COMBAT DIPLOMATE #7

For those citizens who’ve served our country, wearing the uniform of the United States Navy, you were given an opportunity to take a screening test in the third week of boot camp.??If you were successful, and at this time in our history a male, you were allowed to partake in the most unique military training on earth, acronym: (BUD/S) also known as Basic Underwater Demolition / SEAL training.?The highlight of this training command besides becoming a Navy SEAL is an evolution known as Hell Week.??Hell Week is an experience that will stay with you throughout your life.?It does so either as the “Bane of your existence,” or “the gift that keeps on giving.”?This amazing opportunity comes in the 3rd week of the first phase after participating in a 2 week period of pre-training.?So, Hell Week is begun in your 5th week of training.?Nothing! I mean nothing, during that 5 week period prepares you for this evolution.?

Sunday night, one second after midnight and all hell breaks loose.?An evolution that consists of 5 1/2 days of cold, wet, brutally difficult operational training on fewer than four hours of sleep. Hell Week tests your physical endurance, mental toughness, pain, cold tolerance, teamwork, attitude, ability to perform work under high physical and mental stress, and sleep deprivation. ?Above all, it tests determination and desire.?What I and the majority of my class commonly mistook was the belief that Hell Week and BUD/S are all about physical strength.?Actually, it’s as much mental as it is physical which includes a spiritual component.?

For us Banana’s, a moniker expressing how we trainees were seen, yellow on the outside, soft on the inside.??With this namesake, we just decide that we’re too cold, too sandy, too sore, or too tired to go on.?It’s our minds that give up on us, not our bodies.?While Instructors could get anyone to quit if they wanted to, that is not the point.?They apply great physical and mental stress, sow the seeds of doubt, and give tempting invitations for us to quit.?It’s up to the class to either turn it into increased resolve, or the decision to quit.

To give context to this awesome experience from a personal perspective, I spent the Saturday preceding that Sunday renting a room in the town of Coronado.?I got a room with a built-in Jacuzzi and partied by myself till the wee hours of the morning.?On that Sunday afternoon, I met up with one of my classmates and began to prepare for this great adventure.?At this time, there’s no partying, focus is what was required.?The one exception was the pint of Mezcal we stashed, the one with a worm that floats all around.?Whoever succeeded would drink it upon completion, if we both made it through “Hell Week,” we would share it.

First, two days were a blur of evolutions such as Inflatable Boat Small (IBS) Surf Passage/Portage. ?There’s a rock jetty in front of the Hotel Del Coronado.?As the waves crashed upon the rocks with 6 bananas per IBS, we rode those waves, as they slammed into the rocks, to then jump out and lumber the boat and our bodies over the top of those rocks.?

This is much easier in the saying than actually having to do it.?Food was the other evolution that occurred four to five times a day.?You’re burning serious calories requiring constant replenishment.?

The most memorable moment happened on Wednesday night at the Tijuana mud-flats.?We’d spent the day paddling our 18 IBS’s with 6 classmates in each from BUD/S compound, past the Imperial Beach Pier , through the off-shore Shoals, and into the mud-flats. ?We arrived well into the afternoon and began by getting muddy, from head to toe, including coverage of all orifice other than your pie-whole, you get the picture.?Don’t get me wrong it was fun, the instructors made it into a playful evolution.?It wasn’t until the setting of the sun, the plunging of temperature, and the realization we were not going to the Ocean to clean off the mud, that attitudes changed.

The problem is we had good officers, especially our class leader??They and he were able to keep us all together.?That is until we were at the Tijuana mud-flats, our class was pretty much still intact, and this was not all right with the instructor corps.?It began with our class leader and officers against the BUD/S Instructors.?A fight that looked fair however in truth it only looked fair.?For the longest time, our officers countered the instructors.?The game was afoot and the elements were on the side of the instructors.?By nearly midnight there was a roaring fire.?We as a class were kept just far enough away as to see the joy yet unable to receive the joy of its warmth.?Still covered in mud, we’d been going covered in mud for nearly 6 hours when the instructors had enough, they were tired of our officers especially our class leader.?

Their solution??Remove the problem and in the instructor’s eyes and mind, that was our class leader.?So they did, removing him without explanation, doing so out of everyone’s clear visual line of sight.?Then they began, the instructors started with “if one of you, just one quits, all the rest of you can go and get warm,” that being known as fratricide.?On that first attempt, there were 90+ wet, hungry, cold, exhausted, young bananas.?90+ without our key asset, our class leader.?It was interesting to see the other officers try to keep us together, but they just weren’t the ones, they weren’t the class leader with “it,” whatever “IT” is.?Within a half-hour the dam broke and instead of one, 35 bananas rang the infamous “BELL.”?

Then, three minutes after the bell debacle, our class leader with “IT” was returned to us, damage done.?As far as getting warm, standing there so near to the fire, after all, not only one but 35 had quit, and the instructors did make a promise.?Right??Their reply: “this is not love it’s WAR, and there is nothing fair about any of this.?Now, go down to the ocean, get wet, and when you come back I don’t want to see mud, I want to see sugar cookies."

This was the halfway point, by Friday afternoon we were a class of 40 that had been a class of 110.?The classmate I spoke of, he and I both completed Hell Week, splitting that pint of Mezcal, turns out he got the lucky swallow.?In my mouthful having taken the first gulp rested the worm, there is no way I was going to spit it out.?So, down the hatch, aghh.