Damn Few

by Rorke Denver

  Some exiting students, I noticed, pulled the bell cord as softly as they possibly could, as if they were hoping no one would notice. Others gave it such a fuck-you pull, it was like they were hell-bent on denting the bell or yanking it off the stand. Then there were the ring-once guys. They’d ring the bell once, walk away, come back and ring again, then walk away, then in a final realization that their SEAL training was over, they’d give three resigned rings and glumly leave.

  There were some total refusers who said, “I’m outta here, but I’m not ringing any damn bell.” This was handled off the grid. Nothing physical—just a bitingly intense conversation. One of the chiefs pulled the person aside and said: “This program and this community are bigger than any one individual—bigger than you or me. When you disrespect the bell and the program, you really have proven you don’t belong here. Now go be a man. Ring the bell. Do it right. Don’t disrespect the community or yourself.” As far I know, that message was always received.

  The truth is that many people just aren’t ready for this, whatever their level of desire. It is horrible to watch. We’ve had students everyone was pulling for, just hoping they could get through. But they didn’t have the physiology or the athletic ability to perform at this level. We had an expat from Great Britain, a pudgy, little, unassuming guy—five foot seven, maybe 165. He had never been an athlete a day in his life. But he was Richard the Lion-hearted. He gave everything a human could give. He just wasn’t physically strong enough. When he left, one of the instructors sat the whole class down and said: “Some of you have physical attributes that are a gift from God. If you can find inside yourselves half the heart this guy did, you’ll be phenomenal SEALs.”

  Not being strong enough or physically prepared doesn’t always mean the dream is over forever. An officer who leaves may never return. But an enlisted man who falls short and leaves can return for another shot. If you haven’t gotten through Hell Week, you have to start over from the beginning. If you’ve made it past Hell Week and then get injured, you can pick up wherever you left off. The rules say you’re supposed to sit out for two years before returning. But there are cases, like the young Brit, where instructors write a letter to the commanding officer of whatever ship the person has ended up on, saying, “We want to see that guy back soon.”

  Most decidedly, that is not a group that includes the bell refusers.

  I understood why people quit. Truly, SEAL training isn’t for everyone. But I was still sad to see some individuals go. You get close to people in a hurry at BUD/S. My buddy Jason, whom I’d arrived with, left. He had an old shoulder injury that started acting up, and I think a couple of weeks of SEAL training also opened his eyes. “I don’t know if this is for me,” he told me a couple of weeks in. “I’m not sure I’m one of these guys.” He didn’t seem all that broken up when he was dropped for medical cause. Still, we’d started together. He was a bright guy and an excellent friend. I definitely missed having Jason around.

  At the same time, there was something about hearing that bell ring that was also affirming. It was primal, something deep inside. For those of us who stayed, the sound of that bell actually made us feel good. The bell would ring, and we would think to ourselves, We’re still here and those other guys aren’t. We’re that much closer to the finish line.

  After a while, that bell started sounding like a twisted tuning fork—not taunting, not warning, but calling like a mythological Siren to those who remained. Withdrawing was such a public act, it sent a message to everyone: “This place is exactly what you thought it was, a place for the best of the best. That ringing bell proves it.”

  I knew one thing already: However relentless the instructors, however high the demands, I would find a way to get through BUD/S. I was not going to quit. That’s not how I was raised. That’s not who I was. I’d waited long enough to be here. I had made my decision carefully. I wasn’t just testing the waters. This is what I wanted to do. I certainly wasn’t interested in some regular job in the U.S. Navy, which is where I’d be sent if I bombed out of SEAL training. And that positive self-talk, that sense of absolute inevitability, that refusal to even consider anything else—that turned out to be the elusive key to doing well at BUD/S. I was already getting into the SEAL mind-set.

  But that early, intense PT was just a beginning. We had much more training to do, and what came next harked back to the earlier frogman days of the SEALs. Soon enough, the instructors were leading us into the Combat Training Tank. It’s not that the SEAL teams have been doing so many combat-swimmer operations lately. It’s not that future warfare will be fought in masks, fins, and dive tanks. It’s that, as the special-operation force of a Navy, the SEALs are intimately linked to the oceans. There’s no tougher environment to train in. So every future SEAL must demonstrate a high degree of proficiency in the water. A big part of the proving takes place at BUD/S in the CTT, the SEALs’ specially equipped, Olympic-length training pool. The tank is outfitted with various ledges, hooks, and platforms and has windows below the water line like you might see at Sea World or in the shark tank at your local aquarium. Those windows give a great view of the many training ordeals occurring underwater.

  To get through training, every recruit has to master the fifty-meter underwater swim, combative lifesaving, and underwater knot-tying. These are the building blocks to more advanced SEAL skills like affixing a bomb or a mine to the side of a ship. For the drown-proofing test, a student has to float in a dead man’s position, feet tied together, hands bound behind his back. Tied up like a rodeo calf, each student has to swim two pool lengths with a modified dolphin kick and bob up and down in fifteen feet of water. Sinking to the bottom, rocketing to the top, grabbing a big gulp of oxygen—the trick is to maintain a steady rhythm while getting enough air. It’s all about remaining calm and keeping your lungs filled.

  These tests aren’t easy, but for many students it’s the underwater knot-tying or the lifesaving test that strikes the most panic. In knot-tying, you can’t shoot back to the surface until your ropes are tied and untied and you’ve gotten a thumbs-up sign from the underwater instructor. The knots—the bowline, the square knot, the Becket’s bend, the clove hitch, and the right angle—are basic enough. But such intricate hand-eye coordination isn’t so easy on an underwater breath-hold while the seconds tick painfully by.

  I didn’t expect the lifesaving test to be so hard. In theory, it wasn’t so different from the usual grab-and-go at the local YMCA. But one of the BUD/S instructors just about drowned me. He was under six feet, weighed maybe 150 pounds. I was supposed to grab him in the water and pull him to the side of the pool. How hard could this be? When I played high school water polo, I was the team’s hole set or two-meter man, the position reserved for the strongest, most aggressive water-treading wrestler.

  Never judge a SEAL by his build.

  The wiry instructor let me grab him. As soon as I had a good lock, I thought, “I’ll have him at the side of the pool in seconds.”

  To this day, I have no idea how or what happened next. He started kicking and drove me straight to the bottom of the pool. He spun me like a top. I have never experienced such fury underwater when trying to hold on to someone. He was like a bucking bronco. I really thought I might drown. While I managed to hold on and get him to the edge of the pool, I was seriously gasping for air. With my heart still racing, he splashed pool water in my face. All he said was: “You pass. Get out of the water.”

  There was something different about these SEAL instructors. He should not have been able to do that to me.

  But for most students, it is the fifty-meter underwater swim that is the real lung-crusher, the real test of prowess in the water. Each trainee stands at the side, jumps in feetfirst, does a forward somersault, then swims across the width of the pool and back, a total of fifty meters, the same distance at which Olympic medal winners are tested. People pass out all the time on this one. An instructor is assigned to each trainee, shadowing the student in the water fro
m above.

  “Here’s the deal, gents,” one of our instructors said to our group, pumping up the drama just a bit. “When you jump into the water and do your front somersault, start pulling and stroking as fast as you can and get a good rhythm right away. If you are smart, you’ll go down to the bottom and stay down there. Your lungs, when they are under pressure, they will shrink, which will give you more oxygen than near the surface. The problem is that, when you start coming back up, your lungs start expanding. You can experience what we call a shallow-water blackout.”

  He made it seem as if that happened all the time.

  “Here’s what I’m gonna do because I like you guys,” the instructor said. “I don’t care if you pass out underwater as long as you hit the pool wall. If you are about to go tits up—if you are about to pass out underwater—and you have enough momentum to hit the wall with a little glide, I’ll consider that a pass. We’ll pull you up. We’ll revive you with the slap of life. And you’ll pass.”

  That didn’t sound so great to the student standing next to me. He leaned over and whispered: “Is this for real? Is this guy crazy? I’m not gonna purposely try to pass out underwater.” As it turned out, the instructors weren’t exaggerating by too much. Quite a few of our classmates had to be slapped back to consciousness.

  But that was just BUD/S. If it wasn’t one thing, it was another. It was everything at once. Physical, mental, teamwork, students pushed to the breaking point to see who folded and who didn’t.

  Something unexpected was happening as I got my footing there. I actually started enjoying the experience. It was hard. Many of the physical training evolutions bordered on torture. But as the days rolled on, I felt a growing sense of satisfaction that I was able to meet even the toughest challenges the instructors threw at us. That was building my confidence and my connection to this brotherhood.

  The water was cold, but I could stand it. The PT was brutal, but I could do it. Some of the physical challenges actually became fun. You’d never call the SEALs’ obstacle course a breeze. But as I began to master it, I could see my own progress, and I enjoyed the way that felt.

  The instructors could certainly be relentless. Some of them could be real knuckle-draggers. But still, there was something about them that I couldn’t help liking. The unique way they carried themselves. The way they talked. They had a confidence about them, a good form of intensity, a cockiness, almost. They were smart-asses, a lot of them, always making jokes. If you weren’t scared of them, I discovered, they liked to banter and have fun. They engaged with the students and each other in a way that said, “I know who I am. I’m comfortable with that. You could probably learn some things by hanging around with me.” I never heard any of them say that, not directly. But almost all of them exuded it. Despite their constant demands, I thought these guys were cool. Bring it on.

  As I was making my way through BUD/S, I didn’t grasp all the nuances of the curriculum. That would take years for me to sort out. The need for physical strength was obvious. Someday we would all be called to perform even more challenging evolutions in war zones around the world. But until I’d completed BUD/S, joined a SEAL team, been out on fierce combat assault missions, then returned to Coronado as a BUD/S phase officer and begun teaching the things that I had learned, I didn’t fully appreciate how brilliantly designed the mental component of BUD/S is.

  Only then did every grunt and grind make perfect sense to me. Only then did I come to see that a SEAL’s mental toughness is even more important than his physical fitness.

  BUD/S embraces that concept in two ways. First, it weeds out people who, while physically strong enough, will never be able to develop the mental strength to be a SEAL. If you can’t withstand the pressure of tying a knot in the Combat Training Tank, you’ll never keep your cool when someone’s pointing a gun at you in Afghanistan.

  BUD/S takes people who have the mental toughness and natural aggressiveness to be SEALs, and hones that powerful mind-set. The training builds their confidence. It makes winning second nature to them. It creates a default mental attitude that says, “I can do this. No challenge is too big. Nothing will defeat me. I am part of a seriously elite unit.”

  That sense of being a part of something so special—a true brotherhood—is what allows a man to get up every day, ready to put his life on the line.

  2

  BUD/S SECRETS

  Weapons are an important factor in war, but not the decisive one. It is man and not the material that counts.

  —MAO TSE-TUNG

  * * *

  I’ve never seen a SEAL have his gun jam and wonder, What do I do next?

  In a wild exchange one morning, one of our .50-gunners was firing from a gun-truck turret when his weapon suddenly jammed. That .50 is a big, heavy, man’s gun. It takes two hands to pull the charging system back. As the handles are flying forward and the powerful springs are snapping into place, you could easily chop a finger off. You have to own that gun whether you’re shooting it or working on it.

  Not wasting an instant, he pulled out a screwdriver and stuck it into the crease between the belt-fed magazine and the gun, when the tip of the screwdriver promptly broke off.

  “Get me a screwdriver!” the gunner yelled.

  Within a couple of seconds, another team member was reaching up with a fresh one, but the gunner shook his head. He’d already reached his stubby fingers inside the sizzling-hot weapon, moving things around, tossing out a tiny piece of brass, making little adjustments no one else could see, and clearing the jam from the gun.

  He was back in the fight just like that.

  When you ask your gun to fire and it doesn’t, that could be a deadly problem. We train for hours on how to respond to that. Every gun has its own unique malfunctions. The battlefield is an especially unforgiving terrain for a weapon, a perfect swirl of dust, mud, sand, dirt, and grime, all of it just itching to climb inside your gun. Even less forgiving is the enemy, who never waits for us to get our guns ready before he shoots.

  At the range, we have special malfunction drills for each make and model of weapon. We load a dummy round inside the magazines that will cause the gun to stop firing. You never know when that bad round is coming through. Now, how quickly can you clean the jam and get back into the fight?

  Our basic M4 is not an especially rugged gun. You could carry the enemy’s AK-47 through a sandstorm then drag it through the mud. That gun might feel like a rattletrap, but it’ll keep on firing. Our guns are built with such precision, they are much more accurate. They are also more temperamental.

  So our guys have to be good.

  * * *

  “You have heard the harsh statistics about how tough this place is,” I would tell each new BUD/S class after I became the head of First Phase of training. “But here’s a number you may not be aware of. If you can make it until Friday of Hell Week, you’ve got a ninety percent chance of succeeding in this course. Almost all the attrition happens in the first five weeks.”

  That was true when I went through my basic SEAL training. It’s true today.

  “So if you can just bang out a little more than a month of really, really phenomenal work,” I would say to the students, “you have an extremely good chance of putting that Trident on your chest and being a part of this brotherhood.”

  That’s one of the little-known facts of BUD/S. There are many others, but that’s one these SEAL recruits need to hear early in the game. Yes, the course is super-demanding. Yes, Hell Week is as hellish as it sounds, as those who make it that far discover soon enough. But the lethal part of SEAL basic training is concentrated near the start. “If you had to,” I would ask students, “couldn’t you survive almost anything for five weeks? After that, the brutal numbers will be on your side.”

  There was so much I didn’t understand about SEAL training while I was in BUD/S. I hadn’t been to war yet. No student could possibly have perspective in a whirlwind like BUD/S. But I was fortunate. As time went on, I had the oppor
tunity to test what I had learned in some very hairy combat situations. I then became responsible for hundreds of young men who had the same SEAL dreams I’d had. I ran all the major phases of SEAL training, basic and advanced, and guided our training program through some turbulent times. By now, I can say with confidence: I understand the process as well as anyone.

  Over the years, countless people have offered their views on what makes SEAL training so effective and how best to survive the experience. Physicians, psychologists, nutritionists, physical trainers, clergymen, military theorists, media commentators, and probably a couple of storefront psychics, too—they’ve all weighed in with confident pronouncements. Do this many push-ups. Eat that kind of vegetable. Make a vow with your swim buddy that neither one of you will quit. Thanks for the pet theories, guys. But as far as I’m concerned, none of that has ever quite captured the full reality. It’s oversimplified, out-of-date, or missing key ingredients. The insights seldom get beyond “Gee, BUD/S sure is tough.”

  Yes, it is. But it’s so much more than that.

  Our program is unique in four ways: what we teach, how we teach it, who teaches it, and who we teach it to.

  What we teach is pure SEAL. The lessons are simple, clear, and well-defined: They come right out of our basic values. Winning pays. Losing has consequences. Nothing substitutes for preparation. Life isn’t fair and neither is the battlefield. Even the smallest detail matters. We are a brotherhood. Our success depends on our team performance. And we will not fail. These precepts are driven home constantly as we make new SEALs.

  Whether the students know it or not—and mostly, they don’t—these powerful ideas are behind almost everything that happens in BUD/S.

  A boat race isn’t just a boat race. It’s a way of teaching the culture of winning. A room inspection isn’t just a room inspection. It’s an excuse for the instructors to get all over the students and teach the life-or-death importance of sweating every last detail. It actually does matter if your knife is fully sharpened and sitting just so by the bed. It matters if your dive vest is freshly safety-checked and your fins are resting at a precise 45 degrees.