You may have heard of something called SERE training if you know someone in the military. SERE stands for Survive, Evade, Resist, Escape.
It’s a 3-week course at Fort Bragg that trains soldiers in survival fieldcraft, evasion techniques, resistance to interrogation, and escape. The training is geared to what an evading soldier may need to know to be able to return to “friendly” control and, at the same time, not be detected by the enemy.
Realism is crucial to survival school training and the school instructors strive to create a realistic prisoner of war environment. There are limits placed on what the instructors can do to the soldiers, but food and sleep deprivation are common techniques, and most soldiers typically drop 15 pounds during the course. Basically, this ain’t your typical summer camp.
The reason I bring this up is that neither my son nor his prior-military father knew he would have to go through SERE training to be part of Special Forces. (Recruiters certainly don’t bring it up.) Homework was never a strongsuit for either of them, but you would think that they might do just a liiiiiiiiiiittle bit of digging to see what would be in store for someone interested in one of the most elite jobs in the military. I did, but apparently I’m a information junkie, aka MOM.
Apparently, had my son known that he would potentially have to go through this course if he makes it all the way through, he might have thought about the SF decision a bit more. Perhaps that would have been a good reason to discuss the decision to join the military with a couple of people. Just sayin.
Here’s an easy-to-find website that provides more information on SERE training:
http://www.training.sfahq.com/survival_training.htm
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