Three Simple Things. Thom Shea

to swim and passing the entrance test to Basic Underwater Demolition/ SEAL (BUD/S) training happened. I hired a swim coach and swam every day until I passed the test. Simple, but not easy! The method works every time.

      I arrived to start class 195 with 87 other crazy dudes. Nothing abnormal happened. We did ungodly amounts of push-ups and flutter kicks and pull-ups. The instructors really seemed not to care if we died or lived, so we ran until someone would puke or quit or break something. We swam until someone would puke or nearly drown or quit. This seemed to get worse every single day. People were quitting so often, and for some reason, it really felt lonely. My friends of the day before would quit and be out of the room before the end of the day. I do not recall feeling brave or tough. I felt normal. I don’t know why I felt normal. I really enjoyed the straightforward brutality of the instructors and the training.

      Everything seemed to be going great until “Hell Week.” Hell Week is the six-days-without-sleep part of training that weeds out all the quitters who don’t have what it takes to thrive in chaos. Surf torture was a non-event for me because it was just cold and seemed to make everyone else panic. I loved to see people panic and quit. And here is the real truth about tough times: all the most pristine athletes panic and quit during surf torture.

      After surf torture we paddled the boats down to the rocks in front of the Hotel del Coronado. Everything seemed to be going really well. I felt great. I was warm again. Albeit I was now the tallest guy in my boat, which meant when we carried the boat on our heads, my neck would be destroyed, but I didn’t care. All we had to do was successfully land our boat on the rocks during an eight-foot swell and get our boat and crew over to the beach. The landing would be as easy as eating a bowl of ice cream melting on a hot day. I recall seeing the rocks and our boat landing well. I was the first guy out to grab the bowline and secure my footing in the rocks to keep the boat from going back out during the ebb. I have to admit I did keep the boat from going out. But the breaker behind it came in and lifted the boat up and smashed my head between it and the rocks. I don’t recall that part. It was explained to me some time later over a beer.

      When I came to my senses, I was laying in the SEAL training medical room. My head was bloody, and I recall cussing, then asking what had happened. Two instructors approached, one carrying the bell, the other brandishing paperwork. The one with paperwork said, “Okay, ring the bell so we can get back to training. You are done.” The other pushed the bell in front of me.

      I cussed again, saying, “No!”

      “Don’t argue with me, you quit because you got injured! Getting injured is quitting. Stop wasting my time and ring the bell three times and go back home to your parents and tell them how you got injured. We don’t want quitters or people who get injured and leave their team,” he said rather convincingly.

      I said no again.

      They both turned and walked away.

      That night, alone in my room, the reality of failure gripped me again. Not knowing my fate, not knowing what was next, stared me right in the face again. However, I did not seem lost. The thought did occur they had already out processed me, and when I checked in at 8:00 a.m., my orders to be “haze gray and underway” completed and signed. I wasn’t going to quit. I wasn’t going to ring that bell. I didn’t care if the admiral ordered me to.

      I got up and put on my uniform and walked that long walk to the medical department. Just like before on the plane ride home from West Point, my senses were heightened, albeit my head hurt quite a bit more than I was willing to admit. Quitting was not my option. My resolve was to simply ask for another opportunity to make it through training. The primary thoughts of leaving training and my dream were far scarier than the secondary thought of going home as a quitter or a failure.

      While I sat in medical awaiting my fate that I had by blunder, left in the hands of someone else because I got injured, the quitters who had actually rung the bell three times formed around me. As a whole, none of them were looking me in the eyes. I find that odd to recall after all these years. One asked me what had happened, and with my normal, snappy retort I said, “I got knocked out on rock portage.”

      He said, “Yeah I saw that and said, ‘enough,’ after they pulled you away.” His response didn’t seem to register with my brain. I looked away, shaking my head. I feel sorry for him now, because I know he will surely deal with being a quitter every day for the rest of his life.

      After some time, the chief of the training phase came out and looked at me and said, “Follow me!” Chief Mahrer scared me because he was matter of fact and always seemed to be holding all the cards. We went into the first phase office, and he made me stand in front of the bell. Lord, that seemed like an eternity, waiting and waiting and waiting.

      “Shea, get in here,” he said. In the office were Mahrer and another instructor. Mahrer spoke the words I will remember until I die. “Shea, I want to tell you a truth: there is no difference between getting injured and quitting in combat. If you quit, you leave the team one man short. If you get injured, you do the same thing. We are here to get rid of those two types of people. Do you understand that?”

      I couldn’t think of a response that made sense, so I simply said, “I didn’t quit!”

      They both looked at me. “Okay,” Mahrer finally said, “you have another chance, but you have to start over at the beginning of first phase.”

      For a moment the feeling of weightlessness happened. Maybe I was about to faint. The only words I could say were “I won’t quit, chief.”

      He looked up emotionless as ever and said, “We shall see. The second time is much harder. Few make it through the second chance.”

      Class 196

      Mahrer was correct. The next class was distinctly harder. From my point of view, the instructors seemed to loathe this class leader for some reason unbeknownst to the students. The first morning inspection went badly, I mean really badly. My room didn’t even get inspected. We went to the surf zone and got punished for something none of us seemed to be aware of. The order was given to bear crawl down to the obstacle course and stand by in the push-up position.

      On any given day the obstacle course is hard to pass, even harder if you are wet and sandy and already tired. The course was about three quarters of a mile through the sand from where we started crawling toward the starting line. Along the way one person just stood up and walked over to the bell and rang it three times. The rest of us pushed on. By the time we all arrived at the starting line, it was an hour later.

      I could not even stay in the push-up position without my arms collapsing. I knew the obstacle course was all upper body strength. For the first time in my life, I was facing something I knew I couldn’t do. It was daunting.

      The first five students were on the course, and my name was called. Upon standing, I felt exhausted. The first obstacle was like trying to pick up an elephant with noodles. Once over the low wall, I heard the siren go off, signifying an injury. With that I stopped and took a knee as the class leader took a headcount and the instructors dealt with the injured student. The brief rest was needed. Then the reality of the injury took shape. A student had fallen off the “Slide for Life” and broken his back upon hitting the ground. Mahrer was right.

      Mahrer was walking around the students and saw me and walked straight over to where I was kneeling. “If you don’t do things in life correctly the first time, it always takes twice as long and is twice as hard to do it right the second time.” With that, he walked away.

      No truer words have ever been said regarding life’s big challenges. Now I was faced with a course that already had an 8 percent attrition rate when you try the first time. I wondered what the attrition rate was the second time as the instructors yelled to start again.

      The rest of the class 196 first phase leading up to Hell Week was just like this every day: twice as hard, mentally brutal, physically overwhelming. Hell Week started with a blur, but the weather was warm and so was the water. On Tuesday we were back at the obstacle course to attempt to take the entire boat and crew up and