SEAL Training 5: Starting Over

Although my injury was serious enough to roll me back in training, it wasn’t debilitating enough to take me out of training. In addition, I trained harder than ever and entered Class 144 faster and stronger than I’d been in Class 143.

At 0500, wearing only our UDT swim shorts, we sat shivering on the cold concrete next to the pool, officially known as the Combat Training Tank. The sky was black, but lights illuminated the pool. This was the first day of Class 144’s Indoc. Training hadn’t officially started.

Instructor Stoneclam arrived. His eyes looked crazy in a scary way.

Ensign Mark was our class leader, a graduate from MIT. (Years later, as a SEAL officer, he would lead Howard Wasdin and their SEAL Team 2 platoon in Iraq.) “Feet!” he shouted.

We jumped to attention. “FEET!”

“Instructor Stoneclam!” Ensign Mark said.

“HOOYAH, INSTRUCTOR STONECLAM!”

Instructor Stoneclam greeted us. “Some of you guys are shivering. Let me warm you up a bit. Drop.”

“DROP!” We scrambled to find an empty place on the concrete to get in the pushup position.

“Push ‘em out.”

After three sets of twenty push-ups, we took the same PST as before: swim, pushups, sit-ups, pull-ups, and run. Only this time, I wasn’t the slowest during the swim. Martinez was. Martinez and Duquez were two of my new roommates. They’d come from L’ Infanteria De La Marina, Ecuador’s marine commandos. I’d heard people say that BUD/S training is the toughest in the world, but L’ Infanteria De La Marina training was so brutal that one of their classmates died.

One guy failed the PST. The instructors sent him to pack his sea bag.