The stress
Garner scratched his head a bit and tried to gather his thoughts.
“Stress is not just simple fatigue; it's much more complicated than that.
It's an entirely different concept, which you will have to learn again from scratch.
Stress is everything we feel as unpleasant: mostly hunger and thirst, but also being sleepless, cold or wounded, or losing a friend.
It's everything that takes energy away from us, but also attention and motivation.
A soldier on the field complaining of the cold or the mud because it's been continuously raining for days is a soldier in stressed state. And in such a state, he is partially careless, no matter how little.
So, stress is distraction. What is stress?”
“DISTRACTION!”
“Good. The purpose of the training you are going to receive here is to increase your stamina with regard to the stress. That's why we are going to be a bloody nuisance to you until we make you crazy”
The class laughed.
Garner allowed himself a smile, then continued:
“While training, you will always have to search for stress. You won't 'wait' for it, or hope it will never come. You must search for it with all of your will, even if it's masochistic”
The recruits smiled again.
“Very good. After all of these years working out in the search of more and more stress, when you’re at war, you will have to do exactly the contrary. At war, you will have to avoid stress with the same energy you have searched for it during these two years in Fort Bragg”
But as he spoke, Garner saw perplexity on their faces.
So he decided to underline the idea:
“If you aren’t able to save your energy just because you are not used to it, you are not fit for the SOG. Am I clear?” ”
And while saying this last sentence he almost raised his voice, because they deserved it.
The selection process had made them big-headed obviously.
He could read it in their eyes.
After passing it, those idiots thought they were omnipotent and that nothing in the world could push them into a state of crisis any more, not after what they had been through in Fort Bragg.
Idiots.
Macho men... That's what they are: fucking heroes.
But the point is that there's no room for heroes, inside the SOG.
And he pushed himself to say it aloud.
“You just don't believe me. Jesus”
They looked even more perplexed and suddenly Garner hated them.
He hated them because had they left for Vietnam the following day... They would have just died as heroes.
Every one of them, no one excluded, and that damn selection process – that had just cost them so much blood and fatigue -, would never have been of any use to them in Vietnam... Because they hadn't understood anything yet.
Garner tried to calm down, and gather his thoughts.
“How much longer do you think you would have held out, had the selection process lasted longer? A single day? Two?”
“But Sir, the selection was obviously...”
“WHAT? THE SELECTION PROCESS WHAT?”
But no one dared to reply.
Garner then took a deep breath.
Then he tried to understand what the guys in front of him were thinking and, in the end, he concluded that those guys had no idea at all about the world, life and even less about death, nor war.
“Do you think that the selection process was exaggerated, is that it? That it was beyond the human limits, am I right?
Very well.
I am sorry to be the one to tell you this, guys... But it wasn't. Not at all”
Garner lowered his gaze.
“The selection was nothing. There are American POWs over there that are living an ongoing selection that is lasting years, and yet they are still alive. They are over there right now, as we speak”
Garner looked up again, and toward them.
“And that's another reason why Trautman and I are here right now: to explain to you how to survive such things, should they ever happen to you. The only thing we really ask of you is to believe profoundly in what we tell you here.
You have to believe in it as if it was a matter of faith, because one day your lives will depend on what we told you here.
And this is no game.
Is this clear for everyone?”
Garner looked in their eyes again... And this time they had finally changed.
At last the recruits were starting to understand that their lives were at stake, not just their careers.
And so, Garner resumed his lesson about stress.
“During your missions you must always save your energies.
If it's possible to march slowly and still get there in time, it's your duty to march slowly.
If you have more odds of survival by eating a rat, you must eat that rat. You don't have to wait until it gets absolutely necessary just because eating a rat is an unpleasant experience.
Clear?
Another thing.
You must learn to do as we teach even when your instinct tells you otherwise.
Instinct is a double edged weapon, doomed to fail at the first very unusual situation you face.
On the contrary, you are going to analyse the situation you are in, judge it using both your experience and knowledge and only if you really can't do otherwise, are you going to rely on your instinct.
Many of you are used to keeping your heads down and throwing yourselves in without a second thought. But if you feel the urge to shut your brains down when you have to clench your teeth, you can go. That's the door. This is not the marines’ corps”
After hearing those words, Jorgenson almost jumped in his seat... But Garner didn't noticet.
“Here's much more complicated than in the marines’ corps.
During the kind of missions that you are going to run, this kind of attitude will only get you killed.
I will use an example... Let's talk about fear.
Fear causes adrenaline, and adrenaline takes hunger away.
When soldiers are under siege and are scared by death, they stop eating for days, because of fear and adrenaline.
But after twenty four hours of continuous effort on an empty stomach, soldiers are fighting undernourished... And that will make them commit even more mistakes, which happen because they forgot to eat.
On the contrary, you are going to remember to eat. You are going to smother that wrong instinct suggesting that 'it's not the moment for eating', and you are going to stuff yourselves with food by force, if necessary. Am I clear?”
“YESSIR!”
“But you need lucidity to think in this way, and even more while fighting, and an absolute trust in what we are teaching you here. You won't even be human beings any more, after we have finished with you in here.
In the SOG we are going to teach you to use your intelligence much more than people spontaneously do.
Do you know why so many soldiers are such fans of instinct?
Because using it is easy. On the contrary, taking a pause and using your head makes everything even more tiring.
Analysing the situation while under enemy fire, continuing to reason while you are on your own, tired and maybe even wounded... It's during those moments that you really see what a soldier is really worth.
We are going to turn you into cold blooded calculators.
At the end of this course, you will be able to sleep at command, which is something completely unnatural, but that we are able to teach you to do.
You are going to eat every time you can, you are going to rest every time you have a chance of doing it without bad consequences and you are going to learn something new during every single fucking mission you are going to run, and with a humble attitude for all your fucking life.
And at the end of your last mission, when you'll be in your thirties, you will ask yourselves what you have learnt today. And you are going to do it just like you did at the end of your first mission, ten years before
That's the real meaning of 'studying the next move'.
That's the reason why this is our motto.
Don't you ever forget it”