SEAL Target Geronimo: The Inside Story of the Mission to Kill Osama Bin Laden Read Online Free PDF Page B

time to wear olive-drab T-shirts under their camouflage utilities. This is the only acknowledgment instructors will give them, but it marks a fundamental change in the relationship between teacher and trainee. From this day forward, the students are treated as if they are worth teaching.
    In the second phase of BUD/S, students are taught the science of combat swimming. They are introduced first to basic open circuit scuba and then to the more exotic world of oxygen rebreathers and mixed gas breathing rigs. They are taught to swim long distances underwater, precisely navigating from point to point. Students will dive two to three times a day, and in between dives carry out physical evolutions such as timed runs, obstacle courses, and, of course, more swimming.
    The academics get harder as well. Not only will the students learn diving physics and the mechanical and electronic characteristics of their diving rigs, they will also learn how to operate submarine escape trunks and study the physiology of diving casualties, such as gas embolism, nitrogen narcosis, and the bends. They will learn the principles of hyperbaric medicine, and how to operate diving rescue chambers. Students who don’t make it academically will be out just as quickly as those who don’t cut it on the runs.
    The third phase of training is land warfare. It begins with marksmanship training and an introduction to the venerable M-16 assault rifle. Students also learn to assemble and disassemble every weapon in the U.S. arsenal, including pistols, machine guns, submachine guns, assault and sniper rifles, as well as antitank weapons and grenade launchers. Stopwatches will click as blindfolded students disassemble and reassemble these weapons for time. Trainees will also learn to operate the principal weapons used by the enemies of the United States, including the AK-47 and its variants the RPK, AKM, and AK-74.
    The last six weeks of third phase are spent on a Navy-owned island off the Pacific coast called San Clemente. There, students will undergo accelerated classes in land navigation, small-unit tactics, communications, combat marksmanship, advanced first aid, and the demolition of explosives.
    They will learn the art of hydrographic reconnaissance, and how to slip ashore at night to reconnoiter a target, use infrared cameras, and draw maps. Training on the island culminates in a seven-day “war,” where students recon a section of the island, locate and blow up underwater obstacles, and conduct demolition raids.
    All of those exercises are conducted with live ammunition and real explosives. The margin for error and the tolerance for mistakes is zero. There are SEALs who will tell you that the last six weeks on San Clemente were harder than Hell Week. Maybe they are. The strain is certainly higher on the class officers who have to plan and brief attacks and demolition raids under the watchful eye of their instructors—all of whom are combat veterans who have done these operations for real.
    Twenty-six weeks after the beginning of BUD/S, students will find themselves standing once again on the asphalt in the courtyard of the Naval Special Warfare Training Group. The graduation ceremonies at BUD/S are low-key. Unlike the Green Berets’ Q Course, where students graduate and are handed the headgear of their dreams, sailors graduating from BUD/S are not yet considered SEALs. Ahead of them is an additional year and a half of advanced training, to include military freefall parachuting and advanced courses in everything from counterterrorism operations to the rudiments of chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons.
    It’s been said that SEAL training is not so much a battle of wills, but a struggle against oneself. No amount of physical conditioning is enough to prepare a student to meet the challenge. Students are made to come to grips with misery. The test is always against oneself.
    But as difficult as it is to get through BUD/S, life is tougher in the