Category: SERE Indoc

Lackland AFB, TX

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Your Tax Dollars (Not) at Work

Hiding on Grandma’s couch is one of the only things this camo pattern’s good for

Right after Basic Training I got shuttled off to another section of Lackland Air Force Base near San Antonio, TX. It was here I began the long road to become an instructor for Survival, Evasion, Resistance, & Escape, or SERE.

Of course, right after Basic, you’re not much good for anything aside from doing what you’re told. It’s nothing personal…you just don’t know anything yet. You have to hang around for awhile and learn how things are done (sadly, the thing that makes the most sense isn’t commonly done). Our first week or so after arriving at SERE was spent doing what we call “in-processing,” which in our case consisted of some paperwork and sitting around listening to lots of briefings. We didn’t interact with the SERE instructors during that week other than to say “hi, we’re here;” we did our in-processing en masse with administrative troops that did it full time.

One day, probably the week after we finished all our in-processing, I think our instructors had some stuff they had to take care of at the school building, so they sent us back to our dorms to do our details…where we cleaned up and were supposed to make the place shine. One thing that’s important to understand…this was in early 2004; we were in the midst of two wars and the military infrastructure to support them was crying uncle in some places. Rumor had it that the dorms we were staying in had been condemned, but had been pressed back into service for the war effort. We could do our details for weeks, but it was only going to make the place look so nice, you know? Sending students to do details in the dorms was just a way of keeping them out of our instructors’ closely cropped hair for awhile.

Now I was still pretty new to this, but apparently we didn’t get sent back to the dorms to do details very often, and when we did, it was seen as a great opportunity to goof off. The training was pretty intense, so having some free time was a nice thing to have, because we were all wound up pretty tight.

I guess I happened to be standing in the wrong place at the wrong time. One of the more senior students pointed at me and said “You, you’re on Sergeant watch.” He sat me by a window where I could see the main entrance to our building. If I saw anybody that wasn’t a student approaching the entrance, especially any of the SERE instructors, I was supposed to raise the alarm.

I have no idea what everyone else was doing, but I’m pretty sure it wasn’t what we were supposed to be doing. If one of our instructors had snuck in the back door and caught us, we would have paid pretty dearly for it. I was still young enough in my Air Force career not to know it, but punishment through physical exercise was something you come to embrace in SERE Indoctrination. Uniform look like garbage? Get down and start doing flutter kicks. Is your hair too long? That’s a set of pushups for each hair that’s touching one of your ears. Suffer an egregious lapse in judgment during the weekend? Heaven help you.

After staring hard out the window for awhile, one of our SERE instructors rounded the corner of the building, heading toward our door. I was still so new that I didn’t even know the guy’s name. “It’s Sergeant…one of the sergeants is walking up the path!”

One of the more senior students rushed to the window to get a better look, and sure enough, he saw Joe walking toward the front door. With a muttered curse, he ran out of the room and down the hallway, letting everyone know they needed to look busy…now. About 10 seconds later, guys were mopping the halls, vacuuming the Day Room, washing windows, dusting stuff that didn’t have a speck of dust on it, and scrubbing stuff you never even thought about scrubbing.

Joe wasn’t a sadistic dude, but if he had caught us goofing off, he would have dropped the hammer on us! It would have been one of those “everybody do pushups until I get tired” moments. Then after hearing us struggle for awhile he would have said “are you getting tired?” When we said yes, he would have said “okay, roll over on your backs and start doing flutter kicks.”

I wouldn’t say we performed our duty in an honorable way that day, but it provides a different bit of context to a famous Bible verse about being watchful. First Peter 5:8 says Be alert and of sober mind. Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour.

I don’t think Joe came there to try to catch us doing something we weren’t supposed to be doing. He was probably just coming to the dorms to say “okay, we’re ready for you to come back now,” but if he had seen what we were actually doing, you can bet he would have devoured every last one of us. Whether he was intentionally trying to catch us or if he caught us as targets of opportunity, the result would have been the same: we’d be toast.

The devil is the same way. Constantly on the prowl, he’s looking for believers to devour. I don’t think he bothers too much with nonbelievers…he already owns them, so why would he waste effort on them? He’s looking for enemies to pick off. Sometimes he’s targeting a firmly planted Christian through an ongoing campaign against them, and other times he comes across a Christian that’s teetering on the edge of something they’re not supposed to be doing. If he sees that, he’ll put his campaign on pause and pounce on the target of opportunity. Enticing that believer to sin enables a whole host of tools that can be used against them to cripple their effectiveness as the hands and feet of God (guilt, shame, desensitizing of sin, fear, doubt, follow-on consequences, etc.).

Therefore, as Peter says, be on your guard and on high alert, because your enemy’s looking for an opening where he can nail you. Don’t give him the opportunity.

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Wait a Minute…How Epic Would it be if…

While training to be an Air Force survival instructor, the first hurdle to pass was a screening course that occurred immediately after Basic Training. Recruits fresh out of Basic spent a few weeks getting their bodies strengthened through rigorous physical training, leading up to the official two-week course.

Week 1 of the screening course involved performing a lot of tasks in preparation for week 2. The second week took place out in the field. Training on base can help familiarize you with a lot of things, but if you want to be a survival instructor, sooner or later you need to get away from civilization. Week 2 of the screening course took place in the scrub country on a military installation north of San Antonio, TX. Here we got our first real dose of land navigation, drinking scummy water, and eating things we normally wouldn’t consider eating.

During most of our time in the field we worked in pairs or in groups. There were lots of tasks and activities to perform, along with new things to learn. Then at the end, we spent our final night going solo. On that night our instructors gave us a list of items we had to accomplish and dropped us off in locations where we were isolated from one another.

The list of items seemed fairly long, but none of them were terribly complicated. I went through the course in March, so my biggest challenge was completing as much of the list as I could before dark. I think the first thing I did after getting dropped off was find a spot to set up my shelter. I set down my ruck, then looked through the list of tasks to see which ones would be best to perform during daylight.

One of the things I needed to do was make a ground-to-air signal out of the materials available. Since I needed to wander around a bit in order to scavenge items to use in building the signal, I wanted to make sure I got that done while it was still light out. I started collecting logs and brush to arrange in the required pattern.

I can’t remember if I was using an axe or a military-issue bolt knife, but I started hacking away at some brush. Almost immediately I heard a sound I’d never heard in person before but knew right away what it was. While thrashing in the scrub, I had disturbed a rattlesnake, and it let me know in no uncertain terms that I needed to back up.

Of course I was startled and jumped back. It didn’t take long, though, for me to have this thought…how epic would it be if I were eating a rattlesnake when the instructors showed up to pick me up in the morning? That would become, like, the stuff of legends back at the survival schoolhouse on base!

I eyed the snake as it started slinking away, trying to decide whether I should try to kill it or not. Here I was, about to pass the course. I was hungry, but wouldn’t have a problem making it until the next day without anything else to eat. I’d never eaten a snake before, so I wasn’t sure how to prepare it. Since it was venomous, there were plenty of ways for things to go wrong. All you did was cut off the head a little below the widest part, right? I think so…but, how much am I willing to gamble on that?

Was it a good idea? By almost any measure, no. Would it be awesome? Absolutely and unequivocally yes!

Should I make the decision with my feelings or with my head?

I watched the snake as it slowly left the area, still flirting with the idea. In the end, the risk didn’t seem worth it. I didn’t want to make some kind of stupid mistake that ended up with me being injected with (or accidentally eating) venom when I was on the cusp of passing the course…a course I had no desire to repeat. When it was all said and done I gave the snake a wide berth and decided to pick a new spot to build my shelter for the night…a spot that wasn’t so near the brush the snake had been hanging out in.

The penalty? This story is less cool than it could have been. (I passed the course, though.)

It’s funny how we make choices in life. I’d compare this experience to other times when we’re trying to decide whether or not to pursue something we know isn’t a good idea…pick whatever sin is especially hard for you to walk away from. Even when you know it’s something that could bite you in the end, there’s that draw that pulls on you. Despite the fact that you know it’s a bad idea, you may still spend some time thinking it over despite the fact that you know you should walk away.

This is something you probably know, but I’m going to say it anyway. The closer you stay to and the longer you flirt with doing something you know you shouldn’t, the more likely you are to do it. When you find yourself in that position, take action to just shut that door. Walk away from the computer if you’re about to start looking at stuff you’re not supposed to look at. Put your phone down and walk away from it if you’re about to text something you shouldn’t. If you get yourself into trouble when you’re alone, go somewhere where you’re around people. If you get yourself in trouble when you’re around people, go somewhere where you’re by yourself.

Sin isn’t always going to be as obvious as a rattlesnake, but God gave you a conscience for a reason. If you consistently ignore it, it’ll eventually leave you alone.

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You’re On Your Way to What You’ll Be Later

During my time in the Air Force I spent some time trying out to be a survival instructor. Known as SERE Specialists (Survival, Evasion, Resistance, & Escape), these professionals focus on preparing high-risk-of-capture personnel in the event they become isolated and cut off from friendly forces in neutral or enemy-held territory.

This was in 2004, so the Air Force was pretty busy at the time with both Afghanistan and Iraq. Lots of people needed SERE training, and there weren’t enough SERE Specialists to go around. To help boost numbers, representatives from the SERE career field spent time recruiting people while they were still in Basic Training. This got a lot of people interested, but before we could really get started with SERE Specialist training, we had to pass a screening course, known as SERE Indoc (indoctrination).

There are some odd situations that occurred along the way as a result of how things unfolded. In Basic Training, they really regulated what (and how much) you ate. You’ve got a bunch of civilians from across the country and its territories that in most cases had a little extra pudge when they first showed up to Basic, and you give them healthy food, but you give them less of it than they’d like. Everybody loses weight, and some people lose a lot of it. (When I graduated Basic Training, I think my Mom was a little traumatized when she saw how skinny Uncle Sam made me.) Then, when you’re the skinniest you’ve been in awhile, they fit you for your dress uniforms.

After Basic, I went to SERE Indoc, which was very demanding physically. It usually involved five days a week of rigorous PT…lots of running, pushups, pull-ups, and rucking with heavy packs. I don’t remember how much, exactly, but between being able to eat normally again and putting on a lot of extra muscle over a couple of months, I probably gained over 30 pounds from my low point at Basic. The buttons on my dress shirt were definitely stressed, and there was no longer a crease in my dress pants above the knee because they were more like spandex or leggings at that point.

Mom & Dad came to see my graduation from Basic. They barely recognized me!
Some $5 footlongs & a few thousand pushups later

I can honestly say that I’m no longer as muscular or as heavy as I was back then, so that adds still more volatility to the weight yo-yo. It’s been awhile since I tried on my old dress uniform; maybe I should dig it out of mothballs to see how it fits.

I went into each of those phases with one set of characteristics, and due to the conditions I went through, it led to a new set of characteristics. It’s the same for the Christian. Not only are you imperfect when you’re born, you’re still imperfect when you’re born again. From the moment of salvation until the moment you slip from this life, God’s working on your heart and on your mind, shaping you into a tool He can wield to accomplish things in or through you that you’re not yet prepared to do.

He’s refining unwanted things out of your character or preparing you for a coming challenge. Some seasons of life will leave you gaunt and weak. Others will make you stronger. It’s all leading somewhere, though. Rarely does the path you’d chart out for your life align completely with the path God’s chosen for your life. Looking back, it becomes easier to see how a phase of life or a certain string of events prepared you for something that came afterwards. Right now you’re on your way to what you’ll be later. Seek God’s will for your life and see Him do something wonderful. Keep seeking God’s will for your life and watch how He entrusts you with more responsibility and higher callings.

Not sure what God’s will for your life is? Start by increasing the amount of time you spend in prayer. Confess the things you’ve done wrong, then tell Him all the things you’re thankful for. Do this on a recurring basis and see where it takes you.

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Sometimes You Can’t Roll Your Sleeves Up Far Enough

In the Air Force I spent about four or five weeks preparing to pass a screening course for survival instructor candidates. As the time drew near for us to move from preparation to test time, the tone of training got more serious. Up until now we had been building our bodies and learning skills, but there was plenty of goofing off, too. The culmination of our time at Indoc was a nine-day course that was split between rigorous assignments on base and in the barracks for the first half, followed by a period of being out in the field for the second half.

On the last Friday before the course began, it was tradition for instructors to run students through “The Swamp.” The Swamp was a nasty section of Lackland Air Force Base that was just what it sounds like. Making it through the event was not a prerequisite for the course, but it was a way for students to begin making the transition from head knowledge to experience. (It was also fun for the instructors to do.)

A large portion of Air Force Basic Training was focused on professional appearance, making the uniform look good, and establishing a proper demeanor for recruits now living in one of the armed services. While that’s important and has its time and place, preparing to be a survival instructor carried with it a totally different set of objectives. The goal in a survival situation is to do just about whatever it takes to survive and return to friendly territory. A survival instructor goes through grueling circumstances so they better understand how to convey that crucial information to the students they’ll later teach. The Swamp helped students further overcome their reluctance to take actions they might not otherwise take.

Our outing started with some laps up and down a steep hill while wearing heavy rucksacks. We then made our way to the edge of the water. As we got near, we could smell the nasty, stinky, stagnant swamp. It was muddy, had some gross stuff floating in it, and we could only imagine what lived there.

We made our way to where the instructor indicated, then set down our rucks. We weren’t dirty enough yet, so he had us start low crawling through some of the muddiest channels. Naturally, you try to keep your head out of the mud when doing something like that, but that’s exactly what our instructor wanted to break us out of doing. “C’mon, get some mud on your face!”

All of us got herded into an area on the bank of the water, where we started taking turns leading exercises in soaked, muddy uniforms and heavy, waterlogged boots. Pushups, crunches, flutter kicks, eight-count bodybuilders, all sorts of calisthenics made more difficult or tricky by our environment. During flutter kicks, while our soaked boots were up in the air, water would run out of our boots and down our legs. On another occasion I remember that the ground was so soft, while I was in the pushup position my hands sunk down past my elbows into the mud. I couldn’t even bend my elbows to do pushups anymore! We alternately laid on our backs, then on our stomachs, all of us covered in mud except for our necks and heads.

Finally the instructor flat out told us to get every inch of ourselves covered in mud. Then, for his idea of a fun photo-op (which I think is fun too, in retrospect), he had us find some kind of plant to put somewhere on ourselves. By this time, you could hardly even distinguish between the students.

It’s tough to see, but yours truly is the fifth from the left

After awhile, our instructor called an end to the experience. We all headed back toward the bus. Since we couldn’t just walk onto the bus in our current condition, though, we had to get all the mud off. The stinky, dirty, nasty water that once seemed to stink so badly now washed us clean. We walked waist-deep into the water, bent down so the water was up to our neck, and in some cases even went all the way under. Considering how clean we looked when we came up, you wouldn’t know the water was so disgusting and swampy. It later took a few trips through the washing machine for those uniforms to become free of the swamp stink, but they eventually recovered.

This was a crazy experience. It was challenging, certainly, but it was very valuable. All the physical training we’d suffered through for weeks, or even months in some cases, and now this situation, demonstrated something very interesting to all of us: if we try pushing ourselves to the limit, we’ll arrive at our self-imposed mental blocks much sooner than we reach our actual limits. Maybe it’s been awhile since someone asked you: “Are you giving it everything you’ve got?” Maybe nobody’s ever asked you the follow-on question: “Yeah, but, are you really giving it your all?”

It’s also valuable to understand that when you’re confronted by difficult (or even miserable) circumstances, it’s a lot more tolerable when you have others there with you. If you’re headed toward something tough, link up with a few others so you can encourage each other along the way. Alternatively, keep your eyes peeled for someone who’s alone in the mud right now. It could be more encouraging than you’ll ever know for them to see someone wading into the mess to come alongside them.

(To see other posts related to the survival instructor indoctrination course, click here.)

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Who’s Going Back?

Photo courtesy of angryjogger.com

After Air Force Basic Training, I moved on to become a candidate for survival instructor. Since there was a high wash-out rate for that job field, we first had to complete a physically demanding screening course.

Before we could even begin the course, we had to spend a few weeks or even months building up our physical stamina. After having just graduated Basic, most of the people that arrived were very skinny and had not had any serious exercise. By the time people graduated the course, they would need to do hundreds of pushups a day, be able to run a few miles within a certain time limit, and be able to ruck four miles with a 65-pound ruck sack on their back in under 60 minutes.

These things were all possible, but our bodies needed time to build up to those capabilities. Our instructors designed PT programs meant to work us up to those goals. As a way of keeping tabs on who was deficient in which areas, we periodically had performance checks…where we measured and recorded our performance in a task (whether it be a timed run, number of repetitions done, etc.).

When we first started timed runs or timed rucks, everybody went at their own speed because nobody knew how their natural speed would play out over the distance in question. As time went on though, and we learned a bit more, we started recognizing not only our own abilities, but those of our teammates. Some people learned “okay, I’m usually able to make the cutoff with a few minutes to spare, so maybe I don’t need to push it quite so hard.” Others learned “that guy usually sets a pretty good pace…if I can just keep up with him for most of the distance, I can fall off near the end and still make it.”

The result was that trainees would usually pair off or group up according to their ability. During a run they would set the pace for each other, or during a ruck they’d be able to talk and keep each other’s spirits up. Being together helped them draw strength from one another and made them stronger than they would be on their own.

It seemed, though, that in every class you had someone who struggled very hard with certain things. Some people were naturally good at running, others were good at push-ups. Some were gifted at rucking long distances quickly, others were just born leaders. We had a guy in our class, Bob, who wasn’t really good at any of those things.

During runs Bob would always be last. He’d be near the end during ruck marches. His pushups were okay, but his pull-ups were terrible. He was not a leader. He was a goofball that would drag down the team’s average performance, and he didn’t seem too bothered by it.

One day we did a timed run. We had a one-mile dirt track, which made it nice because then we only had to do a quarter of the laps that we’d normally do on a regulation track. I don’t remember how many laps we had to do that day, but it was at least two or three.

The results were predictable. The regulars were first across the finish line, and the next few guys finished in what was a pretty normal order. By the time everyone else had finished and were all doubled over with our hands on our knees in the grass near the finish line, Bob was still on the track, way behind everyone else.

Sometimes on runs, the people who finished early would jog back to meet up with guys still trying to cross the finish line, and go at their speed to encourage them along until the end. I don’t remember everyone’s first names anymore; I’ll just call this guy Jack. Jack looked down the track and asked “who’s going back for Bob?” This was much further back than any time we’d gone back for someone before.

Jack looked around at everyone, and nobody seemed willing to go that far back to meet up with Bob. Without another word, he took off running across the field to meet up with Bob. After he took off he didn’t look back.

You can imagine the mood among those still left at the finish line. A little bit of guilt, a little bit of “but…it’s Bob.” It didn’t take long though, before everyone else started running across the field, too.

Now imagine you’re Bob. You’re plodding along at your best pace, which never seems to be good enough. Everyone else has left you in the dust, and you’re on your own. Even though this is one of your personal best distances and times, you can’t even see anybody anymore. But then here comes Jack, running over the hill and meeting up with you to match your pace and maybe urge you on a bit. As soon as he comes alongside you, a group of more than a half dozen other guys appears over the same hill, coming back for you.

Sometimes you just need to be willing to be the first one to step out. Jack didn’t know what would happen, but he decided that he was going, with or without anyone else. His resolve set everyone else in motion.

If you’re a Christ-follower, there are going to be things in your life that you are not going to want to do. There will be other times where you know there’s something that you ought to do, but you really don’t want to. It could be something like starting a new ministry from scratch because you’re the only one in a position to do it. It might be visiting a shut-in to see how you can help them. Whatever it is, nobody’s doing it, and you have the ability to do it.

After you step out, you just might find that others follow your lead.

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You Can’t Be Serious…

Image courtesy of YouTube

Imagine you’re lost in a jungle, starving, scared, and dirty. Hunger is ever present, and food is all you can think about. Then you see a lizard that you’re pretty confident you can catch.

Right now your stomach might turn a little bit, but if you’re in that situation you might start drooling. What makes the difference?

Part of it is the fact that you’re probably not desperate for food right now. Another part of it might be how squeamish you are about being around little critters.

When I was attending the screening course for Air Force Survival Instructors, the instructors wanted to impress upon students that you can’t let discomfort come between you and the actions you’ll need to take to survive. As a way of helping students get used to that idea, we had a whole slew of terrariums that were filled with all kinds of creepy crawlies. I don’t remember everything that was there, but there were lizards, toads, spiders, bugs, mice, and snakes. We had the opportunity to “get friendly” with them. We had to clean the containers they all lived in, so we had to handle them and get accustomed to holding things we’d ordinarily shy away from.

  • This guy had a Banana Ball Python around his neck

We even had Max, a 20-foot Python, which we needed to feed every few weeks.

  • Taking Max out for feeding time
Max getting ready for lunch

Some of us were more creeped out than others when it came to these critters. Some people weren’t bothered by most of them, but might have a problem with one or two of them. I don’t know that there was anyone who was unfazed by everything, but it was all done for the sake of meeting our discomfort, or even fear, head on.

You might find yourself in the middle of a situation where you’re creeped out by what you see around you. This might be your opportunity to get more comfortable with the idea of functioning well in the presence of something that gives you the willies.

Are you being held back because of your fear of something? It might be that forward progress can only happen after you face your fear. Fighting for your survival can be a messy business, and a lot of it comes down to how much discomfort you’re willing to accept. Are you willing to get uncomfortable?

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The Importance of Stretching

Photo courtesy of picswe.com

After graduating Air Force Basic Training, I began my tryout to become a survival instructor. The Indoctrination course after Basic Training is just a screening course; if you pass it, then you get to move on to take another one. While at “Indoc,” it’s your job to demonstrate that you can handle mental and physical challenges and that you’re determined to make it.

Life at Indoc was physically demanding. Our instructors needed to build our skinny bodies into something that could physically withstand punishment and grueling conditions. Physical Training was a large part of every work day. Pushups became second nature to us all. Calisthenics, weights, running, ruck marches…all intended to build us into something stronger. At that time most members of the Air Force were required to take a PT test once a year. Physical fitness was so important to our training that we did a PT test once a week.

We had some strange workouts. Sometimes we’d be in the woods cutting down trees and setting up shelters. Once every few weeks we’d have a Combat Controller (one type of Air Force special forces) come by and lead us on a run that took us through the woods and the mud, over fences, through base housing, and anywhere else he felt like going.

In order to reduce the risk of injuries and to help prepare ourselves for physical activity, we spent between 20 and 30 minutes at the start of each day stretching. Stretching warms up your muscles and helps enable them to cope with strains, exertion, and overextensions.

There were times when we had a good idea of the upcoming workout. Sometimes we knew we had a run coming up, so we’d perform stretches with a focus on that activity. Other times we knew we’d be in for a long session of calisthenics, so we stretched nearly every muscle we had. When you know the nature of the goal, in this case a particular type of workout, it’s easier to take steps to prepare for meeting that challenge.

The tricky part is when you don’t know what the goal is. On occasion, our instructors didn’t tell us what we were in for. They made sure we performed certain types of stretches, but didn’t give us any clues other than that. We had to trust that the instructors’ preparatory guidance would help set us up for whatever we had to face next.

The workouts were often grueling, but the part that took awhile to see was that successfully making it through a difficult workout was part of the solution to overcoming subsequent challenges we didn’t even know about at the time. At first all we knew was that we were exhausted at the end of a workout session. The following day we’d show up again, then leave exhausted after another workout. Each day we’d show up and go through another session and leave exhausted, but over time we discovered we could withstand more stress, we became stronger and more capable; we were able to tolerate conditions we previously didn’t think we could withstand.

It’s exactly the same thing when living a life for Christ. When we think of “living a life for Christ,” we think of going out and doing amazing or improbable things, but the truth is that some days we’re just trying to survive. We know people who have either made it through intolerable conditions or are currently enduring miserable circumstances. For them, each day is a fight just to make it through. At the end of each day all they know is that they are completely exhausted and worn out, and they don’t know how they’ll ever make it through another day, let alone months (or possibly years) of the same conditions.

The things I learned at Indoc have parallels in life. God is the only one that knows ahead of time what the goal is and how He intends to use individuals to achieve it. If those people knew at the start what they’d have to face, many of them would never believe they could do it. At Indoc we stretched to prevent injuries; going on a run through the woods without stretching is dangerous. It’s easy to twist an ankle. If you stretch your ankle ahead of time, you might still twist it and it will still hurt, but you’ll be able to continue the run without actually sustaining an injury. God’s version of stretching a person sometimes means putting them in experiences that prepare them for follow-on experiences. They hurt, but it allows those people to make it through a subsequent challenge without breaking. Since God is the only one who knows what your upcoming “workout” entails, He’s the one that best knows how to “stretch” you ahead of time.

“But what about when the stretching never seems to end?” Sounds like you’ve moved past the stretching and into the actual workout. It’s important to remember that a muscle doesn’t become stronger by doing a workout a single time. It takes repetition. When you do the same workout repetitively, your muscles adapt. They grow; they meet the challenge. Over weeks, over months, or even years, they prove they can handle it, and so you have to “add more weight” to the workout in order to keep growing. The hard workouts are exhausting and draining, and they make you ask “why?” Looking back at what you were before it all started, aren’t you now stronger and more capable? Are you now in a better position to face the next challenge?

Have you ever been stretched spiritually, physically, mentally, and/or emotionally? Maybe it was to increase your “range of motion,” capacity, or willingness. The stretching and workouts cumulatively built you into someone that can handle something more…something more difficult.

The next challenge is on the way. Whatever it is, it’s going to look intimidating. Remember that God’s been working you up to it, though, and that it’s not too much for you. Your past experiences have prepared you to take it on and succeed; don’t be afraid to accept the challenge.

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You Have Influence

Think you don’t have the power to influence others? Think again.

I entered the Air Force at a time when the nation was trying to strengthen its military capabilities. At SEREIIC (see the previous post for context) in San Antonio, we stayed in a dorm that had been condemned, and then re-opened because they needed extra space for trainees during the Iraq/Afghanistan military campaigns (at least, that was the rumor). Part of our responsibilities included keeping our barracks in sparkling condition. You can imagine how successful that was.

I don’t remember what we did wrong, but one time we collectively screwed up big time. I mean, our instructors were MAD. These were our SERE instructors, but they didn’t just get mad at the SERE trainees, they were upset at pretty much everyone on the whole floor, including trainees from other career fields. Part of the reason for their wrath was because it was a Saturday morning. Nobody wants to come in to work on a day they would ordinarily have off, especially because someone else screwed up. Everyone had to head outside in their sweats and an instructor told them to “beat your boots” while waiting for the other instructors to finish inspecting every room inside the building. Beating your boots was a type of exercise that burned out your legs. From a standing position, you bend at the knees low enough so you can slap the side of your shoes, and then you stand straight up again. You continue this over and over until told to stop. It gets old fast…

The dorm’s courtyard began filling up with young Airmen dressed in identical “Air Force” sweatpants and sweatshirts. It was noisy chaos as everyone beat their boots at their own pace and cadence. More and more people came out of the building and found a spot to start exercising, until there was almost no room to hold any more. None of us were allowed to talk. By the time everyone was outside, we probably had between 100 and 150 men outside, and all you could hear was the sound of squatting, slapping, and standing up again all at a different pace.

Then the most extraordinary thing happened. Our head instructor was pacing back and forth in front of us, chewing us out for whatever our egregious infraction was, but to tell the truth, I don’t even remember what we were in trouble for. The memorable thing was what happened next.

There was a guy right in front of me, Jon, who had someone on either side of him. Without speaking, Jon looked at the guy on his right, and stared him in the eyes. The guy on the right got the message, and slowly they began squatting and standing in rhythm with Jon. Once they were synchronized, Jon turned and looked to the guy on his left and did the same thing, until all three in a row were in synch.

I was right behind them, so I started doing it too. Over time the size of the group beating their boots in unison grew. We squatted and then stood up again hundreds of times that morning, and our quads burned like crazy…but we started to draw strength from our unity and the mood began to change from one of despair to one of hope.

It didn’t take long before everyone in the courtyard moved in unison. The sound of the chaos changed; instead of a constant drizzle of individual slaps, it was a rhythmic thunder of over a hundred pairs of slaps.

Our instructor stopped pacing, and he stopped yelling. He looked around and thought about what he had witnessed take place right in front of him. Those in the SERE occupation are taught to adapt and overcome adversity. They’re taught that if you are a military prisoner of another nation, you draw strength from your fellow prisoners and from whatever other means is necessary. Although he didn’t anticipate providing that type of lesson that day, he couldn’t help but be pleased with what he just saw.

“I like it.”

He mellowed out and quickly wrapped up what he was talking about, cautioning us to straighten up. We were dismissed and allowed to return to our rooms and have the rest of the day off.

Even though it was bad, our situation could have been much worse, and it all started with one guy that influenced others without even saying a word.

Who do you have the power to influence?

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Adapt and Overcome

After I finished Air Force Basic Training, I moved to a different part of Lackland Air Force Base (AFB) near San Antonio, TX. Here I began trying out to become a survival school instructor, officially called a SERE Specialist (Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape). At the time, this two-week course was called SEREIIC – SERE Instructor Indoctrination Course. If you passed this course, you moved up to Fairchild AFB near Spokane, Washington to take part in a longer, 6-month training course.

Just because this course was only two weeks long didn’t mean we only spent two weeks there. Having just arrived from Basic Training, all new SEREIIC trainees were skinny, had no muscle, still called everyone “Sir” or “Ma’am,” and generally were not suited for the physical rigors of the upcoming training. Two weeks is simply not enough time to transform skinny “Basic” bodies into something strong enough to withstand the requirements of the course. Even though the course was only two weeks, some students spent months there developing muscle mass and required skills. A few months after I first showed up at SEREIIC, I was 30-40 pounds heavier, mostly from all the workouts we did.

The training could be incredibly stressful, both physically and mentally. It’s not on par with Navy SEAL training, by any stretch, but they use some of the same elements. Room and uniform inspections that require impeccable attention to detail; sleep deprivation; spending hours a day doing physical training; and constant harassment from your instructors and others in charge of you. The whole purpose of this introductory course is to weed out the people that want to be there from the people that are less than fully committed. The instructors are training you to adapt and overcome. In a survival situation, when you are alone, exhausted, and it seems like there’s a never-ending list of hurdles you need to overcome, your life itself can depend on your willingness to overcome doubt, get up off the ground and keep going, no matter how much you just want to lay there a little bit longer.

We didn’t always see it while it was happening, but the misery we endured built fortitude and perseverance in us. The physical training on its own was enough to make some people drop out. Add to that various types of verbal harassment and other pressures, and it became incredibly stressful. I showed up with a group of about 10 or 11 guys, and the guys who had been around for awhile thought it was really fun to haze us. Our first night we were part of the “Newbie 500,” more or less a couple of hours where the students with seniority made us work out in absurd ways until they got tired of messing with us. Pushups, flutter kicks, squats, sprints, bear crawls, crab crawls, and a number of other activities too difficult to describe here, all of them exhausting or painful.

We were only seriously hazed once, but it continued on and off until the guys with seniority either graduated or washed out of the course. The heavy duty physical training came as a part of our normal duty day, under the supervision of instructors. During our duty day (when we were actually at work), any time we entered or left the dorms, the chow hall, or the school, all of us did a synchronized set of about 25 pushups. To be honest, it looked pretty cool when there were 20 of us doing pushups in unison, but we had to do it as a team, or else we’d have to start over and probably pay some kind of physical penalty on top of it for not working together. Between the normal course of traveling between buildings, doing normal PT, missing details during our uniform or room inspections, and after-hours “smoke sessions,” there were days where we did a thousand pushups.

There was plenty of running and rucking, too. We had a couple of tracks, one of them a quarter mile and another one a full mile. To help build our bodies’ tolerance, the new trainees were issued ruck sacks that they were to fill with “only” 45 pounds’ worth of rocks or anything else that could get the scale past the minimum. Over time the load grew. Our instructor cadre would tell us to either run or ruck some seemingly impossible distance in some improbably short amount of time. We had this one guy that, once the instructors were out of earshot, would always start complaining “Dude, there’s no possible way we can make it that far that fast!” It never failed. At first we felt the same way as he did, but over time we learned not to think like him, instead saying “you might be right, but c’mon, let’s argue about it along the way.”

A funny thing happened during our stay there at SEREIIC. We got stronger, and our confidence grew. The ruck sacks got heavier, but we could handle it. We became faster, and could go farther. Pushups weren’t so scary, they just became part of the day’s routine. We were able to smash through the mental barriers we had put up for ourselves and accomplish just about every goal the cadre set before us.

I’ll have more stories to share from this chapter of my life, but for this post I want to convey this main point: if you want to do great things for Christ, you have to be able to look at seemingly insurmountable obstacles, take a deep breath, and start moving. If you are a child of God, there is unimaginable power living within you! Do not be afraid or discouraged!

Break loose from mediocrity, and start climbing the huge wall that stands between where you are and reaching your full potential as an impactful Christ-follower. Want to know a secret that’s kinda scary but also kinda exhilarating? After you make it past that wall, there’s going to be another, bigger one behind it. And there’s another one behind that one. And another one. And on, and on, and on. Each one you overcome, though, will either arm you with new knowledge, or show you that you can do things you once thought impossible. Once you’ve scaled a number of these metaphorical walls, you’ll no longer flinch at doing things you believe to be beyond your capability.

God has a way of putting big challenges in His followers’ lives. It’s important to remember that the things you faced yesterday have prepared you for the challenges you’ll face today and tomorrow. It’s scary sometimes, but if He’s placed an impossible task in front of you, He’s also made a way for you to get past it. Will you start complaining that it looks impossible, or will you pick up your ruck and start moving?

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Help’s Coming

An Air Force Pararescueman during an exercise

More than normal, I feel like this post can be helpful or encouraging to people. So please, when you finish reading it, pass it along if you think you know someone that can benefit from it. Link to it on social media, forward the email, or text the link to someone that comes to mind.

In order for the Air Force to cultivate an aggressive attitude among its frontline warriors, those Airmen need to be confident that if something goes wrong during a mission (their aircraft gets shot down, they get separated while behind enemy lines, etc.), somebody from our side is tenaciously coming to find them, and is going to fight viciously to bring them back. Just in case our forces can’t get there right away, those people need to be trained how to survive, how to try to avoid capture, and what to do in case they do get caught.

The Air Force has two main answers to this. It has two entire career fields dedicated to this function. One group is a set of special forces medics sent into combat to locate, stabilize, and bring out our people that are in trouble (all while under fire, if need be). They can parachute or swim in, rappel down a cliff to retrieve someone dangling by a parachute, get them medically patched up well enough to move them, and link up with a way to get to safety. This group is called the PJs (short for Pararesecue Jumper), and during a real mission, they rarely travel without some heavily armed friends.

The second career field is the one I tried out for: the SERE Specialists. The acronym “SERE” (pronounced “seer”) stands for Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape. Full-fledged SERE Specialists are responsible for conducting training for anyone that, due to their official duties, experiences a higher-than-normal risk of being isolated and/or captured by the enemy. This includes pretty much anyone that works onboard an Air Force aircraft, Air Force special forces, some specialized combat roles, and a mishmash of other personnel. This is the only career in the Air Force where brand new enlisted Airmen are trained as instructors teaching both officers and enlisted Air Force members right off the bat.

Fire building is a critical skill taught in SERE training

The SERE acronym itself covers the full range of living through a combat mishap and getting returned to friendly forces. “Survival” is the easiest one. If, for example, your aircraft crashes in the ocean and you drift to a deserted island, you need to figure out how to survive until you get rescued. “Evasion” gets trickier; now you need to survive and signal friendly forces while trying not to get caught by the enemy forces looking for you. “Resistance” refers to your actions after you’ve been caught by the enemy; you’re going to be interrogated and dispirited. This phase focuses on doing your best to avoid giving the enemy useful information while clinging to hope. Finally, “Escape” is the goal of most prisoners. During WWII, the more prisoners that escaped from their POW camps, the more enemy personnel had to go out looking for escapees or guard those camps, which meant those enemy troops left combat roles on the front lines.

It’s expensive for the Air Force to move people around to different assignments and locations. Someone in the Air Force noticed “Hey, there are a handful of jobs whose training courses have high failure rates. Instead of sending people directly from Basic to those schools, why don’t we have sort of a “try out” school at the same location as Basic Training, and if they pass that, then we send them to their school?”
That’s why, after Basic Training, I moved from the main part of Lackland Air Force Base (AFB) near San Antonio, Texas to a base annex nearby. The unit I joined was made up of five groups:

  • SERE trainees (this is the group I was a part of), 
  • Pararescue, or PJs, 
  • Combat Controllers (another type of special forces that can improvise a runway or landing zone where no official one exists; they’re air-traffic controllers with guns and face paint), 
  • Explosive Ordnance Disposal, or EOD (the bomb squad),
  • SOTs – Students Out of Training (someone that, for whatever reason, will not be continuing to the main training school of one of the previous four groups. The collective washout rate for the other four groups was so high that this group warranted its own organization while they awaited reclassification to a new job.)

For the SERE trainees, every aspect of being stationed here revolved around one of two purposes: developing the mental and physical toughness to endure hardship and seemingly overwhelming odds, and demonstrating proficiency in learning the skills taught to you. If SERE trainees passed this class, they move up to Fairchild AFB in Washington State, where they continued their training. Anyone who ultimately graduates as a SERE Specialist will have personally endured situations where they refused to give up, where they endured miserable conditions, and where at times all they could think about was finding shelter, firewood, food, or water. On top of that, they learned to be teachers responsible for the health and well-being of a group of students that were cold, wet, miserable, and hungry, trying to trek around in the Washington wilderness without being caught by a mock enemy.

It’s also very expensive for the Air Force to train aircrew and special operators. Once those individuals are trained and begin getting some combat experience under their belt, they become even more valuable. The point behind the Air Force sending so many of its aviators and special forces personnel through survival school is so that, if something goes wrong on a mission, they can keep going long enough for us to get them back and return them to performing well in their combat role. The training does not guarantee that they’ll live comfortably while isolated; it doesn’t even guarantee that they’ll be able to perform the same job once we get them back. It’s just meant to help them live through it, because Air Force leaders know that even if they recover people that can no longer perform their primary function, the training and experience wrapped up in them still makes them high-performing contributors in a different capacity.

You might be in that situation right now. Figuratively, or maybe even literally, you might be cold, dirty, wet, wounded, hungry, exhausted, and scared. All you’re trying to do is survive; to hang on long enough for things to get better. You can’t possibly think about embarking on some grand adventure for Christ right now. My answer to that is this: you may have already begun one.

Once you get back to being able to take a deep breath, the experience you’ve survived will become a part of who you are. The immediate danger and stress may be over at that point, but it will permanently impact how you go through life, affecting how you make decisions in the future. Better yet, God can use the current craziness to steer you into a new role that reaches others in ways that you didn’t see coming. That could be the part God’s after, even though things are rough right now. What you’re going through now is part of the training you have to endure, but you don’t yet know what your future role is going to be. Even though it’s difficult, and at times unbearable, but it’s something that you’ll lean on in the future.

In the meantime, I know it’s hard, but keep holding on. Someone’s coming for you. I don’t know what form it will take, but help is tenaciously coming for you, and will fight viciously to bring you back.