To be a Navy SEAL or SWCC, you must first be in the NAVY. The first stop in the training pipeline is Recruit Training Command, known informally as "boot camp." In this episode we visit RTC and learn more about boot camp for NSW candidates.

DANIEL FLETCHER: To become a Navy SEAL or SWCC you must first learn to be a sailor. This essential process starts at Recruit Training Command, Great Lakes, Illinois. First utilized in 1911 and home to the United States Navy Boot Camp. This, is where it all starts.

Sound Ups:
"you have to pay attention to detail and you have to give it your maximum effort"
"Division, attention!…"

…music continues

DF: Welcome to The Only Easy Day Was Yesterday, the official Navy SEAL podcast. Every aspect of a Navy recruit's life is scheduled, categorized, and inspected. There are rules and standards for how the toilet paper, toothbrushes, and T-shirts are stored to how they eat, dress, walk, and speak. I'm Daniel Fletcher. Over the next few episodes you'll hear from a select group of people responsible for on-boarding NSW candidates into the Navy. Today I speak with Chief Petty Officer William Roberts, one of the Recruit Division Commanders conducting this eight-week orientation.

01:00
DF: This podcast is meant specifically for people in the SEAL/SWCC pipeline. For a minute, if you could talk a little bit about how those candidates are treated or the process. Maybe, is it different than people that are off the street joining the "Big Navy?"

01:15
WR: As an RDC, which is a short term for Recruit Division Commander, we're just responsible for how ever many recruits come in. It doesn't matter if it's 105 recruits, 60-something recruits. We're just responsible for their day-to-day care and their day-to-day wellbeing from the time they arrive to the date of departure. We take care of when they eat, when they sleep, what training they need, where they have to go, when they have to be there, how they fold their clothes. We train all of that from beginning to end, from day of arrival to date of departure.

01:44
WR: For anyone that's in what we call 800 Divisions, which are your SEALs and SWCC recruits or candidates, boot camp is not any different for them than it is for anybody else. There's a few other requirements in regards to what we call Dive Motivation PT that they have to participate in on a daily basis Monday through Friday. Outside of that, the only difference here is that there is an expectation that they are going to be better than those that are coming in for "Big Navy" just "Regular Navy" as we call it. There's an expectation that they're going to perform a whole lot better than those recruits, so there's, for lack of better terms, a bull's eye on their back. Everybody's gunning for them; all the other RDCs are gunning for them. Staff, not necessarily gunning for them, but every simple mistake they make, it's highlighted because they're what's called an 800 Recruit.

02:36
DF: So the 800 Recruits coming in here, they have a higher expectation of themselves as well and that they're going to be held to a higher standard later on through their employment with the Navy.

02:47
WR: Definitely. The idea is that they come here, they know why they're here as far as being in the Navy. The Regular "Nav" is more, "I didn't have a choice. There was nothing else left for me to do. I don't know what I want to do, so this is just the option for me to try right now." Whereas in SEALs and SWCCs, they kind of know they're signing up to put their lives on the line. They...know... that's what they're going to do barring that they make it through the training pipeline.

03:13
DF: Right. Right. Yeah, I think a lot of people think that if you want to become a SEAL, you go to Coronado, you go to BUD/S, and you become a SEAL, and they kind of skip over the process of basic training or Navy recruitment process. Probably do a lot of reading about Navy SEALs and the BUD/S training and(continued)