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

dumps it into the deep end of a swimming pool and more or less leaves it there
until it starts to sprout fins. It was just another happy day in the life of a fledgling
student going through Indoc. Understandably, Class 226 shrank daily, and we
had not even started BUD/S.
And you think it was a great relief finally to get through the day and retire to
our rooms for peace and perhaps sleep? Dream on. There’s no such thing as
peace in Coronado. The place is a living, breathing testimony to that Roman
strategist who first told the world, “Let him who desires peace prepare for war”
(that’s translated from the Latin Qui desiderat pacem, praeparet bellum —
Flavius Vegetius Renatus, fourth century). Or, as a SEAL might say, You want
things to remain cool, pal? Better get your ass in gear. I knew I was close.
That old Roman knew a thing or two. His military treatise De Rei Militari
was the bible of European warfare for more than 1,200 years, and it still applies
in Coronado, stressing constant drilling, training, and severe discipline. He
advised the Roman commanders to gather intelligence assiduously, use the
terrain, and then drive the legionnaires forward to encircle their objective. That’s
more or less how we operate in overseas deployment against terrorists today.
Hooyah, Flavius Vegetius.
Coronado, like New York, is a city that never sleeps. Those instructors are
out there patrolling the corridors of our barracks by night into the small hours.
One of them once came into my room after I’d hot mopped it and high polished
the floor till you could almost see your face in it. He dropped a trickle of sand
onto the floor and chewed me out for living in a dust bowl! Then he sent me
down to the Pacific, in the company of my swim buddy and of course himself, to
“get wet and sandy.” Then we had to go through the decontamination unit, and
the shrieking of those cold hydraulic pipes and the ferocious jets of water
awakened half the barracks and nearly sent us into shock. Never mind the fact
that it was 0200 and we were due back under those showers again in another
couple of hours.
I think it was that time. I can’t be absolutely sure. But my roommate quit that
night. He went weak at the knees just watching what was happening to me. I
don’t know how the hell he thought I felt.
One time during Indoc while we were out on night run, one of the instructors
actually climbed up the outside of a building, came through an open window,
and absolutely trashed a guy’s room, threw everything everywhere, emptied
detergent over his bed gear. He went back out the way he’d come in, waited for
everyone to return, and then tapped on the poor guy’s door and demanded a