I Can Survive Anywhere in the World...

I am a SERE Specialist. I am an expert in Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape. I can survive anywhere in the world and prepare others to do the same. I prove myself by deed and action. I accept the fact that I must live my life to the highest standard regardless of rank and do so without complaint. I respect every warfighter and consider their needs before my own. I will remember that the lives of those I influence rest in my hands and if they fail I fail. I will keep myself in top physical and mental condition. I will never tarnish the honor of fellow SERE Specialists and will accept no less from my peers. I do these things so others may: "Return With Honor ".

It takes a special kind of toughness for a person to make it out of a life-threatening situation using their instincts, experience, and skill.  It takes a distinct breed of individuals to be able to do it in any environment on earth, and then prepare others to do the same under combat conditions. Since 1948 there has been a select group of USAF men and women who have devoted themselves to the safety and survival of America’s warfighters. Today they are known as the USAF SERE Specialist. SERE Specialists are the professionals who make sure the personnel recovery enterprise, from start to finish, is there to bring America's isolated personnel home from around the globe. They have one mission, to prepare America’s warfighters to “Return With Honor.”

General Curtis Lemay is regarded as the visionary leader who brought survival to the forefront in military operations. Often regarded as a hard, but intelligent individual, General Lemay built his reputation leading combat flying missions in both the Pacific and European theaters during World War Two. Survival training existed in the Army Air Forces but it was more an afterthought and something that was left to unit commanders to develop. With the establishment of the United States Air Force as a separate branch of service in 1947 came an opportunity for General Lemay to change that. As the commander for the newly formed Strategic Air Command (SAC), he was in a position to start making changes. Unfortunately, the new Air Force leadership did not share his concerns when it came to survival and refused to fund or create a survival program (Root, 2016). It's at this moment that I recall a motivational speaker once saying, “Most people are stoppable. All you have to do is tell them no.”  General Lemay was not like most people and he definitely wasn't about to be stopped.  

There were 130,201 American POWs during WWII (Friedman, 2014). General Lemay was concerned by this figure and knew that by providing survival skills for his aircrew he could reduce that number and better protect his people so they could return to the fight. He knew that a standardized course that provided these essential skills taught by certified experts would give aircrew members the best opportunity to make it back from a crash or accident. 

General Lemay's initial pitch to the new AF Command for a sponsored and funded survival school was denied. So he did what anyone who knows they are right does, he made one on his own. With the Cold War just getting started and the Soviet Union emerging as the United States’ biggest competition globally, Lemay was aware his bombers would play a significant role in any combat operation during this time. He refused to let these crews go unprepared. He used bilateral agreements in Canada designed to protect the arctic regions from Soviet incursions to justify his first survival school. The protection of these aircrews necessitated the SAC Arctic Indoctrination Course (AIS) at Marks AB in Nome, AK. Its goal was to prepare his aircrews to survive in the event of a shoot-down or accident. The AIS name was said to have been chosen to keep it under the radar of AF leadership. General Lemay wanted the course to be taught in the environment the skills would be needed. This would make it effective while keeping it far away from the rest of the AF command. It would be financed and manned by SAC, the Alaska Air Command, and the Air Rescue Service and would train individuals from all three organizations to survive in the arctic (Root, 2016).

The initial instructors for this course were a combination of volunteers and the "volun-told". They became “experts” through knowledge sharing and engagement with the Nome residents. One thing survival instructors are good at is learning from the locals. They determined what the basic skills needed to survive in the region were and worked to master those skills. These initial instructors went through an intensive 30 day OJT where they would spend the majority of their time in the field. After their training, the AIS survival instructors would be able to teach from their own experiences and knowledge base. After they completed the instructor training they were awarded their own Military Occupational Specialty, Rescue and Survival Specialist (Root, 2016). When they started to teach their formalized 5-day arctic survival course they could perform every task they would teach with a high degree of efficiency to demonstrate to their students this training would work to keep them alive if the worst-case scenario ever happened to them. This baseline requirement to be able to “Walk the Talk” has been maintained throughout the evolutionary process of the AF’s Rescue and Survival Specialist to the modern-day SERE Specialist.

Within a year of opening the AIS, other commands, seeing the great value the course provided for SAC, began requesting slots for their people.  General Lemay’s foresight had set the stage for a standardized survival program with expert instructors. The increased student load necessitated the school's movement from the remote Nome location to Ladd AFB in Fairbanks, AK in 1950. The course, no longer a secret from the AF Command, was renamed the Arctic Survival Training School. It was still a SAC-run school, but the rest of the AF was starting to look at survival programs in a different light. Ladd AFB would later become Ft Wainwright Army Base due to the realignment of priorities within the services (Root, 2016). AF Arctic Survival training is still taught in Fairbanks, AK. The course has evolved over time. Based at Eielson AFB, it is now known as the “Cool School” and is “just across town” from Ft Wainwright.

The next step in the evolution of AF survival would have lasting effects on the program and its instructors. General Lemay had received the validation for his concept of survival training through the recognition of SAC's Arctic School. He had a more in-depth, all-encompassing vision in mind for the future of AF survival training. In 1948 he would begin planning this next step with Colonel Demetrious Stampados. Col Stampados had served as a British Commando, Army Ranger, and worked with the Office of Strategic Services during WWII. His background provided the direction and guidance needed for General Lemay's advanced survival training initiative. The first step was to develop survival programs at SAC bases to get more aircrew the skills that General Lemay thought were vital. The second step was to create the Advanced Survival School at Camp Carson, CO. Col Stampados led a recruiting team that began to scour the AF for the “right” type of people to build this new program. The individuals that he brought to Camp Carson to start the advanced course included former POWs, members of arctic exploration teams, and personnel from the arctic survival school at Ladd AFB. They would begin to develop the course in 1949 (Root, 2016).

This is where the AF Survival program would start to develop into an all-encompassing enterprise that sought to prepare personnel for more than just the physical environment. One of the things that had concerned General Lemay after WWII was the number of personnel that had been captured and made POWs. There were 130,201 American POWs during WWII (Friedman, 2014). Unfortunately, the number of POWs doesn't reflect the total number of missing. He knew that by providing skills for his aircrew to survive as well as evade and escape from the enemy he could reduce that number and better protect his people so they could return to the fight. He also knew that a standardized course that provided these essential skills, taught by certified experts, would give aircrew members the best opportunity to make it back from an isolating incident or even captivity. The selection of certain members of his cadre reflected his desire to address this matter with the one thing he had always valued in his training programs, experience. Even though his belief in this training had always been present it became more pronounced with the events unfolding in Korea. SERE training and the professionals who delivered it were about to be born and the focus on preventing service members from becoming POWs would start to take hold.

The advanced course started with environment-specific training. Camp Carson was chosen because it had similar terrain to key areas of the Soviet Union. The competition between the two superpowers was building as the cold war expanded. By late 1950 General Lemay had directed the addition of the Evasion and Escape curriculum. SAC’s Advanced Survival Course was the first of its kind to develop and standardize a curriculum for this type of training. The response from other commanders was overwhelming as they began seeking more and more access to SAC’s survival training course (Root, 2016). This concept of survival in all environments, including evasion and escape, would be the foundation of the Advanced Survival School and ultimately the AF Survival School.

The initial surge required additional instructors. The call went out for experienced veterans to apply. A large number of former 10th Mountain Division soldiers had settled near Camp Carson and answered the call. This is where the link to Col Stampados' history as an Army Ranger shaped the development of the instructor cadre. A good portion of the person he hired had Ranger backgrounds. These individuals were incredibly tough, determined, and highly knowledgeable in survival skills and techniques. This group of cadre had all of the intangibles necessary to deliver the type of training that General Lemay had envisioned for the demanding course he was creating. This carry-over between the original Advanced Course instructors and the Army Rangers would be reflected in the Survival Instructor certification course that would be created for future Survival cadre. The linkage between these first Ranger-Survival instructors and the SERE career field today is reflected in the beret and Arch that is worn by SERE Specialists to honor this lineage (CMSgt (Ret) Rick Arnold, Personal Communication. 2019).

The demand for survival training soon outmatched what the facilities at Camp Carson could handle. And the survival school would be forced to relocate. This time they would have the entire base to themselves. The entire SAC Advanced Survival program was moved to a deserted military airfield outside of Reno, NV in 1952. Stead AFB offered the Survival School everything it could have wanted. They had the Sierra Nevada mountains and forests to the west, a dry barren desert-like area to the east, and the Truckee River. They could cover nearly any survival situation where they were and if needed could travel the 6 hrs across CA to get to the Pacific Ocean for open water training (Root, 2016). 

Stead AFB would be where the AF Survival program would expand to the potential that General Lemay had envisioned from the start. The program became the AF Survival School in 1954 and was aligned under the new Air Training Command. This was the beginning of standardized initial survival training for all designated personnel across the AF. The survival course itself would grow to a three-week course that would teach global survival techniques as well as instruct personnel in evasion and escape techniques (Root, 2016). The Survival School would eventually include the Code of Conduct, officially instituted in 1955, as part of its Resistance program. This time frame established many of the facets of AF survival training that are still utilized today. The inclusion of global aspects, mock POW camps and resistance training, water survival, and recovery demonstrations all would align here to make the program what it would become later. 

Stead was also the site of the first military parachuting club recognized by the United States Parachute Association. Although not all items would last throughout the school's tenure at Stead AFB, they would eventually return because of the work done there (Root, 2016).

Resistance training became quite a focal point when articles about the training were published in both Time and Life magazines in Sept 1955.  Both articles alleged instructors were torturing service members for no apparent reason and thought it should be stopped immediately. The controversy started by the articles actually led to an immediate congressional investigation. Suffice to say, there is still resistance training conducted because of its value to the warfighter, and the program was found to have done nothing illegal. The program expanded with strict parameters for implementation and was sought after by many organizations for specialized training (Root, 2016). The effectiveness of the training has been debated, but the number of “recognized” POWs during Vietnam is 725 (Friedman, 2014). That is an almost 90% reduction from WWII. It needs to be understood that the type of warfare employed was vastly different, but the accounts of those that returned indicate that the training they received, although not perfect, better prepared them to survive while in captivity. The input from these POWs would be utilized to improve training for future conflicts. Just like when the Survival School employed former POWs at Camp Carson to create realism, these returnees would provide the realism that would be integrated into the course to better prepare our warfighters.

Fairchild AFB is located just outside Spokane, WA. It became the current home of the Survival School in 1966 after Stead AFB was closed in a cost-saving maneuver. It took leaders nearly a year of searching to select Fairchild. Similar to Stead AFB, Fairchild has the ability to train personnel in multiple environments. The recently abandoned Deep Creek Air Station on the southside of Fairchild’s runway provided a location that would cause minimal impact on the current base population and offered separation to conduct its training activities. As part of the move, the two areas would be combined to form the new boundaries of Fairchild AFB. Today, the old Deep Creek AB area is simply known as the “Survival Side” by those that reside on the base (Root, 2016). 

Since the establishment of the school in Fairchild, the training has grown more specific with every operation and engagement carried out by the United States military. The ability of the AF Survival program to adapt and learn from each engagement has allowed them to better serve the warfighters that attend the survival school. The number of POWs with each operation has continued to decrease. During Operation Desert Storm, Persian Gulf War 1991, there were 23 identified POWs. During on-going operations in the Middle East, there was 1 (Friedman, 2014). Improvements in equipment and training have helped to continue to protect the warfighter. Current contingency operations also benefit from the employment of SERE Specialists in deployed environments to help coordinate personnel recovery networks and operations. Their reputation as subject matter experts has helped bridge the gap between training and mission execution.

Fairchild is also the home of the SERE Specialist Training (SST) course. This region of the country provides the variety needed to develop global survival skills in all potential SERE Specialists. SST is a nearly six-month course that tests the physical strength, mental ability, and will to persevere of any that choose to attempt it. Candidates will train in temperate, desert, tropical, cold weather, water, and captivity environments to hone their craft.  From the environments, training expands into understanding what recovery methods exist and how to effectively employ them to get survivors out of hostile environments. Their first-hand knowledge of the skills needed in any environment allows them to identify problems and shortcomings before they occur. This ability to think pro-actively increases mission success through effective planning and equipping. 

There is no way to complete the course without failing at some point in the process. I think that is what makes the professionals who complete the training so unique. I have found that failure is when you learn the most about yourself. Survival is about the ability to adapt to any situation. Not all situations are resolved quickly. Long-term success comes through recognition of weaknesses and how to overcome them. This is what SERE Specialists give to those they work with. They provide them with the knowledge of how to adapt to anything they encounter. The career field started with survival and equipment knowledge. They then learned how to apply that to any environment they encountered, including captivity. SERE Specialists are now the go-to profession for all matters regarding personnel recovery. They prepare personnel through training, preparation for specific environments and circumstances, actions are taken to increase success, ways to communicate, and actions necessary for rescue. SERE Specialists also guide leaders to increase their ability to plan for operations through the knowledge of the environment, actions that should be taken, and precautions to take before getting started.

The training that is conducted at FAFB to create a SERE Specialist is what makes the program as successful as it has been. The fact that every SERE Specialist has the experience to back up the knowledge they share makes them highly effective at their jobs. Their expertise has expanded well beyond simple instruction and use at the school. SERE Specialists are assigned globally to bring their knowledge and expertise to all aspects of personnel recovery. They can instruct techniques for specific environments, provide guidance on recovery missions, identify gaps in mission planning to ensure rescue viability, and are vital in the debriefing efforts of those that have been isolated to create lessons learned for future leaders to employ in similar environments and circumstances and bring closure to the returnee and their family.

Tropics (1963-1975)

This specialized course was designed specifically for personnel assigned to the Southern Command. Like all survival training, it was chosen because it afforded Survival Specialists the ability to prepare personnel to learn how to operate in the environment in which they would be conducting ops. The primary customers were the air commandos and aircrew that were operating throughout Central and South America providing training and rescue missions in the region (Air Force Mag, 1964). The school was closed in 1975 due to reduced student load and a more robust curriculum at the AF Survival School at Fairchild AFB to cover global aspects and survival principles (Google Books, 2021).

Jungle (1967-1975)

This specialized survival course was designed with the conflict in Vietnam in mind. Clark AFB in the Philippines provided a nearly identical environment for training in order to better prepare the Pacific Air Forces aviators who would be operating in Vietnam. The dense jungle environment and proximity to the area of operations made it ideal. This course was aligned under the 3636th CCTW in 1971 in an effort to standardize survival under a single command structure. The school was closed in 1975 due to reduced student load and a more robust curriculum at the AF Survival School at Fairchild AFB to cover global aspects and survival principles (Google Books, 2021).

Parachuting Water Survival (1971-2015 within FL)

This specialized water survival course was designed for personnel assigned to airframes that were either ejection or bailout designated emergency egress. The course started at Homestead AFB. Aircrew would be taught the basics on land and would then parasail into the water to simulate egress conditions in open water. The training would provide the experience that could not be gained through classroom and pool instruction. The school would be forced to move after Hurricane Andrew destroyed the Homestead area in 1992. The temporary home of the water survival school would be Tyndall AFB until it was collocated with the navy training program at Pensacola Naval Air Station. In 2015 the parachuting water survival course was relocated to FAFB in an effort to centralize all initial survival training and reduce training costs associated with the program.

Cool School (1949-Present)

The Arctic Survival School is basically where it has been since 1949 when the course was moved to Ladd AFB. The course was assigned under the Alaskan Air Command until the alignment of all survival training under the 3636 CCTW in 1971. The reason the school has been in the same area for so long is one of location. The availability of the training ranges of Ft Wainwright and its consistent winter weather conditions make it the ideal environment to meet the purpose of its creation. Its nickname as the “Cool School” is well earned. The Cool School offers arctic training for the masses in the form of a 5-day course. The Cool School also offers an advanced course specifically for SERE Specialists during the coldest period of the year where these survival professionals will endure the remoteness of “barrens”, without a doubt the coldest I have ever been. The Barrens phase is conducted without fires or artificial heat sources. You stay warm through very deliberate movement and constructing efficient improvised shelters. During the winter there are effectively 4-5 hours of light for work and the rest of the day is spent in your improvised shelter. You learn very quickly the benefits of being efficient and thorough. Failure to build your shelter effectively can lead to a very long and miserable 19 hour night.

From its beginnings, the SERE career field has been based upon the concepts of preparing others to survive in any environment. The “environments” have expanded beyond the physical and now include the mental aspect of any situation encountered and how to react, and perform. The professionals that undertook this tasking were expected to demonstrate their knowledge and expertise based upon their experiences gained through a vigorous and unrelenting training process. This experience level enabled them to exemplify all the attributes and skills that they would demand of their students. In turn, this credibility led to their desirability as subject matter experts. As the world and the battle-space evolve and change so too must the SERE profession. The expansion into all aspects of the Personnel Recovery enterprise is the next tier in the evolution of the SERE Specialist. Command and control of personnel recovery missions and forces are where SERE Specialists are now being required. Their experience in operational environments, situational awareness, and in-depth knowledge of recovery mechanisms makes them uniquely suited for the successful planning and preparation of units or individuals to operate, adjust, and if necessary extract themselves from dangerous and unpredictable situations. Despite their numbers, SERE Specialists' mission sets are not getting smaller, they are increasing. Regardless of the circumstance or era in time, their skills make them indispensable to leaders as they plan for the defense of our nation and the safe return of our military and civilian personnel around the world.

Over the course of the past 73 years, the path of the AF Survival Program and its professionals has been intertwined. The vision and will of one commander created an enterprise that is the envy of other militaries. The dedication to ensure that the warfighter is the focal point of everything they do has been reflected over that time as well. By focusing on the survivability of our fighting men and women in all environments, both manmade and natural, this personnel recovery enterprise has helped to significantly reduce the number of missing and captive American military members in all modern operations since WWII. This is the realization of General Lemay's vision, but far from the accomplishment of the goal. AF SERE Specialists, personnel recovery professionals, will continue to work to keep the warfighter safe, regardless of where the conflict takes them.

This Story Map of the history of the USAF Survival School and SERE profession is dedicated to the memory of MSgt (Retired) James Root (RIP). Jim was compiling as much of the history of the SERE career field as he could to preserve it for future generations. With the number of times the school has moved over the years things will inevitably be lost. His manuscript was a treasure trove of recollections, photos, and stories that needed to be preserved and shared with others. That being said, this is a living history, not a completed project. I am not its author, just its current caretaker. I was 37 when I went through SST and I can attest to its rigorous nature and the humbling experiences it can provide. I learned more about myself in that 6 months of training than I had in the previous three decades. I also found that it was difficult to research the background of my new career. Much of what was known was through word of mouth. Hopefully, this will remedy some of that, and Jim's dream of capturing AF Survival's history will be realized.