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

The instructors swam alongside us wearing fins and masks, looking like
porpoises, kind of friendly, in the end, but at first glance a lot like sharks. The
issue was panic. If a man was prone to losing it under the water when he was
bound hand and foot, then he was probably never going to be a frogman; the fear
is too deeply instilled.
This was a huge advantage for me. I’d been operating underwater with
Morgan since I was about ten years old. I’d always been able to swim on or
below the surface. And I’d been taught to hold my breath for two minutes,
minimum. I worked hard, gave it all I could, and never strayed more than about a
foot from my swim buddy. Unless it was a race, when he remained on shore.
I was leader in the fifty-yard underwater swim without fins. I already knew
the secret to underwater swimming: get real deep, real early. You can’t get paid
for finding the car keys if you can’t get down there and stay down. At the end,
they graded us underwater. I was up there.
Throughout this week we took ropes with us underwater. There was a series
of naval knots that had to be completed deep below the surface. I can’t actually
remember how many guys we lost during that drownproofing part of the Indoc
training, but it was several.
That second week was very hard for a lot of guys, and my memory is clear:
the instructors preached competence in all techniques and exercises. Because the
next week, when phase one of the BUD/S course began, we were expected to
carry it all out. The BUD/S instructors would assume we could accomplish
everything from Indoc with ease. Anyone who couldn’t was gone. The Indoc
chiefs would not be thanked for sending up substandard guys for the toughest
military training in the world.
And while we were jumping in and out of the pool and the Pacific, we were
also subjected to a stringent regime of physical training, high-pressure
calisthenics. Not for us the relatively smooth surface of the grinder, the blacktop
square in the middle of the BUD/S compound. The Indoc boys, not yet qualified
even to join the hallowed ranks of the BUD/S students, were banished to the
beach out behind the compound.
And there Instructor Reno and his men did their level best to level us. Oh, for
the good old days of twenty arm-tearing push-ups. Not anymore. Out here it was
usually fifty at a time, all interspersed with exercises designed to balance and
hone various muscle groups, especially arms and abs. The instructors were
consumed with abdominal strength, the reasons for which are now obvious: the
abdomen is the bedrock of a warrior’s strength for climbing rocks and ropes,