Always Ready – Behind Enemy Lines: Part II
This is Part II of the Behind Enemy Lines series. ← Start with Part I: The Rescue of Scott O'Grady
Scott O'Grady wasn't the first American servicemember forced to survive behind enemy lines.
Long before Bosnia, thousands of soldiers, sailors, Marines, and airmen found themselves isolated from friendly forces and trapped in hostile territory. Some escaped. Many did not. Their experiences would shape the military's understanding of survival and eventually give birth to the modern SERE program.
The story begins in the skies over Europe and the Pacific during the Second World War. American bombers and fighter aircraft flew thousands of missions over Europe and the Pacific. Aircraft were shot down daily. Aircrews parachuted into occupied France, dense jungles, remote islands, and enemy-controlled territory with little more than the equipment they carried on their backs. Surviving the crash was often only the beginning of their ordeal.
Some airmen relied on resistance networks that smuggled them across occupied Europe. Others attempted long overland escapes through mountains, forests, and enemy checkpoints. Success often depended less on courage than preparation. The military quickly realized that surviving a shootdown required a unique set of skills. Pilots needed to know how to find water, avoid detection, navigate unfamiliar terrain, and communicate with friendly forces.
The British were among the first to formalize those lessons. Through an organization known as MI9, they developed escape and evasion training for aircrews operating over occupied Europe. Instructors taught pilots how to avoid capture, navigate hostile territory, and survive long enough to reach friendly forces. They also developed specialized equipment concealed inside uniforms and personal gear, including hidden compasses and escape maps.
After the United States entered the war, American officers studied the British program and established similar organizations of their own. At the same time, hard lessons from the Pacific exposed another challenge. The U.S. Navy discovered that most pilots who were shot down initially survived the incident itself, yet only a small percentage remained alive for long. Many lacked the skills necessary to survive in open water or sustain themselves on remote islands.
By the end of the war, the foundations of modern survival training had been laid. Schools began teaching navigation, signaling, water survival, shelter construction, and escape techniques. Those programs saved lives and improved the odds of recovery for isolated personnel.
Yet they were designed primarily to help servicemembers survive the environment.
The next war would reveal that the environment was not always the greatest threat.
The Korean War exposed a problem few American planners had fully considered.
When North Korean and Chinese forces captured American servicemembers, they subjected them to physical abuse, isolation, and psychological pressure. Many prisoners resisted heroically. Others struggled under conditions few had been prepared to endure.
The experience forced military leaders to confront an uncomfortable reality. Survival was more than finding food and water. A servicemember might survive the battlefield only to face years as a prisoner of war.
In response, President Dwight Eisenhower signed the Code of Conduct for Members of the Armed Forces in 1955. The six articles established expectations for conduct during capture and resistance to enemy exploitation. More importantly, they laid the philosophical foundation for future survival training.
The military could no longer afford to train its people only for combat.
It had to prepare them for what happened after the fight.
From Survival Training to SERE
The Code of Conduct established how American servicemembers were expected to conduct themselves if captured, but it did not solve the problem of how those skills would be taught. Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, the military expanded survival schools and developed increasingly formal training programs for aircrews operating over hostile territory. Students learned wilderness survival, navigation, signaling, escape techniques, and the principles outlined in the Code of Conduct.
The Vietnam War transformed those efforts. Hundreds of American aviators were shot down over North Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia. Some successfully evaded capture, while others spent years as prisoners of war. Their experiences provided an unprecedented body of knowledge about survival, resistance, captivity, and recovery.
Military leaders carefully studied those lessons. Escape attempts, evasion techniques, prisoner resistance efforts, and recovery operations were analyzed and incorporated into training programs. Survival was no longer viewed simply as a matter of finding food, water, and shelter. It became part of a broader system designed to prepare servicemembers for isolation, evasion, resistance, and escape.
Over the following decades, the Air Force developed a dedicated cadre of instructors responsible for preserving and teaching those lessons. What had begun as survival training gradually evolved into the modern SERE program, combining fieldcraft, personnel recovery procedures, and resistance training into a comprehensive course designed to prepare personnel for some of the most difficult circumstances they might encounter in combat.
The Modern SERE Specialist
Today, Air Force SERE specialists serve as the military's subject matter experts in survival, evasion, resistance, and escape. Their primary responsibility is to prepare pilots, aircrew, special operations personnel, and other high-risk communities to survive isolation and return to friendly control.
Their work extends well beyond traditional wilderness survival. Students learn navigation, signaling, personnel recovery procedures, water procurement, shelter construction, and methods for avoiding enemy detection. They also study the psychological challenges associated with isolation, captivity, and prolonged uncertainty, drawing on decades of lessons learned from combat operations, prisoner-of-war experiences, and recovery missions.
The profession requires a diverse set of skills. SERE specialists must be effective instructors, capable of teaching both in classrooms and austere field environments. They study emergency medicine, land navigation, risk management, personnel recovery doctrine, and human performance under stress. Just as importantly, they must translate those subjects into realistic training that prepares students for real-world emergencies.
Most servicemembers who attend SERE training will never need to use those skills in combat. The military's objective is not to predict who will become isolated, captured, or stranded. It is to ensure that those who do have the knowledge, discipline, and confidence necessary to survive until recovery forces can bring them home.
Because of that responsibility, becoming a SERE specialist requires one of the most demanding training pipelines in the Air Force.
Continue the series → Behind Enemy Lines: Part III — Becoming a SERE Specialist
Related reading from MTNTOUGH
- Swift, Silent, and Deadly: The Story of Marine Corps Reconnaissance
- The Girl Who Fell From the Sky, Part I
Byron Owen is a Reconnaissance Marine with tours as both a platoon commander and commanding officer at the elite 1st Force Reconnaissance Company. He also had the honor of commanding several intelligence and cyber units to include Cyberspace Warfare Task Group 1, and 3d Radio Battalion. He writes about leadership at www.rucksackleadership.com, information warfare at keyterraincyber.com, and is the author of the upcoming book Bury my Heart in Baghdad.
