That World War I English poet and serving soldier Rupert Brooke understood the Brits do not traditionally bring home their war dead. And he expressed it right: “If I should die, think only this of me: / That there’s some corner of a foreign field / That is forever England.” There’s not a Navy SEAL anywhere in the world who does not understand those lines and why Brooke wrote them.

It’s a sacred promise to us from our high command. That’s why it gets drummed into us from the very first day in Coro-nado — you are not going to be alone. Ever. And you’re not going to leave your swim buddy alone.

I suffered a minor setback in the early part of that summer when I was in Class 226. I managed to fall from about fifty feet up a climbing rope and really hurt my thigh. The instructor rushed up to me and demanded, “You want to quit?”

“Negative,” I responded.

“Then get right back up there,” he said. I climbed again, fell again, but somehow I kept going. The leg hurt like hell, but I kept training for another couple of weeks before the medics diagnosed a cracked femur! I was immediately on crutches but still hobbling along the beach and into the surf with the rest of them. Battle conditions, right?

Eventually, when the leg healed, I was put back and then joined BUD/S Class 228 in December for phase two. We lived in a small barracks right behind the BUD/S grinder. That’s the blacktop square where a succession of SEAL instructors have laid waste to thousands of hopes and dreams and driven men to within an inch of their lives.

Those instructors have watched men drop, watched them fail, watched them quit, and watched them quietly, with ice-cold, expressionless faces. That’s not heartless; it’s because they were only interested in the others, the ones who did not crack or quit. The ones who would rather die than quit. The ones with no quit in them.

It was only the first day of Indoc, and my little room was positioned right next to the showers. Showers, by the way, is a word so polite it’s damn near a euphemism. They were showers, okay, but not in the accepted, civilized sense. They were a whole lot closer to a goddamn car wash and were known as the decontamination unit. Someone cranked ’em up at around 0400, and the howl of compressed air and freezing cold pressurized water forcing its way through those pipes sounded like someone was trying to strangle a steam engine.

Jesus. First time I heard it, I thought we were under attack.

But I knew the drill: get into my canvas UDT swim trunks and then get under those ice-cold water jets. The shock was unbelievable, and to a man we hated it, and we hated it for as long as we were forced through it. The damn thing was actually designed to power wash our sand-covered gear when we returned from the beach. The shock was reduced somewhat then because everyone had just been in the Pacific Ocean. But right out of bed at four o’clock in the morning! Wow! That was beyond reason, and I can still hear the sound of those screaming, hissing water pipes.

Freezing cold and wet, we reported to the training pool to roll and stow the covers. Then, shortly before 0500, in the pitch dark, we lined up on the grinder and sat in rows, chest to back, very close, to conserve body heat. There were supposed to be 180 of us, but for various reasons there were only 164 of us assigned.

We had a class leader by now, Lieutenant David Ismay, a Naval Academy man and former Rhodes Scholar who’d had two years at sea and was now a qualified surface warfare officer. David was desperate to achieve his lifelong dream of becoming a SEAL. He had to do this right. Officers only got one shot at BUD/S. They were supposed to know better than to waste anyone’s time if they weren’t up to it.

The man we all awaited was our proctor. That’s the instructor assigned to guide us, teach us, torture us, observe us, and get rid of us, if necessary. He was Instructor Reno Alberto, a five-foot-six man-mountain of fitness, discipline, and intelligence. He was a ruthless, cruel, unrelenting taskmaster. And we all grew to love him for two reasons. He was scrupulously fair, and he wanted the best for us. You put out for Instructor Reno, he was just a super guy. You failed to give him your absolute best, he’d have you out of there and back to the fleet before you could say, “Aye, aye, sir.”

He arrived at 0500 sharp. And we’d have a ritual which was never broken. This was how it went:

“Feet!” shouted the class leader.

“Feet!” An echoing roar ripped into the still night air as nearly 164 of us responded and jumped to our feet, attempting to move into ranks.

“Instructor Ree-no!” called the class leader.

“Hooyah, Instructor Ree-no!” we bellowed as one voice.

Get used to that: hooyah. We don’t say yes, or right away, or thanks a lot, or understand and will comply. We say hooyah. It’s a BUD/S thing, and its origins are lost in antiquity. There’s so many explanations, I won’t even go there. Just so you know, that’s how students respond to an instructor, in greeting or command acceptance. Hooyah.

For some reason, Instructor Reno was the only one who was unfailingly addressed by his first name. All the others were Instructor Peterson or Matthews or Henderson. Only Reno Alberto insisted on being called by his first name. I always thought it was good they didn’t call him Fred or Spike. Reno sounded good on him.

When he walked onto the grinder that morning, we could tell we were in the presence of a major man. As I mentioned, it was pitch dark and he was wearing sunglasses, wraparound, shiny black. It seemed he never took them off, night or day. Actually, one time I did catch him without them, and as soon as he saw me, he reached into his pocket and immediately put ’em on again.

I think it was because he never wanted us to see the expression in his eyes. Beneath that stern, relentless exterior, he was a superintelligent man — and he could not have failed to be amused at the daily Attila the Hun act he put on for us. But he never wanted us to see the amusement in his eyes, and that was why he never showed them.

On this dark, slightly misty morning he stood with his arms folded and gazed at the training pool. Then he turned back to us and stared hard.

We had no idea what to expect. And Instructor Reno said without expression, “Drop.”

“Drop!” we roared back. And we all struggled down to the concrete and assumed a position for push-ups, arms extended, bodies outstretched, rigid.

“Push ’em out,” said Reno.

“Push-ups,” snapped the class leader.

“Push-ups,” we responded.

“Down.”

“One.”

“Down.”

“Two.”

We counted out every one of the twenty push-ups in the set then returned to the rest position, arms outstretched. The class leader called out, “Instructor Ree-no.”

“Hooyah, Instructor Ree-no,” we roared.

He ignored us. Then said quietly, “Push ’em out.” As he did twice more, at which point he left us with muscles on fire in the straight-arm, outstretched rest position. He actually left us there for almost five minutes, and everyone’s arms were throbbing. Eighty push-ups and now this new kind of agony, which ended only when he said, very slowly, very quietly, “Recover.”

We all yelled, “Feet!” in response, and somehow we stood up without falling over. Then David Ismay called out the wrong number of men present. Not his fault. Someone had simply vanished. Reno was onto young Dave in a flash. I don’t quite remember what he said, but his phrase contained the loud pronunciation of the word wrong.

And he ordered Lieutenant Ismay and our leading petty officer student, “Drop, and push ’em out.” I remember that first day like it happened this week. We sat and watched Dave complete his push-ups. And when they’d done it, damn near exhausted, they called out, “Hooyah, Instructor Reno!”