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

out my name and tell me to get going. Then he’d tell me to get wet and sandy,
and I’d run into the ocean, boots and all. Then I’d have to try and catch up with
boots full of water. I guess he knew I could take it, but I cannot believe he was
not laughing his ass off behind those black sunglasses.
Still, eventually it would be lunchtime, and it was only another mile to get
something to eat. And all the time they were telling us about diet, what to eat,
what never to eat, how often to eat. Jesus. It was a miracle any of us ever made it
to the chow hall, never mind study our diets.
There was also the obstacle course, known to us as the O-course, and a place
of such barbaric intensity that real live SEALs, veteran combat warriors from the
teams, came over to supplement their training, often preparing for overseas
deployment to a theater of war: jungle, mountain, ocean, or desert.
The Coronado O-course was world famous. And if it tested the blooded
warriors of the teams, imagine what it was like for us, ten-day wonders, fresh out
of boot camp, soft as babies compared to these guys.
I stared at the O-course, first day we went there. We were shown around, the
rope climbs, the sixty-foot cargo net, the walls, the vaults, the parallel bars, the
barbed wire, the rope bridges, the Weaver, the Burma Bridge.
For the first time I wished to hell I’d been a foot shorter. It was obvious to
me this was a game for little guys. Instructor Reno gave a couple of
demonstrations. It was like he’d been born on the rope bridge. It would be more
difficult for me. All climbing is, because, in the end, I have to haul 230 pounds
upward. Which is why all the world’s great climbers are tiny guys with
nicknames like the Fly, or the Flea, or Spider, all of them 118 pounds soaking
wet.
I assessed rightly this would be a major test for me. But there were a lot of
very big SEALs, and they’d all done it. That meant I could do it. Anyway, my
mindset was the same old, same old. I’m either going to do this right, or I’ll die
trying. That last part was closer to the reality.
There were fifteen separate sections of the course, and you needed to go
through, past, over, or under all of them. Naturally they timed us right from the
get-go, when guys were tripping up, falling off, falling down, getting stuck, or
generally screwing up. As I suspected, the bigger guys were instantly in the most
trouble, because the key elements were balance and agility. Those Olympic
gymnasts are mostly four feet tall. And when did you last see a six-foot-five,
230-pound ice dancer?
It was the climbing which put the big guys at the most disadvantage. One of