The following is an event that happened leading up to Hell Week. It was one of those life moments where we have a choice to make.
Enjoy, Brandon
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By the fifth week of First Phase, I was a wreck: exhausted, humiliated, just about beaten into a corner. Then, one afternoon, just a few days before Hell Week was to begin, it all came to a head.
Every afternoon we formed up in seven-man boat crews, grabbed our heavy rubber boats, threw them up on top of our heads, and ran with them to the beach to get tortured for a while. On this particular afternoon, we were on our way out to the beach when Instructor Shoulin called over to my team. “Webb, get over here.”
Michelson, my boat crew leader, said, “Hey, what’s up, Instructor Shoulin? Where is he going?”
“Don’t worry about Webb,” he replied. “Just go get your fucking boat ready.” I looked over and realized that O’Reilly, Buchanan, and Kowalski were all with him. Uh- oh. I peeled away from my boat crew and headed with them out to a section of beach where it was just us, alone: me and the four alpha instructors.
“Drop, Webb,” said one of them. “Eight-counts, begin.” This was one of their favorite forms of punishment. The eight-count bodybuilder goes like this:
