This was Captain Maguire, a man who would one day serve as deputy commander of the U.S. Special Operations in Pacific Command (COMPAC). With his twin-eagles insignia glinting on his collar, Captain Maguire instilled in us the knowledge of what really counted.

I stood there reflecting for a few moments, and then the roof fell in. One of the instructors was up and yelling. “Drop!” he shouted and proceeded to lay into us for the sins of one man.

“I saw one of you nodding off, right here in the middle of the captain’s briefing. How dare you! How dare you fall asleep in the presence of a man of that caliber? You guys are going to pay for this. Now push ’em out!”

He drilled us, gave us probably a hundred push-ups and sit-ups, and he drove us up and down the big sand dune in front of the compound. He raved at us because our times over the O-course were down, which was mostly due to the fact that we were paralyzed with tiredness before we got there.

And so it went on, all week. There was a swim across the bay, one mile with a guy of comparable swimming ability. There were evolutions in the pool, in masks, wearing flippers and without. There was one where we had to lie on our backs, masks full of water, flippers on, trying to do flutter kicks with our heads out over the water. This was murder. So was the log PT and our four-mile runs. The surf work in the boats was also a strength-sapping experience, running the boats out through the waves, dumping boat, righting boat, paddling in, backward, forward, boat being dragged, boat on our heads.

It never ended, and by the close of that first week we had lost more than twenty men, one of them in tears because he could not go on. His hopes, his dreams, even his intentions had been dashed to bits on that Coronado beach.

That was more than sixty rings on the big bell right outside the office door. And every time we heard it, without exception, we knew we’d lost an essentially good guy. There weren’t any bad guys who made it through Indoc. And as the days wore on and we heard that bell over and over, it became a very melancholy sound.

Could I be standing there outside the office door, a broken man, a few days from now? It was not impossible, because many of these men had had no intention of quitting a few hours or even minutes before they did. Something just gave way deep inside them. They could no longer go on, and they had no idea why.

Ask not for whom the bell tolls, Marcus. Because the son-ofabitch might toll for thee. Or for any one of the sixty-odd others still standing after the brutal reality of week one, first phase. Every time we crossed the grinder, we could see the evidence right there before our eyes, a total of twenty helmets on the ground, lined up next to the bell. Each one of those helmets had been owned by a friend, or an acquaintance, or even a rival, but a guy whom we had suffered alongside.

That line of lonely hard hats was a stark reminder not only of what this place could do to a man but also of the special private glory it could bestow on those who would not give in. It drove me onward. Every time I looked at that line, I gritted my teeth and put some extra purpose into my stride. I still felt the same as I had on my very first day. I’d rather die than surrender.

The third week of first phase brought us into a new aspect of BUD/S training, called rock portage. This was dangerous and difficult, but basically we had to paddle the IBS along to an outcrop of rocks opposite the world-famous Hotel del Coronado and land it there. I don’t mean moor it, I mean land it, get it up there on dry land with the surf crashing all around you, the ocean swell trying to suck that boat right back out again.

I had to figure pretty big in this because of my size and ability to heave. But none of my crew was quite ready for this desperate test. It was something we just had to learn how to do. And so we went at it, paddling hard in from the sea, driving into those huge rocks, straight into waves which were breaking every which way.

The bow of our boat slammed into the rocks, and the bowline man, not me, jumped forward and hung on, making the painter firm around his waist. His job was to get secure and then act like a human capstan and stop the boat being swept backward. Our man was pretty sharp; he jammed himself between a couple of big boulders and yelled back to us, “Bowline man secure!”

We repeated his call just so everyone knew where they were. But the boat was now jammed bow-on against the rocks. It had no rhythm with the waves and was vulnerable to every swell that broke over the stern. In this static position, it cannot ride with the waves.

Our crew leader’s cries of “Water!” were little help. The surf was crashing straight at us and then through the boat and up and over the rocks. We had on our life jackets, but the smallest man among us had to hop over the bow, carry out all of the paddles, and get them safely onto dry ground.

Then we all had to disembark, one by one, clambering onto the rocks, with the poor old bowline man hanging on for his life, jammed between the rocks with the boat still lashed to his torso. By now we were all on the rope, trying to grab the handles, but the bowline man had to move first, heading upward into a new position, with us now taking the weight.

He set off. Bowline man moving! I hauled ass down in the engine room, pulling with all my strength. A wave slammed into the boat and nearly took us all into the water, but we hung tough.

Bowline man secure! And then we gave it everything, knowing our crewmate could not come catapulting backward right into us. Somehow we heaved that baby onward and upward, dragged it clean out of the Pacific, cheated the Grim Reaper, and manhandled it right up there onto the rocks, high and dry.

“Too slow,” said our instructor. And then he went into a litany of details as to what we’d done wrong. Too long in the opening stages, bowline man not quick enough up the rocks, too long on the initial pulls, too long being battered by the waves.

He ordered us onto the sand with the boat, gave us a set of twenty push-ups, then ordered us straight back the way we’d come — up and over the rocks, boat into the water, bowline man making us secure while we damn near drowned...get in, get going, shut up and paddle. Simple really.

That first month ended much like it had begun, with a soaking wet, cold, tired, and depleted class. At the conclusion of the four weeks, the instructors made some harsh decisions, assessing the weakest among us, guys who had failed the tests, perhaps one test, maybe two. They looked hard at very determined young men who would rather die than quit but simply could not swim well enough, run fast enough, lift heavy enough, guys who lacked endurance, underwater confidence, skills in a boat.

These were the hardest to dismiss from the program, because these were guys who had given their all and would go on doing so. They just lacked some form of God-given talent to carry out the work of a U.S. Navy SEAL. Years later I knew several instructors quite well, and they all said the same about that fourth week first phase assessment, the week before Hell Week — “We all agonized over it. No one wants to be in the business of breaking a kid’s heart.”

But neither could they allow the weak and the hopeless to go forward into the most demanding six days of training in any fighting force in the world. That’s not the free world, by the way, that’s the whole world. Only Great Britain’s legendary SAS has anything even comparable.

The results of the four-week assessment meant there were just fifty-four of us left; fifty-four of the ninety-eight who had started first phase. And Class 226 would start early, as all Hell Week classes do, Sunday at noon.

Late that last Friday, we assembled in the classroom to be formally addressed once more by Captain Maguire, who was accompanied by several instructors and class officers.