Frosted Misery: A Navy SEAL in SERE School
Frumentarius | January 10, 2022
SERE — short for Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape — training is one of the more psychologically challenging training courses the U.S. military has to offer. It is not really that physically challenging, other than having to overcome the short duration of enforced hunger and the occasional slaps and stress/discomfort techniques employed against the students in the course. But for a young man or woman who has never been a prisoner of some type, it is mentally jarring. Uncomfortable, even. That is where the real challenge is presented.
I won’t go deep into SERE training here (just because it is a school that should remain cloaked in some mystery for it to be truly effective as a training program) other than to share a few of the memories that stand out for me, almost 20 years after I went through it.
I went through a SERE program run by the U.S. Navy, in January in the American Northeast, with a handful of my fellow SEALs, some Navy pilots, and a few Marines. The other service branches ran their own programs at that time, I believe, and presently. I am not sure how the program is run across the services. I am sure, however, that the training continues in some form given its perpetual relevance to service members in danger of becoming prisoners of war.
https://www.sandboxx.us/blog/frosted-misery-a-navy-seal-in-sere-school/
