Ten days later, Fort Bragg
That day it was raining and thundering; the sky was completely covered with dark, heavy clouds. The trainees were silently complaining in the rain.
They weren't wearing anything waterproof at all, and the wind lashed through their uniforms.
The exercise for that day was to carry a rock as large as a newborn baby.
Trautman was watching them in silence.
He and his assistant, who was called Garner, were wearing olive-green ponchos.
They watched the trainees without saying a word. Their faces were expressionless, as if they were watching a movie and not fifty young men walking around in the cold, carrying large rocks.
Garner was holding a folder in which he occasionally made notes, and didn’t care about the rain falling on the sheets of paper.
The men were breathing with difficulty.
They had been carrying the rocks for hours.
“Feel the cold and feel the heat,” said Trautman.
Barry walked by in front of him, breathing heavily and groaning, and wondering what the hell the colonel was talking about.
Trautman was in his early thirties and yet from Barry's point of view the officer seemed so old.
The colonel was often called 'Trautman the beast' or simply ‘the beast’ but at the time Barry had no idea why.
He was ten years older than the trainees but they had heard that once the selection program was over, Trautman would work out together with the trainees, doing all of the exercises, which seemed out of the ordinary given his age.
Barry’s thoughts were interrupted when the ‘old man’ abruptly said:
“The clothes you’re wearing right now are not fit for this situation but you don’t feel cold.
As long as you keep moving, you will stay alive. Remember that, because one day it may save your lives. If you don’t move when it’s extremely cold, you may die.”
Barry wasn't really tired at the time, but having to listen to every single word the colonel said was almost worse than carrying all of those heavy rocks in the rain.
Barry was worried about getting injured, for example having a dislocated shoulder or, worse still, something might happen to his back.
That day they had begun with a two-hour run and now they were carrying these rocks, and if the rumours about the selection program were right, they were probably going to eat in the rain, with the their plates filling up with water.
Eating very small quantities of bad food and working like slaves to see who would survive was part of the selection program.
So they would probably go on like that for days, and then they would start keeping them awake.
Trautman and his men wanted to see who would lose weight and how much, and who got to a point where they couldn’t take it any longer and after how long. The only thing the trainees wanted to know was how long this torture was going to last.
However, Barry had done his homework with regard to the selection process before joining the unit. He knew that if he came to Fort Bragg without knowing what he might expect, it would have been worse; the fear would have made everything even harder to stand. Besides, he had decided a long time ago to do everything he could to pass the tests.
But that day, in the rain, Barry wondered why the hell they were doing all of these exercises.
What was the sense of it? Weren't they all just damaging themselves? Were they going to become victims of forced labour in Vietnam or were they going to be fighting in a war?
He had already been to Vietnam and he had already worked as a slave many times during his tour, but never like this.
This was just crazy, and no one could stand it for very long.
However, Barry had no intention of giving up.
He was far too angry to simply quit.
There were certain memories well-embedded in his mind of the yelling and screaming soldiers waiting to be avenged.
Barry wanted to go back to Vietnam.
There were too many loose ends and he had to go back.
And it wasn't just that.
That day, and that morning in particular as he was standing in the rain he also thought about a completely different matter.
He was black, and joining the special forces was the only way he might have a successful career in an army in which it wasn’t easy for an African-American to be promoted or become an officer. Whatever the reason, they weren't promoted in accordance with their years of service as would normally and automatically occur in the case of white soldiers.
This is why Barry would never give up during the selection process, even at the cost of splitting a rib or injuring his backbone.
He was really very pleased to be at Fort Bragg training to become a member of the Special Forces. Because there, the world was different.
Fort Bragg was a bit like Vietnam: it wasn’t like the rest of the world and American rules and customary behaviour stopped at the gates of the base.
The color of Delmore Barry's skin didn't matter at all.
At this particular site and time only two things were really important: what the trainees could and couldn't do.
In this sense whites, blacks and Hispanics were all on the same level. They were all the same and they were all brothers, suffering together during a period of hardship … or at least that’s the way it would be for those who managed to get through that damned selection process.
So, instead of letting the rock fall to the ground and yelling out in pain, Barry continued to struggle as hard as he could. In this way he could show everyone what a black kid could do in an army ruled by whites.
He had already beaten some of them: the day before three of the trainees threw in the sponge.
Barry was thinking of his less fortunate companions as he continued carrying his rock in the rain, with the wind blowing against his wet clothes.
Inside of him, despite the suffering, he conjured up the inner strength and smiled.
Barry didn’t know it but Trautman's personal assistant immediately made a note of the fact.