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

supple for the day ahead.
The new shift of instructors turned up and started yelling for everyone to
wake up and get back out there. It was like standing in the middle of a graveyard
and trying to wake the dead. Slowly it dawned on the sleepers: their worst
nightmare was happening. Someone was driving them forward again.
They ordered us into the surf, and somehow we fell, crawled, or stumbled
over that sand dune and into the freezing water. They gave us fifteen minutes of
surf torture, exercises in the waves, then ordered us out and told us to hoist the
boats back on our heads and make the elephant walk to chow.
They worked us all night, in and out of the surf; they walked us up and down
the beach for God knows how many miles. Finally, they let us sleep again. I
guess it was about 0400 on the Thursday morning. Against many pessimistic
forecasts, we all woke up and carried the boats to breakfast. Then they worked
us without mercy, had us racing the boats in the gigantic pool without paddles,
just hands, and then swimming them, one crew against the other.
Wednesday had run into Thursday, but we were in the final stages of Hell
Week, and before us was the fabled around-the-world paddle, the last of the
major evolutions of the week. We boarded the boats at around 1930 and set off,
rushing into the surf off the special warfare center and paddling right around the
north end of the island and back down San Diego Bay to the amphibious base.
No night in my experience has ever lasted longer.
Some of the guys really were hallucinating now, and all three of the boats
had a system where one could sleep while the others paddled. I cannot explain
how tired we were; every light looked like a building dead in our path, every
thought turned into reality. If you thought of home, like I did, you thought you
were rowing straight into the ranch. The only saving grace was, we were dry.
But one guy in our boat was so close to breakdown, he simply toppled into
the water, still holding his paddle, still stroking, kicking automatically, and
continuing to row the boat. We dragged him out, and he did not seem to
understand he’d just spent five minutes in San Diego Bay. In the end, I think we
were all paddling in our sleep.
After three hours, they summoned us to shore for medical checks and gave
us hot soup. After that we just kept going, until almost 0200 on Friday, when
they called us in from the beach with a bullhorn. No one will ever forget that.
One of those bastards actually yelled, “Dump boat!”
It was like taking a kick at a dying man. But we kept quiet. Not like an
earlier response from a student, who had earned everlasting notoriety by yelling