Fort Bragg
The following day the recruits were marching even more than the day before.
That morning was particularly cold and Krakauer's face was a pain mask, while he clenched his teeth.
I won't give in – he thought.
I can't give in.
His legs ached, his shoulders were heavy, his lungs were on fire... But it just wasn't enough.
What else do you think you can stand?
Everything – he replied himself.
How far do you think you can go?
Almost up to death.
On this subject, in 1961 Alan Shepard went on board of a fucking rocket and got himself launched a million miles up in the sky.
And in a few years from now, four or five people at most, would board an even larger missile, almost as tall as a skyscraper, and try to land on the moon.
I am doing it – he thought.
I am doing it.
I am holding on.
Lawrence then let the pain go throughout his body in all of its tremendous power, as if it wasn't painful at all.
This is nothing – he thought.
Some think Formula One pilots are brave to race on circuits where, if something goes wrong, you can end up against a wall at 130 miles per hour.
Some others think that the best in the whole world are the astronauts, as brave and cold blooded as machines.
But I have found something even bigger.
Such a big challenge, so difficult and so dangerous that it will finally give a meaning to my life for sure, even for the bad boy I have always been – he sadly thought.
And he found that challenge in Vietnam.
It was the war and the special forces.
Because they were the best of the best and that place, Vietnam, was a place where the meaning of the phrase 'put yourself to the test' became so unbelievable that it would have made even the bravest racing pilots or astronauts become more realistic.
Even people like them would have never dared to go to Vietnam.
Because there's no so such final challenge in a man's life as war is (*) and Lawrence was absolutely obsessed by the idea of doing something great during his life, in order to avoid wasting it.
There are only two kinds of people in this world: those who want to be happy and those who want to do something.
So, after the first time in his life he ran for a whole hour, he immediately felt the need to run for two.
Then three...
And so on with everything he did, and for all of his life.
But if you aren't the son of an important person, it is really difficult that you will ever have your chance to really do anything big.
A long time ago, Krakauer understood that the army could give him his shot.
So during the basic training, he always gave his best.
Walking, marching, climbing...
The constant word had always been the same for him: more, more, more...
Because to Krakauer, being capable of something meant becoming someone.
And he wanted to be the best.
He wanted to be the one that could run more, march for whole days and be resistant to hunger, sleep and cold almost as if he wasn't a human being anymore.
And he wished to risk his life in Vietnam.
And if that meant killing people he didn't even know, he didn't care a thing about it, because if the United States had told him to kill these people, they couldn't be wrong.
And most of all, he would prove that the whole world was wrong about him.
He would how it to the world and, most of all, to himself.
He would show to everybody what Lawrence Krakauer was really capable of despite his poor, ugly, shaming origins.
But as his thoughts got near his past, he immediately stopped them and continued gritting his teeth.
* Oriana Fallaci's quote from the book 'Nothing, and so be it' Rizzoli, 1969.