Way farther out on the water, more stunningly beautiful than any stars up in the sky, bobbed a grouping of green lights. Every few minutes half a dozen of these lights would break away from the others and make a determined charge for the shore. As they got closer we could hear deep-throated shouting, almost like cadence being called. The half-dozen closely grouped green lights would be lost from view temporarily, behind the big boulders and the flying spray. Then men with an inflated rubber raft would clamber up and over the boulders, struggling not to hurt themselves or drop and damage their awkward load; each raft weighed hundreds of pounds. They sloshed through a shallow, calmer tidal pool between the boulders and the sand. One man, his green light much brighter now on his floatation vest as he ran toward us, placed six paddles in a neat pile on the sand. He dashed back to help the others with the raft.

There were instructors and medical corpsmen on the boulders, supervising every move. Other instructors and corpsmen paced the beach, issuing orders. The boat teams that had done well got to put down their raft and assume a parade rest formation, relaxing if ever so briefly. Those who’d made mistakes, or shown a lack of spirit, teamwork, or confidence had to stand at attention, with the raft held at arms length over their heads.

In moments, they would all be sent back out to sea, to that staging area they’d come in from, to do it over again, and again. One instructor told me the men would be at this, nearly non-stop, until dawn. We were watching night rock portage training, U.S. Navy SEAL style.

This particular class had started only two weeks before; at the time Hell Week lay another ten days or so ahead of them. (That Hell Week is going on right now, by the way, as I write this, and included a rare inspection of the exhausted “buds” -- trainees -- by SECDEF Donald Rumsfeld himself.)

My visit to the Coronado beach was a bit of a side trip, from a party for a captain in Special Warfare who’d had his retirement ceremony earlier that day. I’d been privileged to be invited to the 2005 West Coast UDT/SEAL Reunion. The SEAL who’d done the inviting, a personal buddy of mine, was a combat veteran returned from Iraq. Of the SEAL training class who most recently finished, and was then awaiting their formal graduation day, out of 160 hand-picked candidates who’d started the three-phase, months long training, fewer than 20 made it all the way through. I wondered how many men in this brand new class, hard at work now with rock portage, would hold on for that long, with the mental and physical endurance needed to join a world-famous elite, to become one of the best of the best. I wondered what missions they might be sent on in the years to come in defense of freedom. I asked myself whether some of them, like their forebears, would be wounded or killed. Our country is at war against terror, and these young men keenly knew it, yet everyone of them had volunteered. It was hard to not feel proud, and grateful.

And that was only the first day of the Reunion gathering. Another captain’s retirement ceremony, plus several receptions, an unclassified but revealing briefing, a family cook-out, and some candid private conversations, were all still to come.

In the interests of brevity, I won’t give a lengthy discussion of these fun and eye-opening events. I’ll stick to some highlights, which range from the pleasurable to the grim.

1. The Reunion participants spanned several generations. I met one man who’d been with the Underwater Demolition Teams (UDT) on D-Day at Omaha Beach in 1944, assigned to clear landing obstacles. He said many of the Nazi’s barbed wire entanglements he faced were so brittle from exposure to corrosive seawater and salt spray that they could be eliminated simply by steeping on them, breaking the wire to bits. But it was no picnic -- he lost his left arm at the shoulder in action early on D-Day.

2. SEALS and UDT members tend to be friendly and sociable people. They are, after all, consummate team players, they love their work, and within the bounds of secrecy they like to talk shop with guests. Seeing hundreds of UDT/SEAL guys gathered in one place for several days, many with their wives and kids, they came across as well rounded, polite, and engaging -- smart folks and especially good listeners. At the Reunion, the diversity of the crowd, in every sense, was impressive. The veterans came from all sorts of backgrounds and from all over the country. Among the younger SEALs especially, ethnic and racial variety was impressive -- a truly unbiased cross-section of America herself.

3. According to these people, who’ve been overseas in the Global War on Terror and saw a thing or two during Vietnam, events are going much better in Iraq and Afghanistan than you’d ever think from the media. The story less well told -- but one which does need telling -- is that innovative ways of gathering and processing intel rapidly, plus more nimble operational doctrines and transformational technologies, are taking the battle against terror onto hostile turf and pinning the enemy there. Reportedly, the leadership of al Qaeda has been decimated, slowing the organization’s planning by years.

4. Security threats to the U.S. homeland remain, and are very real. Among these threats are a number of Russian-made briefcase atom bombs that went unaccounted for when the USSR collapsed, and have not yet been recovered. Some of these nukes, possibly still functional, may now be in the hands of Islamist extremists, who are biding their time before trying to “crater” several American cities at once. Constant diligence is absolutely necessary. I got the distinct impression that the people who told me this weren’t pulling my leg or inventing scare tactics -- they knew I know a fair amount about nuclear weapons myself. They were stating bald-faced facts.

5. There’s a serious shortage of Special Warfare qualified operators relative to needed positions. The Navy now has about 1,700 men on active duty with the proper training and skills to do the unique things that SEAL teams do. But the authorized strength is currently 3,000. That’s one huge manpower gap to fill. Recruiting efforts are being stepped up to a) get more of the right sort of people to sign up for the training, and b) prepare those people better so the pass rates in each class will be higher. This is a vital but uphill battle to keep Navy Special Warfare maximally effective in the field.

6. New organizational structures and evolving cultures have integrated special operations forces from the different branches of the armed forces in a manner never seen before in military history. Though much of this goes on behind the scenes, and many of the biggest payoffs in action remain highly classified, terrific leverage is being achieved as SEALs work side by side with Army Rangers and Green Berets, Marine Recon, Air Force Special Operations Squadrons, and other elites, even Seabees.

The Reunion was a great success, an enjoyable and enlightening experience. The recruiting and pass-rate problems left me feeling thoughtful, though. I’d like to see more guys struggle through that night rock portage exercise, and then press on to successfully earn their coveted qualifications. Our country needs them badly, and the need won’t go away for many years.

JoeBuff.Com / Joe Buff Inc. Joe Buff, President Dutchess County, New York E-Mail readermail@JoeBuff.Com