THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, April 13, 1996 TAG: 9604110446
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY KERRY DEROCHI, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: CORONADO, CALIF. LENGTH: Long : 555 lines
At 5 a.m., the recruits gather in a tight formation in the middle of the cement grinder. They wear green pants and thin, white T-shirts, though the temperature is 40 degrees. They stand at attention as gusts of wind blow a cold mist up from the Pacific Ocean. They don't flinch.
They wouldn't dare.
For more than an hour, the recruits flip from sit-ups to leg raises to push-ups and back again as an instructor barks orders under the banner ``BE SOMEONE SPECIAL.'' A second instructor squats to see who is extending his legs six inches above the cement. He doesn't say anything, just watches, measures. He knows the cheaters will be gone soon. They'll never make it as SEALs, as frogmen.
Six inches. In some ways that's what it comes down to. That's the difference between making it and going home. Six inches on a cold January morning.
The instructors circle through the rows of recruits, striding across the grinder, a wide, square-shaped expanse of gray cement. They aren't interested in just building men who can take the pain of this pre-dawn ``PT.'' They're after something more. They're building a private world of Navy elites, a world where secrets stay hidden, where failure is forbidden, where loyalty to a team is the first commandment.
BUD/S, the training ground for prospective SEALs, is a way to separate the warriors from wannabes. It's a gut check. The instructors, all of them SEALs, know the stakes here are high. A SEAL's job is too dangerous, the missions too risky. Bosnia. Haiti. Somalia. Panama. Anywhere there's a a hot spot, Navy SEALs get the call.
Under the dim glow of yellow spotlights, the instructors walk with the swagger of having been there. They know how it feels to want something so badly that you'll go through hell for 18 hours only to wake up and do the same the following morning. They know what it's like to sense your dream slipping away as you lie cramping on the cold cement, struggling to hold your legs straight for one more second. Just one more second.
The instructors peer into the eyes of the recruits, searching for the bad apples, the Rambo-types who want only to shoot guns and blow up stuff. The loners who can't or won't be part of a team. You can't get through BUD/S without some integrity, the instructors will tell you. You need something deep inside of you to keep you focused while you paddle 14 miles in the dead of night in a 200-pound rubber boat. While you stand in the surf from dusk until dawn, arms linked with your teammates, trying to keep each other from quitting, from dropping on request or as they say, ``going DOR.''
You have to have a soul.
That's why last year, when two SEAL trainees were arrested for killing a college woman in Virginia Beach and leaving her body to rot against a tree in a wooded city park, the scandal shook this community some 3,000 miles away. Questions followed the June 1995 arrest of Billy Joe Brown Jr. and Dustin Allen Turner. Tough questions on how they'd gotten through, and what kind of men the SEALs force was training.
Brown and Turner completed SEAL training at BUD/S - Basic Underwater Demolition/SEAL school - less than six months before the murder. They'd been there on the grinder with the other recruits, sweating and grunting. They'd been watched by instructors, yelled at, pushed - yet, somehow, they hadn't cracked. They'd held their legs six inches.
After BUD/S, they went through jump school and were sent to SEAL Team Four at Little Creek Amphibious Base. Security checks were being completed. They were waiting for their Trident pins, the signature of a Navy SEAL.
The questions kept coming.
Just hours after the arrest, newspaper reporters learned that Brown had a juvenile record prior to entering the service for beating and threatening to kill his then 14-year-old wife. Detectives searching Turner's apartment in Bloomington, Ind., found an arsenal of hidden SEAL weaponry: smoke grenades, blasting caps, ignition fuses and close to 5 pounds of C-4 explosives, enough firepower to blow up a house.
The Navy tried to distance itself from Brown and Turner. Press releases insisted that reporters refer to the pair as trainees. They weren't real SEALs. Not yet.
But the connection couldn't be cut. At least, not that easily. The privacy that SEALs enjoyed and jealously guarded for decades was now working against them. Blame was easy to place because no one understood. Even if some could write off Brown and Turner as freak accidents, a pair of bad apples who somehow slipped through the system, others could not help thinking that something was off kilter.
That maybe our elite forces have become too separate, too independent.
It hasn't been that long since Richard Marcinko shocked the nation with his 1992 book ``Rogue Warrior,'' boasting of the antics of SEALs under his command. He told of the demolition style derby the commandos conducted in Florida when they rented and demolished 20 automobiles just to see which one held up the best.
He described a string of barroom brawls on the Virginia Beach strip, leaving their prey bloodied, broken and black and blue. And he told of the accidental parachuting death of one SEAL in Arizona and how his buddies kidnapped the body from a civilian morgue before local authorities and the press could catch them.
In a second floor office above a churning Pacific Ocean, Rear Adm. Raymond C. Smith, the commanding officer of Naval Special Warfare, is aware of the criticism facing his Navy SEALs.
Though Smith won't discuss the specifics of Brown and Turner, the pain of knowing this happened on his watch plays across his face. A SEAL for more than two decades, Smith defends the record of his commandos and the tradition of honor held by the tightly knit community. His press spokesman hands out a packet on community service projects SEALs routinely provide. It's a thick packet, filled with stories of SEALs donating food and helping children in need.
``By and large, not withstanding these two gentlemen, the kids we turn out of here are remarkable,'' Smith says.
``But no system is perfect. . . . It's hard to have a perfect society, even one as small as ours.''
That's the problem. SEALs have always wanted to be perfect.
It's their standard. Be the Best. Because anything else is failing.
`The only easy day
was yesterday'
PELIGRO shout the large red and white signs posted along the edge of the SEAL training ground. PELIGRO.
DANGER.
The words are meant as a warning to the steady trickle of tourists wandering down the beach from the Hotel Del Coronado. The men and women stroll by the compound in bright pink jogging suits and matching visors. They seem not to notice the rusted out shells of helicopters or the rows of men dressed in camouflage and running into the surf with black and yellow boats above their heads.
It's a curious blend of two worlds. Sort of like Town and Country meeting Soldier of Fortune.
BUD/S is located on luxurious Coronado, a tiny strip of land off the coast of San Diego, replete with capuccino machines and Rollerblades. Lush green city parks and a swank yacht club flank the base where SEALs learn how to launch beach assaults.
The school itself is housed in a string of unremarkable office buildings on the west side of Route 75. Next door is a drive-thru McDonald's.
In the center of the BUD/S compound stands the grinder. Tiny web feet are painted on the cement, marking the spots where recruits are to stand during ceremonies. A large statue of a frogman stands on one side, beneath a sign that reads, THE ONLY EASY DAY WAS YESTERDAY.
A brass bell hangs in the corner. Legend says a trainee who goes DOR must ring the bell three times and place his helmet in a row stretching beneath the bell down the side of the grinder. Then, he must leave.
On a January morning, 27 green helmets from class 205 are lined up under the bell. The names, painted in white letters, are easy to read even in the pre-dawn mist.
Sims. Thompson. Parron. Howe.
They couldn't cut it. Week three of training and already they've gone home. Class 205 has been trimmed from 83 to fewer than 60.
Most recruits fail. Of the 900 trainees who will arrive at BUD/S, fewer than 30 percent will make it through the 25 weeks. Less than one in three. The attrition is an accepted screening process of SEAL training, a way for the SEALs to keep only the best.
``You're born with a mindset,'' says Senior Chief Perry Dobstaff, as he watches the recruits. ``If you don't have it, I can't give it to you. If you come here and you don't have it, you're not going to get it here. You're gone.''
Dobstaff, 37, is pure Navy SEAL. He is medium height with a square jaw and a shortly cropped mesh of curly hair. He stands on the edge of the grinder in shorts, arms folded across his chest, swaying back and forth in his combat boots. He watches the recruits, trying to see who will make it.
``They know I'm standing right here,'' he says. His gruff voice makes mere observations sound like orders. ``The person has to want to earn it himself. He has to want to grow. Most people cannot or will not. We're not going to make anybody do anything. All I'm doing is asking. They come in the military, they saw the movie and thought, yeah, I'd like to try that. There's a big difference between yeah I'd like to try it and yeah I'm going to do it.
``A SEAL is something that you achieve. Until we can bring out that mindset, until we can get our fingers in there and mold, all they are are people who want something.''
Until then, they're bell ringers.
Few can be Navy SEALs. Few can even try. The teams are closed to women and to men older than 28. You cannot be color blind or have vision worse than 20/40 in one eye and 20/70 in the other.
The physical test is grueling: Swim 500 yards in 12 1/2 minutes. Rest 10 minutes. Do 42 push-ups in 2 minutes. Rest 2 minutes. Do 50 sit-ups in 2 minutes and then six pull-ups. Rest 10 minutes. Run 1.5 miles wearing combat boots in soft sand in less than 11 1/2 minutes.
That's just to get in the door. That's just to get your shot.
At 11 a.m., members of Class 205 sit in rows on the wet cement surrounding the outdoor swimming pool. They stare straight ahead as a Navy SEAL describes their next task.
Knot tying. It sounds simple enough. Still, no one smiles.
The instructor calls for the first group to get into the pool. They have to tread water, swim down 15 feet and tie a piece of string around a cord strapped across the bottom. They will perform a series of five knots, each one different. The recruit cannot come up for air until the instructor gives him the thumbs up. The exercise is supposed to build confidence in the water. Soon, they'll be doing rotations that are far more dangerous.
``They know by now they want to be here, now they have to meet the standards,'' says Chief Pat Harwood, a SEAL instructor. ``The bus keeps moving. Either you're on or you're not. You can have a lot of intelligence, but it takes will. Training is designed to find your weakness. Hopefully you can push through them. It makes you a better man. It makes you a better person.''
It may make you a SEAL.
He turns to the recruits, who have finished and sit shivering on the cement.
``Everything you do around here is about choreographing it in your mind,' Harwood says. ``Understand?''
``HOOYAH,'' scream the recruits. ``HOOYAH.''
``These are the keys to success, got it?''
``HOOYAH.''
``Practice in your bed. Tie and untie knots as you go to sleep.''
``HOOYAH.''
The recruits grab their seabags and fumble through them for white socks and combat boots. They put on pants and the green helmets. Next is lunch at the chow hall. Then, a 2-mile ocean swim.
Class 205 is in the first of three phases of training. Hell Week looms in front of them. That's when the recruits go for an entire week with less than five hours of sleep. Total. They paddle for miles in the dark surf. They run along the beach's edge. They never stop. Except to eat.
The few that survive will go on to the second phase of training, diving.
It's kind of the cruel joke at BUD/S. You think you've made it, you think you've finished the last test. You're no longer a wannabe. You've proven yourself.
Then the hurdles change.
``We take them at the level they've achieved and we raise them a level higher,'' says Todd Peters, a SEAL instructor. ``To me it doesn't really matter if you get all 50 through or if we can get 10. I don't think the numbers have been a real big thing to us.
``We want to be as fair as possible. You meet the criteria, you pass. You don't, you fail.''
Peters, 29, an ordained Baptist minister, has been a SEAL since leaving the seminary more than a decade ago. In his spare time, he runs a youth program at a local church for 12- to 18-year-olds. He doesn't see a conflict, preferring to quote the Old Testament story of David and Goliath. The SEALs are like David fighting a mighty enemy with small numbers.
It's hard to imagine a SEAL with just a slingshot.
``You're looking for someone who has confidence,'' says Peters. ``It's real easy to spot. You look at someone's face. I can tell if someone's going to pass or fail just by looking in their eyes. I don't see it as my being mean. I see it as saving their lives. I think that's why all the instructors are strict. It's hard to shake. What we're trying to see is someone who has integrity. If we don't have integrity in a guy, pretty much training comes to a halt. If you can't trust a guy, you don't want him on a team.''
Peters tries to define what he means by integrity. All the instructors do. They try to define what it is they see in the eyes. But no one can find the words. Mention Brown and Turner and they get quiet. The press spokesman gets angry. No one seems to remember either trainee though they graduated less than 13 months before.
``To be honest,'' says Peters, ``you can miss it.''
`Who am I, Sir?
A Frogman am I'
On the far wall in Capt. Joe Yarborough's office hangs a framed copy of a story titled, ``Who am I, Sir? A Frogman am I.'' It's the first thing Yarborough points out to a visitor.
Yarborough is the commanding officer of BUD/S. On this day he sifts through a pile of papers, trying to figure out why 40 percent of class 205 have dropped out in the first three weeks. That's a bit high. He reads the excuses given by the recruits.
I don't like the water.
I requested a summer Hell Week.
I just don't have the motivation right now.
The excuses rankle. When Yarborough signed up 20 years ago as a 140-pound teenager, you didn't hear complaints about the cold water.
Back then, the SEALs were the strongest, fastest thing special warfare had to offer. Their history was proud. They were the frogmen, dating back to World War II when volunteers from the Navy's construction battalions were sent in to clear the beaches ahead of amphibious assaults.
In 1962, the Navy designated them as SEALs or Sea-Air-Land commandos, and their role expanded. They have been sent to conflicts around the world, building a reputation for clandestine operations from rivers and oceans.
They always left secretly. A beeper went off and a unit of SEALs was dispatched. Only wives and girlfriends knew they were gone. They didn't know where and they didn't know for how long (If I tell you, I'll have to kill you).
Through the years, one statistic has remained the same.
Though SEALs have died in combat, not one body has been left behind in the field.
``We pride ourselves on that,'' says Yarborough. ``You look at a gathering of Navy SEALs. The one thing we have in common is we never quit.''
Somehow, you believe it from Yarborough.
But things have changed since the day Yarborough stood on the grinder and rang the bell - just once - at graduation.
The whole Navy's changed.
It's the new Navy. A sensitive post-Tailhook kind of a Navy. The legendary beer drinking is frowned upon (except for Thursday nights at an Irish pub in Coronado). There is talk of psychological screening of all special warfare recruits, like the Army does, though Yarborough does not believe it is needed, even in the wake of Brown and Turner. He's not sure what psychological tests would really show.
Last summer, Yarborough, at the request of the admiral, ordered the recruits to start core value training. They meet once a week in a classroom to talk about issues like personal responsibility and honor and integrity.
``I think this is going to help in the long term,'' says Yarborough. ``It's not enough to be a big tough guy to get through this training. You have to have respect in the community. The press tends to think about things that aren't pretty, makes people think we are out of control. The guys out there training, they're doing that every day. They know what they have to do. What's keeping them in shape is peer pressure and knowing they have to get the job done.''
Extra PT and a pink
T-shirt on the O course
Jonathan Sanchez feels the pressure.
A 1995 graduate of the Naval Academy, he is the only officer assigned to class 205. He's the man in charge. He is 22 years old. He grew up one of six children in Bolling Green, Ohio. His grandfather was in the Navy. His brother is a SEAL.
``I don't see myself anywhere else,'' Sanchez says. ``These guys are the best at everything. It's physically challenging, mentally tough. We all hang off of each other. We all use each other for motivation. When we lose somebody we really want or need, that hurts. But to be honest, after a while, after two days, I don't know they're gone. I couldn't tell you who quit last week.''
That's what BUD/S does. It streamlines your memory, narrows your focus. Friends come and go with little or no warning. One day you're relying on a buddy to make it through one more set of push-ups. The next day he's gone.
It's what the recruits fear the most.
They're not afraid of pain, of danger. They're afraid of losing. Petrified. It's what keeps them awake at night in their berthing, lying there on the bed practicing how to tie knots. Over and Over. They don't want to be forced out. They don't want to go back to being a faceless blue shirt on a ship.
They know the statistics: 2,200 billets for SEALs, 400,000 in the rest of the Navy. You do the math. There aren't enough seats and soon the music is going to stop.
``Yes I will make it through,'' Sanchez says. ``I have a lot of people counting on me. This has taught me a lot about leadership. It's taught me a lot about people. I think a lot of the changes I'm experiencing, I don't even realize right now. This isn't like training for a team. This is training for THE team. This is more about being a better person, a stronger person. Do you have what is deep inside you to pull through? I do.''
At 1 p.m., the recruits jog up to the vast obstacle course, a circuit of 15 wooden contraptions that from a distance look like the toys found on a children's playground. Until you notice the barbed wire. Until you realize the walls are 50 feet high.
``Here we go O course, here we go'' the recruits chant as they line up at the starting line, according to their times. The fastest goes first. The slowest goes last. He is Mrs. O Course. He wears a pink T-shirt that says ``Always a Lady.'' It's not a compliment.
Sanchez is second. He wants to be first. Needs to be. Each SEAL must improve his record every time he runs the course. If not, it's extra PT. Or another dip in the water.
The clock starts. One by one, the recruits run through the course. They climb a giant rope netting and pass over the other side. They wiggle under barbed wire and throw themselves across a gut-wrenching log called Dirty Word before climbing a four-story platform and creeping down the 90-foot Slide For Life. They have 12 minutes to complete the loop. The record is 4 minutes and 30 seconds.
No one comes close. The guy in first place cheats. He wraps his hands on the top of a wall he's supposed to be shimmying across, apparently, with no hands.
``REPEAT THE OBSTACLE,'' shrieks Lt. Mike Massa, an instructor, striding across the sand.
``HEAR ME?''
The recruit stands there, unsure of what to do. Uncomfortable.
``REPEAT THE OBSTACLE,'' screams Massa.
``IF YOU'RE GOING TO CHEAT, YOU SHOULD AT LEAST BE SMART ABOUT IT.''
The error costs the recruit top billing. Sanchez passes him. His time is 6 minutes and 34 seconds, his personal best. He runs to the finish line and drops to do 20 push-ups. He finishes and looks at the instructors. They order him back to the sand. The berthing wasn't clean enough this morning, they tell him. He owes them 1,000 more. He can choose sit-ups or push-ups.
Sanchez chooses sit-ups. He begins counting.
``It's another easy day at BUD/S,'' he says. He smiles.
Sharks with snorkels
attacking recruits
At 9 a.m. across the compound, members of another group, class 204, stand on the edge of the pool, waiting.
They are in the middle of the second phase at BUD/S, diving. Today is their final test. Pool Comps. It's the last dive they'll make in the pool. Next week they'll be in the ocean, alone.
The day is cold and cloudy. A light drizzle is falling. Perfect. As if they didn't have enough to worry about. Now they have to dance from one foot to the other, trying to keep warm. The chaplain is there early, walking among the men, trying to boost their spirits. He prays with this class often, at the end of the training when they gather together in a classroom and thank God - or whatever they believe in - for getting them through one more day.
It's been a tough few days for Class 204. Four members have been caught cheating on a 4 a.m. run down the Silver Strand. They decided to turn back too soon, before the midway point. Two of the guys were sick. One had bronchitis. The other, diarrhea. The other two just decided to bag it. They didn't think anybody would notice. Right. They didn't know the instructors were waiting in their truck, in the dark at the halfway point, counting.
Now the whole class will have to pay.
``If any one person in the room cheats, basically everybody else is cheating, too,'' says Ensign John Cowan, 23. ``We all of a sudden felt the instructors had lost all respect for us. That was really tough. Deep down we all have respect for them. They were totally disappointed in us.''
It could not have come at a worse time.
Suddenly the loudspeakers blare a 1960s rock song called Green Onions. It sounds sort of like the theme from Jaws. The instructors come walking out of the locker rooms, dressed in black wet suits.
``HOOYAH.''
``ALL RIGHT.''
``LET'S GET FIRED UP.''
The tension rises. This is the last big test the recruits will face in BUD/S. In some ways it's harder than Hell Week. Not physically harder. But mentally.
The first set of recruits jumps into the pool in full scuba gear. They go to the bottom and begin crawling along the floor, waiting, like scared crabs. Above them, the instructors circle like sharks, breathing out of snorkels. They dive down to start the test. In the first phase, they each take a recruit by the ankles and spin them over and over, against the bottom of the pool. This is supposed to simulate a wave. Flippers are torn loose. Masks ripped off. The recruit has to keep his wits about him. He has to keep breathing and crawling along the bottom, because things are going to get harder.
In the next three phases, the instructors take ``hits'' on the recruits, tying knots in their hoses. They flutter kick above their heads, their flippers knocking them over and over. The recruit has to calmly inspect the problem and fix it. Then he waits for the next attack, the final attack. The one where there is no solution and he has to get out of his gear and leave it wrapped on the floor with his 12-pound weight belt. Then, he has to wait for the signal and swim to the surface. All while holding his breath.
The tricky part is figuring out when it's the last attack. And, when it's something he's supposed to fix. The whole thing has to be done in 20 minutes.
Half of the recruits fail this day. All but two will pass later. By the end of the week, the cheaters are gone.
``How do we look
into the soul?''
Large posters of Navy SEALs line the foyer of SEAL headquarters. There are SEALs dressed in tan camouflage walking up a beach with loaded guns. There are commandos jumping from an airplane - in formation - and floating into the pre-game festivities at the Super Bowl. You begin to understand the lore. And the lure.
Rear. Adm. Raymond Smith comes to the door and immediately offers coffee. Gourmet decaffeinated, hazelnut flavor. He sits in a chair near the door. His aide begins straightening the framed photographs and flag behind him.
Smith gives a history of the Navy SEALs. The commandos go farther now than was ever imagined when they were formed 34 years ago. They gather intelligence in foreign nations. They launch from submarines. They are no longer brawn and beauty. They have brains. He calls them cerebral warriors.
``We took the hairy chested frogman and changed him to a guy who has to be multi-talented and very good at everything,'' Smith says. ``What hasn't changed is the need to have fundamentally strong people in their body, their mind and their spirit.''
He says BUD/S is designed to test the recruit on every level, to measure his ``heart and his soul by 25 weeks.'' Instructors want to find out what's inside. ``That's where the challenge comes to us. How do we look into the soul of that young man?''
It's a tough question.
Smith defends BUD/S against allegations the Navy should have done more to screen out Brown and Turner. What more could they have done? They don't have access to juvenile records, he says. They could never have known Brown had a record for assault. Even if they did, who's to say Brown shouldn't have been given a shot. Once bad is not always bad.
Last year, on a trip to England to tour the British military facilities, Smith learned that the recruits over there took classes on citizenship while learning how to conduct special warfare. The idea intrigued him. He ordered core values training at BUD/S to start immediately.
SEALs have to be warriors. Now they also have to be citizens.
``Nobody ever criticized us for not being brave, that's where we traditionally succeed or fail,'' Smith says. ``What also constitutes success is being above reproach on a professional basis. That's where we cannot afford to fail. It's not a great program if we created kids that get in trouble. Where we fall, when we do stumble, which isn't often, is in professional behavior. That is a certain cultural change that has to permeate this community. We have to move the other way. Is it going to change the kids? No, it's not. But it begins to dawn on them, there is more to being a SEAL.
``Is it going to solve our problems? No. It's one more step.''
A moonlit mission
for a beach assault
At an hour past sundown the grinder is, again, dark. Members of class 205 gather in yet another formation. This time, there is an air of excitement. Of danger. Their faces are painted with war paint. They're dressed completely in olive green.
Finally they get to act like Navy SEALs.
Their mission this night is to launch into the surf in the black and yellow boats, paddle beyond the waves and head south towards Tijuana, Mexico. When they are parallel to a white truck, they are supposed to turn in. Two of the boat crew will swim up to the beach and pretend to take it under their control. They will signal the rest of the boat crew when it is safe. The crew will paddle in and they will secure the boat. Slowly, they will crawl their way up the beach to a bonfire where the instructors are waiting, smoking cigars. It should take them about two hours.
It's all a game. Make believe. No one's laughing.
Nervous, the boat crews get ready. They stand at attention and wait. It's their first beach assault. Next week, they'll be doing it on the rocks.
The night seems surreal. Clear and cold with a bright moon. In the distance are the green and yellow lights of San Diego skyscrapers.
``You're going to hit the surf and you're going to paddle in,'' yells the instructor as the recruits wait, restlessly for the start. ``You're going to come in where you see the white truck. Does everybody understand?''
``HOOYAH''
``Any questions?''
``NEGATIVE''
``Everybody, about face. Prepare to hit the surf. OK. Go.''
``HOOYAH.''
Turning, the recruits run screaming into the water. ILLUSTRATION: Color photos by Martin Smith-Rodden\The Virginian-Pilot
YNSN Joseph P. Watterson and other SEAl candidates train with
telephone poles. Grueling training is one way instructors can tell
which men will have the right stuff - physically and
psychologically.
Ensign David F. Maruna of class 204 waits his turn to enter the pool
to test his ability to act in a crisis.
While some instructors monitor the test, other instructors test the
trainees' mettle by attacking their gear to see how they will
react.
The would-be SEALS are sprayed down with a mist as they enter the
pool area. The pool is a major make it or break it aspect of their
training. After going through Pool Comps, the trainees must face the
real thing - being in the ocean, alone.
During Log PT, AW3 Robert I. Kaneiss yells. He yells encouragement
to his teammates. He yells defiance at the pain. He just yells.
At 5 a.m. SEAL trainees greet the day with an hour of push-ups,
sit-ups, leg raises and the like on the cold, wet floor of the
grinder, the aptly named center of BUD/S. A large staute of a
frogman stands on one side, beneath a sign that reads, THE ONLY EASY
DAY WAS YESTERDAY. Here, the trainees learn that failure is
forbidden.
At left, Trainee TMSN James R. Mjor shimmies down a rope on the ``O
course'' trying to better his time on that course.
B\W Photos by Martin Smith-Rodden
Ensign Jonathan M. Sanchez grimaces while doing leg raises after
completing the obstacle course.
A brass bell hangs in the corner of the grinder. Tradition says a
trainee who goes DOR must ring the bell three times and place his
helmet in a row stretching down the side of the building. Then, he
must leave. Less than one in three of the trainees will pass and get
to ring the bell - once.
Senior Chief Perry Dobstaff, teaches the method of storming a beach.
Night assault is the first chance they get to act like SEALs.
SIDE BAR
SEALs in Hampton Roads
Little Creek Amphibious Base is home to about 1,000 SEALs assigned
to Special Warfare Group Two. There are SEAL Teams Two, Four and
Eight, which conduct Naval special operations, as well as a
``development group'' involved in testing and evaluating new
equipment and tactics. The group also has SEAL Delivery Vehicle Team
- Two, which operates submersibles allowing for underwater
operations.
KEYWORDS: U.S. NAVY NAVY SEALS by CNB