Lone survivor: the eyewitness account of Operation Redwing and the lost heroes of SEAL team 10 (14 page)

“Not your fault, Mr. Ismay. You were in the classroom when they quit. Two-two-six will class up in BUD/S first phase with a hundred and eleven men.”

Hooyah!

I realized we had been losing guys fairly steadily. But according to these numbers, Class 226 had had 164 men assigned on the first day, and we’d lost more than fifty of them. I know a few never showed up at all, mostly through sheer intimidation. But the rest had somehow vanished into the void. I never saw any of them leave, not even my roommate.

And I still cannot work out quite how it happened. I guess they just reached some type of breaking point, or maybe they anguished for days over their own inability to cut the mustard. But gone is gone in this man’s navy. I did not entirely comprehend it at the time, but me and my 110 cohorts were witnessing the ruthless elimination process of a U.S. fighting force that cannot tolerate a suspect component.

Instructor Reno now spoke formally. “You’re on your way to first phase BUD/S. And I want each and every one of you to make me proud. Those of you who survive Hell Week will still have to face the pool competency test — that’s in second phase — and then the weapons practicals in third phase. But I want to be at your graduation. And right there I want to shake your hand. I want to think of you as one of Reno’s warriors.”

The
Hooyah, Instructor Ree-no!
with our clenched fists in the air could have lifted the roof off the classroom. We loved him, all of us, because we all sensed he truly wanted the best for us. There was not a shred of malice in the guy. Neither was there a shred of weakness.

He repeated the orders he had been giving us for two weeks. “Stay alert. Be on time. And be accountable for your actions at all times, in and out of uniform. Remember, your reputation is everything. And you all have a chance to build on that reputation, beginning right here on Monday morning, zero five hundred. First phase.

“For those of you who make the teams, remember you’re joining a brotherhood. You’ll be closer to those guys than you ever were to friends in school or college. You’ll live with them...and, in combat, some of you may die with them. Your family must always come first, but the brotherhood is a privileged place. And I don’t want you ever to forget it.”

And with that, he left us, walked away and slipped out of a back entrance, leaving behind a very long shadow: a bunch of guys who were revved up, gung ho, and ready to give everything to pass the challenging tests ahead. Just the way Reno wanted it.

Enter Instructor Sean Mruk (pronounced
MUR-rock
), ex-SEAL from Team 2, veteran of three overseas deployments, native of Ohio, a cheerful-looking character we had not encountered during Indoc. He was assistant to our new proctor. We heard him before we saw him, his quiet command, “Drop and push ’em out,” before he had even made his way to the front of the classroom.

In the following few minutes he ran through the myriad of tasks we must complete after hours in first phase. Stuff like preparing the boats and vehicles, making sure we had the right supplies. He told us he expected 100 percent at all times, because if we did not put out, we’d surely pay for it.

He made sure we had all moved from our Indoc barracks, behind the grinder, over to the naval special warfare barracks a couple of hundred yards north of the center. Prime real estate on the sandy beach, and it’s all yours — just as long as you can stay on the BUD/S bandwagon and remain in Class 226, the numbers of which will shortly be blocked in stark white on either side of your new green phase one helmet. Those numbers stay with you as long as you serve in the Navy SEALs. My class’s three white-painted numbers would one day become the sweetest sounds I ever heard.

Instructor Mruk nodded agreeably and told us he would be over to the new barracks at 1000 Sunday to make sure we knew how to get our rooms ready for inspection. He gave us one last warning: “You’re an official class now. First phase owns you.”

And so to the cloudless Monday morning of June 18, all of us assembled outside the barracks two hours before sunrise. It was 0500 and the temperature not much above fifty degrees. Our new instructor, a stranger, stood there silently. Lieutenant Ismay reported, formally, “Class Two-two-six is formed, Chief. Ninety-eight men present.”

David Ismay saluted. Chief Stephen Schulz returned the salute without so much as a “Good morning” or “How y’doing?” Instead, he just snapped, “Hit the surf, sir. All of you. Then get into the classroom.”

Here we went again. Class 226 charged out of the compound and across the beach to the ocean. We floundered into the ice-cold water, got wet, and then squelched our way back to the classroom, freezing, dripping, already full of apprehension.

“Drop!” ordered the instructor. Then again. Then again. Finally, Ensign Joe Burns, a grim-looking SEAL commander, took his place in front of us and informed us he was the first phase officer. A few of us flinched. Burns’s reputation as a hard man had preceded him. He later proved to be one of the toughest men I ever met.

“I understand you all want to be frogmen?”

Hooyah!

“I guess we’ll see about that,” said Ensign Burns. “Find out how bad you really want it. This is my phase, and these are my staff instructors.”

Each of the fourteen introduced himself to us by name. And then Chief Schulz, presumably terrified we’d all go soft on him after an entire two minutes of talk, commanded, “Drop and push ’em out.” And again. And again.

Then he ordered us out to the grinder for physical training.
“Move! Move! Move!”

And finally we formed up, for the first time, on the most notorious square of black tarmac in the entire United States Armed Forces. It was 0515, and our places were marked by little frog flippers painted on the ground. It was hardly worth the visit.

“Hit the surf. Get wet and sandy!” yelled Schulz. “Fast!”

Our adrenaline pumped, our legs pumped, our arms pumped, our hearts pumped. Every goddamn thing there was pumped as we thundered off the blacktop, still dressed in our squelching boots and fatigue pants, went back down to the beach, and hurled ourselves into the surf.

Jesus, it was cold. The waves broke over me as I struggled back into the shallows, flung myself onto the sand, rolled over a couple of times, and came up looking like Mr. Sandman, except I wasn’t bringing anyone a dream. I could hear the others all around me, but I’d heard Schulz’s last word.
Fast.
And I remembered what Billy Shelton had taught: pay attention to even the merest suggestion...and I ran for my goddamned life straight back to the grinder, right up with the leaders.

“Too slow!”
bellowed Schulz. “Much too slow...
drop!
”

Schulz’s instructors roamed among us, berating us, yelling, harassing us as we sweated and strained to make the push-ups...
“Like a goddamned fairy.” “Get a grip on yourself.” “For Christ’s sake, look as if you mean it.” “C’mon, let’s go! Go! Go!” “You sure you wanna be here? You wanna quit right now?”

I learned in the next few minutes there was a sharp difference between “get wet and sandy” and just plain “get wet.” Parked at the side of the grinder were two of the inflatable boats, laden to the gunwales with ice and water. “Get wet” meant plunge over the bow, under the water, under the rubber seat struts, and out to the other side. Five seconds, in the dark, in the ice, under the water. A killer whale would have begged for mercy.

Now, I’d been cold before, in the freakin’ Pacific, right? But the water in that little boat would have frozen the balls off a brass monkey. I came out of there almost blue with the cold, ice in my hair, and blundered my way to my little frogman’s marker. At least I’d gotten rid of the sand, and so had everyone else. Two instructors were going down the lines with freezing cold power hoses, spraying everyone from the head down.

By 0600 I had counted out more than 450 push-ups. And there were more, I just couldn’t count anymore. I’d also done more than fifty sit-ups. We were ordered from one exercise to another. Guys who were judged to be slacking were ordered to throw in a set of flutter kicks.

The result of this was pure chaos. Some guys couldn’t keep up, others were doing push-ups when they’d been ordered to do sit-ups, men were falling, hitting the ground facedown. In the end, half of us didn’t know where the hell we were or what we were supposed to be doing. I just kept going, doing my absolute best, through the roars of abuse and the flying spray of the power hoses: push-ups, sit-ups, screwups. It was now all the same to me. Every muscle in my body ached to hell, especially those in my stomach and arms.

And finally Schulz offered us mercy and a quiet drink.
“Hydrate!”
he yelled with that Old World charm that came so naturally to him, and we all reached for our canteens and chugged away.

“
Canteens down!
” bellowed Schulz, a tone of pained outrage in his voice. “
Now push ’em out!
”

Oh, yes. Of course. I’d forgotten all about that. I’d just had a nine-second break. Down we all dropped again and went back to work with the last remnants of our strength, counting the push-ups. We only did twenty that time. Schulz must have been seized by an attack of conscience.

“Get in the surf!”
he bawled.
“Right now!”

We floundered to the beach and darn near fell into the surf. We were now so hot, the cold didn’t even matter. Much. And when we splashed back to the beach, Chief Schulz was there, ranting and yelling for us to form up and run the mile to the chow hall.

“Get moving,” he added. “We don’t have much time.”

When we arrived, I was just about dead on my feet. I didn’t think I had the energy to chew a soft-boiled egg. We walked into that chow hall like Napoleon’s army on the retreat from Moscow, wet, bedraggled, exhausted, out of breath, too hungry to eat, too battered to care.

It was, of course, all by design. This was not some kind of crazed Chinese fire drill arranged by the instructors. This was a deadly serious assessment of their charges, a method used to find out, in the hardest possible way, who really wanted to do this, who really cared enough to go through with it, who could face the next four weeks before Hell Week, when things got seriously tough.

It was designed to compel us to reassess our commitment. Could we really take this punishment? Ninety-eight of us had formed up on the grinder two hours earlier. Only sixty-six of us made it through breakfast.

And when that ended, we were still soaked, boots, long pants, and T-shirts. And once more we set off for the beach, accompanied by an instructor who showed up from nowhere, running alongside us, shouting for us to get moving. We had been told what awaited us. A four-mile run along the beach, going south, two down and two back. Thirty-two minutes on the stopwatch was allowed, and God help anyone who could not run eight-minute miles through the sand.

I was afraid of this, because I knew I was not a real fast runner, and I psyched myself up for a maximum effort. I seem to have spent my whole life doing that. And when we arrived at the beach, I knew I would need that effort. There could not have been a worse time to make the run. The tide was almost full, still running in, so there was no appreciable width of drying hard sand. This meant running in either shallow water or very soft sand, both of which were a complete nuisance to a runner.

Our instructor Chief Ken Taylor lined us up and warned us darkly of the horrors to come if thirty-two minutes proved to be beyond some of us. And sent us away, with the sun now climbing out of the Pacific to our right. I picked the line I would run, right along the high point of the tide, where the waters first receded and left a slim strip of hard sand. This meant I’d be splashing some of the time, but only in the shallowest surf foam, and that was a whole lot better than the deep sand that stretched to my left.

Trouble was, I had to stick to this line, because my boots would be permanently wet and if I strayed up the beach, I’d have half a pound of sand stuck to each one. I did not think I could lay up with the leaders, but I thought I could hang in there in the group right behind them. So I put my head down, watched the tide line stretching in front of me, and pounded my way forward, staying right on the hardest wet sand.

The first two miles were not that awful. I was up there in the first half of the class, and I was not feeling too bad. On the way back, though, I was flagging. I glanced around and I could see everyone else was also looking really tired. And right then I decided to hit it. I turned up the gas and thumped my way forward.

The tide had turned during the first twenty minutes and there was just a slight width of wet sand that was no longer being washed by the ocean. I hit this with every stride, running until I thought I’d drop. Every time I caught a guy, I treated it as a personal challenge and pulled past him, finally clocking a time well inside thirty minutes, which wasn’t half bad for a packhorse.

I forget who the winner was, probably some hickory-tough farm boy petty officer, but he was a couple of minutes better than I was. Anyway, the guys who made the time were sent up into the soft sand to rest and recover.

There were about eighteen guys outside thirty-two minutes, and one by one they were told,
“Drop!”
Then start pushing ’em out. Most of them were on their knees with exhaustion, and that kinda saved them a step in the next evolution, which was a bear crawl straight into the Pacific, directly into the incoming surf. Instructor Taylor had them go in deep, until the freezing cold water was up to their necks.