by Zoe Dawson
Warmth from now on would be a fleeting memory and all of them knew it.
“Class is mustered,” Ensign Lane said. “One hundred and forty-five men present. The two men who went to medical DOR’d, Instructor.”
Hemingway thought it best not to look for or make eye contact with Shea. She was there like a trooper, recording with her camera. Some guys got a bit distracted and were yelled at. His memories of the weekend with her would have to do for now. BUD/S training was a reality, and he realized that she would be seeing and documenting everything. His wins and his fails. He was again not sure dating her was the best idea he’d ever had.
Returning Lane’s salute, Master Chief Nathan Walker said, “Everyone into the surf, sir. Then head to the classroom.”
Hemingway wasted no time in running full out to the surf in his white T-shirt, fatigue pants, and boots, getting immersed in the ocean. Damn that quick dip was cold, and Hemingway knew it was only the beginning. Mentally, he thought about the ocean as a hot tub, and when he got cold, a dip would be welcomed. He kept it fully fixed in his mind. Soaked, he pelted back up the beach to find his seat in the First Phase classroom. Complying with the command to push out their push-ups, the order was given to take seats. He wasn’t the only one dealing with chills; most of the class shivered in intervals.
“Good morning and welcome to First Phase. Your first step to your initial goal begins now.” Chief Walker, short and stocky but fit, had a scar on his cheek and a shock of black hair under his BUD/S instructor cap. He had the command air about him that immediately said he knew what he was about. That had to be true. There weren’t many Master Chiefs in the Navy, and to get there, grit was required.
“You have your hearts set on becoming frogmen?”
“Hoo-yah.”
“Well, this is where it begins. We’ll all see how much heart you do have. I guarantee it.” He folded his arms across his chest, and Hemingway swore he looked every man there in the eyes and weighed their mettle. “I’m Master Chief Walker and this is my show and my cast.” He indicated the fourteen instructors standing in the front of the room. One by one they sounded off with just their name. Hemingway looked over at Lane and Hollister. As the leaders, they would have to announce each instructor by name when they showed up, which meant they would have to memorize each man’s face and name—a daunting task. If they failed to do so, there would be push-ups until they came up with the right name.
Lane was already focused on the challenge, and he took notes.
Mad Max was up there with the others, and Hemingway wondered how he’d been roped into BUD/S or if Fast Lane had pulled a fast one and assigned the big SEAL to make sure he measured up.
Walker then bellowed out the order for more push-ups and the staff exited, then he shouted, “Grinder! Put it in gear!”
“Hoo-yah,” Hemingway shouted with his team, the sound of over one hundred voices reverberating off the pale-yellow walls. They bolted for the black asphalt. Slowness was a reason for a beat down, and Hemingway was going to make sure he wasn’t the weakest link. Professor was right beside him, and he shot Hemingway a grin. “I see what he did there. Guy has a sense of humor.”
“Gear, grinder. Yeah, he’s a laugh a minute.”
Professor howled as he ran, his enthusiasm reaching out and grabbing Hemingway by the throat, pumping him up. It was as if every nerve ending in his body came alive. They quickly found their places on hallowed ground, the first time they were allowed to do PT where so many other trainees had sweated, suffered and endured. A sense of awe and respect washed through him, and he was determined not to let any of the brothers who had passed this way down, especially the men of the two teams who had given him a leg up on BUD/S.
Their lookout was keeping an eagle eye on him.
Mad Max stood near the platform watching over the trainees. He was an imposing figure, six feet four, body thick with muscle, bulging biceps, a broad chest that put even some of the other instructors to shame, his blue eyes brightly peering from beneath a prominent brow. He looked like he could run all day, do pull-ups all day, kick their asses all day.
He was showing them that not only could a big man get through the training, but he had mastered the mental over the physical and made the teams.
Shea was standing next to Mad Max, and Hemingway broke his rule about not looking at her. She made eye contact with him. In those dark depths were encouragement and a softness that made him want to get as close to her as he could. But training had to be his focus, and he couldn’t lose that. He had a long way to go. Damn this timing.
“So far I don’t see anything too impressive. Some of you have the stamina and are pushing out the push-ups, but this isn’t about single guys. This is about why you’re all here. You’re here for one purpose. Get to the teams. Be a ‘team guy.’ We don’t want any candy asses serving at our backs. We’ll weed those out,” Walker said. He was leading the PT.
“He’s not even breaking a sweat,” Professor said, his form good next to Hemingway.
“Yeah, he’s no candy ass,” Hemingway said, and Professor chuckled.
Suddenly a stream of water hit them both and a couple of guys next to them, a stinging frigid blast that wasn’t strong enough to knock them over but made Hemingway and Professor gasp simultaneously at the cold stinging spray.
“Having fun now fellas?” one of the instructors said, keeping the water on them. He thought it was Hal Cheezer, a mean looking SOB, stocky, built with white straight teeth. Hemingway was sure this wasn’t the last he’d see of a Cheezer beat down. Cheezer crouched down and said, “You think this is a joking matter?”
“No, instructor.”
“Wipe those smirks off your faces, and all of you, surf and sand time, courtesy of Sinclair and Prescott. Get out there and make me proud. I wanna see some sugar cookies. Move!”
Hemingway popped up from his push-up form to his feet and dashed toward the beach, making his way across the instructor parking lot and over the sand berm, a barrier manually erected for protection in the case of storms.
The salty scent of the ocean mingled with the smell of rotting kelp and sand in a mixture he’d always associated with the beach on a leisurely day. He wondered when this was over would he ever be able to forget this experience. An experience that was getting him closer to his goal. I can make it until breakfast, he thought, thinking of the hot food, the full feeling in his now empty stomach, the images urging him on.
He threw himself into the water, getting deep enough to saturate his clothes, then pushed out of the breakers to the fine, soft sand of the strand. He rolled, threw sand over his head and made sure every part of him was covered. It got in his mouth, nose, eyes and ears, but he endured it. Then he was up and moving back to the grinder.
The next forty-five minutes were more of the same. All told, they had been at this for almost an hour and fifteen minutes. The instructor shouted at the weaker guys, but luckily Hemingway avoided any more individual attention, especially from Cheezer. By the time he was ready for breakfast, he’d estimated they had done over five hundred push-ups, sixty pull-ups, untold flutter kicks and many sit-ups.
The sand from the beach was grinding against his skin, causing chafing, which was only aided by the water and his cold skin. The salt from the ocean stung every abrasion.
He knew the first three weeks of BUD/S were designed to weed out the men who didn’t have the emotional commitment needed to be SEALs.
“We’re looking for warriors, not men just getting by. If you can’t even do this much PT, there’s the bell. Do yourself and all the dedicated guys here a favor and ring out.” This was a fire-in-the-gut check. First Phase was also about each man here looking deep into himself to really understand and know why they were here at BUD/S.
“My sister has better form than you do, Hitchcock. Get that weak ass out of the air and do your push-ups like a man.” Matt Hitchcock was one of Hemingway’s boat crew, with boy-next-door looks, dark hair, and piercing pale blue ey
es. He was from a small town in Kansas. In the fleet he was on a destroyer and worked as a radar fire control guy. Hemingway liked him. He was solid, but this PT was kicking his ass, and Hemingway had to wonder if he was going to make it. His chest got tight, and he thought about his own reasons for doing BUD/S. He knew Matt was just as dedicated and had a lot riding on finishing BUD/S.
“You’ve got this, Matt,” Hemingway said. “Dig deep man.”
“The only easy day was yesterday,” Professor chimed in.
Matt’s eyes flared, and he shot Hemingway an appreciative look. “Hoo-yah,” he grunted.
Hemingway noticed a few guys from the class ahead of them. They were in Second Phase and it was easy to see that all of them were remembering their first day, their eyes roving over the trainees with a strong sense of a shared experience.
Hemingway understood immediately why they were all being put through this. It’s how they built team spirit and tight-knit special operators.
He was determined to be one of those guys looking at them with that shared memory.
“Surf, you have two minutes.”
Hemingway was up again and then back as fast as he could run. Some guys seemed confused on whether they should get sandy again, but there was no order to get sandy, so he skipped it. Behind him, instructors were yelling at the guys who were getting sandy again, and it looked like they were going to be held up for breakfast.
Back at the grinder, Walker shouted, “Form for breakfast, you are released.”
Hemingway grabbed his fatigue top, canteen, belt and helmet, the muscles of his chest, shoulders and arms burning, and got in line for the mile jog over to the base chow hall.
Suddenly everyone froze as the bell clanged. Three rings, six, nine, twelve, and finally fifteen. “Five,” someone murmured in a small voice as if he had been thinking about quitting.
The class had just dropped to one hundred and forty men.
The jog to the chow hall wasn’t pleasant, especially in wet, sandy uniforms, but once inside, the smell of food hit Hemingway so strongly, he forgot about anything else. During this training, he could easily eat upwards of five thousand calories and still lose weight. Grabbing a tray, he filled up his plate with eggs, bacon, toast, pancakes and all the fixings.
He found a table with Lane, Professor, Hitchcock and Brown. Just as he was digging in, Shea settled down next to him. “Is it okay that I sit with you guys?” she asked.
Brown’s eyes were round, and he nodded as he shoveled food into his mouth. None of them could speak because their mouths were too full.
Shea’s plate held a smaller portion compared to all of them who had heaped on food. Hemingway smiled at her, and she smiled back. “Do you mind if I ask questions when you’re done eating and if I film it?”
They nodded their heads. They were instructed to talk to her in their down time. This was as down as they were going to get.
“Something to think about while you’re fueling up for the rest of the day.”
“Timed run,” Lane said after swallowing what he’d been chewing, washing it down with more water. They had to drink a lot to keep up with dehydration, especially after being immersed in water.
Shea nodded. “Although I train hard as a triathlete, I don’t have somebody making me run into the ocean, get sandy, and do exercises on asphalt. Quite a different training regimen.”
“That’s cool,” Lane said. “Do you compete?”
“Yes, but in the past when I was younger. I keep up with my fitness and still cycle, run and swim a lot.”
“It shows,” Professor said with a wink, and Hemingway narrowed his eyes at him.
“So, I’m going to ask the question that most of you guys get asked by anyone who is curious about why you want to do this. Why put yourself through all of this? What is your motivation? I’m aware this is internal and personal.”
“Chicks,” Professor said, and all the guys laughed. “Naw, just kidding. I was pretty lanky and nerdy growing up. I excelled in academics, but not so much in sports. Both my parents are professors, one in law and the other in poetry. They laughed when I told them I wanted to do this.” He was silent for a moment and even though Hemingway had heard a lot of what Professor was saying, his next words surprised him.
His voice hushed as the din of the mess hall roared around them, Professor looked down at his plate. Shea leaned forward, her interest intent. “I had an uncle who was a New York City firefighter, a Rescue Squad lieutenant, and he and eleven others of his squad perished when the South Tower fell. I was only one at the time. I never knew him, but my dad talked about him often. He was thirty-three years old.” He looked up, his eyes sad. “Once the memorial was in place, my family and I traveled to New York City each year and honored him on September 11th. We visited the firehouse where he worked, and I got to know some of his colleagues. All of them were touched by what happened that day. It gets into your gut and the fabric of your skin, deep into the place in your head that tries to make sense of horror and shock.
“Those firefighters aren’t Navy SEALs, but they put their lives on the line every day. I had a great childhood, loving parents, and amazing opportunities, but none of it satisfied me. There was always this…desire to do more.” He took a breath and closed his eyes. “I quit school and gave up a Rhodes Scholarship to pursue this for the memory of my uncle and to make a difference in terror, in people’s lives, in the world as a whole. Instead of words and academia, I will do it with action. Hoo-yah.”
“Hoo-yah,” Hemingway said, already liking and trusting Professor. His words only made that bond tighten.
Lane, Hitchcock and Brown echoed the word.
“Thank you for sharing that with me.” Her voice was soft and her eyes moist.
“They need to pay for what they did that day,” Wilson said, materializing next to Shea and her attention swiveled toward him standing at her left elbow. “We might have cut the head off the snake, but the fight is still out there and as SEALs we can make a difference.”
“Did you also lose someone?”
“No,” he said and looked away. “What difference does it make?” His dark eyes fixed. “We’re all in this together, right?”
“Form up!” came the command, and they had to get ready for the jog back to the compound and the four-mile timed run on the beach.
Before Hemingway could step away from the table, Shea touched his arm. “Can you manage to come by tonight?”
“It will be late.”
“That’s okay, I’ll have a snack for you and a rub down. You will need it.”
He smiled and reached out to squeeze her hand. “Then I will be there, tired, sore, and ravenous.”
When they got back to the compound, green helmets were lined up to the left of the bell. Two men broke off and headed in that direction. Without saying anything to anyone, they rang out, the last of them setting his helmet next to the previous two.
Their class was now down to one hundred and thirty-eight.
Being a long-time resident of San Diego, Hemingway was a son of the sea. He loved the water and the fact that SEALs spent a lot of time in it didn’t bother him a bit. One look at the conditions told him that it was going to be hard on any man who didn’t live by the ocean, who hadn’t been running in soft sand to condition their ankles, calves and thighs. It was high tide which sucked. Navigating the dry soft sand and the harder wet sand of the surf area was going to be a bitch. They would be doing this evolution in wet fatigues and boots.
After stretching, they took off. Hemingway paced himself, adept at finding that sweet spot between the upsurge and the soft dry sand. Along with Professor, Hemingway finished the run five minutes before the allotted time, while the majority of the class straggled in. As they stretched, the slow runners had to do push-ups, bear-crawl into the surf, and endure surf torture by linking arms and lying down in the breakers.
Mad Max and the other instructors kept track of the time the trainees were immersed on their watches wi
th the corpsman, Rick Baxter keeping an eagle eye on them too.
“It pays to be a winner,” Cheezer said to the trainees in the surf, and there was a loud hoo-yah.
After that, there was an introduction to log PT. The seven members of their boat crew did well, but by this time, Hemingway was beginning to feel the effort deep in his muscles. The two-hundred-and-fifty-pound log took a toll, even when the members worked together. It made him understand even more the value of teamwork.
Lane was outstanding with his support and encouragement and the other guys on his team were of the same mindset. Hemingway enjoyed this while it lasted. As men rang out and the class dwindled, most likely his boat crew would be shuffled. He hoped not, but it was part of reality.
Then it was chow time again, after which they had to get back to their rooms for inspection, showered, buffed and in their starched uniforms.
As Hemingway, Professor, Wilson and Brown stood by waiting for their turns, Hemingway could hear the instructors going from room to room. There was plenty of shouting with words like pigsty and terrible and you failed, hit the surf. Sometimes clothes, bedding or items would fling out of the open doors, then trainees would run out on their way to the surf.
Lane followed the instructors around. Two rooms passed and Hemingway was relieved to have been one of the two. Lane’s room had been the other pass. Not having to clean up, after the instructors pulled the room apart, would leave Hemingway more time with Shea.
Once inspection was over it was back into wet and sandy clothes, then it was time for surf passage in their “inflatable boat, small,” or IBS.
He’d been introduced to IBS in BO, but this surf passage was ten times harder and more demanding with Hal Cheezer in charge. He had them paddling out in the surf and dumping the boat, which meant they would have to bail out of it, turn it upside down, then right side up all the while keeping a hold of their paddles, then paddle back to the beach. To top it off, this was a race and whoever wasn’t in first place wasn’t a winner. Hemingway’s competitive spirit always came to the fore when there was a challenge. Lane pushed them with the kind of calm, measured leadership Hemingway was used to from him. He kept them all in line, kept them working hard and by the time they were back on the beach, they were winners.
