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

everything. Why not just tell it like it is? I didn’t say that, of course. Four hours
with the pocket battleship of Coronado had slammed a very hefty lid on my
personal well of smart-ass remarks. Besides, he’d probably have broken my
pelvis, since he couldn’t possibly have reached my chin.
We had a new instructor for the pool, and we were all driven through the icecold
jets of the decontamination unit to get rid of the sand on our skin. That
damn thing would have blasted the scales off a fresh haddock. After that, we
piled into the water, split into teams, and began swimming the first of about ten
million lengths we would complete before our years of service to the navy were
complete.
They concentrated on buoyancy control and surface swimming for the first
few days, made us stretch our bodies, made us longer in the water, timing us,
stressing the golden rule for all young SEALs — you must be good in the water,
no matter what. And right here the attrition began. One guy couldn’t swim at all!
Another swore to God he had been told by physicians that he should not put his
head underwater under any circumstances whatsoever!
That was two down. They made us swim without putting our heads up,
taught us to roll our heads smoothly in the water and breathe that way, keeping
the surface calm, instead of sticking our mouths up for a gulp of air. They
showed us the standard SEAL swim method, a kind of sidestroke that is ultraefficient
with flippers. They taught us the technique of kick, stroke, and glide,
the beginning of the fantastic SEAL underwater system that enables us to gauge
distances and swim beneath the surface with astounding accuracy.
They taught us to swim like fish, not humans, and they made us swim laps of
the pool using our feet only. They kept telling us that for other branches of the
military, water is a pain in the ass. For us, it’s a haven. They were relentless
about times, always trying to make us faster, hitting the stopwatches a few
seconds sooner every day. They insisted brute strength was never the answer.
The only way to find speed was technique, and then more technique. Nothing
else would work. And that was just the first week.
In the second, they switched us to training almost entirely underwater
throughout the rest of the course. Nothing serious. They just bound our ankles
together and then bound our wrists together behind our backs and shoved us into
the deep end. This caused a certain amount of panic, but our instructions were
clear: Take a huge gulp of air and drop to the bottom of the pool in the standing
position. Hold it there for at least a minute, bob up for new air, then drop back
down for another minute, or more if you could.