It’s Sink or Swim : Hurting and Exhausted to Extreme, Navy SEAL Recruits Battle to Finish Course

On the third morning of Hell Week, the class of SEAL recruits paddled their rubber dinghies 15 miles. After breakfast, the men swam 400 yards in their uniforms and boots and ran eight miles in the deep sand. Mark Kaldi, a 23-year-old seaman, fainted during the run.

“You quit while you passed out,” a SEAL instructor told Kaldi, whose face was green. “You know why you passed out? Not enough exercise.”

Kaldi stared at him blankly and swayed slightly as if he might faint again. The instructors ordered the 54 men to line up again in the sand. “They think they are going to run again,” an instructor confided.

But Kaldi didn’t line up, panicked at the thought of another run. His teammates clustered around him whispering encouragement. Kaldi shook his head. “If he is going to quit--it’ll be now,” an instructor said.

The whistle blew. Class 172 lined up, Kaldi among them.

“That man Kaldi just gained incredible self-confidence just by the fact that he went to the starting line,” the instructor said. They ended the bluff and marched Class 172 off for lunch.

During Hell Week, the most intense period of training to become a Navy SEAL (sea-air-land commando), men undergo not only physical but mental stress. For the first two days of Hell Week, trainees had been tossing and kicking 250-pound logs, shoulder-pressing 180-pound boats, swimming, running, and crawling. Except for four one-hour meals a day, the men were almost constantly exercising.

By mid-week instructors began an almost diabolical mental assault on their exhausted charges, who had slept less than one hour in three days.

With so little sleep, hallucinations are common. During the dinghy ride, one man insisted that a wall was rising out of the ocean. Another thought a battleship was following his boat.

Second-class petty officer Kenneth Graham, a 22-year-old St. Louis native, said he fell asleep and tumbled into the water during the 15-mile paddle. Engineman apprentice Tim Speer, a 21-year-old Springhill, Fla., native, was luckier--he fell asleep and toppled into his boat.

“These sleep attacks really get to you,” Speer said later. “But we didn’t come here to go to our limit and stop--we came to go beyond. You start saying, ‘I am hurting, I am putting out as much as I can. I am at my limit.’ The instructors say you are not and you keep going.”

Hell Week, which hits during the sixth week of a 25-week training program, is likely to remove any man not absolutely certain about his commitment to become a SEAL.

“We are trying to train Mrs. Jones’ little boy for combat and train him so he comes home,” said Capt. Douglas Huth, commanding officer of the Naval Special Warfare Command here, where SEAL training is conducted.

As Class 172 went through Hell Week two weeks ago, Navy officials allowed The Times unusual access to the exercises and men involved.

At breakfast on Wednesday, the class was numb with exhaustion. The men struggled to keep their eyes open--a task which had become increasingly difficult. Several men slept standing as they waited to be served food.

“You look around and see people’s eyelids get heavy and you start to think about it,” said Lt. Anthony McKinney, a 25-year-old Newport, R.I., native. “Extreme pain is extremely good--it means you are really building your body up to be what they want you to be.”

McKinney, like many others, had hoped for several years that he would get the chance to become a SEAL. Because he had punctured a lung, as well as breaking his shoulder and three ribs in a car accident during his college freshman year, McKinney had to obtain a medical waiver to attend the SEAL program. “There’s no way I would quit,” he said.

The boat groups found shortcuts to make their work a little easier. One boat group arranged to have its boat repaired by a former student. This man repaired the floor board and fixed a nozzle that leaked.

“I kind of feel obligated to help,” said the seaman, who also gave them a cleaning kit. “I cheer them on.”

On the sly, one man popped tablets of ibuprofen, an over-the-counter pain reliever, and aspirin. Though he could have gotten these medications from the hospital corpsman, he preferred to sneak them so it would not be entered on his medical records. One boat group arranged to have other students supply a stash of such pills in a non-functioning light-switch plate in their barracks.

And they found other ways of working around instructors. When asked to lie in the surf, they linked arms and, as a group, they surreptitiously allowed the waves to push them closer to shore. Though none talked back to instructors, many cursed beneath their breath.

On Thursday, the men were zombies.

“You talk to them and there is no brain--you just keep them moving,” said a senior SEAL instructor. The pace of exercises slowed. The men didn’t trot but marched and stumbled. They cleaned their barracks, endured races in the sand, stretching exercises.

Doing somersault relay races on the beach, one man began to vomit in the sand. “Get in line. If you gotta puke, throw up on the guy in front of you,” an instructor yelled.

In the afternoon, they napped for 50 minutes. Starved for sleep, their bodies retaliated. Limbs swelled; fingers and joints puffed up. When they played water polo for two hours in a pool, sheets of dead skin floated off their feet.

Because of severely chafed groins and armpits, Class 172 has perfected the bow-legged “Hell Week walk.” They hobbled and many turned their toes out, Charlie Chaplin-style. With oozing sores in their armpits, they held their arms away from their sides.

“Everything is hurting. There is no degree of bad anymore,” said William (B.J.) Whitted, 28, a Virginia Beach, Va., resident, who went through Hell Week with a stress fracture in each leg. “They are going to get you wet and make you cold. It just doesn’t matter anymore.”

Whitted originally started with Class 171. But one day during training when he was carrying a man, he felt excruciating agony in his legs. Doctors diagnosed stress fractures and recommended he wait at least four months to allow his legs to recover. But Whitted decided to try again seven weeks later, this time with Class 172.

“It hurts. It hurts bad. Every step you take it’s like someone strikes your legs,” said Whitted, father of a 5-year-old girl and the most senior petty officer of the class. “They run you into the dirt. They beat the hell out of you. You have to want the program really bad.”

Many of the men considered dropping out.

“I wanted to quit. The saltwater was getting on my chafing and I wanted to quit,” said engineman fireman apprentice Phillip Beaumont, an 18-year-old Corbin, Ky., native. “I was ready to cry I hurt so bad.”

But Beaumont didn’t. The boat crews helped each other out. The stronger men shouldered the weaker ones. The limping ones leaned on others. Some, like corpsman Clint Livermore, said they cannot quit because they have hitched so much to the dream of being a frogman.

When Livermore quit his job as an engineer at Hughes Aircraft Co. and joined the SEAL program, a number of people were startled. It was a move that meant a loss of more than two-thirds of his annual $42,000 income. A 27-year-old Santa Maria, Calif., resident with a receding hair line, his classmates called him ‘old man.’

“Sitting at my desk, at my computer, I thought there has got to be more to life,” Livermore said.

At 9 p.m. Thursday, Livermore and the others had gotten less than two hours of sleep in the past four days. Wearing wet uniforms, they were ushered into a heated classroom where classical music played on a radio. The instructor welcomed them to the creative writing class. The men were stunned.

“You will not sleep--you will write,” he ordered. The assignments were surreal: Describe your last moments as a lobster placed in a pot of boiling water; being a drunk Viking at a party when a buddy makes a pass; being a fly partially destroyed by a poorly aimed blow from a swatter; and brushing your teeth only to be transported to another planet.

Classroom 122 steamed up. The heat was oppressive. The men tried desperately to stay awake and write. One by one, they keeled over and fell asleep at their desks. One by one, the instructors woke them and motioned them to silently leave the room. Finally, only two men remained: McKinney and Joseph Peters, an engineman. Before each, the instructor placed a signed form indicating that the man had quit--12 hours before Hell Week is over. Then they shook the two awake.

The men were devastated.

“I want to be here. This doesn’t make any sense. I didn’t quit,” McKinney protested.

He and Peters were shaking. They could not comprehend what had happened. The instructors allowed them to twist with their own uncertainty and confusion for 20 minutes. Then they were returned to class.

“It was kinda scary,” McKinney said. “But it was meant for me to make sure that no matter how stressful, I never let down my defenses--I agree with that.”

If McKinney were an instructor, would he try that on a trainee? “Yes,” he said, “it was a good trick.”

For six hours, finishing at 6 a.m. Friday, Class 172 was ordered on a meandering “treasure hunt.” Feebly, they put together clues and found instructors. Their pain and fatigue was almost palpable. After breakfast, seven of eight boat crews paddled three hours to a demolition pit. The other crew, which won the most points awarded for races, was allowed to shower and sleep.

“It pays to be a winner,” an instructor chided the remaining men. “Let’s see if you are in the proper frame of mind.”

He blew a whistle and the rest of Class 172 dropped to their bellies. As he walked, they crawled. With no warning, smoke bombs exploded. The men coughed and choked. Suddenly the air was filled with smoke; explosions rocked the pit and shook the ground. Class 172 began to curse. They crawled beneath a barbed wire-lattice, following the instructor into the thick of the explosions.

It lasted three hours.

During that time, Class 172 encountered another Hell Week tradition.

“Gentlemen, the dreaded crossing of the black pit!” barked one instructor, as he stood at the edge of a huge pit filled with sedentary water. One by one, the men attempted to cross the pit, holding ropes suspended at the ends. The ropes, however, were rocked by the instructors.

The losers were ordered to lie--belly down--in the rancid water. Only nine men crossed without tumbling. Clint Livermore, 27, was one of them.

Class 172 cheered him on. “Yeah, do it for the old guys!” they shouted.

The men were ordered into two opposing teams to knock one another off the ropes. For the first time in six days, the men disobeyed. “Teamwork! Teamwork!” they shouted, allowing one another to pass on the ropes.

Instructors ordered them to the surf. Some men carried others. And they hobbled down to the ocean. But as they lined up for more surf torture, the command’s executive officer Larry Simmons walked up.

Class 172 turned and stood at attention. Their colleagues from the winning boat crew arrived in a truck, they were dry and clean. They took their positions in line.

“Cowards never started,” Cmdr. Simmons said, addressing the line of men. “I’ve got some good news and some bad news. The mission ain’t over--hit the surf!”

Class 172, arm-in-arm, turned and plunged into the ocean.

“What can you tell me about pain?” Simmons asked.

“We love it! It feels extremely good,” Class 172 shouted.

“The mission is over!” Simmons announced.

Class 172 yelled. They raised their fists. Hugging one another, they jammed into a huddle. The men cried and dripped with sea water. For Class 172, Hell Week was over.

“I want to say you are a tough bunch of bastards,” Simmons told them. “I want to shake your hands and I want to serve with you.”

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