Lone Survivor_ The Eyewitness Account of Operation Redwing and the Lost Heroes of SEAL Team 10 ( PDFDrive )

below the thirty-two-minute standard, and the instructors feigned outrage as if
they didn’t know we were slowly being battered to hell. By that first Monday
evening, we’d been up for thirty-six hours plus and were still going.
Most of us ate an early dinner, looking like a group of zombies. And right
afterward we were marched outside to await further orders. I remember that
three guys had just quit. Simultaneously. Which put us down to six officers out
of the original twelve.
Judging by the one guy I knew, I didn’t think any of the ones who quit were
in much worse shape than they had been twelve hours before. They might have
been a bit more tired, but we had done nothing new, it was all part of our triedand-tested
routines. And in my view, they had acted in total defiance of the
advice handed to us by Captain Maguire.
They weren’t completing each task as it came, living for the day. They had
allowed themselves to live in dread of the pain and anguish to come. And he’d
told us never to do that, just to take it hour by hour and forget the future. Keep
going until you’re secured. You get a guy like that, a legendary U.S. Navy SEAL
and war hero, I think you ought to pay attention to his words. He earned the right
to say them, and he’s giving you his experience. Like Billy Shelton told me,
even the merest suggestion.
But we had no time to mourn the departure of friends. The instructors
marched us down to an area known as the steel pier, which used to be the
training area for SDV Team 1 before they decamped for Hawaii. It was dark now
and the water was very cold, but they ordered us to jump straight in and kept us
treading water for fifteen minutes.
Then they let us out back onto dry land and gave us a fierce period of
calisthenics. This warmed us a bit. But my teeth were chattering almost
uncontrollably, and they still ordered us straight back into the water for another
fifteen minutes, the very limit of the time when guys start to suffer from
hypothermia. That next fifteen minutes were almost scary. I was so cold, I
thought I might pass out. There was an ambulance right there in case someone
did.
But I held on. So did most of us, but another officer climbed out of the water
early and quit. He was the best swimmer in the class. This was a stunning blow,
both to him and the rest of us. The instructor let him go immediately and just
carried on counting off the minutes the rest of us were submerged.
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