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

men quit.
Then the instructors came up with something new and improved. They made
us carry the boats over the O-course and manhandle them over the goddamned
obstacles. Another man quit. We were down to forty-six.
Right then we switched to rock portage and charged back down the beach to
get the IBS into the water. We crashed through the light incoming waves like
professionals and paddled like hell, using the remnants of our strength, to the
rocks opposite the Hotel del Coronado. My swim buddy, Matt McGraw, was
calling the shots in our boat by now, and we drove forward, crashed straight into
the rocks, and the bowline man leaped for his life and grabbed on to the painter.
We steadied the boat with the oars, and I thought we were doing real good.
Suddenly the instructor, standing up on the top of the rocks right there at
damned near two o’clock in the morning, bellowed at our crew officer, “You!
You, sir. You just killed your entire squad! Stop getting between the boat and the
rocks!”
We hauled the boat out of the water, over the rocks, and onto the sand. The
instructor gave us two sets of push-ups and sent us back the way we came. Twice
more we assaulted the rocks, slowly and clumsily, I suppose, and the instructor
never stopped yelling his freakin’ head off at us. In the end we had to run the
boat back along the beach, drop it, and get right back into the surf for flutter
kicks with heads and shoulders in the water, then push-ups in the surf. Then situps.
Two more men quit.
These DORs happened right next to me. And I distinctly heard the instructor
give them another chance, asking them if they wanted to reconsider. If so, they
were welcome to press on and get back in the water.
One of them wavered. Said he might, if the other guy would join him. But
the other guy wasn’t having it. “I’m done with this shit,” he said, “and I’m outta
here.”
They both quit together. And the instructor looked like he could not give a
flying fuck. I later learned that when a man quits and is given another chance
and takes it, he never makes it through. All the instructors know that. If the
thought of DOR enters a man’s head, he is not a Navy SEAL.
I guess that element of doubt forever pollutes his mind. And puffing,
sweating, and steaming down there on that beach on the first night of Hell Week,
I understood it.
I understood it, because that thought could never have occurred to me. Not
while the sun still rises in the east. All the pain in Coronado could not have