Back in the mid ‘70’s, I was at the AF Academy. Every one of us was required to go through SERE during the summer following our doolie (freshman) year. The POW phase was NOT fun.
What you described about people snapping during such training is dead on. I know, because the next two years I was actually a SERE instructor; an “interrogator” in the POW camp.
Know that the AF Academy’s SERE school/training was, by far, the largest in the US military. It was very, very good and very, very thorough.
I was trained by professional military interrogators....and I learned well. We had oversight by men who, up until recently (at the time) were “guests” at the Hanoi Hilton. Yep....the real deal; guys who had recently lived it and kept us on track: they helped us ensure realism, yet made sure things stayed in line. When I was later leading a team of interrogators myself, I understood the importance of what we were doing (TRAINING these guys, and hopefully teaching them things that would save their lives later).
I personally made people snap; completely lose it....like most could not believe. We had one very hard case; a West Pointer going through our SERE on an exchange program for the summer. Big, mean, and a total asshole. John Wayne reincarnate, if you will. When it came time to do his “hard sell” interrogation, my team and the officer leadership insisted that I do it (let’s just say I had a reputation by then).
Hand to God as my witness.....within 20 minutes....count ‘em, 20.....in that little interrogation room with him, one on one.....I had him blubbering like a toddler. He wouldn’t look at himself in a mirror; he couldn’t. He was a complete and total wreck. Completely destroyed psychologically.
Twenty minutes.
I spent the rest of the hour we had scheduled calling what was known as an “academic situation”, a sort of “time out; stop projecting and rejoin the real world; let’s talk about this”. I had to literally talk him back up to feeling human again, let alone a man and soldier.
I emphasized to him that he had nothing to be ashamed of; that, in fact, he just learned something very valuable as a future combat leader that could save his life.
I’ve never forgotten that and other similar occurrences during my time as an interrogator in that God-awful POW camp. The “real” former POW’s used to tell me how they hated my guts after watching me interrogate.....which they meant as a compliment; they knew what the real thing was like. Yet, it showed me just how fragile the human psyche really is. The gung-ho badasses were by far the easiest to break.....every time.
As for Bales....I’ll say this and this only at this point: If Future Snake Eater vouches for the man and speaks highly of his character, that’s good enough for me. FSE is my oldest son. I’ll take his word over any asshole’s in the media any day, any time, any issue, anywhere.
Prayers up for all involved.
Sometimes, when you are in situations like yours as a SERE school instructor, it’s hard to know how many lives you save and how you affect the guys who come through your training.
My Navy SERE school wasn’t really very tough. It took a few months for me to realize that what we had experienced in our 5 days at the school was, essentially, a handslap, if that. I had heard that the AF school was a lot tougher and, truth to be told, after I assimilated the Navy training, wanted to go to a tougher school because I knew that what we would experience if we were ever captured in ‘Nam was NOT going to be fun.
I do have a funny story to share with you about my SERE school. In the Navy, in those days, whenever we went to a school or changed duty stations, we were required to fill out a “Home Town News Release”. Well, I’m a service brat and moved 13 times before I enlisted so I didn’t have a hometown to send a news release to that anyone would care about. Since we had to fill one out regardless, I would fill it out and just put “Do Not Release” on the bottom.
So, when I got to SERE school, that’s what I did on the first day. Unfortunately, my weird sense of humor kicked in while I was filling it out and, when it got to the part on the form about my wife and children, I put down on the form that I was married to “Miss Strawberry Festival of 1938” and that we had 2.3 children. I turned the form in never expecting to see it again.
Until I got into my “interrogation” session in SERE. The interrogator is trying to get me to fill out some Red Cross forms so that my family could be notified that I was safe and he went into a spiel about my”Mozzer krying herzelf to schleep at night” (in his mock German accent) wondering where I was. Now, he’s looking at a piece of paper during all of this and I kept trying to figure out what he could be looking at. Then, I found out.
The next thing out of his mouth was “And vhat about your vife!?” As hard as I tried to remain stone-faced during this, I felt an expression cross my eyes that he picked up and took a closer look at the form. After reading it more closely, He put the form down and looked up at me and said “Zo, DustyMoment, you are a comedian!”
Trust me, it was all I could do to keep from laughing!! He left the room for a few minutes and, when he came back, tried to give me a hard time but there was just no spirit to it all and, after a few minutes of “torture” (holding my arms out and answering questions! LOL!), I was sent back to the general population.
Thank you for what you did. I know that it was probably tough for you, but what you did saved countless lives and (God forbid!) helped those who were captured and sent to the Hanoi Hilton.
In the evaluation of my SERE class, the lead instructor told us that we resisted so hard, a lot of us probably would have been killed. During our time in the POW portion, several of our senior POWs were replaced in an effort to find one who would be more cooperative with the camp guards.
It was, and still is, a VERY good learning session. I think all of us walked away knowing a little more about ourselves than we expected.