[The Reaper]

Gates

What I would consider “Day One” began with administrative activities, such as the checking of our medical records and our orders. We were broken down alphabetically and then assigned numbers in ascending order. We were issued, among other gear, red numbered pinny shirts, which you wore over either the Army Physical Fitness Uniform shirt or the brown T-shirt. This became our identity for the next three and a half weeks. For the next two days we took exams that measured our intelligence, our problem solving abilities and our psychological make-up. We were briefed, and welcomed, by the cadre, course commander, course first sergeant, camp commander, camp sergeant major, group commander, and finally the overall commander of the Special Warfare Center.

Our Army Physical Fitness Test (APFT) was held at the beginning of this first week. There was nothing new about any of the events; it was all standard Army practice. What was different, however, was that there was to be no encouragement of another candidate, as this was an individual event, and the strict adherence to form during the execution of each exercise. Each push-up had to be slow and deliberate and each sit-up had to break the perpetual “plane” with one’s upper-back coming to ninety degrees with the ground. Most of us did well. Others had a really hard time as they had developed bad habits back at their home stations. The cadre had set up a nice two-mile run track with a very gradual incline and decline. It was essentially a large loop on the Camp Mackall Airfield. I came in at the middle of the pack on the run. All in all, this was not a bad first day. Incredibly, about 30 people failed the APFT and had to retake it the next day. Of those, about five soldiers made it to join the rest of the class.

The APFT may have been the first real gate into the course, but it was also the green light for the instructors to punish us with physical activity should this become either necessary, or part of the weeding-out process. Collectively, I think we all understood this and the regular formations became a bit more organized. We would form-up just outside of our huts, which is what we called our living quarters. We now had enough candidates to occupy four huts. Because of where my last name fell on the alphabet, I became part of Hut 4, our last man being candidate roster number 269. This meant we were intuitively placed at the end of almost every task. Chow came last to us more often than not. But, it also meant that we were not the first hut that was called upon for menial work details. The instructors communicated to us in two ways: harsh language and a dry erase board placed just outside their shed next to a clock with the official SFAS time. Strangely, this clock seemed to change just about every day, so we were forced to reset our watches time and again. What this ended up doing was ensuring that we appeared about fifteen minutes early to each formation. As the instructors made it a rule to write the next events on the dry erase board, each hut sent out a man to look for changes to either the clock, or the board’s contents about every fifteen minutes. This way, a thirty minute warning for an event really meant just about fifteen minutes to inform everyone, put on the newly prescribed uniform and be outside fully accounted for. To aid this, the cadre assigned a temporary leader to each hut, as well as an overall leader for the whole class. These positions rotated about every three days and did not seem to follow a pattern of rank, or experience. When an inexperienced leader got to the helm, everything seemed disorganized. The troops would not listen and would shout back suggestions to the hut leader. The position of hut leader can be quite intimidating. Most of the candidates in any one hut were anywhere from Private First Class (PFC) to Captain (CPT). Some came from the Ranger Regiment, the National Guard Special Forces Groups, while others boasted recent combat experience in Afghanistan.

(TBC)