Against All Enemies

10 INDOC AND BUD/S

On a cold night in October 1994, Maxwell Steven Moore was lying on his bunk in the special warfare barracks, a few seconds away from becoming a quitter at a place where men never said “quit.” In fact, if the word took root in your psyche, then you weren’t a Navy SEAL in the first place. Getting through BUD/S (Basic Underwater Demolition/SEAL) training would forever change the eighteen-year-old’s life. It had meant everything to him.

But he couldn’t go on.

The journey had started nearly two months prior when he’d arrived at the Naval Special Warfare Center to begin the INDOC course. The class’s proctor, the leather-faced Jack Killian, whose eyes were too narrow to read and whose shoulders seemed molded into a singular piece of muscle, had addressed Moore’s class with an oft-heard question at Coronado: “So I heard you boys want to be Frogmen?”

“Hooyah!” they responded in unison.

“Well, you’ll have to get through me first. Drop!”

Moore and the rest of class 198, some 123 candidates in all, hit the beach and began their push-ups. Since they were still only candidates, they were not yet permitted to exercise on the hallowed blacktop square of the BUD/S “grinder,” where only those who’d made it through INDOC could perform their calisthenics and other assorted forms of physical torture that were part of BUD/S training First Phase — seven weeks designed to test a man’s physical conditioning, water competency, commitment to teamwork, and mental tenacity. No man would begin First Phase without passing the two-week-long INDOC course. The initial endurance test included the following:

• A five-hundred-yard swim using breaststroke and/or sidestroke in less than twelve minutes and thirty seconds

• A minimum of forty-two push-ups in two minutes

• A minimum of fifty sit-ups in two minutes

• A minimum of six dead-hang pull-ups (no time limit)

• A run for 1.5 miles wearing long pants and boots in less than eleven minutes

While Moore’s upper-body strength still needed work, he excelled in both the swim and the run, routinely beating his classmates by wide margins. It was during this time that Moore was introduced to the concept of a “swim buddy” and the tenet that you never leave your swim buddy alone and that no man, alive or dead, is ever left behind. “You will never be alone. Ever,” Killian had told them. “If you ever leave your swim buddy, the punishment will be severe. Severe!”

Moore’s swim buddy was Frank Carmichael, a sandy-haired, blue-eyed kid easily mistaken for a surfer dude. He had an easy grin and spoke in a laid-back cadence that had Moore doubting this guy could ever become a SEAL. Carmichael had grown up in San Diego and had traveled a similar path to INDOC as Moore had, going to boot camp, then being recommended for the SEAL program. He said he wished he’d gone to Annapolis and become a member of the Canoe Club, the nickname given to the Naval Academy, but he’d goofed off too much at Morse High School and his grades weren’t competitive enough for admission. He hadn’t even bothered getting into JROTC. There were a number of other candidates who were officers — Annapolis graduates, guys who’d come out of Officer Candidate School as O-1 ensigns, and even those who’d served in the fleet for a while. BUD/S, however, leveled the playing field — every candidate had to pass the same tests, no special treatment for officers.

Moore and Carmichael hit it off immediately, middle-class guys who were trying to do something extraordinary with their lives. They suffered together through the four-mile beach runs they had to complete in less than thirty-two minutes. Killian seemed to punctuate every command with the phrase “Get wet and sandy.” The entire class would rush down into the freezing surf, come out, roll around in the sand, then, standing there like mummies, like the undead, they’d be sent into their next evolution. They learned immediately that you ran everywhere, including a mile each way to the chow hall.

This was 1994, the year Time magazine described the Internet as a “strange new world.” Moore griped that today’s candidates could get on the Web and learn ten times as much about their upcoming training than Moore could back in those days. Today’s crop could review websites dedicated to BUD/S, watch streaming videos and slickly produced Discovery Channel specials. All Moore and his buddies had had were the tall tales passed on from previous classes, the rumors and warnings about the unspeakable horrors to come posted on a few newsgroups. Hyperbole? In some cases, yes, but Moore and Carmichael had faced their challenges with hardly as much preparation as the current group did.

Of all the training evolutions they went through during INDOC, Moore enjoyed the swimming work the most. They taught him how to kick, stroke, and glide, and to, above all, make the water his home. This was where the SEALs excelled over other branches of the service. The intel they gathered by being stealthy in the water assisted Marines and many other combatants. He learned to tie complex naval knots while submerged and did not panic when his hands were bound behind his back during the drown-proofing test. He relaxed, swam up to the surface, took his breath, came back down, and repeated the process, while several members of the Canoe Club near him freaked out and DORed right there. Moore’s reaction to that was to demonstrate just the opposite to his instructors, who were floating around him in their scuba gear, waiting for him to panic. He lowered himself to the bottom of the pool and held his breath—

For nearly five minutes.

One instructor came up to him with bug eyes enlarged by his mask and motioned for Moore to get back to the surface. He smiled, waited a few seconds more, then swam up and took his breath. He’d learned to increase his anaerobic tolerance by doing running and swim sprints, and he’d felt certain he could hold his breath even longer than that.

Killian learned of the “stunt,” and warned Moore not to try that again. But he’d winked when he’d said it.

The underwater fifty-meter swim proved interesting for many guys. Killian concluded his description of the test with the following: “And don’t worry — when you pass out, we will revive you.” But Moore did the fifty meters and then some, gliding through the water as though he’d always belonged there, a Frogman through and through. Carmichael told him that even a few of the instructors had cursed in awe.

Moore’s natural gifts had been discovered by Mr. Loengard when Moore was just sixteen. Loengard was not only a high school gym teacher but also an avid cyclist. He asked Moore to take a test on a cycle ergometer and found that Moore had a VO₂ max of 88.0, which was comparable to many world-class athletes. Moore’s resting heart rate was barely 40 bpm. His body could transport and use oxygen much more efficiently than the average person’s, and this, said Loengard, was a genetic gift that made him a very lucky individual. And that’s when Loengard began to talk to Moore about the military, specifically the SEALs. Ironically, the man had never been in the Navy himself, nor had any of his relatives. He simply admired and respected military personnel and their commitment to the country.

When Moore and his INDOC classmates weren’t in the pool, they were back to the beach, the surf, the grit in every orifice of his body. Even the high-pressure, ice-cold showers back at the barracks could not wash out all the sand. The Navy wanted him and the others to literally become one with the beach and the Pacific.

With Carmichael always at his side, they would lie on their backs, legs out, toes pointed, and perform dozens of flutter kicks without allowing their feet to touch the beach. The goal was to move their legs up and down about eight to twelve inches. Everything they did as SEALs would require strong abdominal muscles, and Killian, along with his fellow instructors, had an obsessive-compulsive fascination with exercises like the flutter kick that turned Moore’s abs into rails of steel. He continued to work on his upper body as well, because Killian kept warning him about week number two, but he wouldn’t say what they’d face.

By the end of the first week, sixteen guys had already dropped from the class. They seemed to have just packed their bags in the middle of the night and left. Moore and Carmichael had not seen them and barely discussed the DORs in an effort to remain strong and positive.

It was 0500 on the first day of the second week that class 198 bade a resigned hello to the O-course, or obstacle course, a gauntlet through hell designed by evil-minded men to welcome others into their most private and elite club.

Twenty obstacles labeled with signs had been erected on the beach, and as Moore’s gaze panned over them, each contraption appeared more complicated and challenging than the last. Killian approached Moore and Carmichael. “You gentlemen have twelve minutes to get through my O-course.”

“Hooyah!” they cried. Moore took off in the lead, running toward the first obstacle, the parallel bars. He hoisted himself up and used his hands to walk across the steel, his shoulders and triceps on fire by the time he hit the sand on the other side. Already out of breath, he made a quick right turn, lifted his arms over his head, and hopped his way through the truck tires (about five wide, ten deep) and toward the low wall. There were two ascending stumps he used — right foot, left foot — then with a groan he launched himself onto the top of the wooden wall and swung himself over the side, hitting the sand much harder than he’d thought he would. With his ankle stinging, he jogged over to the high wall, maybe twelve feet, but it could have been fifty at this point. He seized one of the ropes and began to haul himself up, the rope digging sharply into his palms.

At the course’s start, Killian was barking orders and/or corrections, but it was hard to hear him. Moore’s breath and drumming heart led him over to the concertina wire lying across a series of logs, beneath which were two long furrows. He plunged into the first ditch on his left and crawled on his hands and knees beneath the wire. For just a second he thought his shirt had caught on one of the barbs, but it was just hung up on the wood. With a sigh of relief, he finished breaching the obstacle, got to his feet, and muttered an Oh, shit.

The cargo net was fastened between two poles that rose to at least forty feet. Moore immediately determined that the net would be more stable near the pole, as opposed to in the middle, so he mounted it near the pole and began his rapid ascent.

“You got it, buddy,” Carmichael said, coming up just behind him.

Looking down was a mistake, as he realized there were no safety measures, and as he came over the top, he began to grow dizzy. He couldn’t wait to get to the bottom, and he began to rush down the net. And that’s when he missed a rung, slipped, and plunged a half-dozen feet until he miraculously caught hold and broke his descent. The entire class had gasped at that, then hooyahed as he recovered and reached the bottom.

He and Carmichael charged doggedly toward the next bit of fun, the balance logs. The name said it all. If they fell off, Killian would make them work off the mistake in push-ups. Moore tensed and glided across the first log, made a short left turn, then headed back on a straight course down the next one, dumbfounded that he didn’t actually fall. Carmichael was right on his heels as they hit the hooyah logs, an obstacle made of six logs stacked and bound in a pyramid. With palms clasped behind their heads, they ran up and over the pyramid, then crossed over to the transfer rope. At this point, Moore’s cardio endurance was still holding up strong, but Carmichael’s breath was nearly gone, his heart rate clearly in the red zone.

“We got this; come on,” he urged his buddy, then took up the first rope, climbed about six feet, then swung over, caught a metal rung with one hand, released the first rope, and then swung himself again to transfer to the second rope. Down he went. Carmichael took an extra swing to reach the rung, but he made it nonetheless.

The next challenge was referred to by the sign as the Dirty Name, and one look at it told Moore why: It comprised three n-shaped structures made of logs, two shorter n’s sitting side by side so that two lines of candidates could tackle the obstacle at the same time. The longer, taller n-shaped barrier stood in the back. Moore ran to the log seated before the n, leapt onto the first log, and pulled himself up. Then he stood on that one and leapt across to the taller one to repeat the process, swinging around by hooking his legs over the log. The impact on the second log made him utter the notorious dirty name, as did the impact as he hit the dirt.

Another pyramid of hooyah logs waited for him, this one built with ten logs instead of six — steeper and taller. As he came over the top, his boot gave way, and he crashed face-first into the dirt. Before he knew what was happening, he was being hauled to his feet.

Carmichael, bug-eyed, screamed in his face, “Let’s go!” Then turned and ran.

Moore set off after him.

What resembled a pair of giant ladders lying at forty-five-degree angles stood in their way. Killian was shouting at them, “This is the Weaver! You weave in and out of the poles!” Moore clung to the first pole, hurled himself around, swung onto the next, and continued the process, like a needle and thread, sewing himself up and down through the poles, growing dizzy as he did so. Carmichael worked the obstacle beside him and was down the forty-five-degree backside a few seconds before he was.

The rope bridge, better known as the Burma Bridge, was a single piece of thick rope on the bottom, with support lines attached to form a v-shape. Carmichael had already climbed to the top of the bridge and was out on the rope. Moore took his first step on the single piece of braided line and realized the best place to step was on the sections where the support lines were tied. He moved from knot to knot, the bridge swinging as Carmichael finished his crossing and Moore came up behind him. By the time he reached the end, he’d felt a sense of rhythm that he vowed not to forget for the next time he hit the obstacle.

He and Carmichael ascended one more ten-log pyramid of hooyah logs, then approached the towering platform of the Slide for Life, a four-story affair that had them swinging up onto each platform (no ropes or use of the ladder) until they reached the top. There were two ways to take the obstacle: go to the top and then work your way down the ropes strung at about forty-five-degree angles from there, or simply go to the first platform and work the low ropes, which Killian was saying would burn the forearms but was less dangerous. First time around, though, he wanted them to go to the very top. Once there, Carmichael grabbed the left rope and Moore grasped the right. He leaned forward, hooked his right leg back over the line, and then, with the rope between his legs, he slid down face-forward, using both hands to draw himself across the line. He wasn’t even halfway down when all points making contact with the rope began to burn. He beat Carmichael to the bottom, hit the ground, gaining about two seconds on his buddy, then launched himself toward the rope swing that would take him to a log cross, a set of monkey bars, and then one more beam. He seized the rope, hauled himself forward, and missed the log. Carmichael, on the other hand, ran past the rope, grabbed it, then pendulumed himself easily onto the log. Moore did likewise on his second attempt, but now Carmichael was back in the lead.

After navigating a second bed of tires, they reached a five-foot-tall incline wall they hit from the back side and slid down the front. That led them to the Spider Wall, which was about eighteen feet high, with pieces of wood bolted onto its side in two stair-step patterns to form a very narrow ladder. It was all fingertips and toes moving along the stairs to reach the top; then Moore had to shift down sideways, all the while clinging closely to the wall like a spider. With hands still burning from the rope slide, Moore lost his grip on the very last step but hopped off the wall before he fell.

Meanwhile, Carmichael’s boot caught one of the wooden steps at a bad angle. He fell and had to start over, losing precious time.

With only a single obstacle and sprint left, Moore dashed on toward the set of five logs lying on their sides and suspended to about hip height. The logs were spaced about six feet apart, and the entire contraption was called the Vault.

“Don’t let your legs touch!” Killian warned them. “Only hands!”

Well, that drew a few inward curses as he slapped his palms on the first log and hauled his leg over. Again. And again. Carmichael was just behind him. Moore slipped on the very last log and banged his knee hard. He went down, groaning in pain. Carmichael arrived, dragged him back to his feet, grabbed Moore’s arm, and threw it over his shoulder. Together, they finished the sprint (more a fast limping march) to the end.

“You, Carmichael, did the right thing,” said Killian. “I saw you guys racing, but you did not leave your swim buddy behind. Not a bad first time.” He regarded Moore with a frown. “How’s the leg?”

The leg was beginning to swell like a grapefruit. Moore ignored the pain and shouted, “The leg is fine, Instructor Killian!”

“Good, get down to the beach and get wet!”

The O-course was just one of many more evolutions they faced, and even when they weren’t training and simply trying to get their barracks ready for inspection, the instructors would come in and tear apart their rooms, testing to see how they handled the setbacks. Moore hung on through it all, through the final part of INDOC, where they trained with their IBSs (Inflatable Boat, Small). The boats were thirteen feet long and weighed about 180 pounds. Working in seven-man boat teams, the crews learned how to paddle, how to “dump” the boat by flipping it over, and how to carry the heavy bitch on their heads. They were told that once they were in BUD/S, they went everywhere with their boat. They engaged in a series of races, and even did push-ups with their boots up on the rubber gunwales. Carmichael, despite being somewhat lanky, was a remarkable paddler, and with his help, their crew often won races. Winners got to rest. Losers dropped to the beach for push-ups. All of them were taught how to read the surf and when to make a mad dash into it so they could get their boat past the breakers before it capsized.

By the end of the second week, twenty-seven men from Moore’s class had dropped. They were good men who’d chosen something else. That’s what Killian told them in a warning tone that implied the DORs were not to be mocked.

But the fact remained that they would not receive their Naval Special Warfare Classification (NEC) Code, a great honor but proof positive that an operator had survived the ultimate test of one’s physical and mental motivation. A sign at the center reminded them all of the SEALs’ motto: “The Only Easy Day Was Yesterday.”

At their final briefing of INDOC, Killian gave Moore a firm handshake and said, “You got a lot of talent. I want you to make a name for yourself. And don’t you forget — you’re one of my recruits. Do me proud.”

“Hooyah!”

Moore and Carmichael sang to themselves while they moved their gear into the Naval Special Warfare barracks. They weren’t visitors anymore. They were real candidates.

The jubilation didn’t last long.

Thirty-one guys dropped in the first hour of BUD/S. They rang the bell outside the CO’s office, then placed their green helmets with white class number in a neat row outside his door.

In that initial hour, the instructors had wrought sheer chaos on the group with repeated wet and sandy evolutions, followed by huge workouts on the grinder, followed by men throwing themselves into rubber boats filled with ice water. Guys were shaking, crying, suffering hypothermia, passing out.

The instructors were just getting started.

Four-mile runs on the beach were frequent and brutal. Seven-man teams were introduced to the new evolution of log PT. The eight-foot-long log weighed about 160 pounds, but some logs were a little lighter, some a lot heavier. Teams were stuck with the one they could grab first. They dragged the log into the surf, got it wet and sandy, carried it around, marched miles with it, and all the while they were being checked, scolded, and harassed by their instructors, especially the shorter guys, who could more easily dump their load on the taller ones. Moore and Carmichael hung on and were even able to keep their log from falling when, during one evolution, the man at the back of their team had lost his balance and fallen into the surf.

Nine more men dropped by the end of the first week. Class 198 had 56. The line of helmets outside the CO’s door had grown at an alarming rate, and Moore gazed on it every day with equal parts determination and foreboding.

It was during breakfast at the end of the first week that Carmichael said something that resonated deeply within Moore: “Those guys that dropped? I think I know what tipped them over the edge.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, one minute they’re in it, hard-core, the next they’re out. Like McAllen, for example. Good guy. No way would he drop. He had no intention of quitting, and then the next minute he’s running up the beach to ring the bell.”

“So you know why he quit?” Moore asked, with a dubious look.

Carmichael nodded. “I know why they all quit — because they didn’t take it one hour, one evolution at a time. They started thinking too much about the future and how many more days they had to suffer, and that drove them over the edge.”

Moore sighed. “You could be right.”

During week three the class was introduced to rock portage, an evolution that had them landing their inflatable boats on an outcropping of rocks. The surf was beating down on the stones like a heavy-metal drummer, the spray shooting into their eyes, as Carmichael got out with the painter tied around his waist. He got up on the rocks, found good purchase with his boots, then leaned forward to be sure the boat didn’t slip back into the ocean. It was Moore’s job to grab the team’s paddles, jump out, swim onto the rocks, climb out of the surf, and store their paddles on dry ground. After he’d climbed out, the others followed, each man trying to haul himself out of the rising and falling water, waves slapping at their faces.

Then Carmichael shouted that he was moving up, and Moore raced back to help him guide the boat up and over the rocks, as the others finally came out of the surf to assist.

When they were finished, they all stood there up on the outcropping, gasping for breath, the wind whipping the seawater from their faces as their instructor shook his head and shouted, “Way too slow!”

Fourth-week assessment was a painful time for both the men and the instructors. Guys who’d stuck it out, tried their best, would not drop, ever, had to be cut from the class because they simply lacked some of the physical qualifications necessary: the stamina, endurance, times on the O-course, and so on. These were men who truly had the hearts and souls of Navy SEALs, but their bodies could not carry the burdens of the position.

Moore and his swim buddy Carmichael survived those fourth-week tests and were preparing themselves for the notorious, the legendary, the dreaded Hell Week, five and one-half days of continuous training evolutions, during which time they were allowed a total of only four hours sleep. Not four hours of sleep per day but four hours of sleep over the entire five days. Moore wasn’t even sure that the human body could remain awake for that long, but he’d been assured by his proctor and instructors that “most” of them would manage.

Moore was chosen as a team leader for his continued and exemplary prowess in the water and during the runs. He’d already proven he could hold his breath longer than anyone else in his class, could swim harder and run faster. On the Sunday afternoon before Hell Week was to begin, they all waited inside one of the classrooms, locked down. They were fed pizza and pasta, hamburgers and hot dogs, Cokes. They watched some old Steven Seagal films on videotape and tried to relax.

At about 2300 someone kicked in the classroom door, the lights went off, and gunfire popped and banged everywhere. The “breakout” had begun — simulated combat chaos. Moore hit the deck, trying to convince himself that despite the racket, those men were firing blanks. One instructor had a fifty-caliber machine gun, and the weapon was thundering so loudly that Moore could barely hear a second instructor yelling, “Hear the whistle? Hear the whistle? Crawl toward the whistle!” He and Carmichael did, making it out of the room and out onto the grinder, where they were hit with fire hoses for fifteen minutes and given no orders. All they could do was raise their hands to shield their eyes and try to run out of the blast. Finally they were ordered down to the surf. Instructors continued firing guns, and Moore saw that there must have been more than two dozen instructors brought in to help challenge them for Hell Week.

You must have a never-quit attitude, he told himself. Never quit.

The evolutions came fast and furious: workouts in the surf followed by log PT, and they were even tasked with carrying their boat as a team across the O-course. They faced repeated drills of rock portage, followed by carrying their boats to chow after nearly ten hours of hard work on the very first day.

Because they were too excited to sleep the day before, and they had trained throughout the night, by morning of the first day sleep deprivation was already taking its toll. Moore’s brain had become fuzzy. He’d call out for Instructor Killian, and Carmichael would remind him that they weren’t in INDOC anymore, that this was the real deal, it’s Hell Week. They were all heavy-eyed, saying things that made no sense, having weird conversations with ghosts in their heads.

This was a major problem, especially for team leaders who had to pay close attention to their instructors — because the instructors would deliberately leave out directions for a task to see if team leaders were still on the ball. If team leaders caught the error and brought it to the attention of their instructors, their team’s task could become much easier — or they might even be allowed to skip the task altogether.

But Moore had been too exhausted, ready to pass out, and certainly not ready to carry a heavy log with the rest of his team.

“Grab your logs and get ready!” came the order.

Most of the men rushed back to their logs, but several team leaders remained behind. Moore was not one of them. Over his shoulder, he heard one of the other team leaders say, “Instructor, don’t you mean you want us to grab our logs and get them wet and sandy?”

“Yes, I do! Your team sits this one out.”

Moore’s shoulders sank. He’d screwed up, and the entire team would pay for his mistake.

That evening, during a rare one hour and forty-five minutes of rest, Moore draped an arm over his eyes. Carmichael had been right. Moore couldn’t stop thinking about all the pain and suffering to come and the pressure of being responsible for the others. They’d given him a leadership position, and he’d failed.

“Hey, bro,” came a voice from the darkness.

He removed his arm and saw Carmichael leaning over him. “You fucked up. So what.”

“You were right. I’m ready to quit.”

“No, you’re not.”

“I failed. Let me quit now so I don’t drag down the rest of the team. I’m making it harder for all of us.”

“Maybe we needed to carry the log.”

“Yeah, right.”

Carmichael’s eyes grew wider. “Here’s the deal. Our training will be even harder than everyone else’s. When we get through this, we got bragging rights to say we took on every challenge, and we did ’em the hardest way possible. We weren’t looking for the easy way out. We’re the best team.”

“They haven’t said it, but I know the other guys are blaming me for this.”

“I talked to them. They’re not. They’re as strung-out as you are. We’re all zombies, man, so get over it.”

Moore lay there, just breathing a moment, then said, “I don’t know.”

“Listen to me. You keep paying attention — but even if the instructor leaves out an order, don’t say anything.”

Moore shivered. “You’re crazy, man. We won’t survive.”

And Moore wasn’t kidding. It was the end of the first day of training, and more than half the guys were gone.

Carmichael’s voice grew more stern. “We’ll make a bold statement. A few weeks ago they asked us to commit to the warrior’s life. You remember that?”

“Yeah.”

“We came to fight. And we’re going to show them how hard we can fight. Are you with me?”

Moore bit his lip.

“Don’t you remember the quote they told us? We can only be beaten in two ways: We either die or we give up. And we’re not giving up.”

“Okay.”

“Then let’s do this!”

Moore balled his hands into fists and sat up in his bunk. He looked at Carmichael, whose bloodshot eyes, battered and sunburned face, blistered hands, and scab-covered head mirrored his own. However, Carmichael still had a fire in those eyes, and Moore decided right then and there that his swim buddy was right, had always been right. One evolution at a time. No easy way out. No easy day.

Moore took a long breath. “I screwed up. It doesn’t matter. We’re not taking the breaks. We’re kicking ass and taking names. Let’s rock-and-roll.”

And by God they did, crawling under barbed wire on the O-course with simulated charges going off and smoke pouring in from everywhere.

Covered in mud, his heart filled with sheer terror, Moore talked himself through it. He would not give up.

Then the time came when the instructor left out a command prior to one of their four-mile runs. The other team leaders caught it.

“Missed it again, Moore?” cried the instructor.

“No, I did not!”

“Then why didn’t you say anything?”

“Because this team is not looking for a free pass! This team came here to fight harder than any other team! This team has the heart to do so!”

“Dear God, son, that’s impressive. That takes courage. You’ve just doomed your entire team.”

“No, Master Chief, I have not!”

“Then go show me!”

They charged off with their team. It was the fifth day of Hell Week, the last, and they were running on four hours of sleep, running on a sense of sheer willpower none of them knew they possessed until now.

In fact, the intestinal fortitude displayed by Moore and his team was awe-inspiring, he later heard. They powered their way through more runs, rock portages at night, an “around the world” paddle covering the north end of the island and then back to San Diego Bay and the amphibious base. They cast themselves into the scummy muck of the demo pits and clawed their way out, looking like brown mannequins with flashing eyes.

“In the unlikely event you actually make it through the next two days, there will be a nice meal waiting for you,” shouted one of the instructors.

“We got one day left!” cried Moore.

“No, you’ve got two.”

The instructors were lying to them, messing with their minds, but Moore didn’t care.

They were held in the freezing-cold surf until they were mere minutes away from hypothermia. They were pulled out, given warm soup, then tossed back in. Guys passed out, were revived, and returned to the water. Moore and Carmichael did not falter.

When the final hour arrived, when Moore and Carmichael and their classmates felt as close to death as ever, they were ordered to haul themselves from the Pacific and roll themselves in the sand. Then came a cry from their proctor to gather around. And once they were huddled up, he nodded slowly.

“Everyone, look around the beach! Look to your left. Look to your right. You are class 198. You are the warriors who’ve survived because of your teamwork. For class 198, Hell Week is secured!”

Moore and Carmichael fell to their knees, both teary-eyed, and Moore had never felt more exhausted, more emotionally overwhelmed, in his life. The hooting, hollering, and hooyahing that came from just twenty-six men sounded like a hundred thousand Romans ready to attack.

“Frank, buddy, I owe you big-time.”

Carmichael choked up. “You owe me nothing.”

They burst out laughing, and the joy, the pure unadulterated joy that he’d actually made it, swelled in Moore’s heart and sent chills rushing up his back. He thought he might collapse as the world tipped on its axis, but that was only Carmichael helping him to his feet.

Later, Moore became class 198’s Honor Man because of his ability to inspire his classmates to keep on going when they were ready to quit. Carmichael had taught him how to do that, and when he told his swim buddy that it was he who should’ve been named Honor Man, Carmichael just smiled. “You’re the toughest guy here. Watching you got me through it.”