Kay Serrar wrote:
vecchia capra wrote:
I completed the Navy SERE course of training in 1990 at the beginning of the first Gulf war and it pretty much fit the description in the linked story. Each aspect of the course was taken from the actual experiences of POWs and those caught behind enemy lines in previous conflicts, toned down from the real experiences but not completely. I missed the waterboarding evolution because one of the "interrogators" broke my collarbone when he tried to grab my by my shirt after I bounced off a wall from his last response to his question. I did spend a lot of time in a small box, get weapons pointed at me, abusive language and other techniques inflicted upon me, but I gutted it out despite having my shoulder swollen up from the interrogation mistake.
Personally I don't have a lot of respect to anyone complaining about torture after going through SERE school; it's supposed to be and introduction to that art! I also went through the shellback ceremony and had my new stripes "tacked on" through my career and never felt like I was being treated badly or needed some counselling to deal with my emotions from those events.
your last paragraph seems a bit of an odd thing to say. first, because presumably real torture could be much worse than what you experienced. and second, because if what you experienced was so bad that you really would have no respect for someone complaining about torture (again, really?), then it must have been so bad that why wouldn't it be reasonable for someone to suffer PTSD and need counseling?
What is so odd about my opinion? The training was for people who stood a chance of being shot down or captured by enemy forces because of their job in the military. The training was not nearly as bad as the torture it was meant to prepare us for so I don't see it as torture itself. I have no respect because each of the people who attended the training CHOSE those career fields knowing that SERE was a requirement along with other equally unpleasant training requirement like jungle survival, cold water survival and the like.
If a person was so frail that the SERE training caused them to need counselling or experience PTSD, then they should leave the career field and let someone with a stronger mind take that job, because the real life stresses of those jobs is often worse than the SERE training without even being ever shot down behind enemy lines. Having been in one aircraft mishap, and having had to photograph several others, SERE was a theme park visit compared to having to search for a coworkers body parts in a field after one such mishap.