Stealth Force

Since World War II with the formation of the Scouts and Raiders, then the Naval Combat Demolition Units and finally the Underwater Demolition Teams, U.S. Navy frogmen have set the standard for Special Operations Forces. This tradition continued in Korea and in Vietnam, when President John F. Kennedy commissioned the first Seal teams in 1962.

Special Forces are ideal for contemporary conflicts. Operation Urgent Fury in Grenada, Just Cause in Panama and Desert Storm in Iraq--as well as actions in Somalia, Haiti and Bosnia--attest to their increased roles. Now comes a new war in Afghanistan, a country last conquered by Alexander the Great. And a country characterized by people at war for a generation. Don't forget to throw into the bargain an inhospitable terrain of barren deserts and mountains rife with catacombs: blazing hot in the summer and frozen with snow during the winter.

Can the Seals handle it? One of their axioms is a quote by Admiral Hyman Rickover, father of the nuclear navy: "The more you sweat in peace, the less you bleed in war." Their training is some of the toughest in the world. With an attrition rate of 80 percent, their maxim ought to be, "The more you bleed in peace, the less you'll mind it in war." The first phase of their grueling six-month regime at Basic Underwater Demolition/Seal training culminates in five days and five nights of around-the-clock physical abuse. It's called Hell Week. This story is a firsthand account of the ordeal. After reading it, you decide if they're up to the task.

I saw Stover my third week at BUD/S training. I mean, I'd caught a glimpse of him before, when I was in pretraining. But we finally managed to talk. He was a class ahead of me.

He looked more gaunt than when I'd met him in boot camp. But now his face was tan and his nose burnt and peeling. It was the weekend, so he invited me back to his room.

"How's it been?"

"You're in training now. You know what that's like. It's like that every day."

"But you're hanging."

"Yeah. It's not a problem. I mean, they fuck with you. But it's mostly mental." He tapped his head with his forefinger.

"Sure."

"The real test is coming. Sunday night." His eyes were wet and shiny. Like a maniac's. Or a fanatic's.

"Hell Week, right?" All I'd heard about Hell Week was that half the class wouldn't make it. That was a (continued on page 116)Stealth Force(continued from page 100)pretty stark figure considering my class had started with 120 trainees and was already down to 64 three weeks into training.

"Yep. Five days straight of staying up. And they hammer you the whole time."

"You feel good?"

"It won't be a problem."

"It starts Sunday?"

"Yeah. Sunday night. Late. Or early Monday morning. That's when they start Breakout."

I had no idea what Breakout was. But I never liked to admit ignorance on any subject. It felt weak, somehow. Except I had to know about this. It was only a couple of weeks away for my class. So I said, "Breakout, huh?"

"Yeah." Stover looked around, then lowered his voice: "I asked a guy a couple of classes ahead and he told me about it. Said they make you go to sleep and then come in the barracks in the middle of the night firing M-60s with blanks. And throwing smoke grenades and grenade simulators."

"That's how it starts, huh?"

"Yeah. But don't tell anyone because it's supposed to be a surprise. After that it's a 24-hour-a-day hammer session. They PT the shit out of you."

PT was short for Physical Training and pretty much synonymous with calisthenics. Push-ups, sit-ups, jumping jacks, pull-ups, dips, those kinds of things.

He went on, "Doing the obstacle course in the middle of the night. Log PT. Swims. Runs. Five- or 10-mile paddles. Rock portage. The fucking works. And they keep you wet and sandy the whole time."

We talked for a while longer. Then I wished him luck and left. That Sunday night, he quit half an hour into Hell Week.

I saw him a couple of days later. He was back in dungarees and a Dixie cup. I was in greens. He was looking down and his shoulders were humped.

It looked like he was going to walk right by me, so I stepped in his way. He looked up. His eyes were flat and they kept dodging mine.

"Hey, Stover."

"Raven."

"Sorry you didn't make it."

"Yeah. I just realized as soon as it started that I didn't want to have motherfuckers yelling at me for another five months. And I didn't want to be wet and sandy for that long, either."

"I hear you. Good luck."

"I don't need it. I'm going to the fleet. Going to see the world. I'm looking forward to it."

That's what I'd tell myself, too, if I quit. I would tell myself anything to get a little self-esteem back--at least enough to keep me from killing myself. I sure hoped I wouldn't have to try to fool myself like that. But you never knew until you were put to the test.

We shook hands. He turned around and walked off. He was looking at the ground again.

•

Before I knew it, it was almost my turn. Seven more days and it would be Hell Week.

I felt all right. I was keeping up in the daily PT sessions. I wasn't one of the ones who garnered the unwanted attention of an instructor because I couldn't do all the push-ups. Or whatever other exercise we happened to be doing a thousand reps of.

I was even in the top five on the timed runs. We had 34 minutes in Phase I to complete the run. Four miles. In the sand. Wearing boots. I was getting 30s. They dropped it two minutes every phase, so I was up to Phase III standards already.

And I'd even done all right on the O-course. Finally. It required dexterity and coordination in addition to endurance. While I had a fair share of the last, I was in the hole on the first two. But practice pays off, and I was finally finishing on time. Most of the time.

Swimming was hard, though. We had started out with a mile. Then the instructors moved it up to a mile and a half. Next, two miles. In the ocean.

I hated everything about it. I hated to get into the icy gray water. And I particularly hated that it was still dark out. Everything seemed colder.

We'd been issued wet-suit tops and fins. But my top was so old and fit so poorly that when I would take a stroke, icy water rushed down the sleeve all the way to my rib cage. Add to that my failure to finish on time, which then got my swim buddy and me hammered, and it was definitely my least favorite evolution.

•

The week went by slow and fast at the same time. Slow because they'd hammer us every day. We were in classes for half the day, but even there we weren't safe. If we pissed off an instructor, which wasn't hard to do, he'd make the whole class get wet and sandy. Then we'd have to go back and sit at our desks--the salt water and sand making us itchy, cold and miserable for the rest of the day.

One guy was caught nodding off during class. It could have been any of us. We were all tired. The instructor who caught him made him get wet and sandy every hour on the hour. He didn't fall asleep again--and neither did the rest of us.

Somehow, suddenly, it was the weekend. Then Sunday morning.

And then, Sunday night. The instructors showed up at the barracks and said we should try to get some sleep. Actually, they ordered us.

So I went to my rack and lay down and tried to sleep. And kept trying. But I couldn't, because I knew they'd be giving us a rude awakening in a few hours. So I finally said fuck it and decided to stay awake instead.

•

I jumped up and nearly hit my head on the bunk above me. The M-60 was so loud in the confines of the barracks it was making me wince. The low bass roaring--duh-duh-duh-duh-duh!--and blinding muzzle flash of the machine gun filled the hallway outside our rooms. All the instructors were yelling, but I couldn't make out the words because they were all doing it at the same time. Smoke from grenades was everywhere. It was a thick, sweet smell, kind of like bad meat. And there were loud bangs and flashes from grenade simulators going off--each one like 10 M-80s exploding at the same time.

Breakout: Hell Week had officially started. It was like living a nightmare. We were forced to do things that didn't make sense.

They ordered us out of the barracks. Outside, a couple of the instructors had hoses and were soaking us as soon as we walked out the door. The shouting never stopped. They were yelling, "Quit now and avoid the rush!" Then they would spray the water full blast in our faces.

Once we were in the compound another instructor started yelling at us. "What are you doing out here, you worms? Go back and come out wearing fins!"

So we'd go in and put on fins and waddle back outside. The first instructor had been replaced by another: "You are stupid and worthless! What good are fins without face masks? Put on your face masks, then fall out to the (continued on page 134)Stealth Force(continued from page 116) grinder for PT."

We had to run the gantlet of water hoses while going in and out of the barracks and putting more gear on or taking it off.

We ended up on the grinder in the center of the compound. They kept making us do set after set of push-ups. One instructor had a megaphone and yelled, "I've never seen such a pathetic bunch of Marys!"

After the 10th or 12th set of 25 push-ups in a row, with hardly any break, he'd catch someone not doing them because they just couldn't. He'd bend over and jam the megaphone in their face. "You need a break, Sally?" he'd scream. "You can get a real good break if you just ring the bell. Three times is all it takes and you're out of here. We'll even give you a cup of hot cocoa with marshmallows. Would you like that?"

Some of the class took him up on the offer. But most, because it was still early, turned him down.

"No thank you, instructor. Hoo-ya!"

"Well then, maybe you need a break. Bear-crawl out to the surf and get wet and sandy. Then double-time it back here."

Things went on like this for a while until the sky started turning gray. Then it was on to another form of torture.

•

When you're up 24 hours a day for five days, things start to run together. You even start to hallucinate toward the end. At least I did. And so did some of my boat crew.

We were on a long paddle in the middle of the night. We were all so tired that occasionally one of us would go to sleep while paddling. Fortunately, everyone seemed to fall into the boat instead of into the water when they went to sleep, although I caught the guy in front of me trying to take a dive. But I grabbed him and shook him before he made the plunge. No reason to be more cold and wet than we already were.

My boat crew was in the lead. The instructors called us the Smurf crew because we were short. We were halfway through and there was no one in sight behind us. I'm sure it all had something to do with hydronautics or some fancy word like that, but when it came to a long paddle, we always seemed to do the best. Maybe it was because we displaced less water.

Of course, the only reason it mattered that we were in the lead was that it was a race--as usual. Every event was a race. That had been true before Hell Week, too. The instructors even had a name for this one--Around the World. It was a seven-mile loop that involved some land portage. Seven miles was a damned long way to paddle a raft. They aren't the most streamlined vessels. Actually, they're pigs. Even with all six of us putting our backs into it and our officer spelling people, the shore, which was about 300 yards off our starboard side, hardly seemed to be moving.

And that was the problem. One of the guys in the boat crew, Tanner, the only black guy in our class, started to complain about it.

"What the hell? We're not moving!"

"Sure we are. Just slowly." Our officer, the voice of reason.

"No, we're not. Look at the beach. We're not moving." It didn't help that this section of the shore was deserted--just an empty stretch of beach with no landmarks.

No one said anything for a while. Tanner started mumbling.

Then someone said, "Maybe he's right. I've been watching the shore. It seems like we haven't moved."

Somebody else, "Yeah, maybe it's a current or something."

Tanner, "It ain't a current. Something's got us."

Our officer, "What do you mean? Like kelp or something?"

"No. It's a sea monster. Can't you see his tentacles? He's holding us back." Then he started mumbling frantic gibberish to himself.

Someone said, "All right, Tanner, shut the fuck up and paddle."

No one said anything for a while after that. A little later, everyone--except for maybe Tanner--could see that we were getting closer to the lights in Coronado.

Then it was my turn. I'd just gone to sleep and fallen in the center of the boat. The fall woke me up. I climbed back onto the tube and started paddling again. I looked out to sea. It was dark. Not a light anywhere. Then I saw a flash of something. I squinted. It looked like a diver's head about 50 yards away. The flash had been the light from the shore shining off his face mask. I shook my head and blinked. He was still there. I went back to paddling and just looked straight ahead at the back of the man in front of me.

•

The instructors weren't playing when they told us to do something. Toward the end of Hell Week, they had us doing log PT. They broke us down into our six-man boat crews and then had us line up front to back by our log. They asked us how many were left in the class. There were less than 30, and we'd started the week somewhere in the 60s.

Anyway, the instructors said we had to do 48 body-builders with the logs. Bodybuilders consisted of picking up the log, hoisting it over our heads, then throwing it up and catching it. Then we were supposed to lower it down on the opposite side from which we started. The logs were bigger around than telephone poles and about 10 or 12 feet long.

I thought they were fucking with us. They liked to do that. Play their psychotic mental games on us. I mean, they had to be fucking with us. Everyone in the class was a sorry piece of shit by that point. We were so swollen we didn't have joints anymore. Our legs and arms looked like water balloons and our fingers looked like sausages.

If I hadn't been, delirious from lack of sleep, I might have realized guys kept "hyping" out--getting hypothermia. The instructors would send them to the corpsman. He would shine a flashlight in their eyes. Somehow this indicated to him if they had hypothermia or not. Maybe if their eyes were dilated or something.

Anyway, if they were hyped, he would throw them in the MASH-looking ambulance that followed us everywhere during Hell Week. They'd get wrapped in orange blankets for 10 or 15 minutes until they warmed up and then he'd throw them back out.

Once in a while, the duty corpsman would do spot checks with his light--usually in the middle of the night, if the instructors had been keeping us wet for a while.

He'd line us up single file and then go down the line looking into our eyes. He'd usually pull a couple of us. I always hoped I'd be one of them. Anything for a few minutes' respite. But I never was, which didn't make a whole lot of sense to me: I was one of the skinniest guys in the class. Back in pretraining my nickname had been Popsicle, because I shivered so much between heats at the pool. I always seemed to get the full benefit.

The medical unit had started giving us antibiotics by the second or third day because our immune systems were so worn down. The tops of our heads had been rubbed raw by having to carry our six-man raft wherever we went--there were open sores under the thin stubble on our scalps. They matched the ones on the insides of our thighs that had been caused by our constantly wet and sandy trousers chafing us.

People were losing control of their bladders. My swim buddy even shit himself. And he wasn't the only one.

"What's that smell?" I said.

"I dunno."

"Smells like shit."

"I don't smell anything."

"You don't smell anything? You trying to tell me I'm having an olfactory hallucination?"

"What?"

"Fuck you, you don't smell it. It's coming from you!"

"What're you talking about?"

"I'm talking about you shitting your pants, asshole!"

"All right. All right. I'm sorry."

I couldn't get too mad. I didn't have the energy. So I let it drop.

Anyway, back to the logs. We started in. We made it to five and I began having visions of someone not being able to catch it on the way down and the log crushing our heads. Ten minutes, and I thought that someone might be me--my arms felt like Jell-O.

At 15, I was waiting for the instructors to secure us. They'd made their point. At 20, I realized there was no point--they just wanted to pound us into grease spots on the sand. And then I quit thinking. We still had 28 to go.

•

I had been doing OK the whole week as our class dwindled and the bell kept ringing. After someone rang out, the remaining class sang Happy Trails.

It was kind of funny at first. But by the 10th time it was depressing. And by the 20th time it was habit. Guys quit who you never thought you'd see quit. Some guys seemed to have it--they were good at PT, running and swimming--but once they were in the crucible, Hell Week ferreted out some hidden mental weakness no one knew they had. Not even them. Or perhaps they had an inkling that until then it had been just a whisper in the dark.

One guy in particular stands out. Everybody liked him. He was an officer and even the instructors liked him. They were good at not playing favorites--they usually despised everyone equally. He was always positive. And not some fake, sappy positive, like a TV evangelist, but the genuine kind.

It was the second day, late in the afternoon. We'd been getting hammered on the beach, doing PT for an eternity. I had collapsed three times in the pushup position, and every time an instructor had seen me and made me get wet and sandy. But the sun was out, and between that and the exercise I was staying warm, so I didn't mind. Plus, if I was running down to the surf, then I wasn't doing push-ups.

The officer, Brophy, walked up to one of the instructors near me. I heard the whole thing.

"I want to ring out."

"Brophy, quit fucking around or I'll make you and your boat crew more miserable than you are now."

"I'm serious. I'm finished. I want out."

The instructor looked at him for a long moment. Brophy looked right back at him, right in the eye, never wavering. The instructor turned to us.

"Class, it looks like Brophy's done. Does anyone want to try to talk him out of this rash course of action he'll regret later?"

There were a couple of seconds of silence. A bunch of people had quit, and they'd never let us try to stop them before. We were so paranoid that I think most of us believed it was a trick. I know I did.

"Come on! I'm not fucking with you. Try to talk him out of it."

That's when the clamor started. As a class, we begged, pleaded and cajoled. I think we all sincerely wanted him to stay, and the instructors had stopped hammering us--a nice fringe benefit.

At first it had no effect. Then I saw him start swaying back and forth. Finally, he swayed forward and turned the momentum into a dogtrot back to his boat crew. Everyone cheered.

We went back to PT. He quit less than an hour later. This time, the instructors didn't let us try to talk him out of it. We sang Happy Trails after he rang the bell three times.

•

The one good thing about Hell Week was that they weren't going to let us starve. We got four meals a day--the usual three and one more in the middle of the night called midrations, midrats for short.

Midrats were the best and the worst. They were the best because we got to go into the cafeteria and warm up for about half an hour. When I was going through the chow line, I always filled two mugs of coffee. When I sat down I could wrap a hand around each one and let the heat sink in.

But it was the worst because it always ended way too soon. Before we knew it, we had to shuffle back into the cold night, which was made even colder by contrast with the warm confines of the chow hall. The worst part was putting our kapoks back on. Kapoks were big, orange canvas and foam life vests like the kind from McHale's Navy. By the time we got back out to the boats, the kapoks were covered in a rime of ice. Someone started calling them K-Popsicles, and the name stuck.

Invariably, after the midnight meal someone would quit. I guess they just couldn't handle being cold again after having tasted the luxurious warmth offered by the chow hall. Can't say I blame them. I thought about it myself. Especially after I'd been shivering so long that my hip joints started to ache.

•

Besides idle pondering after midrats I had a couple of close moments, too. Ones that almost had me following Brophy and the rest of the quitters to the fleet.

The first one came on the third night we'd been up. We were in the barracks getting a medical spot check by a doctor. They let us take a three-minute hot shower. Then we'd walk directly from there, naked, to see the doctor. The shower had just started to take the chill off when I had to get out. I didn't want to be cold anymore. I wanted to stay in the shower till I was warm to the core. I felt frantic. Crazy. I didn't know what to do.

I saw the class officer. He was walking toward me. Connors. He was a big guy, a good old boy from the South. Had played ball. Even made it to third string on the Miami Dolphins.

As he passed by me, I suddenly said, "Mr. Connors. I can't do it anymore. I want to quit."

"Raven, shut the fuck up and go see the doctor."

I walked in to see the doctor. He looked me over. Asked me a couple of questions, gave me my antibiotics and I was done. Not much more than a minute and I didn't feel like quitting anymore.

•

The next time I felt like quitting happened on the last night. Earlier that day we'd done the log PT. Now it was night, the middle of the night, and they had us in the pool. Naked. Well, almost. We were too weak to swim without the likelihood of drowning, so they made us keep our kapoks on.

The instructors had us playing water polo in the deep end. About midway into the game, a steady cold rain that had been falling all night turned into sleet. We were so cold that if someone had to piss, they'd call their whole boat crew over to huddle around them in the pool and then let go. That way, everyone felt some warmth for at least a couple of seconds.

Things kept getting worse. As if playing naked water polo--in the middle of the night, while it was sleeting, after being up for four days--weren't enough.

A buddy of mine in our boat crew, Boyle, came up to me. "Raven, check this out." We were next to the gutter of the pool. He spit in it. It was black under the pool lights. "I don't feel good."

"No shit. That's fucking blood, man! You need to talk to an instructor. That ain't right."

"I don't want to. Hell Week's almost over. I don't want to have to do it again."

"Yeah, well, if you're dead, it won't much matter, will it? You're sick, man. Get help."

"I guess so."

I couldn't take it anymore. He was driving me crazy. The sight of the blood he'd spit up didn't make me too happy either. "Instructor Sebring."

He came over.

"Boyle's spitting up blood. He needs to see the corpsman."

"Boyle, get over here!"

That was the last I saw of Boyle for a couple of weeks. Turns out he had pneumonia so bad his lungs were almost filled with fluid. He almost drowned on dry land.

The instructors kept yelling at us. They wouldn't leave us alone. Said we weren't playing hard enough. Weren't taking the game seriously. Kept threatening us. We all knew from experience that these weren't idle threats.

Finally, they told us to stop, since, in their words, we weren't doing anything anyway. They had us line up in the water by the side of the pool.

"Tighten up, girls. Nut to butt." Nut to butt meant we were basically supposed to spoon with the man in front of us. Which, while degrading, was warmer than standing and shivering by yourself.

"All right. That's better, you pathetic slugs. You don't have what it takes to be frogmen. You can't even play a simple game of water polo. We're gonna make your whole class quit. We don't want a bunch of quitter pussies like you in the teams."

Another instructor turned on a hose and started spraying it in our faces.

"Don't fucking turn away. Look right into it!"

Then the sleet started coming down heavily. It stung my shoulders and head above the waterline.

But even that wasn't enough. Things can always get worse.

"All right, Sallys! We'll give you one out and that's it. If you can't do this, we'll break you right here. Which shouldn't be too hard, because you're a bunch of spineless slugs anyway. If one of you can get a hard-on, we'll let the whole class out of the pool. We'll let you go in the sauna and take a hot shower afterward."

A lone voice, wavering and cracked, asked, "Can we touch ourselves?"

All the instructors laughed. "No. You have to use your imagination."

I cursed. Why did the dumb fucker ask? He should have just done it. Now there was no way that any of us would get one.

I waited. Hoping. But it was pointless. Then it was my turn for the hose. It seemed like it would never stop. Water was going up my nose. It hit the back of my throat and I started coughing. And kept coughing. Finally it was the next guy's turn and I could breathe again.

But it was too late. My spirit was shattered, tattered and waving like a flag of truce. I couldn't take any more of this, particularly when I knew I didn't have to. Not when all I had to do was ring the bell three times. Then it was a warm bunk and I could sleep as long as I wanted to.

"God! If you're out there, I can't take any more. Help me or I'm done." I said the prayer silently.

I believed in God--but thought he was way too busy to help vermin like me. I was down to the wire.

Then I heard a voice singing. After a line, the whole class picked it up.

"We're the frogmen of the Navy!"

And I forgot the rest. But I'll never forget that first voice I heard. It was mine. After we sang a few verses, the instructors pulled us out of the pool and put us in the sauna. The kind lined in cedar with the lava rocks you throw water onto to make steam. I guess they'd just wanted us to show them we had some spine left, that we weren't totally beaten. Whatever. They turned the heat all the way up and let us stay in there for at least half an hour. It was the first time I'd been warm--I mean really warm, all the way through--since Hell Week started.

•

The next morning, after first light, they secured the winning boat crew. I watched the guys stumble off to the barracks. They didn't even have to stow their boat. The class behind us would take care of that. As they were leaving, they wished everyone luck. I didn't care, I still hated them. The rest of us had another eight hours of torture to look forward to.

The instructors had us go into one of the classrooms for a briefing. We were going to do a rock portage. That's where each crew would land their IBS--Inflatable Boat, Small--on the big rock jetty in front of the Hotel Del Coronado. We'd already done it once at night during the beginning of Hell Week, and one guy had broken an arm--he'd gotten between the boat and the rocks. That was a cardinal sin we'd all been warned about, but at the same time it was pretty hard to avoid when the sets were coming in big, fast and furious. And it was night, so you couldn't see the waves till they were on you. At least this time we'd be doing it in daylight.

The surf had been big all week, with waves of five to 10 feet. Not the easiest shit to get a raft through when you were 100 percent, and even harder to deal with when you had to land on a pile of boulders.

In one part of my mind I thought, This is fucking insane. We're all zombies. People are gonna get busted up for sure. But at the same time, since I was a zombie, I couldn't get that worked up over it. I had become numb.

One of the instructors drew a diagram of the jetty on the chalkboard. Somehow he reversed everything--he'd put the hotel and the jetty to the south, and they were north of us. I looked at my swim buddy. He shrugged. I thought about saying something, but I was worried it was a trap. On the other hand they might have done it as a test to see if we were still alert, and if someone didn't mention it.... It was a lose-lose situation, the kind favored by the instructors.

No one said anything about it and then the briefing was over. We limped into the courtyard, threw our paddles into the boats and hoisted them onto our heads. There were three boat crews left. Six men in each for a total of 18.

We started making our way out to the beach. I saw Captain Hailey, the skipper at BUD/S, step out of his office on the second deck and look down at us.

"Instructor, what are these men doing?"

He sounded mad. I was certain that it didn't bode well for me and my classmates.

"They're doing a rock portage, sir."

"No they're not. They're secured."

We stood there, swaying, the IBSs still on our heads. It was another trick. It had to be.

Finally, one of the instructors, Chief Bellnut, said, "You heard the skipper. Put your boats down. You're secured."

"Congratulations on a job well done." After he said that, the captain broke into a smile. So did most of the instructors.

"Hoo-ya, Captain Hailey!" We rasped all at once. Our throats were hash, so it wasn't very loud, but what we lacked in volume we made up for in emotion.

Things got kind of blurry there for a couple of minutes. We placed our rafts on the asphalt, and the next thing I knew I was hugging my swim buddy. He still smelled like shit, but I didn't care.

•

For a week after they secured us, I was walking around like a whore the morning after nickel night. I had to walk bow-legged because the insides of my thighs were so chafed they looked like raw hamburger--that's what happens when you wear the same pair of wet and sandy trousers for a week.

The instructors had some respect for what was left of the class. More than half of the men going into Hell Week had quit by the end. There were 24 of us left--the "hard-core 24" as we liked to refer to ourselves. Part of the instructors' respect came from the fact that it had been the coldest week in San Diego in 48 years. Of course, they didn't bother telling us that till after the fact.

We were so swollen we didn't have joints anymore. Our legs and arms looked like water balloons.

I believed in God--but thought he was way too busy to help vermin like me. I was down to the wire.