Lone survivor: the eyewitness account of Operation Redwing and the lost heroes of SEAL team 10 (18 page)

When we were finally back on shore, I was not really able to speak and neither was anyone else, but we did some more PT, and then they ordered us back into the water for another period, I forget how long. Maybe five, ten minutes. But time had ceased to matter, and now the instructors knew we were right on the edge, and they came around with mugs of hot chicken broth. I was shaking so much I could hardly hold the cup.

But nothing ever tasted better. I seem to remember someone else quit, but hell, I was almost out of it. I wouldn’t have known if Captain Maguire had quit. All I knew was, there were half as many still going as there had been at the start of Hell Week. The hour was growing later, and this thing was not over yet. We still had five boats in action, and the instructors reshuffled the crews and ordered us to paddle over to Turners Field, the eastern extension of the base.

There they made us run around a long loop, carrying the boat on our heads, and then they made us race without it. This was followed by another long period in the water, at the end of which this member of the crew of boat one, a tough-as-nails Texan (I thought), cracked up with what felt like appendicitis. Whatever it was, I was absolutely unreachable. I didn’t even know my name, and I had to be taken away by ambulance and revived at the medical center.

When I regained consciousness, I got straight out of bed and came back. I would not discuss quitting. I remember the instructors congratulating me on my new warm, dry clothes and then sending me straight back into the surf. “Better get wet and sandy. Just in case you forget what we’re doing here.”

Starting at around 0200, we spent the rest of the night running around the base with the goddamned boat on our heads. They released us for breakfast at 0500, and Tuesday proceeded much like Monday. No sleep, freezing cold, and tired to distraction. We completed a three-mile paddle up to North Island and back, at which time it was late in the evening and we’d been up for more than sixty hours.

The injury list grew longer: cuts, sprains, blisters, bruises, pulled muscles, and maybe three cases of pneumonia. We worked through the night, making one long six-mile paddle, and reported for breakfast again at 0500 on Wednesday. We’d had no sleep for three days, but no one else quit.

And all through the morning we kept going, swim-paddle-swim, then a run along the beach. We carried the boat to chow at noon, and then they sent us to go sleep. We’d have one hour and forty-five minutes in the tent. We had thirty-six guys left.

Trouble was, some of them could not sleep. I was one. The medical staff tried to help the wounded get back into the fray. Tendons and hips seemed to be the main problems, but guys needed muscle-stretching exercises to keep them supple for the day ahead.

The new shift of instructors turned up and started yelling for everyone to wake up and get back out there. It was like standing in the middle of a graveyard and trying to wake the dead. Slowly it dawned on the sleepers: their worst nightmare was happening. Someone was driving them forward again.

They ordered us into the surf, and somehow we fell, crawled, or stumbled over that sand dune and into the freezing water. They gave us fifteen minutes of surf torture, exercises in the waves, then ordered us out and told us to hoist the boats back on our heads and make the elephant walk to chow.

They worked us all night, in and out of the surf; they walked us up and down the beach for God knows how many miles. Finally, they let us sleep again. I guess it was about 0400 on the Thursday morning. Against many pessimistic forecasts, we all woke up and carried the boats to breakfast. Then they worked us without mercy, had us racing the boats in the gigantic pool without paddles, just hands, and then swimming them, one crew against the other.

Wednesday had run into Thursday, but we were in the final stages of Hell Week, and before us was the fabled around-the-world paddle, the last of the major evolutions of the week. We boarded the boats at around 1930 and set off, rushing into the surf off the special warfare center and paddling right around the north end of the island and back down San Diego Bay to the amphibious base. No night in my experience has ever lasted longer.

Some of the guys really were hallucinating now, and all three of the boats had a system where one could sleep while the others paddled. I cannot explain how tired we were; every light looked like a building dead in our path, every thought turned into reality. If you thought of home, like I did, you thought you were rowing straight into the ranch. The only saving grace was, we were dry.

But one guy in our boat was so close to breakdown, he simply toppled into the water, still holding his paddle, still stroking, kicking automatically, and continuing to row the boat. We dragged him out, and he did not seem to understand he’d just spent five minutes in San Diego Bay. In the end, I think we were all paddling in our sleep.

After three hours, they summoned us to shore for medical checks and gave us hot soup. After that we just kept going, until almost 0200 on Friday, when they called us in from the beach with a bullhorn. No one will ever forget that. One of those bastards actually yelled,
“Dump boat!”

It was like taking a kick at a dying man. But we kept quiet. Not like an earlier response from a student, who had earned everlasting notoriety by yelling back the most insubordinate reply anyone had ever given one of the instructors. Never mind
“Hooyah, Instructor Pat-stone!”
(Because Terry Patstone was normally a super guy, always harsh but fair.) That particular half-crazed paddler bellowed,
“Ass-h-o-o-ole!”
It echoed across the moonlit water and was greeted by a howl of laughter from the night-shift instructors. They understood, and never mentioned it.

So we crashed over the side of the boat into the freezing water, flipped the hull over and then back, climbed back in, soaking wet, of course, and kept paddling. I locked one thought into my brain and kept it there: everyone else who ever became a U.S. Navy SEAL completed this, and that’s what we’re going to do.

We finally hauled up on our home beach at around 0500 on Friday. Instructor Patstone knew we just wanted to hoist boats and get over to the chow hall. But he was not having that. He made us lift and then lower. Then he had us push ’em out, feet on the boat. He kept us on the beach for another half hour before we were loosed to make the elephant walk to breakfast.

Breakfast was rushed. Just a few minutes, and then they had us right out of there. And the morning was filled with long boat races and a series of terrible workouts in the demo pits — that’s a scum-laden seawater slime, which we had to traverse on a couple of ropes, invariably falling straight in. To make everything worse, they kept telling us it was Thursday, not Friday, and the entire exercise was conducted under battle conditions — explosions, smoke, barbed wire — while we were crawling, falling into the slime.

Finally, Mr. Burns sent us into the surf, all the time telling us how slow we were, how much more there was to accomplish this day, and how deeply he regretted there was as yet no end in sight for Class 226. The water almost froze us to death, but it cleaned us off from the slime pits, and after ten minutes, Chief Taylor ordered us back to the beach.

We now didn’t know whether it was Thursday or Friday. Guys collapsed onto the sand, others just stood there, betraying nothing but in dread of the next few hours, too many of them wondering how they could possibly go on. Including me. Knees were buckling, joints throbbing. I don’t think anyone could stand up without hurting.

Mr. Burns stepped forward and shouted, “Okay, guys, let’s get right on to the next evolution. A tough one, right? But I think you’re up for it.”

We gave out the world’s weakest
hooyah.
Hoarse voices, disembodied sounds. I didn’t know who was speaking for me; it sure as hell sounded like someone else.

Joe Burns nodded curtly and said, “Actually, guys, there is no other evolution. All of you. Back to the grinder.”

No one believed him. But Joe wouldn’t lie. He might fool around, but he would not lie. It slowly dawned on us that Hell Week was over. We just stood there, zonked out with pure disbelief. And Lieutenant Ismay, who was really hurting, croaked, “We made it, guys. Sonofabitch. We made it.”

I turned to Matt McGraw, and I remember saying, “How the hell did you get here, kid? You’re supposed to be in school.”

But Matt was on the verge of exhaustion. He just shook his head and said, “Thank God, thank God, Marcus.”

I know this sounds crazy if you haven’t gone through what we went through. But this was an unforgettable moment. Two guys fell to their knees and wept. Then we all began to hug one another. Someone was saying, “It’s over.”

Like the remnants of a ravaged army, we helped one another back over the sand dunes, picking up those who fell, supporting those who could barely walk. We reached the bus that would take us back to base. And there, waiting for us, was Captain Joe Maguire, the SEAL commanding officers, and the senior chiefs. Also in attendance was the ex-SEAL governor of Minnesota, Jesse Ventura, who would perform the official ceremony when we returned to the grinder.

But right now, all we knew was the baptism of fire that had reduced Class 226 by more than half was over. It hadn’t beaten thirty-two of us. And now the torture was completed. In our wildest imaginations, no one had ever dreamed it would be this bad. God had given us justice.

We lined up on that sacred blacktop, and Governor Ventura formally pronounced the official words that proclaimed we never had to tackle another Hell Week: “Class Two-two-six, you’re secured.” We gave him a rousing
“Hooyah! Governor Ventura!”

Then Instructor Burns called us to order and said, “Gentlemen, for the rest of your lives there will be setbacks. But they won’t affect you like they will affect other people. Because you have done something very few are ever called upon to achieve. This week will live with you for all of your lives. Not one of you will ever forget it. And it means one thing above all else. If you can take Hell Week and beat it, you can do any damn thing in the world.”

I can’t pretend the actual words are accurate in my memory. But the sentiment is precise. Those words signify exactly what Instructor Joe Burns meant, and how he said it.

And it affected us all, deeply. We raised our tired voices, and the shout split the noontime air above that beach in Coronado.

“Hooyah, Instructor Burns!”
we bellowed. And did we ever mean it.

The SEAL commanders and chiefs stepped forward and took each one of us by the hand, saying, “Congratulations,” and offering words of encouragement about the future, telling us to be sure and contact their personal teams once we were through.

Tell the truth, it was all a bit of a blur for me. I can’t really recall who invited me to join what. But one thing remains very clear in my mind. I shook the hand of the great SEAL warrior Joe Maguire, and he had a warm word for me. And thus far in my life, there had been no greater honor than that.

We probably devoured a world-record amount of food that weekend. Appetites returned and then accelerated as our stomachs grew more used to big-sized meals. We still had three weeks to go in first phase, but nothing compared to Hell Week. We were perfecting techniques in hydrology, learning tide levels and demographics of the ocean floor. That’s real SEAL stuff, priceless to the Marines. While they’re planning a landing, we’re in there early, moving fast, checking out the place in secret, telling ’em what to expect.

There were only thirty-two members of the original class left now, mostly because of injury or illness sustained during Hell Week. But they’d been joined by others, rollbacks from other classes who’d been permitted another go.

This applied to me, because I had been on an enforced break when I had my broken femur. And so when I rejoined for phase two, I was in Class 228. We began in the diving phase, conducted in the water, mostly under it. We learned how to use scuba tanks, how to dump them and get ’em back on again, how to swap them over with a buddy without coming to the surface. This is difficult, but we had to master it before we could take the major pool competency test.

I failed my pool competency, like a whole lot of others. This test is a royal bastard. You swim down to the bottom of the pool with twin eighty-pound scuba tanks on your back, a couple of instructors harassing you. You are not allowed to put a foot down and kick to the surface. If you do, you’ve failed, and that’s the end of it.

First thing these guys do is rip off your mask, then your mouthpiece, and you have to hold your breath real quick. You fight to get the mouthpiece back in, then they unhook your airline intake, and you have to get that back in real fast, groping around over your shoulder, behind your back.

Somehow you find yourself able to breathe in pure oxygen, but the only way you can breathe out is through your nose. A lot of guys find the cascade of bubbles across their faces extremely disconcerting. Then the instructors disconnect your airline completely and put a knot in it. And you
must
try to get your inhalation and exhalation lines reconnected. If you don’t or can’t even try, you’re gone. You need a good lungful of air before this starts, then you need to feel your way blind to the knot in the line behind your back and start unraveling it. You can more or less tell by the feel if it’s going to be impossible, what the instructors call a whammy. Then you run the flat edge of your hand across your throat and give the instructor the thumbs-up. That means “I’m never going to get that knot undone, permission to go to the surface.” At that point, they cease holding you down and let you go up. But you better be right in your assessment of that knot.