chris’sakes. I guess those guys were just thinking ahead, dreading the forthcoming five days of
Hell Week, the precise way Captain Ma-guire had told us not to.
Anyway, right now we were ordered to grab the boats and get them in the surf, which we did
without much trouble. But they made
us paddle hundreds of yards, dig and row, lift and carry,
dump boat and right boat, swim the boat, walk the boat, run the boat, crawl, live, die. We were so
exhausted it didn’t matter. We hardly knew where we were. We just floundered on with bloody
knees and elbows until they ordered us out of the water.
I think it was just before midnight, but it could have been Christmas morning.
We switched to
log PT in the surf. No piece of wood in all of history, except possibly the massive wooden Cross
carried to Calvary by Jesus Christ, was ever heavier than our eight-foot hunk of wood that we
manhandled in the Pacific surf. After all of our exertions, it was a pure backbreaker. Three more
men quit.
Then the instructors came up with something new and improved. They made us carry the boats
over the O-course and manhandle them over the goddamned obstacles. Another man quit. We
were down to forty-six.
Right then we switched to rock portage and charged back down the beach to get the IBS into the
water. We crashed through the light incoming waves like professionals and paddled like hell,
using
the remnants of our strength, to the rocks opposite the Hotel del Coronado. My swim
buddy, Matt McGraw, was calling the shots in our boat by now, and we drove forward, crashed
straight into the rocks, and the bowline man leaped for his life and grabbed on to the painter. We
steadied the boat with the oars, and I thought we were doing real good.
Suddenly the instructor, standing up on the top of the rocks right there at damned near two
o’clock
in the morning, bellowed at our crew officer,
“You! You, sir. You just killed your entire
squad! Stop getting between the boat and the rocks!”
We hauled the boat out of the water, over the rocks, and onto the sand. The instructor gave us
two sets of push-ups and sent us back the way we came. Twice more we assaulted the rocks,
slowly and clumsily, I suppose, and the instructor never stopped yelling his freakin’ head off at
us. In the end we had to run
the boat back along the beach, drop it, and get right back into the
surf for flutter kicks with heads and shoulders in the water, then push-ups in the surf. Then sit-
ups. Two more men quit.
These DORs happened right next to me. And I distinctly heard the instructor give them another
chance, asking them if they wanted to reconsider. If so, they were welcome to press on and get
back in the water.
One of them wavered. Said he might, if the other guy would join him. But the other guy wasn’t
having it. “I’m done with this shit,” he said, “and I’m outta here.”
They both quit together. And the instructor looked like he could not give a flying fuck. I later
learned that when a man quits and is given another chance and takes it,
he never makes it
through. All the instructors know that. If the thought of DOR enters a man’s head, he is not a
Navy SEAL.
I guess that element of doubt forever pollutes his mind. And puffing, sweating, and steaming
down there on that beach on the first night of Hell Week, I understood it.
I understood it, because that thought could never have occurred to me. Not while the sun still
rises in the east. All the pain in Coronado could not have inserted that poison into my mind. I
might have passed out, had a heart attack, or been shot before a firing squad. But I never would
have quit.
Soon as the quitters had gone, we were put right back to work. Lifting
the boats into a head carry
for the run over to the chow hall, only another mile. When I got there I was as close to collapse
as I’d ever been. But they still made us push ’em out, lift the boat, to work up an appetite, I
suppose.
Eventually they freed us to get breakfast. We had lost ten men during the nine hours that had
passed since Hell Week began; nine hours since those yelling, shooting gunmen had driven Class
226 out of their classroom, nine hours since we had been dry and felt more or less human.
They were nine hours that had changed the lives and perceptions of
those who could stand it no
more. I doubt the rest of us would ever be quite the same again.
Inside the chow hall some of the guys were shell-shocked. They just sat staring at their plates,
unable to function normally. I was not one of them. I felt like I was on the edge of starvation, and
I steamed into those eggs, toast, and sausages, relishing the food, relishing the freedom from the
shouts and commands of the instructors.
Just as well I made the most of it. Seven minutes on the clock after I finished my breakfast, the
new shift of instructors was up and yelling.
“That’s it, children — up and out of here. Let’s get going. Outside! Right now! Move! Move!
Move! Let’s start the day right.”
Start the day! Was this guy out of his mind? We were still soaked, covered in sand, and we’d
been up half killing ourselves all night.
Right then I knew for certain: there was indeed no mercy in Hell Week. Everything we’d
heard
was true.
You think you’re tough, kid? Then you go right ahead and prove it to us.
Do'stlaringiz bilan baham: 
