 dead-hang pull-ups
5. A 1.5-mile run in 11 minutes, 30 seconds, done while wearing boots and long pants
Only one guy failed to complete. In fact, most of us did markedly better than we had the first time. I recall I managed close to eighty push-ups and a hundred sit-ups. I guess the apparition of Billy Shelton was standing hard by my shoulder, trying to frighten the life out of me and ready to throw me out of the navy if I blew it.
More important, Instructor Reno was watching us with eyes like a fighter jet’s radar. He told me several months later he knew I was putting out for him. Made up his mind about me right then and there. Told me he’d never changed it either. Good decision. I give it everything. On time. Every time. Might not always be good enough, but it’s always my very best shot.
Looking back, I’m not sure that early test showed very much. There were a lot of heavily muscled, bodybuilding types who looked pretty ferocious. I remember they were among the very first to go, because they just couldn’t hack it. Their legs and upper bodies were just too heavy.
The SEALs do place a premium on brute strength, but there’s an even bigger premium on speed. That’s speed through the water, speed over the ground, and speed of thought. There’s no prizes for a gleaming set of well-oiled muscles in Coronado. Bulk just makes you slow, especially in soft sand, and that’s what we had to tackle every day of our lives, mile after mile.
On this first morning of Class 226, we immediately learned another value peculiar to BUD/S. We don’t stroll, walk, or even jog. We run. We actually run like hell. Everywhere. All day. Remember that great Tom Hanks line in A League of Their Own, “There’s no crying in baseball”? Well, we have a line in Coronado: There’s no walking in BUD/S.
Our first encounter with this cruel and heartless rule came when it was time for breakfast. The chow hall was a mile away, so we had to run two miles — there and back — for a plate of toast, eggs, and bacon. Same for lunch. Same for dinner. For anyone mathematically challenged, that’s six miles every day just to find something to eat, nothing to do with our regular daily training runs, which often added up to another eight miles.
That morning we ran in formation all the way across the naval amphibious base to the Special Warfare Center. And there Instructor Reno, after about a thousand push-ups and God knows what else, finally had us seated and paying attention in a manner which satisfied him. This was not easy, because he had eyes like a sea eagle and some kind of a high-flying business degree from USC. He knew precisely what was required, and he missed nothing.
And right here I needed to remember a lesson drummed into me from an early age by Billy Shelton: when a special forces commander makes even a slight reference to an issue that may be helpful, listen and then do it. Even if it was an aside, not a proper command, maybe even starting with I think it might be a good idea …
Always pay attention and then carry out the task, no matter how minor it may seem. Billy’s point was that these SF instructors were looking for the best, and it might be only small things that separate guys who are very good from guys who are absolutely excellent, outstanding. “Listen, Marcus,” Billy told me, “always listen, and always jump all over anything your instructor tells you. Get out in front. Fast. Then make sure you s
tay there.”
Well, that morning, Instructor Reno pulled himself up to his full height of about fifteen feet, in my eyes, and told us he wanted to talk to us briefly, and we better pay attention. “Better yet, take notes.”
I was into my zipper bag instantly, getting hold of a dry notebook and a couple of pencils, the lesson of Billy Shelton ringing in my ears: even an aside, even a suggestion, do it.
I looked around the room, and a few others were doing the same as I was, but not everyone, by no means everyone. Some of them just sat there gazing at Instructor Reno, who suddenly said, mildly, “How many of you have pencil and paper?”
I stuck my hand up, along with the other guys who had them. And suddenly there was a look like a storm cloud on Reno’s face.
“Drop! All of you!” he bellowed. And there was an unbelievable commotion as chairs were scraped back and we all hit the floor in the straight-arm rest position. “Push ’em out!” he snapped. And we made the twenty then were left in the rest position.
He stared at us and said, “Listen. You were told to have a pencil and paper with you at all times. So why don’t you? Why the hell don’t you!”
The room went stone silent. Reno glared. And since I was not able to write while I was prostrate on the floor supporting myself with the palms of my hands, I can’t say verbatim the exact words he said, but I bet I can come damn close.
“This is a school for warriors, understand? This is the most serious business there is. And if you don’t want to do it, then get the hell out right now.”
Christ. He was not joking, and I just hoped to hell he knew who had pencil and paper and who didn’t. Months later I reminded him of that day and asked him. “Of course I knew,” he said, adjusting his sunglasses. “It was your first test. I had the names of the guys who paid attention written down before you’d done your first twenty. And I still remember you were on that list.”
Lone survivor: the eyewitness account of Operation Redwing and the lost heroes of SEAL team 10 Page 8
