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.
I appreciate the kind words. I have tons of stories....maybe one day I’ll put up a thread about ‘em, just for the heck of it. :)
Oh...one thing I did forget to mention in the “West Pointer breakdown” story. I never laid a finger on him. Zip. He was broken down to a blubbering mass simply with words.
Words. My God, how powerful they truly can be in the “right” hands (mouth?).