The rock. San Clemente Island, where the windy northern chip of the island is BUD/s country. It’s at this modern compound that Class 224 will spend their final four weeks of training.
“Out here is the ideal training graft for them. We have weapons ranges,
demo ranges, and a lot of good terranes for them to throw in. The first night we arrive in San Clemente Island, we like to give the students a good confidence photo. We have the night swim form. Before we put them out on the water though we like to show them shark videos just to kind of raise their hair on the back of their neck when they get in the water when it’s d
ark.” – BM1 Doug Echenlaub.
“Guys, spread out. You’re like little chunk pools of the damn shark like chunks.”
“They swim over the top of a huge men array. I’m not sure if it’s seven or eight feet. You think everything is a shark once they show you a drawing or they tell you there’s a shark out there, everything you see is a shark and it’s driving (00:54).”
On the windswept maze overlooking the camp is a rifle range. It’s here that the men will spend day after day of basic weapons training and maneuvering drills.
“A lot of guys who come here have never shot a rifle before so they start out a really basic level, just target shooting.” – OS3 Michael Koch.
“Third phase is designed to finally teach these guys how to be Navy SEALs and we have to start off with basic rifle drills and everything in third phase is a gradual progression.” – BMC Mark Lee.
“It’s all broken down from the first five months at BUD/s. You know, no matter what they do to try to build you up, nothing works, you just – you’re just hurt, you just go on.”
“When you guys get out as a team, you’re going to be asked to do things that you think is impossible, but here, we’re proving to you that maybe it’s not impossible with a little bit of planning preparation. So yeah?”
“I think by far, the toughest part is the daily grand. I don’t think any individual a day or any individual evolution is that hard. You know, it just might be a 14-mile run or a 5-mile swim but in a couple hours, it’s over. It’s just the day-to-day grand and they say you’ll think it’s easier after hell week, but I think the easiest part of BUD/s is hell week in par because at post hell week, a lot more is expected of you and you just go day-to-day. They had so much there to teach you. I think the toughest part of the whole thing is just staying motivated for six months. Six months is a long time to do this everyday, day in and day out and it doesn’t get any easier.”
“During tactics, we do in San Clemente island, we teach them a lot of different classes. Reconnaissance control over the beach, prisoner handling, raids, ambush.”
“Get down on the floor. (03:08). I have security. Cross your legs. Your hands behind your back. Face to the right.”
“It’s all part of learning the tactics, tools that we use, tools that we need as SEALs to do our job. They’re right now doing in the daytime. We’d never do any kind of operation in daytime in the SEAL teams, but they got to learn it, so we need to be able to watch them and see what they’re doing and making sure that they’re doing it right.”
“And on this beach out here, we’re going to be doing an obstacle load. We got a bunch of obstacles underneath the water out there at about 10 to 12 feet, you know, we’re taking out, swimming out, with stuffing charges filled with C4 explosives. We’re going to sit down and monitor them on the obstacle themselves. This is of course to simulate – blowing them up in front of an invasion force coming in and you know, they might tear up the bottom of a landing craft. This is what like the original UDTs. What – their main purpose, their main job besides reconnaissance.”
“Each one of these blocks is 100 to 200 pounds of C4 and this yellow stuff you see coming out of the front here at the top of it, this thin cord. This is what we use to tie into the trunk line, which is going to be run to each one of the obstacles and they’re out in the water behind me. You tie it in with a right-angle knot into the trunk line so that when they detonate it from the shore up here, it all goes off at once.” – RMSN Martin Davey.
“I think the biggest thing about it is for us – for all of us here, it’s the last great evolution of BUD/s.”
BUD/s is the only training program in the Department of Defense where officers and enlisted men go through training together yielding an uncommon sense of camaraderie and brotherhood.
“Very few ever get to where you are today. You only graduate from BUD/s training once. It marks the completion of the toughest military training in the world. In the society where mediocrity is too often a standard and too often rewarded, there is intense fascination with men who detest mediocrity who refuse to define themselves in conventional terms and who seek to transcend traditionally recognized human capabilities. This is exactly the type of person BUD/s is meant to find. The man who will find a way to complete each and every task to the best of his ability, the man who will adapt and overcome any and all obstacles.”
“I feel good. I like – - it’s like a huge wave lifting up your shoulders. I mean obviously everybody says, you know, this is the first step. There’s still a lot to come and stuff but this is a big step, so.”
“I feel on top of the world today. It’s been six months of arduous training and it’s just – I can’t even describe how I feel. There’s some points in training where you feel like you can’t make it through one more day but you press on hour-to-hour, minute-to-minute and eventually you get to this point.”
“The person who wants to be here and ends up becoming a Navy SEAL is the person who wants to get down the side and if he doubts it at all, then you’ll still go on.” – Michael Koch.
