They were given thirty seconds to answer before they were tossed out of the program. Some guys left voluntarily—it was a challenge that got to the core of what it meant to be a SEAL, to face something profoundly uncomfortable and come out the other side.
Those who said they wanted to keep going were thrown back in the pool.
Who passed? The guys who refused to give up, who could suppress the need to breathe, who trusted that they’d be rescued if something went wrong and were prepared to lose consciousness—or even die.
The instructors called it drown-proofing.
I remember one particular trainee, a cocky EOD (explosive ordnance disposal) guy who went around bragging that he was going to finish at the top of the class. He tried to outsmart the instructors by resting the back of his head on a buoy in the pool. But an instructor saw him, grabbed the pool pole, and smacked him in the head. The EOD guy passed out and sank to the bottom.
The BUD/S instructor in charge motioned to the Navy safety divers to pull him out and resuscitate him. Like a number of the other big cocky men, the EOD guy ran home immediately with his tail between his legs.
I almost failed too.
It happened during an exercise in which we were instructed to stand on the side of the pool, do a forward flip above the water into the pool, then complete a fifty-meter swim underwater—twenty-five meters to one end, then a flip-turn and twenty-five meters back—without coming up for air.
I swam twenty-five meters, did my flip-turn, and, feeling that I needed air, came up for a breath. Almost immediately an instructor shouted, “Hey, you quitter! Get out of the pool and stand over there!”
Feeling about two inches tall, I joined the majority of my class along the side of the pool.
The instructor shouted to the eight or so guys who had passed, “These losers quit. You want to go to war with these quitters? They were feeling a little uncomfortable and had to come up to breathe. The hell with them. We can’t allow lower than whale shit quitters into the teams.” I was scolding myself, saying, What the hell’s wrong with you? You came this far and just because you were a little uncomfortable you had to come up for air? That’s pathetic!
Meanwhile, a couple of the instructors were huddled together talking. One of the them announced, “All right, let’s give these quitters one more chance.”
I thought, Whatever happens, I’m not coming up for air. I don’t care if it gets so bad that my head explodes. I’m not quitting this time. I swam underwater, did my flip-turn, and started back. My lungs started screaming. I desperately wanted to take a breath.
Please! Please! my brain was saying.
I forced myself on and blacked out just before I reached the wall. I don’t remember seeing it or feeling it. All I know is that the divers pulled me out, and I heard one of the instructors say, “Okay, you passed.”
Huge relief.
I learned later that the first time you think you need air, it’s really the CO2 receptors in your brain telling you that it’s time to exhale. If you exhale a little you can last a minute or so longer.
I met some real characters during BUD/S. One guy who stands out was Chris Klauser, who paddled up to BUD/S in a rubber boat on the first day. He beached his boat and removed his dry suit; he was wearing his white dress uniform underneath.
He marched up to the quarterdeck, stood at attention, and said, “Petty Officer Klauser reporting for duty.”
Klauser was a short, bald guy who weighed about a hundred and fifty pounds and had one long eyebrow. He looked kind of odd, but he could bench-press four hundred and fifty pounds—three times his weight! There were guys who could lift even more, but for muscle-to-body-weight ratio, Chris was at the top.
He gave the BUD/S instructors a hard time right from the start, which all of us thought was insane.
One of our instructors caught him clowning around one morning and shouted, “Hey, you, Klauser. Who do you think you are?”
Chris leaned against a palm tree and mimed smoking a cigar. “Burt Reynolds?”
The instructor, who didn’t find it funny, barked, “Drop down and give me fifty.”
Chris’s comeback was “Which arm?”
He passed BUD/S with ease and went on to become a distinguished SEAL pilot and cigarette-boat captain.
Cockiness and apparent fitness weren’t necessarily indicators of future success in the SEALs. It was impossible to tell which guys were going to pass. Big tough-looking football-player types were falling out. Bodybuilders broke legs and ankles. Cocky guys broke down and cried.
My third roommate (the first two washed out) was a soft-looking Mexican American who seemed to be failing everything. He was a weak swimmer, a slow runner, and did mediocre on all our tests. I kept wondering when he was going to quit or be sent packing. But he toughed it out, slowly improved and ended up having a very distinguished career in the SEALs.