My SFAS Failure

[Hacksaw]

Interesting read. I used a much simpler process going through selection, one foot in front of the other. I never put too much thought into it and I believe it worked for me. My foot and wrist were broken day one of team week in 1990, I think if I had concentrated on the bigger picture I would not have ever finished that shitshow.
Good luck in selection, a guy in my class was 46 and made it, however, I was in the first easy class....we were the first to have a chow hall.

[spottedmedic111]

Terrific account, thanks for sharing. Using good judgement under stress is hard but necessary, i.e. letting someone else dictate your pace. Unfortunately, I showed up with shin splints that didn't clear up until team week. But, like others have said, focusing on how you can support your teammates helps take your attention off your own misery.

[The Reaper]

I was corresponding with a Marine officer who was preparing to attend SFAS. This was back when SFAS was more than three weeks long, and had full-up team week.

Three days before he reported for selection, he did a water survival practice swim, and then rucked twelve miles in combat boots. The same boots and socks that he had swum in, without drying them.

He sent me pics, most of the skin on the soles of his feet were blistered and falling off. There was more damaged skin than intact.

I told him that there was no way he should attempt SFAS with his feet in that condition. He told me that he had burned his bridges with the Marine Corps by applying for SFAS and agreeing to branch transfer should he be selected. There was no looking back, the Rubicon had been crossed.

I saw him a couple of times during SFAS, limping badly, and I figured he was a goner.

Come my usual visit on Board and Selection day, I asked a cadre if he was still there. He pulled up a roster and shouted for the roster number.

This kid came shuffling over, and I was shocked. I asked to see his feet to verify it was the same guy. His feet actually looked a little better than they had when he started the course, but they were still largely hamburger. Obviously, this Marine REALLY wanted to be SF.

He went off to do some task, and I asked the cadre if he was selected, and he smiled and said, "Roger that."

His teammates from Team Week said that he had the heart of a lion. I cannot conceive of the amount of pain this Marine officer endured during those three weeks. There isn't a lot of time in SFAS off your feet.


I guess there are a few lessons from this long story.

1. Don't ruck in wet socks and boots.

2. If you start feeling a hot spot, stop and treat it.

3. Burning all of your bridges behind you can be a powerful motivator.

4. People who tell you not to go may, or may not know what you are capable of.

5. Never quit or assess yourself out of the program. While a small percentage of people who do poorly are actually selected, we have a 100% non-select rate for Voluntary Withdrawals.

6. What is in your heart and mind is vastly more important to your success than your physical condition. I am not saying that you don't need to be fit and able to execute the tasks given you, but all of the physical fitness in the world is useless if you are not completely dedicated to the cause and are worrying about other matters. Physically strong people without dedication fail at a much higher rate than those physically lesser men who refuse to quit. And when it is just a couple of you left on that mountaintop, and you are stacking magazines, straightening grenade pins, and counting targets, who do you really want standing there with you? I'll take that Marine officer over the biggest PT stud I know.

TR

[MR2]

Amen.

[WarriorDiplomat]

I second that amen TR

[Mike792]

TR That was an excellent post. Thanks for sharing.

[Synsei]

TR- Great story. Definitely one for my suck bank. I have a comedy bank that is filled with memories of funny things that dates back to cartoons I watched as a kid. I tap in to it when I need to pass the time. My suck bank is full of personal experiences and secondhand experiences that I tap into when I start to feel sorry for myself. Now I can say to myself "Shut your face. TR said that guy's feet looked like hamburger."

This site is great because I've never seen so much input and feedback from verified SF guys. There's no coddling here, just good, solid information. I only knew one SF guy when I was working at the SF recruiting station prepping for SFAS. He would come and show his face every so often, but I really didn't know what his role was there. I also got the feeling that he didn't really want to be there (which is understandable if you'd rather be on a team somewhere). He was kind of brash, liked his drinks, and, from what I heard was a bit of a womanizer. BUT there was just something about him when it was "go time". Very professional. I knew I wanted to be like him...mostly.

Another indelible mark was left on me as well. I was returning from some errand with the recruiting station NCOIC. We didn't see very many green berets worn on Ft. Hood, but here came one headed right for us. It turns out to be CSM Richard Efurd (sp). We introduced ourselves very formally and he put out his hand and said "Hi, I'm Richard. Glad to meet you." Being part of the big Army, I couldn't even fathom what just happened. I remember feeling awkward like I had stolen something.

Anyways, back to PT.

[The Reaper]

I was talking to SUT students several years ago.

They were commiserating about how early in the training, what a bunch of assholes they thought the SUT cadre were and how they really weren't anything special either.

Then, on a training event, a charge went off early and some people got hurt.

They said that the biggest cadre asshole of all happened to be an 18D and when the shit hit the fan, he grabbed a bag and went to work treating, stabilizing, triaging, etc. He was a completely different person.

The students said that they all wanted to be like him after seeing him doing his medic magic, and maybe the cadre weren't really as bad as they had thought.



Look up Special Forces and neuropeptide Y.

Neuropeptide Y is a stress buffer that allows people to better deal with stressful situations with less physical and mental performance degradation.

They studied some SERE classes and found that you could pick out the SF students over the others by their NPY responses to extreme stress, like interrogations. It was a nearly complete correlation. The psychs said that they could take the results of the NPY measurements, and make a stack of the highest performers, and the lowest, and the SF students were all in the high-performance stack, and none of the other branches or services were, to include Rangers and 160th.

Basically, as one of the psychs explained it to me, SF guys underperform in no to low-stress situations, and overperform in high-stress situations that would cause normal people to shut down. He drew a little graph that depicted SF performance across a stress event. SF guys tend to be pretty casual and maybe even lazy until the excitement starts, and then their performance goes off the top of the chart while others curl up into a little ball and quit.

Our selection and assessment process somehow found those people with an extreme degree of predictabilitly.

He said that they weren't sure how we did it, but the SFAS program for that time was optimized beyond their improvement for selecting the SF soldiers we wanted.

I guess the point of this is that you can't really judge SF until you are one, and even then, maybe not until you see them in action on a high stress event.

We don't select everyone, and that is good thing for the Regiment, and for the non-selects.

TR

[Joker]

Originally Posted by Hacksaw

...however, I was in the first easy class....we were the first to have a chow hall.

Ha! We had a "chow hall" too when I went through in '82. You filed by, got your C-rat, and at it at the pic-a-nic table in whatever weather was around at the time. Also they (very reluctantly I may add) cattle-cared us back to the COSCOM area for Thanksgiving breakfast, lunch, and diner then back to MacKall for our regularly scheduled smoke break (and still extremely pissed-off cadre I may add).

[Last hard class]

Originally Posted by Joker

Ha! We had a "chow hall" too when I went through in '82. You filed by, got your C-rat, and at it at the pic-a-nic table in whatever weather was around at the time. Also they (very reluctantly I may add) cattle-cared us back to the COSCOM area for Thanksgiving breakfast, lunch, and diner then back to MacKall for our regularly scheduled smoke break (and still extremely pissed-off cadre I may add).

Don't worry. They fixed that. I was there for Thanksgiving the following year. Everyone got the turkey loaf C-Rat.

LHC

[MR2]

Ummm... Turkey Loaf...

[Moses]

I went to through Phase 1 with Class 6-82. We wrapped up just before Christmas of 82.

My motivation on the ruck marches was just to keep close enough to the Cadre, (Big Paul Ford) so that I would be able to butt-stroke him with the "60" if I needed to.

My strategy was;
!. Make no friends- Friends tended to all quit together.
2. Help and be there to carry the load, and make sure I was not slacking on tasks.
3. Ask questions when you could, shut your mouth when you couldn't.
4. Never take the Donnor Pass route. There are no short cuts, only the path.
5. Never look past the task your on at the moment.
6. Never Quit! Better your heart should exploded then to quit.
7. Take the early night patrol shift. -- the food left in the chow hall fridge dwindled during the long nights!

[glebo]

Haa, Paul Ford...haven't heard that in awhile. I was at CMK in Jul (82).

All above advice is sound, lots of different ways to cope, but there are a lot of similarities...

[Hacksaw]

Joker, I had the pleasure of going through phase 1 in 86 (with C company) sitting at those same tables, except we had mre's and that shitty koolaid. Being a rock I was able to hangout in 18D course before being selected for the 18B course which included SFAS. My motivation was to stop attending selection courses and actually pass shit the first time around. What's the saying....life is hard and is even harder if you're stupid.

[Last hard class]

Originally Posted by Hacksaw

Joker, I had the pleasure of going through phase 1 in 86 (with C company) sitting at those same tables, except we had mre's and that shitty koolaid. Being a rock I was able to hangout in 18D course before being selected for the 18B course which included SFAS. My motivation was to stop attending selection courses and actually pass shit the first time around. What's the saying....life is hard and is even harder if you're stupid.

That is some serious perseverance!


I suspect quitting never crossed your mind. I don't know how much info they collect on today's students. Do they ask them prior if they are worried about quitting (not failing)? I bet the majority of the voluntary drops would have answered yes. I have yet to meet an SF man who thought he might quit. Which always kills me when I hear someone say they trained for x amount of time but just wasn't mentally prepared.


LHC