The body
Rambo came into Trautman's office-room, the same in which – one month earlier – his selection was bring into question by Garner.
But now, the youngest of the two Baker teams was right there and in front of him, safe and sound after the selection, and asking him why that course was the way it was.
Trautman was sit behind his desk.
“Sit down, Rambo”
Rambo sat..
“Do you know what's the most common mistake when Special Forces soldiers are training themselves?”
“No”
“They train themselves too much”
Rambo petrified.
In his mind, the idea of training 'too much' had never existed before.
To him, the only limit for training was the will for self-suffering that soldiers could possibly find inside themselves. To John, training had no limits, nor it could have.
“You see, Rambo... The strength of will counts, sure it does and it's never enough. After this selection, I guess you all understood the importance of 'believing to the impossible' and 'trying to do it anyway'”
Rambo nodded.
In those words he found his own thought, even if he still did not understand where Trautman was going to.
“But we are machines, Rambo, and nothing more or less than that. Our body is very similar to a racing car, but we are much more complicated than cars. We have a fuel – what we eat – and an engine... But the rest of it is much more complicated to explain. Anyway, the past stories of some of our P.O.Ws explained us some of the mechanisms that make our 'machines' work.
The first being that no one survives a too long period of excessive effort. And by 'excessive' I mean over your body's abilities of 'self-repair'.
Sheer willpower can make a huge difference but it's not the only factor at play. The other is your body and it must be be up to it too. Are you following me, Rambo? You can't just take a kid and make him do what we do here. This is obvious, isn't it?”
“Yes”
“So the limits are two: one is physical and the other psychological, but believe me when I say you that the physical limit is real. It's not just a matter of the mind.
Someone gets his limit sooner, someone else later, and the mind will make a big difference in setting your exact overall limit, but the physical limit is real, Rambo.
It do exists.
The body of a regularly-training soldier and the body of someone who never workout are two completely different kind of machines”
At this point Rambo started to understand.
It wasn't just a matter of sheer will: it was a physical matter too... Almost a matter of body mechanics.
“During the selection process many goes into confusional state. They lose balance or consciousness: they have reached and crossed their physical limit and are literally starting to die, because over the point of no return the body is disintegrating, not training.
And that point is established by your body.
What I am trying to say, is that between men with the same level of motivation, training makes the difference.
When I don't workout enough, my physical limits gets lower. When I workout some more than usual – and regularly -, it gets higher.
If you want to be the best, you need both things: body and mind. An unbreakable mind – because you know suffering – and a body forged by years of training.
The selection program is just meant to find if you have the mind, not the body.
You will build your bodies here, thanks to our two years training program.
Remember it, John: years.
Every time you stop training for too long, you are ruining your body”
Rambo nodded.
Trautman continued:
“There's another very important thing you all need to know, and this is the most important of all.
Average soldiers are thought that 'nothing is impossible', because they must be able to try the impossible just like if it was perfectly possible.
You guys are are all able to do this already, or you wouldn't have passed the selection, and this is not for everyone, I agree...
But this is just the beginning.
I will make you move even forward that. I will make you go full-circle.
All things considered, inside the SOG I will make you make a step back.
At this point, the most important thing for you is to have a perfect knowledge about your actual limits. The missions you are going to run are far too dangerous for those kind of soldiers simply used to try the impossible without ever thinking about the consequences of their attempts, and just obeying the orders as if they were some kind of brainless machines.
Because in the SOG planning your missions will be up to you, not us.
So I need soldiers both aware of their own limits but also ready to give a try at the impossible, if necessary, and without batting an eyelid.
But this kind of equilibrium of the mind is very difficult to reach. You can understand this, isn't it?”
Rambo understood it... Sure he did.
But Trautman hadn't finished yet.
“Here comes an example; no one can march in the desert, under the sun and with no food nor water. The power of his will will be of very little use because first all later, everybody dies in such a situation.
Special Forces soldiers will survive some days more - thanks to the years of training inside their bodies and a will power stronger than the others – but first or later Special Forces die too.
Let's assume this is going to happen to tomorrow, during a mission.
The usual soldier may say: 'I am going to make it. Nothing's impossible. I can do it'
But you simply don't have the luxury of reasoning like that, not in my units.
The correct way of reasoning that you are going to learn, is this:
'An healthy man can survive from three to six days, and a Special Forces soldier maybe up to eight. But since we have no other choice, we will be the first to survive for up to ten days. And we are going to make it because we are the best”
At this point, Rambo asked himself if he would have been up to thinking this way in Vietnam, but he couldn't say, because he had no answer.
What Trautman was saying was, in some aspects, horrible.
It would have been easy to just thinking that he would have been able of reasoning in this way at war, after all he had already come through in Fort Bragg during the selection process, but the truth was that he had never been in such an extreme situation before, nor forced to think in such a way in Vietnam.
The main problem was fear.
He had been through it already and knew the way fear could change everything inside a man's mind. Reasoning the way Trautman was talking about could be done in 'cold blood', while planning your mission and before its start, but not on the field,when you were tired and afraid of death, no... This was a completely different story, and one of those situations he sincerely hoped to never live.
At this point Rambo felt some kind of awkwardness, almost fear, because every military corps has his own principles and if those of SOG where such... Only God knew what kind of battles created them.
Then Trautman started talking again.
“I will teach you how to workout and train properly. I will teach you how to build up the kind of 'machine' your body really is.
Then you will continue doing as I thought you on your own, and for all the time you will spend in my unit.
The factors to consider are three: eating, sleeping and workout, and a single one of the three can easily ruin all of the others if not applied in the correct way.
That's the way our POWs in Vietnam dies because of hardship: because they work like slaves without eating, drinking and sleeping adequately.
Working out is simply not enough, Rambo... You must also be able of doing it with intelligence: regularly and always near the limits, but without ever crossing them for real, or you are going to ruin everything. And believe it or not, that's the most common mistake between the veterans; they train too much.
Anyway, after you have understand how does it works, you just need a lot of free time and constancy most of all. An unshakeable constancy”
Trautman smiled.
“Believe it or not, but after the two years that you are going to spend here in Fort Bragg, what you have made during the selection process will look like a walk to you. You will see.
But we are going to get to this point step by step and yet, you will see the first results very soon.
Once in a week, you will make one more push up.
Once in a month, you will run a little longer, or faster.
Doing this constantly, you are going to get stronger in everything you are training for.
All in all, this is the reason why we are going to make you work like dogs, during those two years”
Rambo stayed silent..
So Trautman added:
“One day, life or death could just be a matter of how many years you have spent working out, and how you did it. If you did it well, the results of these years will be inside your arms and legs. Otherwise, they won't.
And without the results of training inside of you, the sheer power of will won't be enough to make you survive. Do you understand that that, Rambo?”
The young man nodded, then said:
“But after those two years in Fort Bragg, how long will have to workout, colonel?”
“Well... Considering that one day your life could depend on it, you can understand it by yourself, isn't it, son?”