Английский для военных/Military English. Метод кейсов/Cases. Решения, ответы, словарь, глоссарий

The ship attack mission is where a pair of SEAL divers is dropped off outside an enemy harbor and then swims well over two miles – underwater – using nothing but a depth gauge and a compass to get to their target.

During the entire swim, even well below the surface, there is some light that comes through. It is comforting to know that there is open water above you. But as you ap-proach the ship, which is tied to a pier, the light begins to fade. The steel structure of the ship blocks the moonlight, it blocks the surrounding street lamps, it blocks all am-bient light.

To be successful in your mission, you have to swim under the ship and find the keel

– the centerline and the deepest part of the ship. This is your objective. But the keel is also the darkest part of the ship – where you cannot see your hand in front of your face, where the noise from the ship’s machinery is deafening and where it is easy to get disoriented and fail.

Every SEAL knows that under the keel, at the darkest moment of the mission, is the time when you must be calm, composed – when all your tactical skills, your physical power and all your inner strength must be brought to bear.

If you want to change the world, you must be your very best in the darkest moment.

The ninth week of training is referred to as «Hell Week.» It is six days of no sleep, con-stant physical and mental harassment, and one special day at the Mud Flats. The Mud Flats are area between San Diego and Tijuana where the water runs off and cre-ates the Tijuana slues, a swampy patch of terrain where the mud will engulf you.

It is on Wednesday of Hell Week that you paddle down to the mud flats and spend the next 15 hours trying to survive the freezing cold mud, the howling wind and the in-cessant pressure to quit from the instructors. As the sun began to set that Wednes-day evening, my training class, having committed some «egregious infraction of the rules» was ordered into the mud.

The mud consumed each man till there was nothing visible but our heads. The in-structors told us we could leave the mud if only five men would quit – just five men

– and we could get out of the oppressive cold. Looking around the mud flat it was apparent that some students were about to give up. It was still over eight hours till the sun came up – eight more hours of bone-chilling cold.