My SFAS Failure

[Synsei]

TS gave me the nod to post this. I hope it helps some of you younger (and even older) guys getting ready for selection.


I’m a 38 year old prior service guy that attended SFAS back in 2001. When I was an E-4, I re-enlisted with an option to work in the SF recruiting office on Ft. Hood. The reason I wanted this temporary assignment was so that I could fully immerse myself in all things SF prior to going to selection. There were about 6 or 7 other soldiers (half of which had already been selected and awaiting Q Course dates). We were up doing PT 2 hours before the rest of Ft Hood, and finished an hour after them. We ran, rucked, swam, and carried telephone poles around post. I thought I was ready for SFAS (there wasn’t any material for research back then).

While I was at selection, I had a blast. There was absolutely no other place I wanted to be. I quickly realized that “wanting to be selected” was relative. What I mean by this is that everybody there said they wanted to be selected but I was amazed at how easily people quit. I thought that everybody there wanted to be there just as much as I did but I was wrong. That being said, I couldn’t get my head around while people were quitting. I compared it to high school football. Simply put, if you want to be on the team, you have to run the 2 a day practices under the hot summer sun or you're not going to be on the team. One night I was talking to a guy who was originally from Panama (and could run like the wind). He was always telling jokes that were made funnier by his accent. I enjoyed talking to him after a long day. The next morning his rack was cleared. He had VW’ed during the night.

Now, I didn’t go to SFAS with the mindset of blowing every event out of the water. Actually, the only mindset I had was one of DON’T QUIT. This got me though a lot of tough times. By the time I got to land nav, I started to feel more confident every time somebody else quit because I was nowhere near wanting to quit.

The Downturn- Over the years, I’ve replayed this in my head over and over and over again.

Team week-
During one event, we were rucking while carrying ammo crates and rubber ducks. I was hurting as was everybody else. I should’ve worked on my grip and forearm strength. A Ranger officer was my carrying buddy for a couple evolutions on this event and he kept dropping the crate. This caused my arm and shoulder to jerk violently. After a few times of this, I lost it on him. I don’t remember what I said but it was something along the lines of “Drop this one more time and I’m going to fuck you up. You're a fucking Ranger, dude.” He literally started crying and said “I’m trying.” As I look back, I should’ve offered some encouragement and motivation instead of cursing him. He quit the event shortly afterwards.

I was never a great ruck marcher, but I had a heart like Rocky Balboa. One of the guys on my team happened to be a combat medic that used to do PT with the SFAS group back on Ft Hood. “John” was a lot stronger ruck marcher than I was so I used him as my motivation (“Just keep up with John”). During the transition forced ruck to the next event, we had a pretty good pace that all of the remaining team members were able to maintain. After a while, the cadre designated a new TL. The new team leader was built like a tank and one of his strides was 2 to the rest of us. He took off like a race horse. We had to ruck run just to keep up with him. As we moved out, we passed 3 other teams like they were standing still. Some of the other guys that were from Ft. Hood (but on different teams) saw this and as I was passing them, they mouthed the words “what the fuck?”, but all I could do was shrug my shoulders in reply and continue running. This went on for a good while and my team was starting to slinky a bit. I was definitely hurting but I kept telling myself to “Keep up with John”. What I thought was a good idea, turned out to be the worst. Why? John fell out of the movement. I continued on for a while but more and more of my team fell by the wayside. Finally, after telling our cadre assessor that I’m NOT QUITTING at least 25 times, he told me to get into the bed of the truck. I cried like no grown man should ever cry (barring loss of life). In the end, the new team leader finished with 4 out of the original 14 members. Other teams finished with their whole team intact while mine finished with 4. For 13 years, I’ve blamed that one man for robbing me of my destiny. It wasn’t until about a week ago that I realized the truth. I self-assed myself out of that transition movement. I essentially bet my dream of becoming a Special Forces soldier on John being as motivated as I was. I made a ceiling of John’s performance on that ruck, and as such, when he quit that movement, my mental ceiling was destroyed. It didn’t matter that I had never been able to keep up with John until that day. His failure became my failure.

I’m now older and a different person than I was back then. I understand and accept my shortcomings and I am determined to overcome them.

Here’s where I think I failed although I’m not qualified to say with any certainty:

1. I didn’t show up at SFAS wanting to destroy it, but rather only to survive it. My confidence was a slow gradual ramp up based on the failures of others.

2. As a younger soldier, I didn't understand the nuances of what others perceive as good humor. As we were putting away the logs after log PT, I made a joke about the team in front of mine being “blue falcons” for taking so long. I said it with a smile, but one member of that team glared at me as if I had said something about his mother. Coincidentally, this guy ended up being the aforementioned team leader of death.

3. Mentally, I based my performance output somebody else. I didn’t trust myself and my own intestinal fortitude. Who’s to say that I wouldn’t have been able to finish that movement if I had relied on myself?


What my older mind understands now-

If at least one of your reasons for wanting to be SF is to be a part of something bigger than yourself, then begin your training with that same mindset. Don’t train just to be strong, train to get strong so that you can help your team. Don’t train to be fast, train to be fast so that you can save your buddy’s life if you have to. Continue to learn so that you can be an asset to your team. Doing training with the mindset of becoming an asset to your team instead of a liability gives you a feeling of accountability. This feeling of accountability inherently lends itself to a stronger dedication to training because you are training for something bigger than yourself. I’ve started by sharing my failure with this community so that others may benefit from it. I hope to be back in boots within a month and hope to return to SFAS within 1 year.