SEAL of God by Chad Williams David Thomas

Author:Chad Williams David Thomas
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 8

Answering the Bell

You saw me before I was born. Every day of my life was recorded in your book. Every moment was laid out before a single day had passed.

PSALM 139:16

There is no greater feeling of relief for a SEAL trainee than to see Hell Week in the rearview mirror. But even after the completion of our Hell Week, we were nowhere near the end of our training. We weren’t even halfway through First Phase of BUD/S—with two more phases after that. Over the next five-plus months of training, we would lose nearly half of the twenty-some men who had made it through Hell Week.

For me, the next big challenge after Hell Week involved a bell—but not the quitting bell. It took every ounce of determination I could muster to answer the Monday morning bell that signaled us to resume training.

My spirit was totally willing. But my flesh could barely move.

Talk among SEAL circles is that Hell Week takes five years off your life. They also say your body needs a full year to recover completely. I believe that. I had problems with my toes and parts of my feet—mostly numbness—that lasted through the end of Second Phase.

Each class has individuals who are unable to continue after Hell Week because of injuries. Although medical personnel stay busy during the first weeks of BUD/S and Hell Week, many injuries go unreported. Some are relatively minor, like my shin splints, but some determined trainees have been known to keep going despite serious sprains, stress fractures, or even broken bones.

To go to a doctor to have an injury evaluated is to potentially take your SEAL future out of your control. If a doctor pulls you out before or during Hell Week, you might have lost your only chance to become a SEAL. But once you’ve proved you can make it through Hell Week—especially if you continued despite an injury—the Navy has good reason to put you through the rest of the SEAL training, even if you’re temporarily unable to continue.

Because of that, it’s common for injured trainees to be rolled out of their SEAL class after Hell Week so they can heal and then rejoin BUD/S with a future class. That happened with several members of our class. Likewise, a handful of trainees from previous classes were rolled in to join us after Hell Week. Even more would join us later, especially once we reached Second Phase.

I came close to not being able to continue with our class. The Monday morning after Hell Week, every part of my body was in agony—except for the toes and parts of my feet that I couldn’t feel. Of course, I was more concerned about what I couldn’t feel in my feet than about what I could feel from my ankles up.

The first week of conditioning after Hell Week is called Walk Week because walking is about all anyone can do. I could hardly even keep up with that. On top of the pain, I was

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