There was a story years ago in the Army Aviation magazine about an aviator in Germany who had managed to avoid participating in some survival course. The CO demanded to know what he would do if he was forced down in the backwoods.
"Hell, I'd just walk to the nearest gasthaus and "survive" till my money ran out!" the pilot replied.
Hell, yes!
During my last tac eval, the old man told me to use my imagination. From experiences gained during my 4 years in the area, I put together a very detailed logistics and resupply plan should our unit be cut-off from its normal supply points, i.e. the 3 air bases we defended, and the Army support units at Baumholder and other places.
I spent an entire week putting this baby together. How imaginative was it? On the first day, I'm laying it all out for the chief evaluator. I could see the battalion commander off to the side, trying hard to keep from busting a gut. I used just about every gasthaus I had frequented, from Hahn AB to Bitburg AB, as well as the bakeries in every town.
When I finished, the evaluator looks at me and says: where did you get all this $hit from? I simply replied that I was following the battalion commander's orders to be imaginative in my thinking and planning, and that I used my four years of experience in the battalion, to include an episode where I was able to get a cargo plane diverted in flight a few months back.
Damn, it was fun.
That flight I had diverted? One of my systems was on its way back from ASP at Crete. Instead of the plane landing at Rhein Main, the Army Liasion Officer at Ramstein helped us get the plane diverted to the system's home base at Bitburg. As Rhein Main was at least two hours from Bitburg, it saved a ton of man hours, considering the system had a busted radiator. It took me about five hours, and 50 calls before I came into contact with the ALO.