We were awake and under near-constant assault for the first eighteen hours of Hell Week. We endured long timed runs, marathon swims, more pushups—more everything.
My swim buddy and I knew we were going to freeze all week, so we decided to dive into the waves rather than walk in. They could torture us. But, we thought, we’d show them; we would act like we enjoyed it. You want to freeze us? Ha! We’ll freeze ourselves.
Prior to Hell Week, we’d all dreaded our marathon swims. But now swimming two miles in the ocean was relatively pleasant. Our bodies were warmed by the exercise, and though the instructors patrolled the pack of swimmers in kayaks and yelled at us with bullhorns, they couldn’t inflict much pain on us while we swam.
Still, men continued to quit as the day wore on. Two quit after the swim. When they announced that we were going to put on forty-pound rucksacks and march, two more men quit, and then it turned out that we didn’t even do the rucksack run. Instead, we were ordered to our boats and then ran to chow.
One of my favorite guys in my crew, Eddie Franklin, would joke about quitting. “I’m quitting today for sure. Right after the run. Then I’m gonna go up to Pacific Beach and surf and hang out and eat tacos.” We’d finish the run, and Eddie would say, “Hey, anybody want to quit with me after breakfast? I gotta eat, but then I’m gonna quit.” And he’d go on and on and on like this—sometimes to the annoyance of others who were much closer to actually quitting.
But in Eddie’s humor was wisdom. What he reminded you was: I can always quit later if I have to, but right now I can do what I have to do—hold this log over my head, or sit in the freezing surf, or run down the beach with the boat bouncing on my head—for at least ten more seconds. That’s really all I have to do: get through the next ten seconds.
After the first night, we got four meals a day: breakfast, lunch, dinner, and midrats—midnight rations—and I set my mind to just surviving from meal to meal. At lunch on Monday, Friday felt years away. But dinner wasn’t so far off.
We ran into the chow hall that day already showing signs of wear. Our feet were swollen. Our hands were swollen. They hosed us down before we went inside, but still we had sand in our hair and in our ears and around the collars of our T-shirts.
As we sat down to lunch, we had little energy and less patience. Two guys bumped trays, and glasses of water crashed to the floor. “Watch what you’re doing!”
Tempers flared, and we tried to diffuse the tension with humor.
Someone at our table asked, “D’you see Instructor Jones with that bullhorn? He looks like he wants to eat it.”
“He loves that thing.”
“Is he single?”
“Yeah.”
“No, he’s not. He’s married to the bullhorn.”
“He’s probably got a bunch of pet names for it. Oh, bully, oh, bully, oh, bully.”
We chuckled and turned back to our food. It didn’t matter if what we said was actually funny or mature or even made any sense. It was hilarious to us, and just then being able to laugh reminded us: We can do this.
We fought our way through Monday afternoon. We endured the tortures, completed the exercises, ran the races. Usually any moment that passed in Hell Week was a good moment, but we still had Monday night hanging over us. Monday night was infamous. The hardest night of all. Tonight we had the brutal “steel piers.”
As the sunlight weakened, the instructors ran us out to the beach. We stood there in a line, and as we watched the sun drift down, they came out on their bullhorns:
“Say good night to the sun, gentlemen, say good night to the sun.”
“Tonight is going to be a very, very long night, gentlemen.”
They reminded us that tonight was going to be our first full night of Hell Week.
“And you have many, many more nights to go.”
We watched the sun slip lower and make contact with the ocean.
Then, when they really wanted to torture us, they said, “Anybody who quits right now gets hot coffee and doughnuts. Come on, who wants a doughnut? Who wants a little coffee?”
As we watched the sun slip away, something broke in our class. Out of the corner of my right eye, I saw men running for the bell. First two men ran, and then two more, and then another. The instructors had carried the bell out with us to the beach. I could hear it ringing:
Ding, ding, ding.
Ding, ding, ding.
Ding, ding, ding.
Over and over, I heard the series of three rings that meant someone had given up. A whole group of guys quit together. We’d begun with 220 students. Only twenty-one originals from Class 237 would ultimately graduate with our class. I believe more men quit at that moment than at any other time in all of our BUD/S training.
Who would have thought that after having to swim fifty meters underwater and endure drown-proofing and surf torture and the obstacle course and four-mile runs in the sand and two-mile swims in the ocean and log PT and countless sit-ups and flutter kicks and pushups and hours in the cold and the sand that the hardest thing to do in all of BUD/S training would be to stand on the beach and watch the sun set?
When I thought about it later, the power of fear hit me full force. As the sun set, men’s minds went into overdrive as they anticipated the pain to come. They stood on the beach, perfectly at ease, reasonably warm, but they looked forward, to the tough long night, to the cold and the pain. Their fear built and built and built until they found their release in ringing that bell.
Some handled fear with humor. Some with anger. Others simply didn’t give fear a place to roost in their minds. I’d learned to recognize the feelings and think, Welcome back, fear. Sorry I don’t have time to spend with you right now, and I’d concentrate on helping my teammates.
“How’s your foot?”
“Fine.”
“Good. Keep an eye on it. Tonight’s gonna be a good night for us. Dinner should be pretty soon.”
Others just focused on the moment. What a pretty sunset. This is all I have to do to make it through Hell Week right now? Stand on the beach? This is great.
Finally, the bell stopped ringing, and the night was upon us. We formed into boat crews and started running again. The steel piers were located on the San Diego Bay side of the Naval Compound. The water was calm and cold and dark, and we jumped in wearing boots and cammies. We all spread out and began to tread water.
The cold grabbed hold of my bones as the instructors yelled, “Now take off your T-shirts and blouses.”
Treading, I yanked off my T-shirt and camouflage top and threw them onto the steel piers.
“Boots!”
My crew and I struggled in the cold water as we untied our boots, teeth chattering and hands shaking. We threw them onto the piers.
“Out of the water!”
We climbed up on the quay wall and stood, feet numb with cold, on the concrete.
“Pushups!”
I felt my blood begin to flow again.
“Get down to the piers!”
I stood on the piers. The instructors were oddly silent, and I could hear the sound of men’s teeth chattering all around me.
A voice came over the bullhorn. “Some of you might be here because you thought being a SEAL was cool or glamorous. You thought you could be tough, could be Hollywood. You should know right now that this is what being a SEAL is about. A whole lot of misery. You can leave here and go on to serve your country in a lot of other ways. You don’t all need to be SEALs.”
Men had been doing this for over forty years, I thought. Now it was my turn. This was the culmination of a lot of hard work and of choosing the path I wanted to take. Earl used to say, “Any fool can be violent.” Warriors are warriors not because of their strength, but because of their ability to apply strength to good purpose. That’s why I was here. This was my test. It was making me stronger, and with this strength I could serve others.