Eleven Days by Lea Carpenter

they’ve been ready. Others are broken. Suddenly they are in the closest thing they’ve been in to a live fight. And even knowing it’s a simulation, and that adequate safety precautions are taken, some of the bravest-seeming among them will ring out within the first hour. The shock is too much. By Wednesday, those who remain think they will make it one more night. They put one foot in front of the other and rely on muscle memory. They are ready for relief. The Master Chief’s songs are a form of relief.
    They all know them by heart by now, because he has been singing them since day one—on the beach, on the Grinder, whilechecking their rooms. He likes to sing. And he likes you to sing, too. Sing softly, and you will drop and push them out. Sing too softly, and you gain the privilege of running once more into the water, and it’s like ice. Then you can drop for a hundred more push-ups, in the process of which sand gets in your nose, your mouth, your eyes. The illusion that sand might lodge in your lungs and slow you on runs—or choke you—is powerful. Once you have that image in your mind it is tough to erase.
    As the master chief sings, he will periodically slow his pace, or even run in place, allowing him to observe his men. A month ago, this class started with one hundred sixty trainees. Now they were thirty. He can see how red their eyes are. He can sense how close each one of them might be to the edge of breaking. They have been running in and out of the water on this one night for close to four hours. Running is like breathing here. Run to the O course. Run to eat. Run to rest, briefly. Run to gain the privilege of another, longer run.
    Most of them are unaware of what hour or even what day it is. Still, somewhere underneath the exhaustion, the pain of spliced tendons and stress fractures and stomach muscles stretched to unholy lengths, there is a sense of release. This is what the singing does. The song goes like this:
        
I’ve seen the bright lights of Memphis
,
        
And the Commodore Hotel
,
        
And underneath a streetlamp
,
        
I met a Southern Belle
.
        
Well, she took me to the river
        
Where she cast her spell
        
And in that Southern moonlight
        
She sang her song so well
        
“If you’ll be my Dixie Chicken
        
I’ll be your Tennessee lamb
        
And we can walk together
        
Down in Dixieland
.
        
Down in Dixieland.”
    After Hell Week, the class size shrinks again, to nineteen. After Hell Week, they will have nine weeks of dive training and three weeks of hydrographic reconnaissance work. After that, their class size will stand at seventeen, one guy having injured himself during drown-proofing, another having failed pool competency, the one test Jason never tells his mother about, although she could have found out about it online if she’d wanted. Then the men leave the pool and learn land warfare. In this third and final chapter things become increasingly what might be called fun. The ones who remain will most likely complete the course. The tests they have endured up until this point have been largely psychological. The way their bodies have changed attested to the physical rigors they’ve endured.
    Men about to end BUD/S are like steeplechase jockeys days before a race, only imagine jockeys who have not yet seen a horse, who are unable to distinguish a foal from a thoroughbred. They will have time to train, to learn more about what it means to fight and about which tools they will use. They will learn more about themselves, too. Self-knowledge makes the real warrior, and self-knowledge coupled with tactical skill allows a guy to say he is an operator. Throughout those early weeks, almost everyone was thinking the same thing:
Why did I make it, and why did he fail?
They will have years ahead to talk about it, but over time it will become clear.
    On the last night, the few guys left gather at the master chief’s