Chris Kyle: American Sniper

“I’ll think about it,” I said, getting up to leave.

As I was on my way out, the Navy guy called to me from down the hall.

“Hey, you,” he said. “Come on over here.”

I walked over.

“What were you talking about in there?” he asked.

“I was thinking about going into SF,” I said. “But you have to be an E5. So we were talking about the Rangers.”

“Oh, yeah? Heard about the SEALs?”

At the time, the SEALs were still relatively unknown. I had heard a little about them, but I didn’t know all that much. I think I shrugged.

“Why don’t you come on in here,” said the sailor. “I’ll tell you all about ’em.”

He started by telling me about BUD/S, or Basic Underwater Demolition/Scuba training, which is the preliminary school all SEALs must pass through. Nowadays, there are hundreds of books and movies on SEALs and BUD/S; there’s even a pretty long entry on our training in Wikipedia. But back then, BUD/S was still a bit of a mystery, at least to me. When I heard how hard it was, how the instructors ran you and how less than 10 percent of the class would qualify to move on, I was impressed. Just to make it through the training, you had to be one tough motherfucker.

I liked that kind of challenge.

Then the recruiter started telling me about all the missions SEALs, and their predecessors, the UDTs, had completed. (UDTs were members of Underwater Demolition Teams, frogmen who scouted enemy beaches and undertook other special warfare assignments beginning in World War II.) There were stories about swimming between obstructions on Japanese-held beaches and gruesome fights behind the lines in Vietnam. It was all bad-ass stuff, and when I left there, I wanted to be a SEAL in the worst way.

Many recruiters, especially the good ones, have more than a little larceny in them, and this one was no different. When I came back and was about to sign the papers, he told me I had to turn down the signing bonus if I wanted to make sure I got the SEAL contract.

I did.

He was full of it, of course. Having me turn down the bonus made him look pretty good, I’m sure. I don’t doubt he’s got a great career ahead of him as a used-car salesman.

The Navy did not promise that I would be a SEAL; I had to earn that privilege. What they did guarantee, though, was that I would have a chance to try out. As far as I was concerned, that was good enough, because there was no way that I was going to fail.

The only problem was that I didn’t even get a chance to fail.

The Navy disqualified me when my physical revealed that I had pins in my arm from the rodeo accident. I tried arguing, I tried pleading; nothing worked. I even offered to sign a waiver saying that I’d never make the Navy responsible for anything that happened to my arm.

They flat-out turned me down.

And that, I concluded, was the end of my military career.

With the military ruled out, I focused on making a career out of ranching and being a cowboy. Since I already had a good job on a ranch, I decided there was really no sense staying in school. I quit, even though I was less than sixty credits shy of graduating.

David doubled my pay and gave me more responsibilities. Larger offers eventually lured me to other ranches, though for different reasons I kept coming back to David’s ranch. Eventually, just before the winter of 1997–98, I found my way out to Colorado.

I took the job sight-unseen, which turned out to be a big mistake. My thinking was, I’d been spending all my time in the Texas flatlands, and a move to the mountains would be a welcome change of scenery.

But wouldn’t you know it: I got a job at a ranch in the only part of Colorado flatter than Texas. And a good deal colder. It wasn’t long before I called up David and asked if he needed some help.

“Come on back,” he told me.

I started to pack, but I didn’t get very far. Before I finished making arrangements to move, I got a phone call from a Navy recruiter.

“Are you still interested in being a SEAL?” he asked.

“Why?”

“We want you,” said the recruiter.

“Even with the pins in my arm?”

“Don’t worry about that.”

I didn’t. I started working on the arrangements right away.

“Drop! One hundred push-ups! NOW!”

Two hundred and twenty-some bodies hit the asphalt and started pumping. We were all in camis—camouflage BDUs, or battle-dress uniforms—with freshly painted green helmets. It was the start of BUD/S training. We were bold, excited, and nervous as hell.

We were about to get beat down, and we were loving it.

The instructor didn’t even bother to come out of his office inside the building a short distance away. His deep voice, slightly sadistic, carried easily out the hall into the courtyard where we were gathered.

“More push-ups! Give me forty! FOUR-TEEE!”

My arms hadn’t quite started to burn yet when I heard a strange hissing noise. I glanced up to see what was going on.

I was rewarded with a blast of water in my face. Some of the other instructors had appeared and were working us over with fire hoses. Anyone stupid enough to look up, got hosed.

Welcome to BUD/S.

“Flutter kicks! GO!”

BUD/S stands for Basic Underwater Demolition/SEAL and it is the introductory course that all candidates must pass to become SEALs. It’s currently given at the Naval Special Warfare Center in Coronado, California. It starts with “indoc” or indoctrination, which is designed to introduce candidates to what will be required. Three phases follow: physical training, diving, land warfare.

There have been a number of stories and documentaries over the years about BUD/S and how tough it is. Pretty much everything they’ve said on that score is true. (Or at least mostly true. The Navy and the instructors tone it down a bit for national consumption on TV reality shows and other broadcasts. Still, even the watered-down version is true enough.) Essentially, the instructors beat you down, then beat you down some more. When that’s done, they kick your ass, and beat what’s left down again.

You get the idea.

I loved it. Hated it, loathed it, cursed it… but loved it.

It had taken me the better part of a year to reach that point. I’d joined the Navy and reported for basic training in February 1999. Boot camp was pretty lame. I remember calling my dad at one point and saying that basic was easy compared to ranch work. That wasn’t a good thing. I’d joined the Navy to be a SEAL and challenge myself. Instead I got fat and out of shape.

You see, boot camp is designed to prepare you to sit on a ship. They teach you a lot about the Navy, which is fine, but I wanted something more like the Marines’ basic training—a physical challenge. My brother went into the Marines and came out of boot camp tough and in top condition. I came out and probably would have flunked BUD/S if I’d gone straight in. They have since changed the procedure. There’s now a separate BUD/S boot camp, with more emphasis on getting and staying in shape.

Lasting over a half-year, BUD/S is extremely demanding physically and mentally; as I mentioned earlier, the dropout rate can top 90 percent. The most notorious part of BUD/S is Hell Week, 132 hours straight of exercise and physical activity. A few of the routines have changed and tested over the years, and I imagine they will continue to evolve. Hell Week has pretty much remained the most demanding physical test, and probably will continue to be one of the high points—or low points, depending on your perspective. When I was in, Hell Week came at the end of First Phase. But more about that later.