SEAL of Honor

by Gary Williams

  After about twenty minutes of mayhem and chaos, the hoses were shut off and the last echoes of semiautomatic weapons faded into the evening air. Bewildered, soaked, confused, and in total shock, the students were ordered to the beach for a roll in the sand then back to the grinder. Many were still coughing and hacking, several with their eyes still closed tightly from the irritation of the cordite, water, and smoke. There were numerous bleeding abrasions on knees, elbows, and ankles from crawling on the rough asphalt.

  “Drop!” came the order over the bullhorn. Instinctively, each trainee assumed the fully extended position for push-ups.

  “Push ’em out!”

  In unison the class began its first of what would be twenty-five sets of twenty push-ups, alternated with ten sets of twenty sit-ups and hurried trips to the pull-up bars for additional repetitions, then back to the grinder for multiple sets of flutter kicks. During the push-ups, several vomited as they extended up from the asphalt. The instructors continued to issue the same order: “Push ’em out!”

  Following their warm-up of five hundred push-ups and two hundred gut-busting sit-ups and multiple sets of pull-ups and flutter kicks, the trainees mustered for a run through the O-course. Several more vomited as they ran between obstacles but kept moving. Several students quit and returned to the grinder and their rooms. They had had enough.

  Michael was well aware that there were two critical mental elements to surviving Hell Week: taking the punishment handed out by the instructors; and trying not to think about what was to come, because more often than not it was the anticipation that destroyed the will to go on, rather than the punishment itself. He also had a clear vision of where he wanted to go in life. Having this vision made him less likely to fall prey to the mental and physical torture of BUD/S.

  Those who remained headed to the beach for another roll in the sand before they assembled in a line, linked arms, and entered the cold surf for another round of surf torture. Each realized that this was just the beginning of what was in store for the next five days: hundreds more push-ups and sit-ups, dozens of more miles to run, another dozen or more runs through the O-course, more surf torture, and more sand. Several more quit. After surf torture it was off for a two-mile run to warm up.

  At about 11:00 PM the boat crews paddled their rubber boats fifteen miles around the waters off Coronado, after which they were ordered to place their craft above their heads and run the two miles for their breakfast. During Hell Week, the importance of teamwork was seared into both their conscious and subconscious minds. They ran everywhere they went, carried their 170-pound inflatable boat above their heads, and spent a significant amount of time in the 65° waters of the Pacific. Students endured the effects of deliberate and repeated hypothermia and exposure while highly trained medical teams constantly observed all training evolutions. Under the watchful eyes of the instructors and medical personnel, cases of hypothermia were immediately treated with warm intravenous fluids until the core body temperature rose to a safe level, then the student rejoined his classmates back in the water or in the next training evolution.

  An unbreakable bond of community is developed among those who complete BUD/S. Great risk is involved in the training of the world’s most elite warriors, and nowhere is that risk greater than in Hell Week. Stress fractures of the legs are common due to the constant running, as well as moderate to severe cases of cellulitis, an infection of the skin that can cause redness, swelling, cracking, bleeding, and seepage of fluids, from the extended submersion in cold, polluted saltwater. These and other injuries can result in hospitalization for a candidate and his being rolled back to the next BUD/S class. During meals it is not uncommon for students to fall asleep in their food, and many remain in a constant state of disorientation and confusion. The result is a class greatly diminished in size by the end of Hell Week.

  Michael developed bilateral stress fractures and a severe case of cellulitis in both of his feet and lower legs. Somehow he was able to continue running and hide the swelling, redness, and bleeding from his teammates, the instructors, and the medical teams. Severe cases of cellulitis can compromise circulation to the affected areas and are considered extreme medical emergencies.

  Tragedy in Training

  After their Wednesday evening meal and following their routine examination by the medical staff, the fifty-two students in Michael’s class entered the CTT for a training evolution known as the caterpillar swim. This team-building exercise required students wearing their fatigues and boots to float on their backs while interlocking their legs around the next man’s torso, and using their arms to swim around the pool. At some point during the exercise, the senior student officer in the class, Lieutenant John Anthony Skop, began to have trouble staying afloat and was removed from the water by medics. Found to be without a pulse and respiration, medics began cardiopulmonary resuscitation and transferred him to the Sharp Coronado Hospital, where he was pronounced dead soon after arrival. After Skop’s transfer from the CTT by medics, the NSW commanders canceled the remaining thirty-six hours of Hell Week. While all the students were stunned by Skop’s death, nowhere was the loss felt more than among the officers. Unfortunately, this would not be the only training incident to deeply affect Ensign Michael Murphy.

  Michael made his way back to his room and fell into a chair. His feet and lower legs were so severely red and swollen that he was unable to remove his boots or move his toes. After sitting for a few minutes, he was unable to move his legs and had no feeling below his knees, and he could not bend down to reach his boots. His roommate called for medical assistance. When the medical team arrived, they were unable to remove his boots and had to cut them off, along with his socks, as well as his pant legs to the groin. Both legs were very hot to the touch, with red streaks that extended above the knee to the groin. There was blackened dead and decayed skin between his toes and on the bottoms of both feet, along with massive swelling and several large cracks in the skin on both lower legs that drained a blood-tinged fluid. Several of his toenails were found in his socks.

  Now barely conscious, Michael was transferred to the base hospital, where intensive intravenous fluids and powerful antibiotics were started in both arms. Following the surgical removal of the blackened dead skin, an aggressive wound management program was started that included antibiotic creams and painful sterile-dressing changes several times each day. He was confined to his bed with his lower legs elevated to assist in decreasing the swelling. After about forty-eight hours, Michael was conscious and more alert. When commanders and doctors told him that he could not continue BUD/S training with his class, he immediately tried to get out of bed and return to his boat crew. Only after BUD/S instructors told him that he would be rolled back and permitted to continue with a future class did he finally relent.

  The Slow Process of Healing

  While Michael remained confined to his hospital bed, he frequently thought about his father, who had been in the same position in Vietnam decades before. He drew both physical and mental strength from his thoughts. He spent his hours in bed reading books such as Bill O’Reilly’s Who’s Looking Out for You? and The No Spin Zone: Confrontations with the Powerful and Famous in America. Despite the aggressive therapy of the medical staff, the dead blackened areas of skin between his toes and the bottoms of his feet continued to grow and required additional surgical removal. The medical staff became very concerned about the circulation to both of his feet: if the condition worsened, he could well lose one or both of his feet.

  With Michael’s permission, the doctors notified Maureen and Dan, who arrived at Coronado the following day and met with Michael and his medical team. After another three days of aggressive treatment, Michael’s circulation had improved, and the areas where the decayed skin had been surgically removed were showing signs of improvement. While this was certainly good news, his condition was still serious. After another week of continued improvement, doctors began an aggressive physical therapy program to restore full range
of motion to Michael’s toes, ankles and lower legs. Michael’s parents flew back to Long Island, but remained in contact twice each day with Michael and his medical team. After three weeks of extensive treatment and therapy, Michael was discharged. As an outpatient, he continued on oral antibiotics and followed a highly structured and aggressive physical therapy and dressing-change program twice per day. His job was to follow medical instructions, heal, and prepare himself to return to BUD/S training. His dream of becoming a Navy SEAL had been delayed, but he would not be denied. Having been rolled back to the following class, Michael spent the next nine weeks healing both the stress fractures and his wounds. He also spent considerable time doing pull-ups and sit-ups and other upper-body-strengthening calisthenics that did not interfere with his healing.

  Finally cleared to return to training, he joined Class 236 on the Monday following its Hell Week. The week was spent entirely in the classroom studying hydrographic reconnaissance, surveys, and charting, and gave Michael and his new classmates healing time for their abused bodies. On the following Monday, it was back to First Phase conditioning at pre-Hell Week levels.

  Post-Hell Week Testing

  Following Hell Week and the week of hydrographic reconnaissance training and mission planning, Michael and his new classmates were required to complete a two-thousand-meter swim and a one-and-a-half-mile night bay swim. In addition, the two-mile ocean swim with fins had to be completed in ninety-five minutes, a four-mile run in thirty-two minutes, and the O-course in thirteen minutes.

  While a significant amount of time was spent on the physical requirements, an equal amount of time was spent in the classroom. The academic requirements to successfully complete BUD/S exceed graduate-level requirements at the most prestigious universities in the United States. Enlisted men must achieve a minimum of 70 percent on all their academics, while officers are held to the higher standard—80 percent. Michael would have it no other way. Academic subjects included dive physiology, Navy dive tables, weapons, hydrographic charts and reconnaissance, ground tactics, weapons nomenclature, leadership and communications, psychology, mission planning, and munitions.

  Ben Sauers, one of Michael’s new classmates, related the following story about him.

  During one of our frequent boat crew evolutions, the instructors had repeatedly told us not to use our knives while working around the IBSs. Michael was serving as our boat crew leader and we were determined to be the winning boat crew on this evolution. Something happened that resulted in several of the ropes on the IBS getting tangled in a knot and we were unable to get the IBS free. Michael took out his knife and began working on the ropes. Sure enough, he punctured the IBS. There was no way to cover this. The loud hissing sound attracted the instructor’s attention immediately. As the instructors approached, they began shouting. Michael snapped to attention and immediately accepted responsibility and insisted that he should be the only person punished. Although certainly appreciated, we all knew that is not how BUD/S operates. We all completed a hundred push-ups with our feet on another IBS and our hands deep in the sand, which put our faces in the sand during the down phase of the push-ups. After our push-ups and another lecture from the instructors, we ran to get another IBS.

  Later that evening after the last evolution, Michael was walking with us back to our rooms when he turned to us and with a big grin on his face said, “Well, I won’t do that again, but it went rather well, don’t you think?” He then took off running as each of us chased him.

  Monster Mash

  On Thursday of the last week of First Phase, the final physical training evolution was a race called the Monster Mash, which proved, as always, that “it pays to be a winner.” The students assembled behind the buildings surrounding the grinder dressed in T-shirts, fatigue pants, and boots, then headed down to the beach, where they all lined up. Start times were separated by thirty-second intervals. To start, everyone had to eat a jalapeño pepper. Officers were also required to take a big drink of jalapeño juice. Then each man took off down the beach to complete the first half of the O-course. After doing this, the student ran back to a section known as Gator Beach. Here he stripped down to his canvas swim trunks, threw his clothes in a truck, and ran up the beach, where instructors were waiting for him. The student grabbed his gear from another vehicle and then went into the water. He headed out to a huge pile of rocks about a hundred yards from shore, then returned to shore for a change back into his shirt, fatigues, and boots, and then ran back to finish the O-course. At the top of the Slide for Life obstacle tower there was a bucket of eggs and a bucket sitting at the bottom. If a student could drop his egg in the bucket, he was rewarded by having two minutes subtracted from his time. At the end of the O-course he ran back up the beach, did four sets of thirty push-ups, ran into the surf, then went into the sand, and was finished. The student with the slowest time overall got the honor of drinking the remainder of the jalapeño juice and wearing the pink T-shirt.

  On Friday, the students evaluated their training and their instructors. The Academic/Performance Review Board again diligently reviewed the academic and physical-training performance of each student to determine who would proceed to Second Phase. The board reviewed with each student where he excelled and where he could use improvement. Michael earned the right to proceed to the next phase of BUD/S.

  Second Phase

  During Second Phase, also known as the dive phase, Michael and his fellow classmates would be expected to decrease their O-course times, do PT every day, and lower their beach run and ocean swim times and begin learning the process of becoming combat swimmers. The first three weeks were spent in the classroom learning diving physics and diving physiology. They learned about the Navy dive and treatment tables. They successfully completed extensive, rigorous examinations before entering the water and were subjected to the recompression chamber to monitor their ability to breathe pure oxygen under pressure. The equipment used was similar to that used by recreational or open-water divers. During what was called Pool Week, they learned the three different life-support systems: opencircuit compressed air; closed-circuit, 100 percent oxygen LAR V Draeger underwater breathing apparatus (UBA); and (3) closed-circuit mixed-gas MK 15 UBA.

  Michael and the others were required to be completely familiar with their equipment so that they could prevent or remedy any malfunction underwater without panic. Surfacing from deep water was simply not an option. Also included in the dive phase were the basics of underwater navigation and long-distance underwater swimming. The trainees also learned how to work with limpet mines, underwater explosives that feature a time-delay exploder and are attached to the hull of a ship or submarine with a strap or a powerful magnet. The students made nearly fifty dives during this phase of training.

  After eight weeks, all were considered expert divers by commercial standards, although it would take about three years of mission experience for them to be considered competent combat swimmers. It is the dive component of SEAL training—making SEALs as comfortable in the water as on land—that separates them from all other special operations forces. These diving skills would become essential in later training. After mastering these skills, the trainees were given a competency test. Here, they went one-on-one with an instructor who “attacked” them underwater, removing their regulators from their mouths, turning off their air supply, tying their hoses in knots, pulling off their masks and fins, then tumbling and turning them around. In response, they had to reestablish their equipment and air supply and repair their equipment underwater. Only as a last resort could they surface without their equipment.

  After gaining competency and confidence in the CTT, they headed for the waters of the Pacific and San Diego Bay, learned underwater navigation and pace count, and began mastering the skills necessary to become competent combat swimmers, in both daylight and nighttime. Their last dive evolution was a fiveand-a-half-mile swim from the NSW Center to Imperial Beach.

  Dive Tower

  After learning how to
tie knots on land, it was time for the trainees to practice their skills underwater. This was done at the dive tower, a fifty-foot vertical steel cylinder filled with clear, heated freshwater. In the first evolution, the students dived to a depth of thirty feet and tied three separate knots on a post. The second evolution, a real confidence booster, involved tying a single knot during a fifty-foot dive. Instructors were in the water monitoring every student during the second evolution.

  Physical-Skills Evolutions

  First Phase scores were no longer good enough. The timed and graded evolutions now required a two-mile ocean swim with fins in eighty minutes; a four-mile run in long pants and boots in thirty-one minutes; completion of the O-course in 10:30; and successful completion of three-and-a-half-mile and five-and-a-half-mile ocean swims. As in First Phase, on Friday of the last day in Second Phase, the students evaluated their training evolutions and their instructors. The Academic/ Performance Review Board again reviewed the academic and physical training performance of each student to determine who proceeded on to Third Phase. The board reviewed with each student where they excelled and where they could use improvement. Michael earned the right to proceed to the next phase of BUD/S.

  Third Phase

  Third Phase, also known as the Land-Warfare Phase, introduced the prospective SEALs to demolitions and tactics. This nine-week program was where the class learned the elements of land warfare as practiced by Navy commandos. As in the previous phases, this required specialized equipment used by the U.S. Army, including H-gear, weight-bearing harnesses, canteens, ammunition pouches, sleeping bags, and rucksacks. During Third Phase, sailors learned the basics of being a soldier.