It's been a hot minute since I've posted, which is how blogging goes these days.....
I'm in Georgia for work and I'm working with an Active-Duty Joint Terminal Attack Controller (JTAC) and he mentioned something about SERE (Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape) School, and it seemed very similar to the Survival School I went to back in the day. In my time the school I went to was "basic" and we called the SERE school the "advanced beatings" course.
Of course the conversation got me thinking & on a trip down memory lane.....
Back in 1999 I knew I was getting out of the Air Force in 2000, although I was planning to go Full Time Air National Guard. I had just been made my Squadron's Unit Training Manager so I got some liberty in assigning personnel to schools. Survival School was a "requirement" for my career-field, but the Air Force expected units to pay for the training, instead of "big Air Force" adding it to the student pipeline, which made way more sense. Needless to say, money was always tight in the 90's and units were NOT sending their TACP personnel to Survival School, despite it being a "required" school.
I needed to have 6 months retainability to attend Survival School, which means I had to be finished before August 1999, or it wasn't going to happen. I managed to get into one of the 1st classes when Big Air Force started paying for the course and made it a pipeline school.
Survival School started off with a week or so of classroom, followed by a few days in the field for the survival portion. We'd have another classroom section, but I'll get to that in due time. I was a SSgt at the time and there were a few TACP airmen just out of Tech School. The cadre's initial plan was to spread the 1C4's around, but I was pretty opposed to that since there was clearly a big disconnect between reality for these Air Force Aircrews and the TACPs. I wanted to be able to have "my guys" together so I could interject as needed. For example, the Aircrews would have Air Force Survival Vests and specific gear tied to their ejection seats, which TACP should have a lot more combat-related kit. The Air Crews might have an emergency radio with a couple frequencies, while the TACPs do have much more robust commo gear and could easily access multiple frequency bands and need to know what the actual emergency frequencies were, because they can't just flip a switch to get one of the pre-sets.
The cadre agreed and I was in a group with all three of the TACPs and a Lieutenant-type (2nd Lt) to round out the group. Our group's Instructor was a Senior Airmen (SrA) and I think we were his first solo group. Now in Survival School each individual was given a single Meal-Ready-to-Eat (MRE) and the group had a rabbit. Normally the group takes care of the rabbit during the four (?) days of the field portion and dispatch it towards the end. As young men tend to do, all the TACPs were practically bragging on how they were going to "kill the rabbit". It's a thing that is needed to be done, not something worth boasting about. In retrospect I think they were trying to psych themselves up about what they really perceived as a dreaded task.
After learning how to use our issued Survival Knives, a piece of kit none of us, save that Lt, would have once we left school, the Instructor wanted us to kill the rabbit to "get it out of the way". Of course all the "brave" Airmen were not up to the task, nor was the Lt. I've probably killed a hundred rabbits in my day, usually with a shotgun, but I've had to humanely dispatch a few that weren't killed outright. I go to pin the rabbit's ears back with a reverse grip around the neck, as I intend to use it's body weight to snap it's neck. It's quick, efficient, and humane......but no, I cannot do that. I'm to hold the thing buy it's rear legs and then whack it at the back of the head with a stick.
"I get it, the academic here is that a sharp blow to the back of the head is a generic way to kill anything", I tell the instructor. No, I must dispatch this animal in the prescribed fashion. Again, I iterate that this is a better method, in this particular case, and I make a point to explain I've likely killed far more rabbits than this SrA has. The Instructor won't budge, so I give this thing a strong whack....and it isn't dead.
Now I do not know if you've ever heard a rabbit scream in pain. It sounds far too much like a small child, and a loud as hell one at that. I'm pissed. I whack it again, and again for good measure, finally killing it with (hopefully) that second blow. I go ahead and then grab the thing as I had originally intended and demonstrate how I had planned on killing the poor creature and how it would have been not only more humane, but silent...which might be important in both a survival and evasion situation. I then proceed to skin and gut the animal so we can cook it as a rough stew.
There wasn't a need to be carrying extra calories around as we were in the mountains of Eastern Washington during late June. We were surrounded by food. Wild Strawberries were in season and while foraging for berries is kind of time consuming, you can pretty much eat the whole plant, and the fields were just FULL of Shasta Daisies. I should note that I had a makeshift spear and got to with 15' of a deer, and while I could've taken the "shot" I knew I'd probably just have wounded it and while it would have been legendary, I wasn't willing to risk it. I wasn't stalking the deer, just came across it while solo, and I think it didn't have a clue what I was for a bit.
We had to do a lot of land navigation training, which for TACPs just out of Tech School it's a bit of a joke as they have a lot more training in much more difficult terrain. As such the Lt got most of the focus and the entire time we're be-bopping around the countryside I'm just harvesting handful after handful of greenery.
Now the Instructor has a Plugger (GPS) and at one point he tells us we need to to to a certain grid and we need to head Southeast. Um, what? "Can you confirm what grid we're at?" He tells us and I tell him he's wrong, we need to go Northeast. He starts to get a bit....uppity(?), restating how he's the Instructor and we have to do as he says. Now of course after a couple decades I have to paraphrase, but I know I basically called bullshit and that this wasn't a Student vs. Instructor thing or even a SSgt. vs. SrA thing, he's just fucking wrong. The TACPs are staying out of it but the Lt is telling me I need to knock it off.
The fuck I do! "Listen....coordinates are just numbers, right? If we are at this number and the 1st half of the number we need to go to increases, we are heading East from our current location. If the second half of the number increases as well, then we also need to head North. If that second half decreases, the we are heading South. Last time I checked if we head North and East from our current location we need to go Northeast. You do not need a GPS or a map to figure this shit out."
The Instructor didn't really pay much attention to my words and countered with something to the effect of, "Well then we should've crossed a small branch heading Northeast from the road we were on." I pointed out there was one not even 100m back "that way". The Instructor stormed off to find said spur/branch while we "rested" and the Lt took the opportunity to try and admonish me, which wasn't going to work....because I was right. It could literally be figured out just by comparing numbers.
We finish that day and then have to make some individual bed-down sites where the Instructors place us. We're quite a distance apart, enough we couldn't see each other if we tried. I took the opportunity to build a nice little camp complete with a small Dakota firepit and was busy brewing some Wild Strawberry Tea when they (pretty sure the whole class was in the general area) came to check on me. It took them a moment to even notice I had a fire, which is kind of the point. "Did you actually build a fire?!" "Was I not allowed to? Nobody said we couldn't....would you like some tea. Tastes just OK, but better than iodine purified water."
I don't really remember much of the next/last day of training except that we gathered all the groups together for the night and one of the Combat Controller (CCT) guys, a Captain, was going around trying to scrounge food for one of his guys. He had this massive CCT Airman that was a fucking brick shithouse of a dude. I have no idea how he managed the swim portion, but these days in the field must have been brutal for such a muscular guy. I was able to give him my entire MRE, save for the instant coffee/creamer/sugar packet I had already eaten. I remember because the Captain was surprised I still had it, but I had been eating like a cow so I hadn't felt like I needed it.
The next day we had to do some escape and evasion, basically trying to make it from the camp to a designated spot. I know some groups got captured and at least my group and another had not, but I don't think that was a skill issue as much as it was who-the-instructors-focused-on issue. We made it to the "extraction bus", but once everyone was safely on the bus, "captured" or not, we were all informed we were now captured and were being the resistance portion of training. All I remember is being slotted into what was basically a large wooden locker tall and wide enough to stand up and turn around comfortably in, locked in, and subjected to way too much Yoko Ono. We had bags on our heads and the "guards" would periodically check in to make sure you were still standing inside and if your weren't, well I do not know what happened but I could hear people being extracted and marched off for a bit and then returned.
This portion only lasted for a day because then we were removed from the field and taken back for a couple of days of resistance/escape classroom training. While several things from training still stick with me, I think I mostly remember the one-handed POW sign language...well at least the letter "Q". After the classroom we went back to the "POW Camp" were they had us strip down naked and went through our stuff rather quickly. It was weird because on some level they did not fuck around and on other stuff, not so much. We were highly encouraged to try and sneak various items in with us. Pretty sure they could have found everything I tried to smuggle in, but they didn't. On the flip side they were harsh with the "strip" portion of the strip search. They did not segregate the women, but they did have them together at the end of the group, where I was. I did see some nude officers, but it was kind of surreal, more like watching a movie with my parents and some nudity comes on the screen and we all just pretend it isn't happening.
History has proven female POWs are not treated well and the course did not sugar coat that fact at all.
One of the items I tried to smuggle in was a fake attempt, as in I wanted them to find it. I had hit the Base Exchange and found what looked liked teacher's stickers to hand out in kindergarten. They were an inch, maybe inch and a half, and said "I did as I was told today." Yeah, that was pretty popular with the guards and I don't know it that helped me smuggle more stuff in or not.
We all had different training scenarios to go through and most everything was being filmed. My first bit was with a "Red Cross Representative" and for the most part it doesn't matter what you do you're going to be "wrong". For example, they might throw, towards your feet, what appears to be a US Flag and if you catch it, it's miraculously the flag of our enemy and if you don't it then looks like you're standing on our flag. With selective editing they can, and will, get whatever they want...eventually.
Now I was trying to be a smartass, because I'm me. I had gotten some info on a guy with the same name as me, and about the same age. There's a few of us. One guy is a concert promoter in NY, another a Principle in Kansas(?), and one in prison for killing a family while drunk-driving. Definitely not me! I knew of a Montana Rancher and had some of his details, so I gave bad info. They had looked up some of my file and tried to verify things and I was able to tell them they had the wrong guy. Some of it was *actually* correct, but I didn't know it was. I did not know the 1st three digits of your Social Security Number (SSN) is based one where you were "born", but not really. I didn't get a SSN until I was five(ish) so the prefix was for where I resided when I got the number, not where I was born. So between my attempts to misdirect and my accidental misdirection, I'm probably more successful than I had hoped. Pretty sure I was actually fucking up this portion, as in not doing what I was supposed to, but whatever.
Then they transitioned to trying to get me to spew out some "enemy" propaganda. They ask me to stand in the corner, pick up this wooden sign, hold it in front of me and read what is written on the back of it. Fortunately for me I can read upside down and backwards so I deliberately hold it upside down and start reading. The Instructor is telling me I'm doing it wrong and I'm all, "No, that's what it says....." He tells me to flip it over, so I do so, exposing the real message they were trying to get me to hold up. He keeps giving me instructions and I'm being the biggest moron possible. "I'm sorry, but it's just so hard to follow directions because I'm hungry and haven't eaten...."
In the middle of all this I manage to damage a cuticle.....a fucking cuticle. Doesn't bother me a bit, but it starts bleeding, which makes the Instructor basically call a "time out" to bring in some kind of medic. I say some kind, because while the guy has a first aid kit, it's a shit first aid kit. He doesn't have any bandage tape or even simple band-aids. Really? I ask if this is "out of scenario" and he confirms it is, so I just drop trousers and flop over my pockets to where I have long strips of bandage tape smuggled in. A small piece and I'm taped up and good-to-go.....but I'm not. Now I'm "injured" and have to wear this yellow armband to show I'm injured so now I cannot do certain exercises.....again....really? It's a fucking cuticle!
I'm eventually released back to my cubby and then pulled out to go to "the box". I can get a little claustrophobic and I really expected to lose my shit when I was folded up like a pretzel and stuffed into a small cubby in a larger bank of small cubbies. The door is locked behind me and it's all I can do to keep from freaking out, at first. Eventually I realize that if I relax a bit, which is difficult but manageable, I can move my hands a bit and wiggle around some. I manage to get out a small flashlight and piece of chalk I had in my waistband. The Battle Dress Uniform (BDU) is doubled up at the waistline and there is room to stuff small items in the space between layers. I'm able to shuffle around a few degrees at a time and end up doing what seemed like a 54 point turn so I'm facing the rear of the box instead of the front like they stuffed me in. Between the flashlight and the chalk I'm able to draw a "Killroy was here" and write the date of a future class (probably not a real class date, but just not mine!) I surprise my captors when they went to pull me out of the box....totally worth it.
We got moved to little POW huts as a group and this is where we were expected to form some kind of escape plan. I wasn't involved in the plan because as a yellow-band the guards tried making me look like a traitor. They handed me a dummy AK47 and expected me to "guard" my fellow prisoners. This AK was pretty impressive as it had a lot of metal and you were even able to make it look like you could cycle it. I pulled the fake bolt back and inserted a stick, making sure it was noticeable to anyone actually paying attention. Every chance I had I had my "rifle" pointed at the actual guards as well. As part of my "job" if anyone had to use the bathroom I had to escort them the the actual bathroom and stand outside saying something like "All you bitches and bastards have to stand back......" I do remember the longer phrase definitely had "bitches and bastards" as part of it. I said it loudly and worth the worst inflections I could manage, I knew I was being filmed but I didn't want anyone to think I was serious.
I had two more exercises, one was an interview with me and one of the TACP airmen where they gave us some food and tried to look all benevolent. I let the Airman eat all the food and insinuated that such rich food (it was just a can of beans) was a bit much for my stomach. I do recall also mentioning how many were in our group, but not much else. The other exercise was basically another interview with the "Commandant" about being released....if we'd agree to something that was against the Geneva Conventions. The one NCO I was with refused and was told to leave the room and after he left I said I'd agree to the the end-effect of what he wanted but not the actual agreement because of the violation. Someone needed to get out.....but I also did not know that a couple of the CCT guys had managed to escape according to their plan, mostly because they had to turn back to finish training.
The POW Camp ended in a spectacular fashion that was actually awesome, but since I assume they still do something similar I would not want to ruin the moment for anyone. Afterwards one of the aircrews bought a keg and we had an impromptu party where I got to do my 1st, and last, keg stand where I did ok all things considered.
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