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

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A School for Warriors
It was pitch dark, and he was wearing sunglasses, wraparound,
shiny black...“Most of you aren’t going to be here in a couple of
months,” said Instructor Reno...“If you guys don’t start pulling
together as a team, none of you will be here.”
The six SEALs from Bahrain landed in Bagram, in northeast Afghanistan,
shortly after first light. I realize I have just spent two entire chapters essentially
pointing out what a momentous event that was, our arrival to work with the elite
mountain troops of the U.S. Army. It has occurred to me that you might be
wondering why we thought we were so goddamned superior to everyone else,
why we felt entitled to our own private brand of arrogance.
Not wishing to be haunted by anyone’s doubts about me and my teammates,
I propose to explain right now, before we get moving, precisely why we felt this
way about the world. It’s not some form of premature triumph, and it would be
absurd to call it mere confidence. That would be like calling the Pacific wet.
It’s a higher form of consciousness, and I do not mean that to be pretentious.
It’s been said that only the very rich understand the difference between
themselves and the poor, and only the truly brilliant understand the difference
between themselves and the relatively dumb.
Well, only men who have gone through what we went through can
understand the difference between us and the rest. In the military, even the rest
understand what it takes to scale the heights of combat excellence. And in my
case, it started inauspiciously. Way down on the ranch, with Mom in tears,
refusing to leave the house to see me go. March 7, 1999. I was twenty-three.
To say that I was not making amazing headway in my hometown would be
an understatement. The reputation Morgan and I had was not assisting either of