“You’re worthless shit, Webb!” Do you even know what shit you are? You’re the biggest shit we’ve ever seen! You are weighing down your whole class. You are a walking disaster for one man. You’re making a mess for everyone. You don’t belong here, you fleet shit. Do you know how crazy you are about all this, how much everyone wants you to leave? You’re a disgrace, Webb. You are garbage. You must resign. Nobody wants you during Hell Week.
And so on for the next hour. It was more than brutal. I could feel how much they all wanted me to get up, limp, and go ring that fucking brass bell.
The worst part is that I knew they were right. There was a reason they singled me out. I was physically out of shape, and it affected the whole class, and it bothered me. In fact, it’s something that I’ve continued to be aware of and pay attention to to this day: if you’re late, if you don’t have your gear together, or your facts together, or whatever whatever you need to have together, then you affect the whole team. They were right, and it was a lesson I will never forget.
But if I wasn’t physically as strong as I should have been, I had one thing going for me. I was very tough mentally.
There is a common misconception that to be successful in SEAL training you have to be a super athlete. Not so. In its purely physical demands, the course is designed for the average athletic man to handle. What SEAL training really tests is your mental fortitude. It’s designed to mentally push you to the brink over and over again until you’re hardened and able to take on any task with confidence no matter the odds or until you break.
And I wasn’t going to crack.
My body at this point was nowhere near as conditioned as it would become in the months and years to come, but mentally I was ready for anything. That’s the only reason I survived that hour on the beach. That’s the only reason I managed to go through BUD/S.
People have asked me if I’ve ever thought about quitting during SEAL training, if I’ve ever had one of those dark night moments of the soul that you hear about, those moments of piercing doubt and uncertainty. agonizing. The answer is never, not once. Lying there face down in the sand with these four hardened psychopaths doing their best to break me down, something else happened instead: I had what we call a fire in my gut.
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Of the four, Instructor Buchanan was the most in my face. So I looked up at him, nailed him with the coldest stare possible, and said, “Fuck you, Instructor Buchanan, fuck you. The only way to get me out of here is in a body bag.
He glared at me, sizing me up, weighing my intent. I meant every word, and he knew it. He took a step back and shook his head, pointing down the beach to where my boat crew was ready and waiting. “Get back to your crew” was what he said, but the way he said it sounded like “To hell with you.”
From there, my experience in BUD/S completely changed. These instructors left me alone. When Hell Week started a few days later, it almost seemed disappointing. Welcome to my world, I wanted to tell the other guys. I had been playing these games throughout the first phase.
There is a saying in BUD/S: Ideally, you want to become the gray man. In other words, you become invisible, nobody notices you, because you do everything so perfectly that you never stand out.
