A platoon of US Navy SEALs gathers around
the sparse cover at the base of a hill. The commanding officer receives a last minute
transmission, and turns to his men with a grave look on his face. Despite being in almost
constant action for the last four days, and with only four hours of solid sleep to
each man, the orders are in: the SEALs must take this hill. Leaving it in enemy hands
would endanger friendly forces elsewhere. With grim determination, the SEALs check and
double-check their equipment. They’ve got a job to do. But as the attack kicks off the weary
men are in for a shock for what awaits them. Machine gun rounds whiz over their heads
as artillery drops just meters away. The ear-deafening explosions make them lose track
of where they are or where they are going to. The smoke burns their eyes and blurs their
vision. But that will not stop them from reaching the enemy position on the hill above.
The only problem is getting there. To do so, they must crawl through hundreds
of yards of mud and barbed wire; sometimes sinking all the way up to
their neck in dirty water or mud. If that were not enough, they must crawl through
over a hundred feet of piping filled with muddy water and possible snakes to get through to the
other side. But even if they survive the hundreds of yards of fire-swept barbed wire fields and
muddy ditches they must crawl through, the final obstacle is a rope bridge they must cross under
fire and ensuring that no man is left behind. Despite all these challenges, the men preserve
and take the hill with no casualties; the unseen enemy retreating before they could engage in
the close combat the SEALs desperately wanted. While this scenario might come straight out
of a war movie, it is actually based upon the culminating event of Basic Underwater Demolition
School, or BUD/S (pronounced BUDS), Hell Week. It is a testament of their combat training
so far and incorporates lessons learned from the entire week while teaching the aspiring
SEALs that even when they are the most tired, exhausted, hungry, and weak the most will be
expected out of- combat is unforgiving and does not care what they have already gone through.
Even though this scenario sounds intense, it is actually just a very small piece of what
actually goes on at BUD/S throughout the seven months trainees- affectionately known as tadpoles
by their instructors- attend one of the most difficult training programs on the planet. From
day one, SEAL instructors are looking to maximize attrition and for good reason. There is a high
probability that today's trainee could be serving alongside an instructor tomorrow in an active-duty
SEAL Team abroad. So while their methods might seem intense, out of the ordinary, or downright
sadistic, they all serve the common purpose of crafting some of the world’s finest warriors and
ensuring those that do not want to be there quit. While that event might seem tough,
the entire process from beginning to end is meant to find each trainees’
limit and then exceed that every day. Before training even begins, all prospective
SEAL candidates must attend what is called Indoc. Indoc is a five-week precursor to BUD/S that
each person must pass just to begin training. It is here that candidates receive their first
taste of the SEAL community. Their days are along and regimented, usually starting at 5 o’clock
in the morning and ending twelve hours later. During those twelve hours, they are constantly
being pushed physically. Whether it is group runs on the beach wearing boots and utes
(pronounced oots)- also known as camo pants- doing group exercises, swimming for hours in
the pool, basic diving, or tackling the obstacle course, the instructors unleash a full barrage of
training to get the most out of their students. While these might sound easy at first, the
instructors have a way of making even the simplest of tasks impossibly difficult.
For instance, as part of their swimming qualifications, students must learn
the practice of drown proofing. The purpose of this is to expose students to
a variety of controlled ‘in extremis’- latin for “the point of death”- situations and
see how they react. Students must be able to get to the surface safely if any of their
gear fails while on a mission in the water. There are a couple of ways to do this and one
of the most common is having students tie their feet and hands together then jumping into the pool
to free themselves before they pass out! Another way instructors place students in extremis is by
purposefully pulling off their diving equipment while in the pool and then watching as the student
clears and replaces it back in working order. Useful for sure but definitely
not for the faint of heart. The terror in the pool does not end
there. Another seemingly impossible task is to swim 50 meters underwater. While
that might sound easy, it is not uncommon for students to pass out during this evolution.
The obstacle course is another not so easy task. There is a wide range of high and low obstacles
that require agility, speed, and endurance to conquer, including an almost 60-foot rope tower
to climb. Making matters worse is that in BUD/S, it pays to be a winner, and the weakest
students are often punished severely with more exercises and mind games, with the slowest
runner of the obstacle course usually being buried up to his neck in the sand by his classmates.
While the instructors in Indoc may seem like they are trying to humiliate and beat down the students
for no reason, in reality, they are beating them down only to build them back up. The best way they
do this is by assigning each student a partner known as a swim buddy, which is to remain with him
at all times. Each swim buddy cannot be more than several feet away at a time and if they do each
person risks fear of expulsion from training. This selfless devotion to another is the beginning
of creating a coherent team. By indoctrinating students now that at the end of the day all that
matters no matter how tired, stressed, or in pain they are is the person beside them, only then can
they truly begin to grasp what it means to work in a team. Those that cannot grasp that concept or
who psyche themselves out now leave the program. Once prospective SEALs make it through Indoc,
the next, most grueling phase begins. The first phase builds upon most of the skills learned in
Indoc and pushes trainees past any sort of mental or physical breaking point they might have
thought they had before. It is here that the students are first introduced to some of the
SEAL pipeline’s most legendary challenges. The first challenge they must overcome now and
almost every day throughout their training is the infamous PT arena called the grinder. The
grinder does not look imposing at first. It is merely the asphalt courtyard in between where all
the men live in their barracks. One would not even know of its use as an epic training ground minus
the various pull-up and dip bars that adorn its sides. But make no mistake. Many thousands
of men have been made and broken upon it. Each day the men will train on the grinder.
Thousands of push-ups, crunches, pull-ups, burpees, and other bodyweight exercises will
be done here. But that is not all. Throughout their time here, instructors will continually
spray them with water to ensure their whole time spent here is wet. While this might seem
refreshing in the scorching California summers, at night and in the winter this
just adds another layer of misery. Speaking of being wet, that is one constant that
trainees can count on their entire time at BUD/S. In fact, the instructors give it an affectionate
name: wet and sandy. Whenever a trainee fails to perform, or even at an instructor’s whim,
the men can be forced to run into the surf and roll around to make sure their entire bodies are
covered in sand and water. The added discomfort of the gritty sand and chaffing to follow serves
to add a constant stressor to their environment. The punishment of the First Phase goes beyond just
expanding the physical torment of Indoc but the teamwork aspect as well. Now, SEALs are broken up
into roughly six-man boat crews to an Inflatable Small Boat or IBS. The IBS is one of the
foundational platforms SEALs must conquer since this small, silent craft is what they will use
to creep up on enemy shorelines across the world. The IBS weighs several hundred pounds, and once
seawater and sand are factored in, it feels like it weighs a ton since it is required to be carried
over their heads wherever they go. The boat team is expected to work together to accomplish tasks.
Those that perform well are usually rewarded with extra rest or warmth while those who fall
behind face a variety of punishments from before as well as a new one: rock portage.
The beaches of Coronado are adorned with hundreds of rocks that jut out menacingly
into the shoreline. Often as punishment, or at the direction of the instructors, boat
crews are forced to row into the waves by these rocks and get smashed into them as
the undertow flips their boats in the air. The punishments here go far beyond just
physical though. For those that fall behind or fail to complete events on time, they are assigned
to what is called the goon squad. The goon squad is the slowest and lowest-performing group of
candidates in a class. These men are singled out for extra “remediation” and punishment
workouts that slowly suck their resolve. Here, men are usually forced into a downward
spiral since the extra time it takes to complete these workouts puts them further behind everyone
else still working towards the events of that day. Ultimately, very few men sent to
the goon squad will ever regain their place amongst the rest of the class.
Further compounding the mental torture is the ever-present bell. The bell sits in the center
of the grinder and is a constant reminder that getting out is only three rings of the bell
away. Any trainee at any time can walk up to the bell to quit. Doing so ends their misery but
closes the door to the SEAL community forever. For those that manage to make it to the
end of First Phase, there is one last event remaining that sends a chill down the
spine of all who know its name: Hell Week. Hell Week is the culminating event of the First
Phase. It is a brutal event encompassing a continuous weeklong beat down that tests the mind
and body of all those who dare partake in it. The week starts with the men eating a large meal
for dinner and then going down to their cots on tents on the beach. The instructors give them
a few frightful hours of sleep until sometime, usually around midnight, an instructor bursts
into the tent with an M-60 machine gun firing blanks and throwing flashbang grenades telling
the trainees to start running. This event, known as the breakout, signals the start of Hell Week.
Throughout the entire week, the men will complete many of the events they have done before;
only now they will have no rest. The men are allowed only two, one-hour naps twice throughout
the whole evolution. The chronic sleep deprivation makes the men feel disorientated and hopefully
lose focus on the pain and only on the next event. By the end of the week, those who did not quit
or get dropped for medical reasons face their last challenge of a simulated combat scenario
known as Not So Sorry. Once this is complete, Hell Week is over and then the next
phases of their training can resume. While the next two phases are no
less grueling than the previous two, they are challenging in their own ways. Most of
each class will drop out by the end of the First Phase and very few leave during the next two. Just
exactly why that is, is probably because learning the actual skills of advanced diving and small
unit tactics are things that can be taught, while the mental and physical toughness of being a SEAL
is something students either have or they do not.
