Re-Posting This (Expanded) One, For 2 Reasons: 1, I Wish For Y’all To Enjoy The Vids. And 2, I Have a ‘Brand New’ SEAL Post Screaming/Clawing/Kicking to Escape From My Addled Mind And Land-Somewhere On-My-Blog.

This Should Git ‘R’ Done For My Motivational

Kick-Start.

****

Surf Torture: Great FUN!

***

I Miss My Navy SEAL Training Daze!

“Happy Cockeyed Optimist. I’m Stuck Like a Dope With a Thing called ‘Hope’–

C’est Moi!” I am Stupid Naive!

I’ve loved my life!

Cockeyed Optimist

Mitzi Gaynor

Never Worry!

“Worry” is the Most Useless Waste of Human Emotion

A waste of time and energy!

Video Credit: BobbyMcFerrin #DontWorryBeHappy #Vevo

Late entry/addition which no one will see. I drop it anyway. just a fond memory:

When I was in Navy SEAL training, late Eighties, we had, everyday, to run around with IBS on our head (IBS: Inflatable-Boat-Small).

This is part of a song we made up:

“Oh IBS! Stuck To My Head I Guess!”

The Instructors Often Filled Them With Sand.

Just For The Added Fun

*****

Rock Portage

So Much Fun!

One of My Classmates Managed To Break His Leg While We Were

‘Performing’

This Fun Little ‘Evolution’

NAVY SEAL TRAINING: BUD/S Surf Passage

Keep The ‘FUN’ Comin’ Boys ’til I Can’t Feel Anything

Navy Seal Training

More Surf Passage

“You Guys Ready To Put Out Now?!”

“Hooya!!”

***

NAVY SEALS TRAINING:

BUD/S FIRST PHASE

Cred for Vid: General Discharge

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I loved My Times Two Navy SEAL

Training Experience (’86 & ’88)

This Guy, Patstone, is Very Representative of Your

Typical BUD/s Instructor

I Think Somewhere In-A-Hidden, Very Top-Secret So Cal Location There is A ‘Clone Lab’ Where The Navy Manufacturers These Guys:

***

Best of Instructor Patstone

******

One day, one morning, my class mustered and went to retrieve our assigned IBS’s. Someone in another boat crew was laughing manically.

WTF? I pondered.

I walked over to the boat crew.

“What is so goddamn funny?” I asked.

“Lookit this shit” one said.

I looked at their IBS.

One of the SEAL instructors had spray-painted on all the IBS’s

“Don’t worry; Be Happy.”

I had to laugh.’

I did still manage to maintain my sense of humor, even though I knew I was probably gonna die that day…. Damn! I miss those days. And all the ‘good’ times! Yeah. Believe what you’ve heard/read: SEAL training is BRUTAL. But ya gotta keep a sense of humor about you. Or at least in your pocket.

****

I love Barb in Her Sailor Suit!!

(Judy, You know I LOVE You Too!)

“Happy Days Are Here Again!”

Video Credit: George John

***

Bonus Round:

“Keep The Drinks Comin’ Girl ‘Til I Can’t Feel Anything”

***

No One Hates War More Than A Military Veteran. Trust Me; I Know

Cred: Joni

The astute observer will realize that the ‘soldier’ in the vid is Joni

“There’s A War-Zone Inside Me:

I Cain’t Even Hear The Fuckin’ Music No More, For The Beat Of Black Wings”

Ah! Fun/Fond Memories! — Like The Corners of my Lost Mind. Well At Least I Showed Up. Twice! — “Running In Soft Sand: Intro”

Yes; I Am A Semi-Functional Alcoholic…

Since I seem to still be in

“Military Madness Mode”

Surf Passage:

So Much

FUN!

*****

We Called This Below,

The “Budweiser”

Because We Had A Sense Of Humor

IF You Got Caught With One Of These Uniform Pins While Still In Training….

God Will Not Save You

Just Ask My Roommate From Class One-Forty

I Think The BUD/s Instructors Properly Disposed of His Body

(It was Never Found)

This Bud’s Not For You Marcom!

The Budweiser:

******

“Drown Proofing:

“Military Madness”

In an upstairs room in Blackpool
By the side of a northern sea
The army had my father
And my mother was having me
Military Madness was killing my country
Solitary Sadness comes over me
After the school was over and I moved

To the other side
I found a different country but I never

Lost my pride
Military Madness was killing the country

Solitary sadness creeps over me
And after the wars are over
And the body count is finally filed
I hope that The Man discovers
What’s driving the people wild
Military madness is killing your country

So much sadness, between you and me
War, War, War, War, War, War

–Graham Nash

**********

This is Post One of a New old Series (and one I promise to be faithful to)

I will regale y’all with all my Navy SEAL BUD/s training reckless, feckless experiences. Reliving it for me, is better than it actually was. (Trust me on this one) 

However, before we dive in, you may want to watch the below. For if you do, you will get so much more ‘value’ out of my words (also found below)

I was in Class One Forty and Class One Fifty Eight, but some things (in SEALs) are always constantly constant)

So, here we go….

***

Zero Four. Alarm going off! I knock it off the nightstand. It whimpers for an instant and then grows silent. “Now Run Tell That!” as Peanut would say.

Four o’clock!? Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!

Where am I? Who am I? Do I need to ‘be’ someplace at four-oh-fucking-clock? Of course I do. I start to remember, shaking some dust from my addled mind. I need to be in Coronado. At BUD/s. And I need to be there by zero-five. Fuck! Fuck!

Karen stirs beside me.

“What’s up?” she asks with morning breath and sleepy eyes.

“Go back to sleep,” I say. “I’ll see you later.” (Much later)

Dragging my hung over self out of our bed in La Mesa California, I get dressed and stumble down the stairs, trying ever so careful to not awake the house in my doing so at such an un-Godly-hour. Four o’clock!

Fuck!

Seated in my Toronado, I crank her up, back out of the drive and head west. To BUD/s. God help me.

Of course I had been through this before: back in ’86. I was what some could call a ‘Two-Time Loser.’ Yeah, this weren’t my first attempt at SEAL training. And certainly not my first rodeo. I continued west.

Presently I arrived at the BUD/s compound (For the uninitiated: Basic Underwater/Demolition slash SEAL Training—Yeah—My Navy is fond of acronyms)

Went into my ‘hooch’ and threw on the lights.

“Goddamn it! Marcom!” was the chorus I was greeted with. “I hate you!”

“Drop yer cocks and grab yer socks!” I yelled. (I have lived my life every day, waiting for an opportunity to say this)

“Huh?”

“It’s time to daince gen’telmens. Let’s git to it!”

“Ah fuck!”

“Yep! Fuck!”

I took a dip of snuff as I watched my roommates get dressed. We were due to meet up with the rest of our class, One Fifty-Eight, in about ten mikes.

“Hurry the fuck up!” I yelled at my sleepy ‘roommates’.

“And you… you shut the fuck up, Petty Officer Mar—cone.”

“I’m doin’ ya’ll a favor, getting you up early so you can get all yer constitutionals done in time,” I said.

“What-ever!”

“Let’s go,” I said.

We proceeded down to our class muster point, mustered up with about seventy other disgruntled ‘grunts’—poly-wogs—and ran into the ‘grinder.’

We sang in unison as we did so:

“TO MY LEFT!

“TO MY LEFT!

“HOOYAH

“HOOYAH

“HOO–YAH!!!”

Class One Five Eight had arrived at BUD/s. God save and send us.

On the grinder (asphalt parking lot) there were little paintings of fin-feet, designating where the pollywogs were to assemble for PT (Physical… Uh… training. Read: torture)

Thusly assembled, we waited for the SEAL Instructor to show. During our wait, we knew we were supposed to sing. You see? The singing arouses the instructor and God knows we wanted him aroused:

So we sang:

“Drank Drank Drank

“Drunk Drunk Drunk

“Drunk last night

“Drunk the night before

“Gonna get drunk like I never got before

“’Cause when I’m drunk I’m happy as can be

“’Cause I’m a member of the Frog Fam’ily…

“Oh the Frog Fam’ily is the best family

“That ever sailed a’cross the sea….”

 And on an’ on. You get the idea.

The instructor arrived in full regalia: UDT shorts, T-Shirt, and attitude. There was a platform of sorts in front of us (Just for His Holiness, the PT SEAL instructor to ‘preach’ from)

We stood erect at attention… waiting to hear his first pronouncement. We did not have to wait long.

“What a fucking sorry lot! This is the worst class I have ever seen! Get wet! AND SANDY!!!”

Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!

“Gonna be a long day,” I thought as we all ran to the Pacific to get wet and then sandy on the beach…

And the day had not even yet begun…

****

Russia Won Our World War

Well, Everybody’s War Actually

Russia Suffered Hardships We Cannot Even Begin To Imagine

 

Or, If you desire:

“I’m the reason God Made Oklahoma.” (See? I can say that. Why? Because my second was an Okie and, by parley, that makes me ‘bonafide’—so there!)

Feel better?

Vid Credit? Shelley West (Who Else??)

This I took to Navy SEAL training…

Part Two Here

And WP will NOT Me Properly Edit This

One of The Songs Above was by Al Stewart

Mother-Fuck You WP!

You stupid bag of RUNTS!

(I didn’t Really Mean That)

lANCE IS aN aSSHOLE!

Eagerly Await My Call!

Sea (Somewhat of a Stream of Almost Consciousness)

The scariest thing to me…

Was at sea.

In the Indian Ocean, late one night

(That “IO” That Ho!)

Late at Night.

And the ship was tight.

And the waves were big.

Real big.

IO, She was angry.

And I was scared.

(No! HE Was scared).

I was never scared!

I was drinking coffee… And in between, walking on the bulkheads—all you sailors out there—can relate, and compare…

Never scared, but aside from my ‘coffee mates,” I knew, did, had done… the same drill… Too many times. (Fuckin’ Black-Shoe Navy!)

And if any of y’all find any of my  ‘Sea Stories” unbelievable…The preamble to any good sea story is “This is a no-shitter…”

And then there was Melville…I’ve been around the world and  once saw two white whales fuck.. I did. And there were dolphins… standing by… giggling.

 I have been to Australia.

Twice

And it follows, I have been to sea before:

And here, (for you purists) is the original, stolen from “Hejira”:

My Thanks to

“I’m just a simple soldier Son.

“With one more Year to Go.””

Hahaha! I Have ‘Officially’ Lost Me Mind! “The Cowards Never Started and the Weak Died Along the Way” I Wern’t No Coward, But I Did Die Along The Way. Twice.

I Me Mine

***

Rock Portage

Great ‘Fun’

More Fun, And ‘Fun Fact”: I Have Been “Underneath” ‘Ole Misery–At Leasr Thrice–Probably More Times Than That, But The Human Brain Tends To Attempt To Erase ‘Un-Pleasant’ Memories. I Think it is a “Sanity Self-Preservation” Primordial Response–Just A Theory of Mine…

***

And Yet One More Post From the email Archives:

Please tell me all about your therapy session today once it is done. I know a little about back trouble as I went through some during my Navy SEAL training.

I know there is nothing worse than that for pain. There were several days during that training whereby I thought it would be better to be dead than run/swim yet another step.

Somehow we always managed just one more step. “The only easy day was yesterday” was our mantra and that had been passed down over the years to all BUD/s classes.

There was one guy in my first class (Class 140) who actually broke his femur during a fun little evolution called “Rock Portage.” For two days he remained in training after that. His roommates would walk him about every morning until his leg got numb.

Obviously he couldn’t keep up on any of the evolutions and the SEAL instructors kicked him out. No one knew his leg was broken. Once he was drummed out and had gone to Balboa Naval Hospital they told him he had a broken femur. Imagine his surprise!

Rock-portage1

Rock Portage

Hahahah!  A footnote: Seems his father was a retired SEAL. Well when daddy found out how his son had been kicked out of training for having a broken leg, yet still “putting out” to use the vernacular, he was, shall we say, livid.

Needless to say, the kid in question was apologized to (ad nauseam) and invited to return once healed so that he would have an opportunity to break the other leg. I talked to him about this and he told me he’d had enough, but then I ran into him a few weeks later and he told me he would be coming back.

It takes a special kind of idiot to go through that. I know, as I was just such an idiot. Twice. I suppose that’s why they call it “Special Forces.”

We had a guy in my second BUD/s class (158) whose name was Lundtmark. One day while we were running the obstacle course he got to the very top of the cargo net (roughly 60 feet above the beach) and fell off.

cargo net1

Whoosh!

Bam!

Boom!

He survived, but from that day forward Lundtmark was reborn and known as “Sand-Dart.”

Some of the funniest moments I recall were during “Drown Proofing.” Drown-proofing is quite simple: one’s ankles are tied up and one’s wrists tied together behind one’s back. Then the “wog” (Short for pollywog, a neophyte, wanna-be SEAL) must simply swim 100 meters in 12 foot deep water.

Once that is accomplished, the wog must do some acrobatic maneuvers underwater while still tied up and then somehow get to the bottom and pick up a scuba mask with his teeth and bring it to the edge of the pool where the instructors await to pull him out and beach him. All great fun.

I never had any apprehension with this evolution since I am very relaxed in water. Others had slightly more trouble.

One idiot after being cast into the water did nothing but bob up and down screaming, “I’m drowning! I’m drowning! Save me!” As he would get close to the edge of the pool the instructors would push him back toward the middle using long poles while yelling,

“You idiot! If you were drowning, you wouldn’t be able to say you’re drowning!” It was all great fun, but I suspect you’d have had to actually been there at that precise moment to fully appreciate it.

drownproofing

Drownproofing

Another idiot didn’t even make it into the water. His name was “Feather.” (His name really was Feather and he was a body-builder which made him a target of opportunity for the instructors’ “special attention.”)

Well, seems Feather had second thoughts about BUD/s and his desire to “Kill some Commie Bastards” when it came time for drown-proofing. As soon as we were told to start getting tied up, Feather bolted. He actually ran away! Just like a little bitch. Never saw him again.

He’s probably still running…

Anchors Aweigh And Fuck No. I CNNOT pROPERLY eDIT This Fuck You WordPress! Operator Error? I Don’t Fuckin’ Think So!

“Drink to the Foam!”

Running in Soft Sand: Part Two

The Below is Somewhat of a Rant Interlude (before I get to the rest of my story): Read at Your Own Annoyance.

*****

But before you do that, perhaps you may want to visit here, and watch the video while there, and maybe even read here.

***

I have a lot to say.

About Navy SEALs.

I have a lot of opinions.

About Navy SEALs.

And I am bona fide.

About Navy SEALs

****

I have a lot of regret over my experience with Navy SEALs.

I have a lot of love for Navy SEALs. Hell! I love the Nav!

(I scored ’99’ on my ASVAB–Unheard of!–The Army Tried to Recruit me! The Greenie Beanies! The Rangers! What a fucking joke!

(Now, do not mistake me: I think the Green Berets are just Jim Dandy, but they have parameters: i.e., there are things they just will not attempt. The Navy (SEALs) have no parameters: they will ‘attempt’ anything–more than once)

Video Credit:  Goldenman39z

I recall, while at BUD/s, how we used to taunt the USMC, there for their ‘little taste of amphib training.’

“Hey! Marine Corps! Bullet Sponge Marine Corps! (The few; the proud; the dead on the beach!”)**

Yeah, we got into trouble over that one…

And I did, one day, overhear a TDY Greenie Beanie instructor ask MY BUD/s instructor:

“Hey! How do you guys do it? I mean… how do you do it? You do all the same training! How do you do IT??”

My BUD/s instructor simply said, 

“We do it because this is how we do it.”

Would not trade my time spent at BUD/s for any other of my life’s experiences that I have experienced. (And that includes my time spent at SFM and in Iraq and Afghanistan, and even in Oklahoma and other war zones.)

I ‘earned’ it—my experience with SEALs.

All of it.

Every fuckin’ second.

They, (The SEAL Instructors) tried to kill me, but in a good way…They did kill one, in a manner of speaking, on ‘my watch’, but that is yet another story which time and virtual ink will not permit me to recount here–maybe later)

There are a lot of ‘frauds’ out there now. People who will tell you:

“I was a Navy SEAL.”

Idiots most! If you want to know if someone is / was a SEAL, you simply need to ask one simple question, “Which BUD/s class were you in?”

If that answer comes back as nonsense, then you will know…

(But, how will you know, being a non-com? If it was, indeed, nonsense.) I will tell you. There is only one place on Earth where BUD/s is taking place. That there, for starters, is a good clue. If some asshole tells you he went to BUD/s in Norfolk, VA, (As once happened to me in Basra, Iraq and once in Mombasa, Kenya) he is lying. If some asshole tells you he cannot remember: he is lying. If some asshole tells you it is ‘Classified,’ he is lying.

Walk away and find an interesting chick to speak with. You may get lucky. Buy her a gin and tonic or a wine cooler and tell her you were a Navy SEAL. She may buy into your bullshit. It usually never works in Southern California, but always works like a charm in Toledo.

And the crowd went wild

And The Crowd Went Wild!

Ever since Navy SEALs ‘took out’ OBL… well, and even before… The Navy has had a great PR Program, and a great recruiting machine. The Navy does recruiting better than any other service, (USMC is a very close second, though) But when I was about to enlist and told my recruiter I was ‘going in’ to be a SEAL, he did his due diligence and tried to talk me out of it!

Hahahah!

When I put in my chit (Navy vernacular) for SEALs, no one, and I mean no one, had ever heard of such an outfit, save for a few Nam Vets. I mean to say, data-based, ninety-nine of one hundred Americans could not even define a Navy SEAL.

“SEALs? Never heard of ‘em. Green Berets? Sure. Saw the fucking movie… John Wayne, right?”

Thinking to myself: “Yeah… The Duke, In Fucking Georgia: About as far removed from Viet Nam as is possible, you schmuck!”

Now today, I tune into CNN, FOX: even Aljazeera America, (You damn betcha! I read / watch ALL news), and I see so many ‘Former Navy SEALs’ paraded in front of me, talking to Megyn Kelly, or Bill O’Reilly, or Brook Baldwin, or Kim Kardashian. Jesus on a cracker! Is this what I missed by not becoming a Navy SEAL? I coulda been a ‘coin-tender!’ I coulda been somebody! I could have written a fucking book. Instead of being a bum.

Do a ‘search’ on Amazon dot com for Navy SEAL books. The SEALs I knew, did not ‘talk.’ Now everyone who ever even attempted ‘Hell Week’, is fucking Ernest Hemingway. Makes me nauseous.

Sheeit!

Don’t worry: I will get back to ‘My First Day at BUD/s’ soon enuff, but I am venting now. So please bear with me.

I am going to tell you what it really means to be a young, dumb, full of cum, Texas kid going through SEAL Training. Not the hoopla. Not the machismo. Not the ‘end game’ killing OBL.

No.

Just the story of four or five score scared shitless young kids, who had no idea what they had signed up for… And I was the oldest amongst them, but even, truth be told, the more scared. Because I knew better… Should have known better.

End of Rant.

Please stay tuned… HERE (Part Three)

** And yeah! My own Father was a Korean-Era USMC: ‘Spit an’ Shine, Nickel and a Dime, United States Marine Corps!”

So what?

He weren’t no SEAL (Then again, neither was I)

LancBe Gone! iS El Stupido! aSSHOLE! A Stupid Ass-Hole! Commentary… SEAL Training: Psych Eval–Mitsy–Try To Gain Her

Fuk Them Navy Psychiatrist Pukes!

 

While stationed at Great Mistakes (Errrr…Great Lakes) Naval Training Command, I did my due diligence and qualified for BUD/s (Basic Underwater Demolition/SEAL training in Coronado, California)

After passing the physical physical and clearing all the other stuff (mostly based upon my ASVAB scores and my ability to swim like a dolphin), A Final Task faced me: I had to pass unblemished through an interview with a psychiatrist. Just a formality, right? (Last hurdle: “Lance, do NOT fuck this up.”)

Sailor

Sailor Lance

This should be fun,” I recall thinking as I waited for my interview.

I was eventually summoned and sat my ass down in front of a geeky, mouse-eyed shrink. He obviously had ‘issues’ of his own. This I could discern straight-away from his limp-wristed demeanor. And obviously the only SEAL he had ever met was in some vain dream fantasy.

No matter. I was there just to get my ticket punched.

After a dozen or so stupid questions about such things as how did I feel about my mother, have I ever killed anything (Uh, do frogs count?), the price of tea in China, ad nauseam, he came to his pièce de résistance:

“Seaman Marcom,” he broached, “If you were ordered by your SEAL Team Leader to go in and clear a room whilst on a mission, and you burst into this room only to discover an elderly lady in a rocking chair reading a bible, what would you do?”

I waited for my dramatic pause, then said,

“Sir, I would shoot the bible.”*

Smiling, I observed him take his rubber stamp out and stamp “Approved” on my papers.

“California Here I Come!”

California! Here I Come!

Right Back Where I Started From

*Footnote:

In the Nav, we have bombastic bullshit ‘tellings’, euphemistically known as ‘Sea Stories’. These are always introduced with the mandatory preamble:

“Now, this is a no-shitter…”

The above telling (though completely factual) is a wonderful example of same.

It’s Memorial Day Weekend: Go find yourself a Sailor and say, “Hey Sailor, New in Town?” Then hug him/her.