SEAL Target Geronimo: The Inside Story of the Mission to Kill Osama Bin Laden Read Online Free Page B

you pay for it every day.”
    Finishing “up front” on a beach run means a couple of cold sips of water from the fountain, or maybe a few minutes where the instructors aren’t on your back. As the members of the Goon Squad stagger back into the compound, it doesn’t take long for the students to realize that it pays to be a winner. This mantra will be beaten into them over the next months. Another SEAL maxim is that “winners never quit, and quitters never win.”
    Slowly, the trainees make the transition to “Team Time”—meaning eighteen-hour days and often workdays of twenty hours or more. Sleep is a precious commodity to be had only after one’s room is clean, one’s floor is brushed and buffed, and one’s uniform and equipment are made shipshape. Teamwork is taught by the simple technique of making roommates share the fate of individual failures. If one man’s locker is not put in order, all the adjoining lockers get turned upside down. If one man’s uniform is unsatisfactory, his roommates will join him in hitting the surf, which means sprinting over the sand dunes behind the barracks, enjoying a bracing dip in the Pacific, and returning back to the inspection line where another instructor is even more likely to find fault with a dripping, sand-clotted uniform. No one gets through BUD/S alone. The SEAL Teams are not looking for loners. The instructors watch carefully to see that each man is pulling his own weight and functioning as a member of the team.
    In the movies, drill instructors are portrayed as people with bulging eyeballs and anger-management problems. It is not necessary for a SEAL instructor to yell. If he has to give the command a second time, there will quickly be hell to pay.
    The first phase of BUD/S focuses primarily on physical conditioning. It’s often said that BUD/S will break you and then rebuild you. It is an excruciating process. Each day begins at 5:00 a.m. with ninety minutes of calisthenics. These exercises are performed together, in unison, as a class. Each repetition is counted out loud by the instructor and echoed by the class. Students failing to show the appropriate level of enthusiasm or class spirit will find themselves invited to hit the surf, roll in the sand, and continue exercising in a wet uniform.
    After morning PT, the class forms up and runs a mile to the base chow hall. BUD/S students do not walk, they run everywhere they go. Students are given only an hour to put on a presentable uniform, cover the distance to the chow hall, wolf their food, run the mile back to the training area, gear up and report, as a class, precisely on time for the next scheduled event. The streets of the Naval Amphibious Base are often spattered with food that the students “rented” rather than bought.
    Every day they will run timed distances, negotiate the obstacle course, paddle inflatable boats, and swim in timed events called “evolutions.” All of the students’ runs are conducted in fatigue pants and combat boots. Pounding out the miles in combat boots frequently leads to stress fractures of the legs and ankles. Lengthy swims in the cold Pacific can bring on hypothermia and even pneumonia. It is literally possible for a BUD/S student to go from heat stroke to chilblains in the course of one afternoon. And the medical attention is not particularly fawning. If a student is not dead or exhibiting a compound bone fracture, the docs in sick bay invariably prescribe an aspirin and a nice, long run.
    Every time a physical evolution is performed, a student is expected to improve. Once a week the students will run a six-mile course against the clock. They will also complete a two-mile swim, and a trip through the obstacle course. If the student turns in a time that is higher than his previous attempt, he will come in for some extra attention. A first offense is likely to earn a trip to the surf zone, a roll in the sand, and the opportunity to run again. Running six miles on the beach is