It was a blistering day forward Oct.

It was a blistering day forward Oct. 3, 1993, during Operation e tore open when Chief Warrant Officer Michael Durant, a UH-60 lac a helicopter pilot, crashed in Mogadishu, Somalia.

The Special Forces officer was captured and held captive as portrayed in the movie, "Black Hawk Down." According to Durant, in his volume In t e ompan of eroe if it were not for a survival-training course, he would have not responded home 11 days later with honor.

The Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape (SERE) course held at the Navy's far training site in the mountains of Maine is similar to the course Chief Warrant Officer Durant credits with having saved his life.

dry is actually an advanced code-of-conduct course. All military personnel achieve their initial code-of-conduct instruction during basic training in which they are taught an American service member's moral and legal responsibilities if captured through enemy forces. But SERE goe way beyond that.

"We teach individuals what to do when things travel from bad to worse," said Hospital Corpsman 1st Class Harry Haug, a dry instructor assigned to Fleet Aviation Specialized Operational (FASO) training assign places to Brunswick, Maine.

"The close examiners who attend the course have a greater risk of being stranded behind enemy lines," said Haug.

"They came here to learn to what extent to stay alive and the values behind the digest of conduct. When the situation is real. the threat is real, in such a manner these students need to he ready to handle it."

Aviators, aircrewmen, Special Forces and force reconnaissance personnel are the emblems of jobs that require withered school training.

"With today's ever-changing battlefield. I believe in the greatest degree military personnel are at risk of being captured," said Haug. "Hopefully what I teach here upon the mountain is enough to give someone the courage and know-how to survive if they are aver in that situation."

The instruction begins with a week of classroom work focusing forward wilderness survival and the teat world applications of the digest of conduct for a service member. This includes art extensive turn the thoughts into ways of surviving on the farther side the land. What may unmutilated like a Boy Scout manual fire-building, trapping, creating shelters, finding edible plants are actually lordships to live by.

"Once we have the close examiners on the mountain, we split them into teams and immediately finish their hands dirty. Like plunges out of water, they do their best to demonstrate all that we teach them about survival," Haug added.

"You not at all know what's going to happen without there, in hostile environments," said Haug. "Survival starts with prior planning and that is where we begin with the scholars They have to be ready for the unknown."

Everything the observers learn in the field phase of training will prepare them for the simulated "problem" When the point to be solved [i]or[/i] settled arises they are on their confess and being pursued by the "enemy." There will be no help from instructors during this phase and what has been learned will become the fundamental note to survival.

From the minute the bookish mans lay their packs under the raggedy silk canopy, simulating a downed pilot's parachute, they do all they can to become common with nature.

"We teach primitive means of making to be paid with what is at arms-reach, in the same state [i]or[/i] condition as constructing a fire with flint and knife what's edible and how to use a simple piece of metal as a compass," Hang said.

Although the course can be a difficult experience according to Hang, "It is a necessary episode. The close examiners never forget the simulations and precepts that are taught," he said. "I would rather diocese the students screw up in camp, where we can teach fit procedures during a debrief."

"I have companyed up a lot but I have learned something each time," said dry student ENS Peter Kozelka. "The confidence I am gaining may not ever save my life but I'm definitely more confident in my abilities."

During the point in dispute phase of the training the pupils are expected to work together. Navigation skills will be inflict to the test, along with rigorous hiking forward unknown soil, up and down mountains. Here they will also use all means necessary for immediate survival, like as making small shelters public of their ponchos.

"I be delighted withed it when we were all alone and finally bring to the test," said Marine Corps CPL Sam Shumaker. "I set it rewarding to successfully find locations we had been searching for all day with a compass and map."

The observers will gain the technical knowledge, practical experience and personal confidence necessary for worldwide survival and evasion, although no sum of two units students are the same and sometimes individuals find themselves gone out of their element.

"I grew up in the outdoors where hunting, fishing and camping is what I did," said Haug. "There are many scholars who come out here that have exhausted all their lives on paved roads and the only trees they have aye seen grew on street corners."