Thank You for My Service - Mat Best Page 0,67

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The list of requirements you have to meet before you can even apply for a contracting position with the ████ is, to paraphrase the great Nick “Goose” Bradshaw, “long and distinguished.” You need to be a combat veteran; you need to have served in a Special Operations unit; you need to be able to obtain a specific level of clearance…the list goes on. As a result, the selection criteria, if you’ve been allowed to apply, are oriented primarily toward the attributes of guys who had been “operators” for some period of time: physical fitness, marksmanship, close quarters combat, that kind of thing. Although drunken nights that ended at In-N-Out Burger were a regular part of my stint as a private security manny, I made sure I was in animal-style shape by the time I applied to the program and was allowed to go through my qualification course on the East Coast.

Selection starts with a PT test that consists of a mile-long run, followed by a 100-meter 200-pound dummy drag, and finishes with another three-quarter-mile run. All of this you have to complete in less than thirteen minutes. I could sit here and articulate why you should think I’m an awesome badass because I met some sort of physical standard to be a ███████████████, but in reality, like everything in life, success starts with not being a pussy. Put one foot in front of the other, recognize that no matter what, all adversity will end at some point, and then smile to the poor son-of-a-bitch who is struggling worse than you when you pass him on the way to the finish line.

Most people qualified for this kind of contracting work don’t have issues with the PT test, but if there is one part that smokes people more than the others, it’s dragging that fucking dummy. I think the reason it catches people by surprise is that Jonathan Silverman and Andrew McCarthy made it look so easy in Weekend at Bernie’s. Make no mistake, though: It’s a bitch. If you forget to hydrate or stretch, you can very easily cramp up and collapse to the ground. When the dehydration is really bad, it looks a lot like an epileptic seizure. It’s scary if you’ve never seen it happen before. If you have, then it’s just hilarious.

After the PT test, they put us through the standard push-up/sit-up/pull-up challenge. Most everyone in my selection group had been in Special Operations, so this was old hat. You want me to burn out my arms and back and core for no particular reason? Fine. As long as I don’t have to sit down in a frozen swamp afterward, I’ll Lionel Richie this motherfucker and go all night long.

Once you’ve met these basic physical standards, that’s when the course officially starts. It’s a few weeks of training during which you go through a wide variety of scenarios in order to learn the organization’s tactics, techniques, and procedures. This consists of firearms training and qualification, close quarters combat training, driving school, fight training, and a long list of other fun stuff that involves being a man. If you show up on time, meet the standards, and don’t quit, at the end you get a nice little certificate. It’s like a Bachelor’s of Badassery.

One of my favorite pieces of training that we conducted during qualification was called the hooded box drill. Surprisingly, the name says it all. The drill begins in an empty room in which you are placed inside a four-foot-by-four-foot square box that has been taped off on the ground. You are given an M4 and a Glock 19 loaded with simunition and told that you cannot exit the box at any time during the drill. Next they turn on really loud music and bring a hood down over your head so you can’t see anything. While you listen to something that sounds like Edward Scissorhands fingerbanging a Vitamix turned up to 11, the instructors cook up whatever interesting scenario they can think of. When the instructors are ready, the mask comes flying off your head and you are presented with a situation that you have to react to instantaneously. Maybe someone in a safety suit immediately punches you in the face as four other combatants go for your limbs. Maybe they all open up on you with AK-47 simunitions. The details don’t matter; the important thing is that the drill induces high levels of stress in order to test your