Marcus luttrell

“Now! Now! Now!”
We charged forward, praying to God we 
wouldn’t get swept sideways and capsize. One by one we scrambled aboard, digging deep, trying 
to get through the overhanging crest, which was being whipped by an offshore breeze. 
“Dig! Dig! Dig!”
he roared as we headed for two more incoming walls of water. This was the 
Pacific Ocean, not some Texas lake. Close to us, one of the nine boats capsized, and there were 
paddles and students all in the water. You could hear nothing except the crash of the surf and 
shouts of 
“Dig! Stroke! Portside...starboard...straighten up! Let’s go! Go! Go!”
I pulled that paddle until I thought my lungs would burst, until we had driven out beyond 
the breakers. And then our class leader yelled, 
“Dump the boat!”
The bow-side men slipped 
overboard, the others (including me) grabbed the strap handles fixed on the rubber hull, stood up, 
and jumped over the same side, dragging the boat over on top of us. 
As the boat hit the water, three of us grabbed the same handles and climbed back on the 
upturned hull of the boat. I was first up, I remember. Weightless in the water, right? Just give me 
a chance. 
We backed to the other side of the hull and pulled, dragging the IBS upright, flipping it 
back on its lines. Everyone was aware that the tide was sweeping us back into the breakers. 
Feeling something between panic and frenzy, we battled back, grabbed our paddles and hauled 
out into flatter water and took a bead on the finish line. We paddled like hell, racing toward the 
mark, some tower on the beach. Then we dumped the boat again, grabbed the handles, carried it 
through the shallows onto the beach, and hauled it into a head carry. 

---

We ran up the dunes around some truck, still with the boat on our heads, and then, as fast 
as we could, back along the beach to the point where we had started, and the instructors awaited 
us, logging the positions we finished and the times we clocked. They thoughtfully gave the 
winning crew a break to sit down and recover. The losers were told to push ’em out. It was not 
unusual to complete six of these races in one afternoon. By the end of Indoc week two, we had 
lost twenty-five guys. 
The rest of us, somehow, had managed to show Instructor Reno and his colleagues we 
were indeed fit and qualified enough to attempt BUD/S training. Which would begin the next 
week. There would be just one final briefing from Reno before we attacked BUD/S first phase. 
I saw him outside the classroom, and, still with his sunglasses on, he offered his hand and smiled 
quietly. “Nice job, Marcus,” said Reno. He had a grip like a crane. His hand might have been 
bolted onto blue twisted steel, but I shook it as hard as I could, and I replied, “Thank you, sir.” 
We all knew he’d changed us drastically in those two weeks in Indoc. He’d showed us the depth 
of what we must achieve, guided us to the brink of the forthcoming unknown abyss of BUD/S. 
He’d knocked away whatever cocksure edges we might still have possessed. 
We were a lot tougher now, and I still towered over him. None-theless, Reno Alberto still 
seemed fifteen feet tall to me. And he always will.