Free SEAL Team Six: Memoirs of an Elite Navy SEAL Sniper by Howard E. Wasdin, Stephen Templin Page A

like racehorses. What the hell am I doing here?
    The next day, Iron Man rang the bell. I couldn’t understand why.
    One of our first training evolutions included the obstacle course (O-course). One night a SEAL might have to exit a submerged submarine, hang on for dear life as his Zodiac jumps over waves, scale a cliff, hump through enemy territory to his objective, scale a three-story building, do his deed, and get the hell out. The O-course helps prepare a man for that kind of work. It has also broken more than one trainee’s neck or back—climbing over the top of the 60-foot cargo net is a bad time to lose arm strength. Much of our training was dangerous, and injuries were common.
    We lined up in alphabetical order by our last names. I stood near the end, watching everyone take off before me. When my turn came, I took off like a cruise missile. I couldn’t understand why I was passing so many people.
    Partway through, I ran to the bottom of a three-story tower. I jumped up and grabbed the ledge to the second floor, then swung my legs up. I jumped up and grabbed the ledge to the third floor, then swung my legs up. Then I came back down. As I moved on to more obstacles, I noticed someone stuck behind on the three-story tower. There stood Mike W., who had played football at the University of Alabama, tears of frustration streaming down his face because he couldn’t make it to the third floor.
    With a hint of Georgia in his accent, Instructor Stoneclam yelled, “You can run up and down a college football field, but you can’t get up to the top of one obstacle. You sissy!”
    I wondered what the hell was wrong with Mike W. He was in way better shape than I was. Wasn’t he? (Mike would severely injure his back, but Captain Bailey kept him around doing therapy for almost a year. Later, he became an outstanding SEAL officer.)
    A number of the racehorses were the biggest crybabies. They’d probably been number one much of their lives, and now when they had their first taste of adversity—BUD/S style—they couldn’t handle it.
    What the hell is wrong with these prima donnas?
    Although running and swimming came hard for me, the obstacle course turned out to be one of my favorite events. Bobby H. and I were always pushing each other out of the number one ranking. Instructor Stoneclam advised a student, “Look how Wasdin attacks the obstacles.”
    I’d rather be doing this than picking watermelons.
    *   *   *
     
    Danger had become a constant companion. Danger or no danger, one of our instructors always spoke in the same monotone. In a classroom at the Naval Special Warfare Center, Instructor Blah’s jungle boot stepped on a 13-foot-long black rubber boat resting on the floor in front of my class. “Today, I’m going to brief you on surf passage. This is the IBS. Some people call it the Itty-Bitty Ship, and you’ll probably have your own pet names to give it, but the navy calls it the Inflatable Boat, Small. You will man it with six to eight men who are about the same height. These men will be your boat crew.”
    He drew a primitive picture on the board of the beach, ocean, and stick men scattered around the IBS. He pointed to the stick men scattered in the ocean. “This is you guys after a wave has just wiped you out.”
    He drew a stick man on the beach. “This is one of you after the ocean spit you out. And guess what? The next thing the ocean is going to spit out is the boat.”
    Instructor Blah used his eraser like a boat. “Now the hundred-and-seventy-pound IBS is full of water and weighs about as much as a small car, and it’s coming right at you here on the beach. What are you going to do? If you’re standing in the road, and a small car comes speeding at you, what are you going to do? Try to outrun it? Of course not. You’re going to get out of the road. Same thing when the boat comes speeding at you. You’re going to get out of the path it’s traveling. Run parallel to the beach.
    “Some of you