Selection
- Must be a Portuguese citizen
- Must be at least 18 years-old
- Pass a medical and psychological exam
Physical tests:
- run 2500 meters under 12 minutes
- 47 sit-ups under 2 minutes
- 5 continuous pull-ups (palms forward)
- 32 push-ups
- jump a 3 meter ditch
- jump a 90 cm-high wall
- walk a 5 meter-high portico
- swim 25 meters
- complete a labirynth tunel
- walk 8 km under 60 minutes, fully equipped and with extra 5 kg of weight
The physical tests are easy to complete, which allows the commandos to have large numbers of recruits; useful because there will be a lot of drop-outs during the instruction. It has been confirmed that due to the severity of the training, there is only a 20% completion rate. After passing all the tests, the recruits will start the instruction.
Most of the instruction schedule or nature is unknown to the recruits. That means that they must be constantly ready and, to the smallest indication, present themselves on the parade ground or where they are ordered to, and follow whatever the instructors say. It might happen that they stay un-interrupted in instruction for more than a day, or that they have to conduct their daily lives during the night. The unforeseen and surprise are fundamental characteristics of the instruction. Each recruit must also be self-controlled: they have to control reactions that, otherwise, might be normal if they were not future Commandos. All the demands made in the instruction are not obligations: each recruit has the right to refuse to do whatever he is ordered to. Obviously, doing this means that he is off the course.
When a recruit successfully completes the instruction he is badged as a commando and receives the famous red beret. The badging ceremony (like other traditions of the Commandos) is inspired by old Portuguese military orders (these were forces that, in medieval Portugal, were tasked with surveillance and intelligence in peacetime; first resistance in the defensive and first attack in the offensive; they were also the strongest forces during wartime).
Read more about this topic: Portuguese Army Commandos
Famous quotes containing the word selection:
“When you consider the radiance, that it does not withhold
itself but pours its abundance without selection into every
nook and cranny”
—Archie Randolph Ammons (b. 1926)
“The books for young people say a great deal about the selection of Friends; it is because they really have nothing to say about Friends. They mean associates and confidants merely.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Judge Ginsburg’s selection should be a model—chosen on merit and not ideology, despite some naysaying, with little advance publicity. Her treatment could begin to overturn a terrible precedent: that is, that the most terrifying sentence among the accomplished in America has become, “Honey—the White House is on the phone.””
—Anna Quindlen (b. 1952)