![]() The commander told us to eat everything in the MREs every day, because we’d need every calorie. That’s all I’d eaten for three-squares a day for a week, and all I would eat for the rest of Selection. That afternoon I started the Star Course, and I hadn’t eaten since breakfast. Only ten percent of our 401 candidates completed the course. They warned us on Day 0 they were going to be extra critical because they wanted the experiment to fail. The experiment was roundly rejected by the cadre. In 2008, the JFK Special Warfare Center and School experimented with shortening Special Forces Applicant Selection (SFAS) from 21 to 14 days in an attempt to get more soldiers in the Q-Course and more SF troops on the battlefield. I was pretty skilled in map tracking and land navigation, and the Star Course marked the exact middle of the 14-day selection course. I was more concerned about wandering onto some backwoods moonshine distillery and dealing with Ol’ Bubba. I grew up on a Missouri farm and knew how to handle snakes. I remember a safety brief on the “Star” land-nav course and the cadre talking about all the scary venomous snakes around, trying to get some of the less committed to quit right there. I threw that set of ACUs away, took a baby wipe shower, brushed my teeth, and I think I took the psych test and IQ tests next (but those days all seemed to roll into one). Turns out, I still had some weakness in reserve. Then we switched places with the other group and conducted rifle PT. This routine repeated until all the weakness had left my stomach and found its way into the cargo pockets of my trousers, while other candidates rolled over me. Fortunately there was a polite Green Beret hovering overhead to provide immediate instruction: pick up my weakness and put it in my pocket. When we had to roll right, roll left, or roll over the weak my own weakness came out all over the rubber tire chunks. The strain from the log work made the freshly-eaten food in my stomach fight back. ![]() And I wound up at the end of my mounted log. That morning we got up from our usual three-and-a-half hours of sleep, ate MREs (mine was beef stew) and were split into two groups. I zombied out shortly after starting, and was still dizzy from puking earlier in the day. The ruck in the rain made up for the comfy bus ride. Some have said they rucked out to the site, but we rode busses. I was Candidate 140, still dizzy from log and rifle PT and improper hydration, stumbling along the dirt route through the pine trees of the Star Course. This was the end of my first week at Special Forces Assessment and Selection. It was raining and dark, and I had three days of backed-up shit trying to force its way out. I, the newly-promoted SPC Hack, had an undisclosed distance to ruck within an undisclosed time. You should read, and take to heart, the message he has for us. Eric tried SFAS, failed, and found victory in that failure. He’s also one of Mad Duo Chris’ soldiers. Eric is an Iraq veteran and aspiring actor (he even has an IMDB page). This is a guest post from Eric Hack, a former Regular Army soldier and currently serving member of the Texas Army National Guard. ![]()
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