“You, Carmichael, did the right thing,” said Killian. “I saw you guys racing, but you did not leave your swim buddy behind. Not a bad first time.” He regarded Moore with a frown. “How’s the leg?”
The leg was beginning to swell like a grapefruit. Moore ignored the pain and shouted, “The leg is fine, Instructor Killian!”
“Good, get down to the beach and get wet!”
The O-course was just one of many more evolutions they faced, and even when they weren’t training and simply trying to get their barracks ready for inspection, the instructors would come in and tear apart their rooms, testing to see how they handled the setbacks. Moore hung on through it all, through the final part of INDOC, where they trained with their IBSs (Inflatable Boat, Small). The boats were thirteen feet long and weighed about 180 pounds. Working in seven-man boat teams, the crews learned how to paddle, how to “dump” the boat by flipping it over, and how to carry the heavy bitch on their heads. They were told that once they were in BUD/S, they went everywhere with their boat. They engaged in a series of races, and even did push-ups with their boots up on the rubber gunwales. Carmichael, despite being somewhat lanky, was a remarkable paddler, and with his help, their crew often won races. Winners got to rest. Losers dropped to the beach for push-ups. All of them were taught how to read the surf and when to make a mad dash into it so they could get their boat past the breakers before it capsized.
By the end of the second week, twenty-seven men from Moore’s class had dropped. They were good men who’d chosen something else. That’s what Killian told them in a warning tone that implied the DORs were not to be mocked.
But the fact remained that they would not receive their Naval Special Warfare Classification (NEC) Code, a great honor but proof positive that an operator had survived the ultimate test of one’s physical and mental motivation. A sign at the center reminded them all of the SEALs’ motto: “The Only Easy Day Was Yesterday.”
At their final briefing of INDOC, Killian gave Moore a firm handshake and said, “You got a lot of talent. I want you to make a name for yourself. And don’t you forget — you’re one of my recruits. Do me proud.”
“Hooyah!”
Moore and Carmichael sang to themselves while they moved their gear into the Naval Special Warfare barracks. They weren’t visitors anymore. They were real candidates.
The jubilation didn’t last long.
Thirty-one guys dropped in the first hour of BUD/S. They rang the bell outside the CO’s office, then placed their green helmets with white class number in a neat row outside his door.
In that initial hour, the instructors had wrought sheer chaos on the group with repeated wet and sandy evolutions, followed by huge workouts on the grinder, followed by men throwing themselves into rubber boats filled with ice water. Guys were shaking, crying, suffering hypothermia, passing out.
The instructors were just getting started.
Four-mile runs on the beach were frequent and brutal. Seven-man teams were introduced to the new evolution of log PT. The eight-foot-long log weighed about 160 pounds, but some logs were a little lighter, some a lot heavier. Teams were stuck with the one they could grab first. They dragged the log into the surf, got it wet and sandy, carried it around, marched miles with it, and all the while they were being checked, scolded, and harassed by their instructors, especially the shorter guys, who could more easily dump their load on the taller ones. Moore and Carmichael hung on and were even able to keep their log from falling when, during one evolution, the man at the back of their team had lost his balance and fallen into the surf.
Nine more men dropped by the end of the first week. Class 198 had 56. The line of helmets outside the CO’s door had grown at an alarming rate, and Moore gazed on it every day with equal parts determination and foreboding.
It was during breakfast at the end of the first week that Carmichael said something that resonated deeply within Moore: “Those guys that dropped? I think I know what tipped them over the edge.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, one minute they’re in it, hard-core, the next they’re out. Like McAllen, for example. Good guy. No way would he drop. He had no intention of quitting, and then the next minute he’s running up the beach to ring the bell.”
“So you know why he quit?” Moore asked, with a dubious look.
Carmichael nodded. “I know why they all quit — because they didn’t take it one hour, one evolution at a time. They started thinking too much about the future and how many more days they had to suffer, and that drove them over the edge.”
Moore sighed. “You could be right.”
During week three the class was introduced to rock portage, an evolution that had them landing their inflatable boats on an outcropping of rocks. The surf was beating down on the stones like a heavy-metal drummer, the spray shooting into their eyes, as Carmichael got out with the painter tied around his waist. He got up on the rocks, found good purchase with his boots, then leaned forward to be sure the boat didn’t slip back into the ocean. It was Moore’s job to grab the team’s paddles, jump out, swim onto the rocks, climb out of the surf, and store their paddles on dry ground. After he’d climbed out, the others followed, each man trying to haul himself out of the rising and falling water, waves slapping at their faces.
Then Carmichael shouted that he was moving up, and Moore raced back to help him guide the boat up and over the rocks, as the others finally came out of the surf to assist.
When they were finished, they all stood there up on the outcropping, gasping for breath, the wind whipping the seawater from their faces as their instructor shook his head and shouted, “Way too slow!”
Fourth-week assessment was a painful time for both the men and the instructors. Guys who’d stuck it out, tried their best, would not drop, ever, had to be cut from the class because they simply lacked some of the physical qualifications necessary: the stamina, endurance, times on the O-course, and so on. These were men who truly had the hearts and souls of Navy SEALs, but their bodies could not carry the burdens of the position.
Moore and his swim buddy Carmichael survived those fourth-week tests and were preparing themselves for the notorious, the legendary, the dreaded Hell Week, five and one-half days of continuous training evolutions, during which time they were allowed a total of only four hours sleep. Not four hours of sleep per day but four hours of sleep over the entire five days. Moore wasn’t even sure that the human body could remain awake for that long, but he’d been assured by his proctor and instructors that “most” of them would manage.
Moore was chosen as a team leader for his continued and exemplary prowess in the water and during the runs. He’d already proven he could hold his breath longer than anyone else in his class, could swim harder and run faster. On the Sunday afternoon before Hell Week was to begin, they all waited inside one of the classrooms, locked down. They were fed pizza and pasta, hamburgers and hot dogs, Cokes. They watched some old Steven Seagal films on videotape and tried to relax.
At about 2300 someone kicked in the classroom door, the lights went off, and gunfire popped and banged everywhere. The “breakout” had begun — simulated combat chaos. Moore hit the deck, trying to convince himself that despite the racket, those men were firing blanks. One instructor had a fifty-caliber machine gun, and the weapon was thundering so loudly that Moore could barely hear a second instructor yelling, “Hear the whistle? Hear the whistle? Crawl toward the whistle!” He and Carmichael did, making it out of the room and out onto the grinder, where they were hit with fire hoses for fifteen minutes and given no orders. All they could do was raise their hands to shield their eyes and try to run out of the blast. Finally they were ordered down to the surf. Instructors continued firing guns, and Moore saw that there must have been more than two dozen instructors brought in to help challenge them for Hell Week.