Rourke Denver: Damn Few & clowns on bicycles
I have this huge stack of books about SEALs that folks have sent me to review and I’m about half way through Rourke Denver’s Damn Few. You’ll probably remember Rourke’s face in the following video if you saw him star in “Act of Valor”, but his publicist folks sent us this video of Rourke on Conan O’Brien’s show;
I’ve had my share of hallucinations during training so I can completely identify with the clown on a bicycle thing.
Category: Book Review
Damn straight skippy. At the end of one FTX I thought I’d lost the code book that had been constantly around my neck. Turns out I’d already turned it in, and didn’t remember squat one.
Daggum video just buffers…found the vid from Conan’s website. OK this works.
http://teamcoco.com/video/rorke-denver-hallucinated-during-seal-hell-week
I walked through a Pizza Hut in the middle of McGregor Range back when there was a desert phase of Ranger School. No sh!t. There it was: checkered table cloths, people eating pizza, low hanging ceiling lamps I was ducking under, waving to everybody. I will take a polygraph to this day and swear it was there.
I remember halfway through a JRTC rotation back in the 90s we were doing a tactical foot march in the middle of the night. Apparantly I wispered to a buddy “why is Davenport carrying a surf board”. I guess I went on for a good five minutes about this guy carrying a surf board. I also remember my PSG walking from behind me towards the front of formation a couple times, but I never saw him walk back.
During Patrol Phase of BRC, I was holding security for a FordRep, when this older guy in a suit and two chicks walked up to me on the riverbank. When I blinked, they were gone. A few days later, on security in a hide, my buddy looks over at me and whispers, “Dude, there’s an elf beside me.”
At JRTC back in the 90s, I thought I saw one of the ghosts from Pac Man through my nods when my platoon was tasked with security at some TOC. I got hungry for a pixellated cherry.
@Twist – were you with the 101st at the time? Was that the rotation where the Scots stole the NVGs?
@BK, Yes I was with the 101st at the time. I vaguely remember the Scots. I had done a rotation with 1/327 and then 3 weeks later I was back being an augmentee OC for the 502nd. I can’t remember which rotation it was.
with 1/327 as BLUFOR.
I so envy people who can hallucinate. The closest I can get to it is following my cat when he’s chasing the choir invisible.
I can look right at the spot he’s pawing on the wall, and I see NOTHING. NOTHING, I tell you.
@5Pete – What was the elf’s name? Was it Legolas?
I remember a couple of guys who were so out of it they don’t remember doing a complete reactor plant startup until it was over.
One of them admitted afterwards he thought he was dreaming it.
Damn Few was pretty good, the Kindle and Google Play version is currently only $5 if you want to try it.
I’ve read a bunch of these books now. I think American Sniper and Fearless are my favorites. I think the personalities and emotions just come through better, you feel like you really knew Chris Kyle and Adam Brown. Plus Chris Kyle was just really funny. The only one I didn’t like was Where Men Win Glory about Pat Tillman. The author’s (and the family’s) political bias was just too much. It really took away from Pat Tillman’s story.
I’m looking forward to Trident K9 Warriors in April, I love military working dogs.
As for hallucinations, you guys scare me. Kind of like the thought of doctors cutting you open when you know they’ve worked 100 hours that week.
Training while dog ass tired is the only way to train because when it all goes to shit whose got time to rest?
@10 He said it was a Harry Potter elf.
Another buddy of mine, while driving in Iraq in the wee hours of the morning, suddenly slammed on the brakes, stopping in the middle of the road. When his TL demanded to know what the hell he was doing, he said he’d stopped for the guy in the spacesuit crossing the road.
@Common Sense, you can adopt a military working dog, if one is available. Here is how:
http://www.militaryworkingdogadoptions.com/
Another JRTC rotation we were in a patrol base. I just got done relieving myself and laying back down when one of the security hopped up and started going on about how the OPFOR were in the wire and that the dropped to the ground covering themselves up with leaves. What he saw was me curling up in my poncho liner.