The Heart and the Fist Part 11

My thinking changed when I was actually in the middle of BUD/S. When in BUD/S, the last thing in the world you want is to be rolled out of your cla.s.s for medical reasons and have to start training all over again with another cla.s.s of men you don't know.

A few weeks later, a friend and fellow member of BUD/S Cla.s.s 237 would watch me spit out what felt like a lungful of blood after I'd come up from tying a knot at fifty feet. I turned to him and said, "I'm fine." All he said then was, "Come on. Better not let the instructors see you."

As the weeks progressed, our original ma.s.s of 220 men contracted to a smaller cla.s.s of men we knew, liked, and trusted. Men quit as the runs continued and the swims got longer. Men quit in the pool and were hurt on the obstacle course. One man fell forty feet from the high-tower obstacle and broke his legs. We learned how to row our boats as a team and we learned how to make our backpacks float so we could pull them through the ocean at night. We learned how to sharpen our knives, and we learned how to patrol as a team. Many of the evolutions were painful.

One thing we all enjoyed, however, was working with the helicopters. We ran to them as their rotors flew, and the first time we climbed inside we all had on smiles a mile wide. As my helo lifted free of the ground, I leaned over and yelled to Greg Hall-one of the petty officers in my boat crew-"This is cool!"

He thought I was giving him some kind of last-minute instruction, and he tapped his ear to indicate that he couldn't hear me. "This is COOOOL!" I yelled. His face broke into a wide grin, and he gave me a thumbs-up as we flew over San Diego Bay.

The helo slowed to ten knots. We flew ten feet above the water of the bay, and the rotors whumped and churned the water into a wild froth. I was in charge of a boat crew of seven men and we all stood and formed a line. When the instructor pointed out the door, the first man jumped. The helo continued to fly, and we jumped at intervals one after another, inserting a long string of swimmers in the water. Hall was the second-to-last man to jump.

Hall was a former Marine and a former college football player. He was only about five nine, but he must have weighed 215 pounds. Greg Hall was a rock. He had a ready sense of humor, but he was also dead serious about getting done whatever job was set in front of him. I'd come to trust him completely. In a cla.s.s full of young and inexperienced men who weren't used to being tested and weren't used to taking authority, Hall was a beacon of strength and maturity.

After Hall, I was the last man out of the helo. The instructor held his fist in the hold sign, then he pointed out the helo and I jumped. We were now a line of men afloat in the water. The helo flew a wide circle around the bay and dropped its ladder as it approached us again. Now the test began. The helo would fly over us-again at ten feet, again at ten knots-and each man in our boat crew had to grab the ladder as it was dragged through the water, and then climb up the ladder and into the helo.

We were practicing a method of inserting and extracting SEALs on an operation. A helo would fly in and drop off a team in the water. The team would conduct a mission, swim back out into the ocean, and the helo would lower a ladder, fly by, and pick up the team.

Hall spun around in the water to check our alignment. We were all in one straight line, and he held his arm high out of the water and gave me a thumbs-up. The first man in our crew grabbed the ladder and started to climb. He had stepped up three rungs-this was perfect-when the ladder hit the second man. Yap was a commando from Singapore who had come to BUD/S to train with American special operations, and the ladder twisted as he grabbed it. By the time the ladder hit the third man, Yap had climbed only one rung, and now the ladder was in a spiral all the way down and men were being dragged through the water. Still the helo kept flying and the men kept climbing.

I adjusted my mask over my eyes. The helicopter threw up a swirling mess of water as it approached. I knew that in this mechanical storm of wind and water it wasn't uncommon for men to miss the ladder altogether, an offense that would be severely punished by the instructors.

As the rotor wash of the helo approached Hall, I could make out only three bodies clad in black wetsuits hanging on to the same twisted ladder. Hall was swallowed by the rotor wash, and then the helo flew toward me. I had my eyes on the ladder as the whine of the engines grew louder still, and the mechanical storm approached.

Suddenly, I was floating in a very calm San Diego Bay. I punched the water in anger. I thought I had missed my grab.

I looked up and saw the helo climbing at thirty, forty, fifty feet, with two of our men still clinging to the ladder. Just then one of them let go-and I knew that it was Lucas, a former Marine and the only African American in my boat crew. I watched him fall through the air, his arms spinning, until he brought them to his side and crashed into the bay. The other man, who I later knew to be Greg Hall, was still holding on.

I later learned that after Hall grabbed the ladder, and as the helo approached me, a critical failure occurred in one of the engines. The helo had come a foot or two from crashing into the bay, and the pilots turned to make an emergency run back to Naval Air Station North Island. The instructors had yelled at Lucas to jump-he was safer in the water than in a disabled helo-and so Lucas let go of the ladder and plunged into the bay.

But as Lucas jumped, he freed the ladder of his weight, and as the twisted ladder righted itself, hanging on to the bottom was Greg Hall. Now the helo was at eighty feet, then one hundred. The instructors yelled to Hall over the whump of the rotor and the whine of the engine, with the symbol of a closed fist, "Hold! Hold! Hold!"

Hall later told me that as he watched the world below him fly by at sixty knots from over 150 feet in the air, and he looked up at the instructors yelling, "Hold! Hold!" he thought to himself, Well, no s.h.i.t! Well, no s.h.i.t!

Hall held on to the ladder as the helo flew over the 200-foot-high Coronado Bridge, and I can only imagine what those morning commuters thought when they looked through their windshields, coffee in hand, and saw stuntman Hall flying overhead. Hall had a wild ride, but the helo landed safely back at North Island, and Hall was unhurt.

Throughout BUD/S, whenever we failed to do something that we should have done, we had to do pushups. If you should have sharpened your knife, but failed to, you did pushups. If you should have inspected your lifejacket for salt.w.a.ter corrosion, but failed to, you did pushups. As Hall was walking away from the helo, the instructors yelled, "Hall, drop down!" Hall dropped into the pushup position. "Hall, you should have died. Do pushups for being alive."

Greg Hall knocked out twenty happy pushups and yelled, "Hooyah for being alive!"

Our confidence grew with each pa.s.sing day. Not only were we still alive and still at BUD/S, but we learned we had a team we could count on. We learned that we could do things we might once have thought were impossible.

I stood with five other men next to the ledge of the combat training tank as our swim buddies tied our feet together so that we could not kick free. We then put our hands behind our backs, and our swim buddies tied our hands together.

"How's that?" My swim buddy asked.

"Feels good."

He tugged at the knot to check it a final time. A knot that came undone meant automatic failure. The five of us on the pool deck exchanged glances and then, with our feet tied together and our hands tied behind our backs, we jumped into the pool. It was time for drown-proofing.

The first test was to swim fifty meters. We dolphin-kicked toward the other end of the combat training tank, rolling to our sides every few kicks to catch a breath. After that, it was time to "float." Using a small dolphin kick, we floated about a foot below the surface, kicking up to the surface for air every twenty seconds or so. After five minutes of this, our instructor yelled, "Now bob!"

I blew the air out of my lungs and sank to the bottom of the pool along with the other men around me. As I felt my feet hit the bottom, I crouched into a squat, then pushed off hard. Shooting up through the water, I blew all the remaining air out of my lungs, and as soon as my head broke the surface, I inhaled for an instant and then began to sink again.

Calm was key. If your mind ran to thoughts of your bound feet, or you struggled to free your hands tied behind your back, problems compounded quickly. Timing was also key. A mistimed breath could mean swallowing water, which could lead to panic, which could lead to forgetting to blow all the air out of your lungs. When that happened, men ended up suspended-limbs bound-several feet from the life-giving air, and feet away from the bottom of the pool.

Drown-proofing required intense concentration. During training one day before the test, our hands were bound, but instead of our feet being tied, we were instructed to press them together to simulate them being bound. As we bobbed, my thoughts wandered for a moment. As I came to the surface I mistimed a breath, swallowed water, and went sputtering back to the bottom of the pool. I pushed hard for the surface, but I was out of air, and my mind was running in circles of fear. I pulled my feet apart and started treading water. "Whatsa matter, Greitens? Oh, no, looks like we got another officer panicking on us." I took in a breath to calm myself and let my body sink back down again to the bottom of the pool.

Unwavering mental focus was essential. I came to learn that in SEAL training and on deployments, the greatest distractions for men were not physical challenges, but family issues. The military can place a great strain on family life, and problems in family life can place a great strain on people serving in the military. Men in good relationships were not just happier men, they were also better trainees, and-I'd later come to believe-better SEALs and better public servants. Like drown-proofing, service overseas often demanded total concentration. Walking down an Iraqi road on patrol, men need to be thinking about what's happening in the alley on their right, not about an unhappy wife at home. On deployment, I've had men whose wives left them, a man whose child was diagnosed with autism, men whose homes were broken into, men whose parents died. Life doesn't stop when a service member heads overseas.

I learned how difficult it can be to stay focused when you're worried about someone that you love, and for that learning I'm grateful. I think that it made me a better officer on deployment. I'd check in with guys: "You call home recently? Everything good?" Usually guys would just brag about how great their kids were doing. But on a few occasions, I had guys wake me up in the middle of the night to tell me that they feared their marriage was falling apart, or to tell me that their kid was sick. Strong guys would break down crying. Of course, just like life doesn't stop at home, the mission overseas doesn't stop either, and those same men had to wake up the next day and get back to dangerous work. Emerson once wrote that concentration is the secret of strength. You can't chase two rabbits at once. And for men to perform overseas while their lives kept running at home, absolute concentration on the task at hand is essential.

During the actual drown-proofing, after the bobbing we moved on to flips. Again we blew all the air out of our lungs. As I touched the pool bottom I kicked my bound legs over my head and did a back flip. I pushed off the pool bottom and went to the surface for a s.n.a.t.c.h of air and then I sank again, blowing bubbles of air until I felt the bottom of the pool. This time I did a front flip underwater.

I pushed off the pool bottom. When I next broke the surface, I saw my swim buddy standing on the pool deck holding my facemask. As I sank back down, he threw it into the nine-foot-deep water. I watched the mask float to the bottom of the pool, and on my next push to the surface I grabbed a breath of air and rolled forward. I dolphin-kicked for the mask on the pool bottom, and when I'd made it to the bottom of the pool, I moved the strap of the mask into place with my nose, then bit the strap tight, swung my feet to the bottom of the pool, and pushed again for the surface. I bobbed five more times, breathing at the surface as I held the mask with clenched teeth.

The men at BUD/S wanted to be SEALs for a wide variety of reasons. Some were inspired by relatives, some were inspired by movies, some had played "special operations" video games. Some sought the respect of their parents and their friends. Some wanted to impress a girl. Some just wanted to test themselves. Many of the men had grown up in a culture where they'd inherited ideals about manhood from beer commercials and sitcoms. And whether the men they saw on TV were portrayed as overgrown and selfish boys, or as wimpy doofs forever outwitted and always ineffective at accomplishing anything worthwhile, the men who came to BUD/S knew-even if they might not have articulated it-that there had to be more. They knew that there had to be more to being a man and a responsible adult, and they knew that they wanted to become someone worthy.

We sometimes ran north of the BUD/S compound and onto the civilian beach in front of the Hotel del Coronado-an architecturally spectacular hotel and a popular vacation destination. One day during one of these runs-we still had about sixty men in the cla.s.s and we were sick of looking at each other-the bikini-clad women lying out on the beach captured our attention.

Senior Chief Salazar led the run that morning. Senior Chief was a shorter man, powerfully built, who had a long history of honorable operations in the SEAL teams. He was also the epitome of an excellent trainer, unapologetically demanding and relentlessly positive. Every man in our cla.s.s admired Senior Chief Salazar. I suspect that he knew this, and he used his power to teach important lessons, not just about combat, but also about how to live. "You know what, guys? I want to tell you something about women. And I want to tell you something about what it means to be a real frogman. You know how a real frogman treats women?" We kept running, none of us with any idea what Senior Chief would say. "If you're a real frogman, then every time a woman leaves your side, she'll feel better about herself."

In a culture where so many had been fed a steady diet of shallow macho posturing that involved degrading women, here was a simple message: "Every time a woman leaves your side, she'll feel better about herself." Many men had come to BUD/S not only to learn what it meant to be SEALs; many of them had come because they needed to learn what it meant to be men.

Waiting wasn't going to make the pool any shorter, so I stood with one of the first groups. There were five of us lined up on the pool deck, with five instructors treading in the water. We were standing at the deep end of the combat training tank. The water was fifteen feet deep, and the pool was twenty-five meters across. Our task was straightforward: jump in the pool and execute a front flip underwater, then swim underwater to the other side of the pool and back again, for a total swim of fifty meters underwater.

Standing on the pool deck, my mind started to race: should I try to jump in as far as possible, and save myself an extra foot of swimming, or will that use too much energy and oxygen? Should I do the front flip as soon as I hit the water, or wait until I sink a few feet?

I grabbed control of my thoughts and tried to concentrate on only three things: take a deep breath before I jumped, go deep, and stay relaxed while I swam.

I could feel the eyes of the men in my cla.s.s on my back. I was being watched because I was one of the first students to swim, and because I was one of the cla.s.s leaders. They were watching to see if I was worthy to lead them.

I took a very long, very slow, very deep breath, and I jumped. I did the front flip immediately, and I started swimming for the other side of the pool at a steep angle, hoping to get as deep as I could as quickly as possible.

Boyle's law states that at a fixed temperature and within a closed system, pressure and volume are inversely proportional. The deeper you go, the higher the partial pressure of oxygen in your system. The bottom line is that it's actually easier to swim fifty meters at fifteen feet deep than to swim the same distance at five feet deep. Mr. Boyle was very far from my mind just then, but I knew that I wanted to be deep. I pulled, kicked, and glided about three inches above the bottom of the pool.

As I came to the turnaround at twenty-five meters, I touched the wall, set my legs, and pushed. The water rushed past me, but the other side of the pool looked very far away, and I was out of air.

As I put my hands out in front to start the next stroke, I thought to myself, Stay... Stay... and as I pulled my arms back, I completed the mantra:... and as I pulled my arms back, I completed the mantra:... relaxed. relaxed. I repeated this: I repeated this: Stay ... relaxed ... Stay ... relaxed. Stay ... relaxed ... Stay ... relaxed. I was out of air, and my body was desperate for oxygen, but thousands of men had done this before me. Thousands more would follow. I was out of air, and my body was desperate for oxygen, but thousands of men had done this before me. Thousands more would follow.

I had to keep my heartbeat steady. Stay ... relaxed... Stay ... relaxed... The faster your heart beats, the more oxygen you use. The faster your heart beats, the more oxygen you use.

I pulled again, and then I was there. An instructor launched me onto the pool deck as I touched the finish wall, and I crashed onto the deck between two other students, each of us on our hands and knees, breathing hard. A corpsman bent down and looked in my eyes. I held up the OK sign with my right hand and said, "I'm OK."

"Good job, sir."

Was that it? Was that the swim I'd been worried about for months? I stood up and walked over to my boat crew. "Guys," I took another deep breath, "just go deep, and stay relaxed on the way back. We can all do this."

The guys looked up at me and nodded their heads, but I'm sure it wasn't the most inspirational speech they'd ever heard.

"Oh my, folks, looks like we've got a funky chicken," one of the instructors said.

One of the men that swam in my group was doing the funky chicken on the pool deck. When underwater and desperate for oxygen, your body will sometimes start involuntarily convulsing. It's awkward and painful as your body jerks and spasms. Sometimes when this process has started, the spasming and jerking will continue even when you've made it out of the water.

Men quit every day, and our boat crews-the groups of seven that we used to organize ourselves-changed every day. That morning a very quiet man named James Suh had joined my crew. He looked nervous watching the funky chicken on the pool deck. I said, "You too, Suh. You got this."

Suh looked at me. "I got it, Mr. G." And Suh did get it. He aced the fifty-meter swim that day, and while the cla.s.s shifted and changed around us for months, for the most part, Suh remained part of my platoon or part of my boat crew for well over a year. I never once heard Suh raise his voice. He was utterly dependable. He had an undergraduate degree in mathematics, and he was one of the smartest men in our cla.s.s. He would later help dozens of his fellow cla.s.smates with dive physics, and if it weren't for Suh's tutoring, many of our men wouldn't have pa.s.sed the tests that required us to calculate the explosive power of demolitions. Suh was as good on the rifle range and underwater as he was in the air under a parachute. I remember Suh relating a few stories of fights that he'd had in college. He knew how to fight, and he could fight when he needed to, but he never provoked violence. We suffered a lot together, and we became good friends.

Suh would later die as a Navy SEAL in Afghanistan. He was flying on a helo that was shot down by the Taliban in the middle of a firefight. He was flying in to rescue another man-Matt Axelson, "Axe"-who was sitting with us on the pool deck that day.

"I got it, Mr. G."

Yes, Suh. Yes, indeed.

h.e.l.l Week was coming. Training up to this point had been a challenge, but h.e.l.l Week is the hardest week of the hardest military training in the world, and in a cla.s.s of Golden Gloves boxers, state-champion wrestlers, international-quality water polo players, and collegiate swimmers, we all knew that we'd never been tested in the way that h.e.l.l Week would test us. We were sitting in the first-phase cla.s.sroom, and Instructor Harmon stood behind the podium. Instructor Harmon had a philosophical streak in him, and he said this: "Each one of you is like an earthen vessel-a beautiful piece of pottery-prettied up by your fathers and mothers and teachers with tender loving care. In a few days, h.e.l.l Week is going to begin, and we're going to take every one of you out onto the grinder and we're going to smash you on the ground, break you open, and we're going to see what's inside each one of you. With many of you, we'll find nothing. There's just air. You are empty men without substance. For others, when you break we're going to have to turn away from the smell, because you live in a weak culture that has allowed you to get by on charm and pretty talk and backslapping and you have practiced dishing manure for so long that it almost seeps out of your every pore, and now, that is what you are. For others, when we smash you, we'll find inside a sword made of pure Damascus steel. And you are going to become Navy SEALs."

10. h.e.l.l Week

EVERY MAN HAS a different story of h.e.l.l Week; they remember particular cla.s.smates, particular instructors, their own most difficult moments. But in a larger sense, every h.e.l.l Week story is the same: A man enters a new world with the aim of becoming something greater than he once was. He is tested once, twice, three, four, five times, each test harder than the last. Then comes the most difficult test of his life. At the end of the week, he emerges a different man. He has met the hardest test of his life, and he has pa.s.sed or he has failed. a different story of h.e.l.l Week; they remember particular cla.s.smates, particular instructors, their own most difficult moments. But in a larger sense, every h.e.l.l Week story is the same: A man enters a new world with the aim of becoming something greater than he once was. He is tested once, twice, three, four, five times, each test harder than the last. Then comes the most difficult test of his life. At the end of the week, he emerges a different man. He has met the hardest test of his life, and he has pa.s.sed or he has failed.

h.e.l.l Week normally begins on a Sunday night, but the instructors vary the start time, so we didn't know exactly when the trial would begin.

We arrived at the base early that weekend for a nerve-racking wait. Men carried their favorite movies and their favorite music to pa.s.s the time. They carried a set of civilian clothes to wear in the event that they quit and were sent home. They carried pillows to sleep on and food to eat. Our cla.s.s was restricted to a few general-purpose tents on the beach, and inside these long, green-tarped tents, we were sardined with dozens of other men on packed cots.

We pa.s.sed around food: protein bars, sports drinks, pizza. One guy's wife had made oatmeal raisin cookies and we picked morsels out of the tinfoil. We knew that we'd be burning close to 8,500 calories a day. We also knew that the water temperature was in the fifties, and we knew that the body burned calories to produce heat. We ate as much as we could. As night came, we sat up talking.

Our boat crews were always shifting as men quit and the cla.s.s got smaller. Raines had been in my boat crew in the first weeks of indoctrination, and now-right before h.e.l.l Week-he was with me again. Raines was a kind of BUD/S wise man. He'd been in Cla.s.s 234, was injured, and as he recovered he saw Cla.s.ses 235 and 236 pa.s.s through before he joined our cla.s.s, 237. Raines was in his late twenties: old for a BUD/S student. He was married: this put him in a small minority of BUD/S students. And he was African American: this put him in another minority of BUD/S students. Raines was about five foot ten. He was in great shape relative to most people, but by the standards of BUD/S he had a small gut. He was slower than most in running, and slower than most on the swims. He was slower than most on the obstacle course, and slower than most to knock out fifteen pull-ups.

Eddie Franklin, Greg Hall, and Old Man Johnson (who was probably thirty-one) were all in our crew, and all previously served as Marines. We also had a young guy named Lipsky and another young athlete named Martin. We had a solid group of hard-charging athletes and disciplined Marines, and then we had Raines. The athletes kept us strong. The Marines kept us disciplined. And Raines, he kept us wily-Wile E. Coyote wily. Things don't always work out so well for the coyote, but he's got an endless bag of tricks.

Raines's wife had packed him a brick of brownies, and we were eating Raines's brownies sitting on the cots and waiting for h.e.l.l Week to begin when he started to tell us a story from his time serving on the Florida Highway Patrol.

"So, I get a call on the radio, that there is this cow standing in the middle of this two-lane highway, and it has traffic stopped. I asked the dispatcher was she serious, and she tells me yes. So I start driving out that way, and traffic is backed up for miles in both directions, people just barely creepin' along. I have to drive on the embankment of the road, and I go flying past all of these people of the great state of Florida that have summoned me to remove this bovine obstruction from their midst. Now, you got to understand, these people are hot. p.i.s.sed off. They been sittin' on this road goin' nowhere. So, I get up to the cow, and I see that there is another officer already on the scene.

"Now it's important to tell you that it's another black officer from the city for a couple of reasons, but one of 'em is that I know for d.a.m.n sure that my man has never dealt with a cow in his entire life. And he is standing there. And there in front of him is this cow, and the cow simply will not move, standing smack in the middle of the highway. A few people could drive by the cow on either side of the road real slow, but the cow has traffic stopped in both directions.

"And then of course, all the drivers-who ain't never touched a cow before either-they have all become experts on the movement of cows, and they are yelling at my boy and tellin' him, push the cow with your car, hit it with your baton, pull it by the ear, all kinds of craziness.

"Now I walk up to my man, and I can tell, he is super-f.u.c.kin'-crazy-fragilistic-expi-alla-docious p.i.s.sed off, out there sweatin' in the sun, and a huge traffic jam, suckin' on exhaust, and all those people honking and yelling at him, and this crazy motherf.u.c.ker is yellin' at the cow. He told me to get something, so I walk back to my car, and I got my trunk opened, and just then I look up, and that crazy motherf.u.c.ker is drawing his weapon from his holster. He points it straight at the cow, shoots, and the cow drops dead in the middle the road.

"Now I'm watching this, and I see this little old white lady step out her car, and pull out a car phone. I didn't know who she was calling, or what she was saying, but I knew that this was going to be a mess, and I knew that I didn't want to be anywhere near it, and so I got right on in my car and I drove off."

The whole tent is laughing because it's cla.s.sic Raines: pain is coming down, and he knows just where not to be.

"So, next day, I get called over to the chief of patrol's office, and I'm sitting outside his office next to the man who shot the cow, like two kids getting called into the princ.i.p.al's office. Then the officer turns to me and he says, 'Hey brother,' and I'm thinking, Oh, now I'm your brother. Oh, now I'm your brother. Well, he says to me, he says, 'You got to help me out.' I'm thinking, Well, he says to me, he says, 'You got to help me out.' I'm thinking, Help you out? What the h.e.l.l am I supposed to do? You shot a cow dead in the middle of a pack of witnesses on a highway in broad daylight. Help you out? What the h.e.l.l am I supposed to do? You shot a cow dead in the middle of a pack of witnesses on a highway in broad daylight. So I said, 'What do you want me to do?' And that motherf.u.c.ker looked at me straight in the eye, and he said, 'Tell 'im,'"-and Raines paused-"'that the cow attacked me.'" So I said, 'What do you want me to do?' And that motherf.u.c.ker looked at me straight in the eye, and he said, 'Tell 'im,'"-and Raines paused-"'that the cow attacked me.'"

We all busted out laughing. Somebody yelled to Raines, "So what did you do?"

And Raines says, "When they called me in that office, I didn't even wait for 'im to ask me anything. I walked straight up the desk of the chief of patrol, and I said, 'That motherf.u.c.ker shot that cow for no G.o.dd.a.m.ned good reason whatsoever,' and I turned around and I walked out of there."

The tent roared with laughter-a group of men letting go of tension before the test. There were a lot of men in the tent that night. Only a handful of us would make it through BUD/S, but of all the traits that would be essential to our success, it turned out that this one-a sense of humor-would prove to be more important than I would have imagined.

Men drifted off to sleep, each with his own thoughts. I rehea.r.s.ed our plan in my mind. As a boat crew leader, my most immediate responsibility was for six other men. I'd instructed our crew to sleep fully dressed, boots on. We knew that we'd wake to chaos-instructors firing automatic weapons, artillery simulators exploding, sirens, bullhorns-and our plan was simple: drop to the ground and crawl out under the east side of the tent. Stay down. I would get a full head count. Hall would grab the back of my collar, the man behind him would grab Hall's collar, and so on, until we were all connected. We couldn't plan to be able to hear each other, and if they threw smoke grenades we might not even be able to see each other. Other men and instructors would be running and crashing around us. Connected, we'd start to move. I wondered, Was there anything else I should say to my guys? Anything else I should do? Was there anything else I should say to my guys? Anything else I should do?

Almost as soon as I fell into sleep, I woke to the sound of a Mark-43 squad automatic weapon. The Mark-43 has a cyclic rate of fire of 550 rounds per minute. It is the primary "heavy" gun carried by SEALs on patrol. A blank round is not nearly as loud as a live one, but when the gun is rocking feet away from your ears in an enclosed tent, it still sounds painfully loud. I rolled to the ground. For a moment-certainly less than a second-I was on my knees and elbows in the sand, about to crawl out of the tent. A huge smile broke across my face. The wait was over. The test had begun.

I-like all of the others in the tent that night-had grown up in a modern America that offered its young men few tests. As a kid I read about the Spartans, the Romans, the Knights of the Round Table. I studied Native Americans, aboriginal cultures, and ancient Jewish tribes. Past cultures all seemed to offer young men some orderly set of trials that allowed one to progress into manhood. America offered very little. I'd seen Earl Blair-in the Durham boxing gym-constructing trials for boys who otherwise would have constructed their own trials for themselves in gangs. Men came to BUD/S for many reasons, but to some extent we all shared at least one reason: We wanted to be tested. We wanted to prove ourselves worthy. We wanted a good fight, and now it had started.

The plan worked perfectly. The seven of us crawled out the side of the tent, avoiding the packs of instructors waiting for students at the entrance and exit. The night was dark, and in the confusion we felt unseen. We had a precious few seconds to make sure that we were all together. I stood, Hall's hand on my collar, and we ran. Instructors yelled at us, "Drop!" "Drop!" "Drop down!" but I kept running. Air raid sirens blared, artillery simulators exploded, guns ripped through endless rounds of ammunition, and I decided to use the chaos of the night to our advantage.

We ran off the beach and past a group of instructors who had a fire hose trained on another boat crew as they did pushups. The instructors yelled at us, "Drop!" "Drop down!" and we kept running. We knew that the instructors were going to beat us, but we weren't going to make it easy for them.

Students were being corralled into the famous concrete compound known as the grinder for a murderous session of physical training under the a.s.sault of hoses and prowling instructors. The intention of the instructors was to start h.e.l.l Week in chaos. Break the teams apart. Sow confusion. As the seven of us ran for the grinder, I turned left and ducked us behind a dumpster, where we all seven crouched to a knee.

The instructors were screaming, guns firing, and the other boat crews were running back and forth.

"Mr. G, what are we doing?" We weren't swimming in the river of craziness around us, and it was actually the calm that made some of my guys nervous.

"Be cool. We're just gonna hang here for a bit," I said.

The river of madness ran past us into the grinder, and we could hear the other boat crews getting soaked, the instructors shouting at them for pushups, flutter kicks, squats, sit-ups.

Raines said, "My man, this is beautiful." We waited.

"Stay low." I peered around the side of the dumpster: clear. I stood and we ran back to the beach.