Damn Few

by Rorke Denver

If I had known what I would feel like when the instructors burst into our tent again—blowing whistles, blasting an air horn, yelling as loud as they could—I wouldn’t have taken that nap at all. My ankles, knees, and legs were swelling badly. I didn’t feel one degree warmer than I had. My nervous system seemed to be going haywire. I could tell my bodily fluids were badly out of whack. We were all young, strong men in peak condition. But humans just aren’t built for this.

  By the time my class hit the surf again and returned for the next evolutions, pretty much everyone was looking spent. Easily half the class had quit already. At each step, several more of our classmates had decided, “SEAL training isn’t for me.” In whatever style they chose, they walked to the exit bell and pulled the cord. Now I could see who the real hard-core guys were. They were the ones who were still there with me. It was a steadily shrinking group. There were still a few more who wouldn’t make it.

  As Thursday night arrived, we put our IBSs in the water for the most grueling multi-leg boat race of Hell Week, the one known as Around the World. By then, all seven remaining members of my boat crew, myself included, looked utterly spent. But Coop, a good-looking kid who’d been a real team player, looked the worst of all. His hands were shaking. His gaze was bleary. His speech was slurred. Our boat team had been burning up Hell Week, winning race after race after small-boat race. That kind of effort is what the instructors are looking for, but it also takes its toll.

  Coop was an all-around performer, one of those guys who aren’t tops at anything but are strong in everything and work incredibly hard. But every leg of Around the World was hugely demanding. I didn’t know how Coop could possibly make it through this one.

  “Hey, Matt,” I said, nodding in Coop’s direction. “What do you think?”

  Matt’s dad was a doctor. In the first few weeks of BUD/S, he had become the informal medical advisor to those classmates smart enough to listen. He was the one who explained to me how hypothermia works at the cellular level. And now I wanted his seat-of-the-pants diagnosis on Coop.

  “He’s done,” Matt said.

  I’m not sure if that was an official medical determination. But I knew what Matt was saying, and I was certain he was right. Now I had to explain this to Coop.

  “Coop,” I said. “I want you to curl up in the middle of the boat and go to sleep.”

  Coop tried to protest. “No way. I’m okay,” he said faintly. “Just give me a second here.” But he didn’t have the strength to resist.

  He curled up near the bow of the IBS. He fell asleep soon after the race began. As the other six of us paddled frantically, Coop stayed out for more than an hour.

  Here was the strange part: Having him balled up like that on the floor of the boat shifted our angle in the water and actually made us faster. We won that leg of Around the World.

  When we finally got ashore, Coop had recovered completely. No one else seemed to notice that for this one race, we were a six-man team. But even in victory, Coop seemed devastated.

  “I’m so mad at myself,” he said. “I can’t believe I blew it.”

  Matt and I both tried to tell him that was ridiculous. “Everyone hits the wall sometime,” I said. “You had nothing left in the tank.” In fact, Coop’s unscheduled nap hadn’t been a problem at all. But that didn’t console him.

  “I feel horrible,” he said.

  Coop went on to become a legendarily effective SEAL, involved in some of our highest-profile operations. When I’ve seen him over the years, whatever I say, he still seems slightly chagrined about that Hell Week boat race. That’s just the kind of guy he is. Much as I tell him he has nothing to apologize for, he still can’t stomach the idea of once having failed to pull his part of the load.

  That exact trait is a big part of what makes the SEAL brotherhood so strong. It’s guys like Coop who, even thirteen years later in the middle of a distinguished career, will still fixate on what is now an insignificant shortfall—a total aversion to failure of any sort. I’ve seen it over and over again. Those who get through this training develop an unshakable desire not to let the brotherhood down. They make unreasonable demands on themselves. They are brutal at judging their own performance. Coop felt this would hang with him far longer than it did. We knew who he was, and he had already earned his spot on our team. Once you are part of that team, there is almost nothing we won’t suffer for you. We’d pick you up and carry you a hundred miles across the desert. You have earned it. We know you would suffer equally for us.

  One thing did change as Hell Week moved closer to the end. The bell wasn’t ringing so much anymore.

  Lots of people had left already, and the ones who remained didn’t seem likely to leave. No matter how grueling or weird the process got, they’d be seeing it through.

  And things did keep getting weirder.

  On one leg of Around the World, our boat crew was paddling briskly across the bay when all of a sudden I noticed our teammate Trey was paddling extra-furiously. For no obvious reason, he was pulling twice as hard as he had been a moment earlier. He had what I can only describe as a terrified look in his eyes. Soon our boat was veering wildly. I didn’t know what was happening as I tried to steer us back on course.

  “Trey, Trey, what’s going on?” I shouted.

  “We gotta go, man!” he yelled back at me. “We gotta go. Keep paddling. Let’s go. Let’s go. Let’s go!”

  I was totally confused. “What? What’s going on?” I shouted.

  “We gotta haul ass so that clown doesn’t catch us,” Trey said.

  “What?”

  “That clown on the bicycle. He’s gaining on us. I don’t want that sucker to catch us.”

  Four days into Hell Week, and Trey truly believed that a clown on a bicycle on the Bay of San Diego was going to catch us in our IBS. He couldn’t let that happen. He was too competitive. He had too much pride and too much drive. And in a funny way, I understood where he was coming from. A clown on a bicycle gaining on us—that truly was a horrible vision to have living in your head.

  And while I couldn’t see the clown—believe me, I looked behind us to check—I wasn’t exactly sure there wasn’t a clown back there. By that point, I’ll admit, I was a little wired, too.

  Well, shit, I said to myself. Let’s keep paddling. I don’t want that clown to catch us, either.

  Now all of us were paddling as ferociously as we could. We won that leg of the boat race. Again, it paid to be a winner at BUD/S. Clown or no clown, we got to eat our dinner sitting up high on the shoreline in a dry set of greens while the rest of the class ate, in descending order, in wet green tops, in wet green tops and bottoms, and, for the final stragglers, sitting in a foot of water. Believe in him or not, Trey’s clown took care of us.

  Trey wasn’t the only one with an active imagination after so many exhausting hours with so little sleep. In another race that night, another one of my startled boat crew members started yelling at me to steer the boat away from an aircraft carrier that was at least half a mile away. “That carrier’s gonna roll right over us!” he yelled excitedly.

  I wasn’t worried about the carrier. I was steering in the back of the boat, trying to work out in my head how we were ever going to get around a fence I was sure stretched straight across San Diego Bay, a fence I had never seen before and never saw again.

  When we get to the fence, I was calculating in my mind, if we all stand on one end of the boat, we’ll be able to slide it bow-first over the fence. Matt and I played water polo so we’ll get underneath and push the boat over the fence. Then, if we can hold our breath long enough, maybe we can all swim under the fence and get to the other side. Or maybe we can scale the fence with the paddles. Or maybe…

  It sounds so crazy now. What I thought was a fence must have been the piers across the bay where the big ships are moored. But it’s amazing what exhausted eyes and an exhausted mind can see. It sure looked like a fence when we were paddling toward it. And getting past that fence felt so urgent to
me.

  I asked Matt about it. I’m sure he didn’t see a fence any more than I saw a bulbous-nosed circus reject on a two-wheeler. But Matt did what I had done. He instinctively tried to help a buddy deal with an issue, whatever that issue happened to be. I was with a group of guys I could easily see again on a battlefield, guys who were on their way to being SEALs. Our BUD/S class was becoming a brotherhood.

  Beyond the powerful bonding and the intense competitive drive, the real salvation of Hell Week was the calendar. No matter how exhausting the superhuman demands, Friday eventually came for my class.

  Late that morning, the instructors told us to paddle up to the water line in front of the BUD/S compound. At that spot there were huge sand berms that blocked your view of anything past the beach.

  “Line up your boats on the shore,” one of the instructors ordered. “Get ’em dressed up and ready and looking sharp.” Then the cadre started us on an especially sinister drill—hitting the surf, running back to the sand, hitting the surf again, running back to the sand. They made us all do sugar cookies. Then we had to run into the surf again. We went back and forth like that—it felt like a thousand times.

  Finally, one of the instructors met us at the water’s edge as we were coming out of the surf again, wet and bleary and cold.

  “About face,” he commanded. “Look out at the sea. Lock arms. We’re gonna get wet again.”

  Whatever.

  At this point, no one was going to quit. If one of the instructors had said, “We just got word from the admiral that Hell Week is two weeks instead of one,” no one would have left. These guys would have gone on for a year. Anyone who remained in the class was here for good now. Another round of surf torture wasn’t chasing anyone away. We all locked arms as we were told.

  Now the orders sounded especially urgent.

  “Forward march! Forward march! March forward to the surf!”

  But just as the water was licking at our feet, the same instructor said, “Everybody halt.”

  Then, “About face.”

  We all turned around. Up on the berm across the beach, I saw something so beautiful, I thought it might be a mirage. Just the day before, Trey had seen a clown on a bicycle. But I swear: Up on the berm was the entire cadre of instructors, dressed in uniform, all the chiefs in khakis. A dozen senior officers were standing with them. One of the instructors was holding a huge American flag, which was fluttering in the sharp ocean breeze.

  None of this was a surprise exactly. Everyone knew what was coming. It was almost noon on Friday. But still I needed to pause a second and collect myself.

  “This has to be the end,” I thought.

  Captain Mac was in charge of Hell Week our year. Eight years later, I would serve as his flag lieutenant. He walked us all back to the Grinder and called us into a big huddle. He addressed the class.

  Knowing Captain Mac, I’m sure he said something very eloquent. He probably quoted Socrates or Abraham Lincoln or maybe Thucydides. He’s a gifted speaker, very well-read.

  But I have zero recollection of what he said.

  I was sleep-deprived. I was physically exhausted. I was emotionally drained. I was shivering, sandy, and wet. My mind was zooming in five directions simultaneously. I was 100 percent, totally smoked. I was standing there with my arms around my Hell Week buddies on the road to somewhere amazing, exactly where we wanted to be. We were swaying slightly from side to side and leaning on each other for support. As the captain said whatever it was he was saying, I was listening for three simple words.

  The captain finally obliged.

  “Class two two three,” I heard him say. “Hell Week secure.”

  With that, a tight huddle of hopeful Navy SEALs, fewer than forty of us now, let out a huge, whooping roar. Everyone started hugging each other. Then, like idiots, we turned around, ran to the surf, and dove in.

  4

  COOL STUFF

  Never walk away from your home ahead of your axe and sword. You can’t feel a battle in your bones or foresee a fight.

  —THE HÁVAMÁL

  * * *

  On one nighttime exercise, the members of BRAVO Platoon, SEAL Team Four, were dropping rubber Zodiac boats from two Army MH-60 helicopters hovering eight or ten feet above the water in the Bahamas. Each time, the jumpmaster cut the line, dumped the boat, and shouted “Go!” to the next two swim buddies standing inside the helicopter door. On the jumpmaster’s signal, the SEALs leaped into the dark water and swam after the boat.

  A K-Duck, this rapid-insertion maneuver is called, or Kangaroo Duck. It is considered a routine training exercise, as well as you can say “routine” about anything that involves a leap of faith from a helicopter into pitch-black water at ten o’clock at night. Routinely dangerous is more like it.

  Then came tragedy.

  Somehow, one of the boats was dumped prematurely. Instead of being eight feet off the water, it was 165 feet up. That’s the equivalent of jumping off a fifteen-story building. Instinctively, even before hearing the jumpmaster’s “Go,” the two SEALs jumped into the darkness after the falling boat.

  “I had time in the air to think, Oh, my God, we’re way higher than I thought we were,” one of the SEALs told me later, still shaken by the experience. “And then I thought, Oh, my God, when we finally hit the water, we’re both going to die.”

  He was the lucky one. He broke several bones. He busted some ribs. He got all banged up. But almost miraculously, he managed to survive the fall. And even as he hit the water with such ferocious velocity, he remained every bit a SEAL. Despite his injuries, with the wind knocked out of him, he swam to his buddy’s aid, holding him above the surface long enough for the SEAL corpsmen to arrive.

  The ultimate swim buddy.

  But the other SEAL’s injuries were too severe. He didn’t even make it to the hospital.

  The incident was studied exhaustively. The fundamental causes, concluded Admiral Eric Olson, commander of the Naval Special Warfare Command, were “insufficient situational awareness” and a “predisposition by both men to exit the helicopter prior to receiving a positive ‘go’ signal from the assigned castmaster.”

  Yes, all our lessons are written in blood.

  Just because it’s training doesn’t mean it’s risk-free. Not even close. Some of our training evolutions can be every bit as dangerous as a war zone, and jumping is where most of the deaths occur. Someone’s parachute doesn’t open. Two chutes get tangled up. Distances get misjudged in poor visibility. Hardly anything we do is 100 percent safe. With overconfidence comes sloppiness. Constantly, these lessons must be hammered home.

  A SEAL chief died on a dive from a SEAL Delivery Vehicle mini-submersible. On a training exercise in El Salvador, a SEAL commander was killed in a helicopter fast-roping accident one hundred feet above a concrete airfield. As he stepped out of the Black Hawk helicopter and reached for the dangling rope, somehow his hands slipped, and he fell straight down to the concrete. He was an experienced jumper. He just missed the rope.

  * * *

  To say we all felt whipped and beaten doesn’t do justice to the words whipped and beaten. But Hell Week was over, and I was still on my feet.

  The instructors marched us—more like stumbled us—from the beach back to the compound for hot showers. That was about as soothing as boric acid on my scraped-up skin. Everyone got a thorough medical check, which under the circumstances seemed like a good idea. The doctors and med techs were ready with IVs, bandages, antibiotics, antiseptic ointments—scrapes, bruises, dehydration, and profound exhaustion being the most common ailments. No one in my class needed immediate hospitalization, although that’s been known to happen over the years.

  One by one, the Hell Week survivors emerged from the medical office and walked, limped, or crawled back to the Grinder, where all the fun had started a few long nights before.

  Finally, it was time for a bleary-eyed celebration, which, sadly, no one had the energy to enjoy.

  Following long
-standing SEAL tradition, the class below bought each of us the traditional Hell Week Secure meal—a large cheese-and-pepperoni pizza and a sixty-four-ounce lemon-lime Gatorade. The way a McDonald’s Happy Meal comes with a prize, each Hell Week victor got a brown T-shirt with his name stenciled on the back. I unfolded mine.

  DENVER.

  Now that was something special. The T-shirt didn’t look like much, but it was the most important T-shirt I’d ever received in my life. I knew I had earned it.

  Up through Hell Week, all BUD/S students wear white T-shirts. After completing Hell Week, the shirts are brown. It’s amazing how such a tiny acknowledgment can mean so much.

  We ate our pizzas and guzzled our Gatorades, and that was it for the Hell Week festivities. Nobody felt like hanging around. We were helped onto buses and driven straight back to the barracks, where we’d all set up our rooms just so. We hadn’t seen the barracks in almost five days. But now there were quite a few empty rooms, all in immaculate condition, all prepared by students who had DOR’d and would never get to use them. Sleep, it’s really all we wanted.

  The instructors and senior students had given us ominous warnings and specific advice.

  “Build up the foot of your bed with pillows so your legs will be elevated and put towels along the side,” one of the instructors had strongly suggested. “If you’re lying there and your arm falls off the side, it could go septic on you.”

  “You should leave an empty Gatorade bottle by the bed,” several of the previous class’s students said. “You won’t want to walk even twelve feet to the bathroom.”

  To my great regret, I somehow forgot that last one. At some point in the night, when I tried to get out of bed to relieve myself, it took me a disoriented fifteen minutes to reach the bathroom and find my way back. Another student discovered Trey dead asleep on the toilet. He had clearly been there a while.

  It was a little past one o’clock on Friday afternoon when our heads, arms, and legs finally hit the towels and pillows. I didn’t wake up until eight o’clock on Saturday morning—nineteen hours later—and I wasn’t the last one up.