Recruited for Navy SEALs, Many Sailors Wind Up Scraping Paint (Published 2022) (2024)

NAVAL BASE KITSAP, Wash. — A sailor fresh out of the elite Navy SEAL selection course slung his gear over his broad shoulder and clomped down a steel ladder into the guts of a Navy ship to execute a difficult, dayslong mission specifically assigned to him: scrubbing the stinking scum out of the ship’s cavernous bilge tank.

Hardly the stuff of action movies, but it’s how many would-be SEALs end up.

The Navy attracts recruits for the SEALs using flashy images of warriors jumping from planes or rising menacingly from the dark surf. But very few make it through the harrowing selection course, and those who don’t still owe the Navy the rest of their four-year enlistments. So they end up doing whatever Navy jobs are available — often, menial work that few others want.

The recruits are almost all hyper-motivated overachievers, often with college degrees, who have passed a battery of strength and intelligence tests. But many find themselves washing dishes in cramped galleys, cleaning toilets on submarines or scraping paint on aircraft carriers.

Unlike civilian workers, they cannot quit. To walk away would be a crime. Until the enlistment is done, they are stuck.

“I’m just thrown away here — a nobody,” the sailor who was assigned to clean the bilge said in an interview. “My supervisor doesn’t even know my name.”

Like other sailors who were interviewed for this article, he requested that his name not be used because he was not authorized to speak publicly and feared retribution.