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

whistles kept blowing, one blast, then two, and we kept right on crawling, and by
now my elbows were really getting hot and sore, and my knees were not doing
that great either. All four joints felt red-raw. But I kept moving. Then the
instructors ordered us back into the surf, deep, so we could stay there for fifteen
minutes, maximum immersion time in water hovering just under sixty degrees.
We linked arms until we were ordered out to more whistles and more crawling.
Then they sent us down to the surf for flutter kicks, heads in the waves. Then
more whistles, more crawling, and back into the water for another fifteen
minutes. Right next to me, one of the top guys in the class, an officer and a boatcrew
leader, great runner, good swimmer, quit unconditionally.
This was a real shaker. Another officer in his crew went running up the beach
after him, imploring him not to go, telling the attending instructor, on his behalf,
the guy did not mean it. No, sir. The instructor gave him another chance, told
him it wasn’t too late and if he wished he could go right back into the water.
But the man’s mind was made up, closed to all entreaties. He kept walking,
and the instructor told him to get in the truck right next to the ambulance. Then
he asked the guy doing the pleading if he wanted to quit too, and we all heard the
sharp “Negative,” and we saw the guy running like a scalded cat down the beach
to join us in the water.
The temperature seemed to grow colder as we jogged around in the freezing
surf. And finally they called us out and the whistles blew again. We all dived
back onto the sand. Crawling, itching, and burning. Five guys quit instantly and
were sent up to the truck. I didn’t understand any of that, because we had done
this before. It was bad, but not that bad, for chris’sakes. I guess those guys were
just thinking ahead, dreading the forthcoming five days of Hell Week, the
precise way Captain Maguire had told us not to.
Anyway, right now we were ordered to grab the boats and get them in the
surf, which we did without much trouble. But they made us paddle hundreds of
yards, dig and row, lift and carry, dump boat and right boat, swim the boat, walk
the boat, run the boat, crawl, live, die. We were so exhausted it didn’t matter. We
hardly knew where we were. We just floundered on with bloody knees and
elbows until they ordered us out of the water.
I think it was just before midnight, but it could have been Christmas
morning. We switched to log PT in the surf. No piece of wood in all of history,
except possibly the massive wooden Cross carried to Calvary by Jesus Christ,
was ever heavier than our eight-foot hunk of wood that we manhandled in the
Pacific surf. After all of our exertions, it was a pure backbreaker. Three more