The Warrior Elite: The Forging of SEAL Class 228 - Dick Couch - Hardcover

The Beginning Monday, 4 October 1999. A fine mist hangs over the Naval Amphibious Base on Coronado as a cool marine air layer steals in from the Pacific, extinguishing the stars. The lights along Guadalcanal Road are a harsh, haloed yellow. The base is quiet. Behind a chain-link fence with diagonal privacy slats, Class 228 waits anxiously, seated on the concrete pool deck. The new BUD/S trainees wear only canvas UDT swim trunks. They are compressed into tight rows, chests to backs, in bobsled fashion to conserve body heat. The large clock on the cinder-block wall reads 5:00 a.m.-0500, or zero five hundred, in military jargon. They are wet from a recent shower. Neat rows of duffel bags that contain the students' uniforms, boots, and training gear separate each human file. The pool-officially called the combat training tank, or CTT-has already been prepared for the first evolution. The students had arrived thirty minutes earlier to roll and stow the pool covers and string the lane markers. "Feet!" yells the class leader. "FEET!" The voices of nearly a hundred young men answer in unison as they scramble into ranks. "In-struct-tor Ree-no!" intones the class leader. "HOOYAH, INSTRUCTOR REE-NO!" the class responds in full roar. The first day of training has begun for Class 228. It's pitch black except for the building lights that cut into the mist and the underwater pool lights that illuminate a blue mirror surface. The members of Basic Underwater Demolition/SEAL Class 228 stand at attention in fourteen files, each file forming a boat crew of seven BUD/S trainees. Instructor Reno Alberto, Class 228's proctor for the two-week BUD/S Indoctrination Course, surveys the pool. Apparently satisfied the CTT is ready, he turns and regards Class 228 for a long moment. "Drop," he says quietly. "DROP!" 228 echoes as the class melts to the deck, each student scrambling to claim a vacant piece of concrete. They wait, arms extended, holding their bodies in a rigid, leaning-rest position. "Push 'em out." "Push-ups!" yells the class leader. "PUSH-UPS!" responds 228. "Down!" "ONE!" "Down!" "TWO!" Class 228 loudly counts out twenty push-ups, then returns to the leaning rest. "In-struct-tor Ree-no," calls the class leader. "HOOYAH, INSTRUCTOR REE-NO!" the students yell in unison. Reno stands off to one side, arms folded, apparently uninterested in the mass of students leaning on their outstretched arms. "Push 'em out," he commands softly. "Push-ups!" "PUSH-UPS!" After two more rounds of this, Reno leaves them in the leaning rest for close to five minutes. By now the students are twisting and thrusting their buttocks into the air in an effort to relieve the burning in their arms. "Recover," he says in the same measured voice. "FEET!" the class responds, this time with less zeal. "Give me a report, Mister Gallagher." Lieutenant (junior grade) William Gallagher takes the class muster board from Machinist Mate First Class Robert Carreola, 228's leading petty officer, or LPO. Gallagher and Carreola are the class leader and class leading petty officer, respectively, as they are the senior officer and senior enlisted trainee in Class 228. Carreola is five-ten, but he appears shorter-partly because he has a broad, highly developed upper body and partly because his lieutenant is six-two. Bill Gallagher is a slim, serious young man with a shy smile. He came to the Naval Academy from northern Virginia, recruited to play lacrosse for Navy. Gallagher has wanted to be a Navy SEAL since 1982, when his father gave him an article from Parade magazine with pictures of SEALs andCouch, Dick is the author of 'The Warrior Elite: The Forging of SEAL Class 228 - Dick Couch - Hardcover' with ISBN 9780609607107 and ISBN 0609607103.