Eating
Danforth was particularly tired, that evening.
He sat at the end of the mess, aside, in the hope that no one noticed the kind of state he was in.
On the contrary, Coletta, Rambo and Ortega – the nerds – were unbearably always sat in the front row.
Danforth looked at them, than shook his head.
Nerds.
Danforth thought for a little while about his past, his life and the reason he ended up being there, the robbery he had carried out with Billy that had gone wrong.
Nerds and mommy's boys too.
Ortega wanted to become the teacher's pet, it was obvious.
But in Danforth's eyes, he was a weak man. It was so obvious.
He would never have what it takes to command a team, no... Commanders needed to be tough people.
And the right man for his team was himself.
Then Gates came through the door, shut all the recruits up and started his lesson.
“The purpose of this course is to survive. We will teach you how much you must eat during a survival situation, what and why. Do any of you know what beriberi is?”
No one replied.
“Beriberi is a deadly disease, like pellagra. To tell the truth, it looks like a disease, but it's not exactly a disease. It's something that happens to those who don't eat some of the nutrients the human body needs to work properly.
Because eating something is not enough. It's necessary to eat all of the substances the human body needs in order to survive, because if just one of them is completely missing, sooner or later the body will die. As an example, if you just eat corn for one year, you will die because of protein loss. So, we are going to teach you what you must eat during a survival situation, and how. And then we will teach you how to hunt too, and harvest”
Gates paused.
“This will enable you to survive if you end up being lost in the jungle or – in the worst possible scenario – captured. The kind of situations I am talking about can last for moths, or even years.
Which is why we are not just going to teach you survival, but we are going to make you experience it right here, in Fort Bragg. We are going to make you live that way for a few months. We are going to do this because just teaching it to you would not be enough. We are going to get you used to it”
The recruits looked at each other puzzled.
“As we have told you already, a new situation means stress, and stress means distraction. And when a soldier is at war and distracted... He dies.
So the philosophy is always the same: 'suffering in here in order to survive out there'.
Very well.
Let's start with what you have to eat, when, and why”