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

for the SEALs. And when I think of what I went through in the years before I got
there, I can’t even imagine what it must be like for guys who try out with no
prior training. Morgan and I were groomed to be SEALs, but it was never easy.
The work is brutally hard, the fitness regimes are as harsh and uncompromising
as any program in the free world. The examinations are searching and difficult.
Nothing but the highest possible standard is acceptable in the SEAL teams.
And perhaps above all, your character is under a microscope at all times;
instructors, teachers, senior chiefs, and officers are always watching for the
character flaw, the weakness which may one day lead to the compromise of your
teammates. We can’t stand that. We can stand damn near anything, except that.
When someone tells you he is in the SEAL teams, it means he has passed
every test, been accepted by some of the hardest taskmasters in the military. And
a short nod of respect is in order, because it’s harder to become a Navy SEAL
than it is to get into Harvard Law School. Different, but harder.
When someone tells you he’s in a SEAL team, you know you are in the
presence of a very special cat. Myself, I was just born lucky, somehow fluked
my way in with a work ethic bequeathed to me by my dad. The rest of those
guys are the gods of the U.S. Armed Forces. And in faraway foreign fields, they
serve their nation as required, on demand, and mostly without any recognition
whatsoever.
They would have it no other way, because they understand no other way.
Accolades just wash off them, they shy away from the spotlight, but in the end
they have one precious reward — when their days of combat are over, they know
precisely who they are and what they stand for. That’s rare. And no one can buy
it.
Back in the C-130, crossing into the southern wastes of the Regestan Desert, the
gods of the U.S. Armed Forces with whom I traveled were asleep, except for the
beach god Shane, who was still rockin’.
Somewhere out in the darkness, to our starboard side, was the Pakistani city
of Quetta, which used to be quite important when the Brits ran the place. They
had a big army staff college down there, and for three years in the mid-1930s,
Field Marshal Viscount Montgomery, later the victor of the Battle of Ala-mein,
taught there. Which proves, I suppose, that I’m as much addicted to military
trivia as I am to the smart-ass remark.
However, we stayed on the left-hand, Afghanistan side of the border, I think,
and continued on above the high western slopes of the great range of the Hindu