by Don Mann
The race changed my life. It proved to me once and for all that anything is possible if you work hard and prepare yourself.
I said to myself, Now that I completed this goal, I need to focus on getting to BUD/S and getting in SEAL shape!
I determined that everything I did and everything I ate would contribute to making me stronger for BUD/S. That meant three healthy meals a day and no candy bars, sodas, or junk food. I had micro goals—to win individual races—but the macro goal was to become a SEAL.
I started doing visualizations. For example, I knew that BUD/S involved a lot of swimming under difficult circumstances, and I still wasn’t a strong swimmer, so when I was doing laps in the pool, I’d imagine myself in freezing water looking up at a black sky, every part of my body numb from the cold, from swimming for hours.
One weekend I completed a 240-mile ride around Okinawa in fourteen hours, setting a course record that stood for a long time afterward. And when I wasn’t swimming, running, or racing, I worked at the USMC Futenma base clinic improving my medical skills.
Most days involved routine tasks, but given the constant activity going on all around us, it seemed like things could change in an instant. I was on sick call at the clinic one afternoon when I heard two very loud pops outside. Someone shouted that an OV-10 turboprop light attack aircraft had lost an engine just before landing and had hit the runway. I grabbed my medical bag and ran the quarter mile to the scene of the accident.
The pilot had ejected first and seemed okay. But the copilot had bailed at an angle that shot him across the cement runway. I ran over to where he was lying and saw that the skin along the right side of his body had been scraped away, exposing his bones and organs. The poor guy was dead, but the Timex watch on his wrist was still ticking. Just like the ad.
Once I got a call that a Marine had passed out in the barracks. I ran there and leaned over the Marine to check his pupils. I knew that the Marines didn’t like the fact that a Navy corpsman with a beard and long hair continually aced their PRT (physical readiness test), but I wasn’t there to do anything but help.
The Marine was drunk. When he opened his eyes and saw me looming over him, he punched me full force.
I recoiled; my face throbbed, and blood trickled out of my nose. I was ready to smash him, but part of me said, Don, try to remain professional. Besides, there were eight Marines who were standing around watching.
One of them said, “Let it go, Doc. This guy’s usually not like this. He’s just really shit-faced.”
I was pissed, and the guy who sucker punched me didn’t even apologize.
So a couple days later, my eye still black and blue and my lip swollen, I walked into the clinic, found his shot records, tore them into pieces, and flushed them down the toilet. Then I left a note for the staff sergeant telling him that the Marine was behind on all his shots.
A month later, after the Marine had come in to get all his shots but still hadn’t apologized, I tore up his shot records again. Screw him!
One night around two a.m., I was on duty at the clinic when the bell rang. My buddy and I got up and answered the door.
This drunk Marine staggered in and asked, “Doc, can you help me out?”
“What’s the matter?”
“I got a real bad case of acne and it’s bothering me a lot.”
“Really?”
“I’m sorry for coming in so late after hours, but the bars just closed and I figured I’d stop by on my way back to the barracks.”
I looked at Kevin, my fellow corpsman, and he looked at me. We were both thinking the same thing: Can you believe this guy made an emergency call at two in the morning because of acne?
I said, “Look. We’ve got all kinds of drugs in the pharmacy. Some work, some don’t. But the best cure for acne is this old Indian remedy.”
“What’s that?”
“When you get up in the morning and urinate, cup the urine in your hands and splash it on your face. You do that for a month and your acne will disappear and never come back.”
“Really, Doc?”
“It works like a charm every time.”
About two weeks later, this Marine master sergeant called the clinic sounding irate. He said, “What’s the name of the doc who told my private to put piss on his face? I saw him in the head this morning splashing it on his face like it was some kind of cologne.”
We laughed our heads off. Don’t mess with the docs.
I finished up my assignment to Japan and finally, in May of ’82, when I was back in the States assigned to a Navy Reserve unit in Easton, Pennsylvania, and working temporarily as a prison guard, I received my orders to report to BUD/S.
I was ecstatic. This was it. I called my parents and my girlfriend, Kim, and said, “Finally, finally, my goal is within reach!”
I had no backup plan. It was SEALs or nothing.
Chapter Five
BUD/S
The more sweat and tears you put into the training, the less blood you’ll shed in time of war.
—Basic Underwater Demolition/
SEAL motto
Have you ever heard of something called heart-rate variability (HRV)? It’s a real medical phenomenon discovered by a guy named Dr. Charles Morgan of Yale University that’s used to predict which soldiers are likely to perform most efficiently under the stress of combat.
Most people have a large degree of variability in their heart rates during the course of a day. In other words, your heart speeds up and slows down all the time, depending on conditions—like whether someone is pointing a gun at your head or you’re lounging by the pool drinking a Dos Equis.
But many SEALs and other Special Forces types have what is called a metronomic heartbeat, meaning the heart thumps like a metronome, with the beats evenly spaced, not speeding up or slowing down.
And no, we’re not cyborgs.
Our hearts do this, it turns out, because our brains release a higher level of a neurotransmitter called neuropeptide Y (NPY) than most people’s brains do. NPY works as a natural tranquilizer that controls anxiety and buffers the effects of stress hormones like norepinephrine.
Dr. Morgan found that those with metronomic heartbeats perform better than others in survival school, underwater-navigation testing, and close-quarters battle because their systems are able to manage a very elevated degree of stress. Today, HRV is one of the factors used in the selection of SEALs.
But there’s a downside. Dr. Morgan also found that the metronomic effect is often associated with early heart disease and even sudden death. Apparently, the body chemistry that allows young people to survive under high stress does not translate into optimal heart health past the age of fifty.
I realized my own unusual response to danger the first time I had a gun pointed at me.
I was a newly licensed sixteen-year-old driving like a maniac down the Boston Post Road, my arm around my girlfriend, Lynn, and a beer in my lap. I had my ’68 Pontiac Firebird cranked up to ninety-five miles an hour and was trying to hit a hundred.
We were flying, passing other vehicles as if they were standing still, when this dark Chevy sedan pulled up beside me. The driver wore reflector shades, and his hair was buzzed short. You know the type.
Figuring that he was a cop, I slowed down to eighty. He motioned for me to pull over.
Lynn didn’t want me to.
I stopped and got out.
The thick-necked guy stomped over and grabbed me by the arm. He said, “You’re coming with me, punk. I’m an undercover cop and I’m hauling your ass in.”
I asked, “If you’re a cop, where’s your badge?”
“I’m not showing you shit! Come with me!”
He was big, loud, and aggressive.
I said, “No, I’m not.”
Lynn grabbed my other arm and said, “Let’s go with him, Don. Come on.”
“No!”
For some reason I had a feeling that I could talk my way out of it if I held my ground.
Red-faced now, the big guy pulled out a gun and stuck it in my stomach. He said, “Now you’re coming. Let’s go, punk.”
We were eye to eye, so close that I could smell his breath. I said, “I’m not going with you.”
Lynn pleaded, “Please, Don! Stop arguing. Let’s just do what he wants.”
“No.”
We stood nose to nose for half a minute, then the big guy put his revolver away, walked to his car, and drove off. Lynn was a mess, but I was perfectly calm.
Sometimes I think I’m at my best in dangerous situations. I thrive under stress and like living on the edge.
Another time, shortly before I went to BUD/S, my father and brother and I went to Easton, Pennsylvania, to see heavyweight champion Larry Holmes fight. We parked our car in a lot and walked to the arena, passing by this car parked across the street with a couple in the front seat.
They were both hysterical and holding a baby upside down by the ankles. I ran over to the car and said, “I’m a medic. Can I help you?”
Apoplectic with fear, they couldn’t answer.
The poor baby’s face had turned blue. I took it from them and held its head in my hand.
Immediately, my combat medic training kicked in. My brain was shouting at me, Airway, Don! Airway! Check the airway!
The baby was close to death, but I remained calm.
I looked down the baby’s throat, saw something stuck there, then reached in with my little finger and popped a white piece of plastic out of the way. The baby started making sucking sounds and crying. The blue around its lips started to fade and then changed to a healthy pink.
The parents grabbed the baby, thanked me quickly, and drove away.
In March of 1982, bursting with excitement, my girlfriend, Kim, and I packed our stuff and hopped in my black TR6, which didn’t have working brakes. We drove across country in three and a half days with only a handbrake. I arrived at BUD/S in Coronado (about five miles south of San Diego) on March 31, 1982, fired up and ready for action.
When I looked out on the field where guys from the previous BUD/S class were running around with scuba tanks on their backs, with instructors yelling at them, I thought, This is for me! I’ve arrived. The first two weeks, known in those days as pretraining (it’s changed since), were intense. There were over a hundred men in my class. Most looked fit, but some looked like they’d been spending a lot of time drinking beer and eating pretzels.
Then the instructors handed all of us phase one green helmets and immediately started kicking our butts.
Phase one, which started on June 18, consisted of two months of grueling physical conditioning and training. It included:
Timed runs in the sand
Swimming
Calisthenics
Timed obstacle course
Small-boat seamanship
Hydrographic surveys and creating charts
Rock portage in a rubber raiding craft
We were constantly in motion and ran everywhere, including to breakfast, lunch, and dinner. I’m talking roughly six miles a day in boots just to eat, in addition to long daily runs on Coronado Beach.
First thing in the morning after the 0430 muster, the instructors would order us on the asphalt grinder and we’d do all kinds of calisthenics—flutter kicks, good-mornings, dive-bombers, push-ups, sit-ups, triceps push-ups, pull-ups, and rope climbs. If it was chilly, they’d spray us with cold water just to place another challenge in our way.
From their perspective it was all about seeing how much pain and discomfort we could take and how willing we were to push ourselves.
Being a wiry triathlete type with little extra meat on my bones, I developed an oozing sore on my tailbone from working out on the asphalt and had a constant bloodstain on my shorts.
From the grinder we’d run to the obstacle course, where we’d climb up ropes and walls, run through mud, crawl under barbed wire, hang by our arms, and so on. The instructors would launch a trainee every thirty seconds and challenge him to pass the guy ahead of him.
“Come on, push! For your sake, I hope you can move faster than that!”
And each time you ran the course, you were expected to beat your previous time. The instructors evaluated each candidate at the end of each phase of training and took great pleasure in eliminating the weak candidates, whom they referred to as “shit birds.”
Our first-phase proctor looked like he’d been ripped from the cover of Soldier of Fortune magazine. His name was Bob Donnegan and he happened to be the world arm-wrestling champ at the time—hard, and tough, with huge arms.
One morning he’d climbed up three towers to show us some aspect of the course when he lost his footing, fell about thirty feet, and landed on his back with a thud. The ground around us literally shook, and we thought he was dead.
My training kicked in again and I ran over, knelt by his side, and shouted, “Instructor Donnegan, can you hear me? Are you okay?”
He turned his head to look up at me and growled, “Get the hell out of here.”
Then he stood up in his blue and white dive shirt and UDT dive shorts, brushed himself off, and said, “Listen up, you hooligans. I never, ever want to see any of you do anything like that. You understand?”
“Yes, Instructor Donnegan.”
We stood in silent awe, figuring the guy must have bones made out of steel.
I found out right away that my reputation as an Ironman and long-distance athlete had preceded me, which was both good and bad. The instructors sort of grudgingly respected me but expected more from me too.
The reason for that was Ray Fritz, who happened to be a SEAL from my Navy Reserve unit and the friend of a BUD/S instructor.
Funny guy, Ray. Because when I met him, he actually tried to talk me out of becoming a SEAL.
Knowing that I was corpsman, he said, “Don, why do you want to go to BUD/S? Hell, you’ve already proved yourself physically. You and I should go into sports medicine. There’s a fortune to be made there.”
I said, “No, I want to be a SEAL. That’s my one and only goal.”
So before I got to BUD/S, Ray—who went on to become a very successful orthopedic surgeon—called his friend at BUD/S in Coronado, a guy named Steve Simmit, to let him know that I was coming.
The first week of BUD/S I ran into Steve as we were assembling before our weekly four-mile timed run on the beach. Steve was another amazing physical specimen—a pentathlete with a body so fit that it looked like it had been turned inside out, leaving all of his muscles on the outside.
I said, “Instructor Simmit, a friend of mine says hello.”
“Who is your friend?”
“Ray Fritz.”
He grunted. “Drop down and give me fifty.”
No problem. It was a beautiful California summer day with a fresh breeze blowing in from the ocean. I enjoyed doing push-ups and I loved that I was finally at BUD/S.
As I was lifting myself up for the fiftieth time, he said, “Now get in the water and make a sugar cookie.” Sugar cookies meant getting wet and rolling in the sand.
So I’m in my shorts covered with sand when he barks, “All right, Mann, give me another fifty.”
“Yes, sir.” I did another set.
“Fifty more!”
The inside of my thighs were starting to bleed because of the chafing from the sand.
Then he beckoned me closer and said in confidence, “What you gotta do now is win the run. I know what you can do, and I expect you to win every time.”
My swim buddy Jeff Hobblit and I always ran at the front of the pack. Steve Simmit said, “Don, you gotta beat him today.”
“Yes, sir.”
I did, and I beat him the next time too.
Instructor Simmit started acting real friendly and I was honored. When somebody told me that the instructors were taking bets on whether Jeff or I was going to come in first, I understood why.
So a couple days later, I ran down the beach as hard as possible to catch up with Jeff.
When I finally pulled alongside him, I said, “Jeff, instead of us killing each other each time we run, why don’t we tie?”
“Good idea.”
For the next four months we ran at 99 percent instead of 100 and crossed the finish line side by side. I’m sure it threw the oddsmakers for a loop.
Jeff was on my boat team too, along with four other trainees, during small-boat-tactics training. We were the power guys up front—I was on the port side, Jeff was starboard. We paddled every day, some days for as long as eight hours.
One night the IBS (inflatable boat, small) we were in was lurching all over the place and we were losing speed so that the team behind us was closing.
I yelled at Jeff, “Come on, Jeff. Paddle harder!”
He turned to me and shouted, “I am paddling hard. You paddle harder!”
I looked behind me and saw that the officer, the coxswain, who only had to steer the boat, had fallen asleep. No wonder we were zigzagging all over the place. It took all my self-control not to smack him with a paddle.
Training was always highly competitive, and often highly dangerous. Rock portage was hairy as hell. The goal was to get your IBS through the surf and onto a forty-foot-high rock formation near Coronado Cays. Guys broke arms and legs all the time. The less fortunate broke backs and cracked their skulls.
When the waves reached their violent peak, a BUD/S instructor standing on top of the jetty would signal with his flashlight. If the moon wasn’t out, you couldn’t see squat.
Most times you’d get smeared and flip over. Sometimes you’d end up sailing over the bow. The boat would go flying. You’re getting tossed around, flailing through huge waves, doing your very best not to drown or hit the rocks. Then you had to regain control of your boat, paddle out, and try again.
I never hit the rocks hard enough to get hurt. But I saw plenty of guys from previous classes walking around the BUD/S compound with broken arms or hobbling around with broken legs or ankles from rock portage.