I did it!
 

I passed the US Special Forces test today!

I had to swim 500m in under fifteen minutes, then run two miles in under fifteen minutes, the do ten military-style pull ups in a minute, fifty military push ups in two minutes, then fifty sit ups in under two minutes. I actually did quite well and finished everything far under the time limits and came nowhere near muscle failure.

I'm hoping to go into the Air Force as a SERE (Survival, Evasion, Resistance, Escape) instructor. Basically I'll be teaching Marines, Navy Seals, Fighter Pilots, etc. how to survive in any situation and resist enemy torture and what-not.

I just thought I would share the good news!

Someone remind me not to F with this guy in person. :lol:


Congrats, that's a hard core workout right there!

Congratulations that's pretty empressive! Good luck on your endeavors. :D

Wow, Congrats!

I used to be able to do that too. You know, in my dreams.

That is awesome.

What would you say was the hardest part of the test session?

Excellent! Congrats!

My money would be on the swim or the pullups being the hardest...

Thanks everyone.

I actually had a hard time with the run only because it was 85 degrees out, I wasn't properly hydrated, and I was on a track. I run 5 miles everyday up a canyon then back down, but I have something to look at then. I had no idea that it made the big of a difference.

The swim was no problem for me because I'm a Lifeguard and I swim 500-1,000m once or twice a week.

If I get in to SERE school I have five months to train my ass off. The day I get to SERE school after basic I have to do the whole test over, but after the run I have to throw on a 65 pound ruck sack and go four miles in under an hour. I've got a lot of work to do.

Yeah dude, that was the "get in" test, not the graduation test. ;) You're way ahead of the game though man. When I showed up in Missouri for Basic, on our first PT test (which was after a week of training), I ran the 2 miles in 16:40, did 50 situps, and a whopping 17 pushups. :lol:

Oh, and when you're running for time on a track, the best trick is to just keep chasing down the next person in front of you. Shorten the distance of your run mentally to just the distance to where he is ahead of you. Once you catch him, reel in the next guy. Next thing you know, you're done and you're a minute ahead of where you'd be just looking around and the unchanging scenery.

I know, that was the easy part!

Kevin, that's a great idea, thanks.

Awesome man, congrats!

Can I ask, have you been tortured?

Congrats on the completion.

Congratulations Tim!

Ergh. I knew a few folk who went through SERE training. Not my cup o' tea. Congrats, though. :)

Werd. Frankly, Id rather learn on the fly in the hands of the enemy that *might* capture me someday, than go through what is essentially a worst-case scenario... the Geneva Convention rules don't actually apply when it's your own military that is imprisoning and 'questioning' you. ;)

Not yet.

My AF career counsler told me that I need to be prepared to have fingers and toes broken or lost in training. One of the exercises he told me about was something like this. You are teamed up with someone they see that your close with through training, sit you guys down while the interigator (sp?) ties your friend down. He starts asking for information, you resist, then he starts breaking you buddies fingers until you talk.

Should be fun :lol:

Sounds like a party to me! Spaghetti MREs, beer in your canteen, broken fingers. . . sweet!

BTW, sp=interrogator ;)

So the trick is to get close to someone you really don't like, and then you can endure anything they do to them... :devil:

Uhh, is that for real? WTF is the point of "training" if it permanently damages the soldiers going through it?

hell yeah!!!! lol

I got some bad news this morning. Apparently I failed the hearing test. The highest pitch on the test was the problem apparently. I've got to re-do it at a private ear doctor next week.

What?

The same thing happened to one of my Drill Sergeants in AIT. Except he was already most of the way through SF school when they gave that test. :( Sucked ass for him.

I would think bad hearing would be a benefit. Can't hear people screaming, and blasting Matalica doesn't bother you... :)

The one thing for military hearing tests is that they all follow the same pattern. I work around jet engines and loud equipment every day, and my hearing test has been getting better every year, purely because I figured out the sequence and pauses. Remember that the machine tries to trick you into pushing the button when you don't hear anything.

Good luck! Those SERE guys are nuts ;)

what's the deal there?

:lol: I got yelled at one time for pushing the button too many times before the test had actually started!

Hearing tests! I scored ridiculously high when I first enlisted, and my right side was slightly better. I did two years of training and then spent three more as a radio voice interceptor and analyst in Korea. Then I took another hearing test just before ETS. I usually kept my headphones over my right ear while scrolling freqs so I could hear what was going on in our bay with my left. And what happened? Right side hearing diminished below left. Yay! :|

When you re-take the test, close your eyes and make sure you get a good solid seal around your ears with those headphones.

sounds stupid but slow your breathing too. and sleep with ear plugs in the night before. SERE training is fun..you will love the water table.. They don't really hurt you that much but they do slap you around a little.

Thanks for the advice guys. I'm doing my re-take on Wensday.

I thought I was the only one that did that kind of thing..but its funny ..HAY STOP PUSHING THE BUTTON WHEN THERE IS NO BEEP!!

You guys that were in the military, what did you do?

time served
 

I was in the USAF for just over nine years. Did physiological support for the U2 and SR-71. Plus hyperbaric medicine and refresher survival training for the U2 and SR-71 pilots under the supervision of a SERE instructor (water and combat). Attended SERE in the mid 90s (sorry no finger braking that I've heard of).

Joe, why did you get out if you don't mind me asking?

I spent 5 years in the Army. I was a Korean linguist and radio voice interceptor/analyst - I spent my days/nights/midnights/16 hour shifts/whatever either tethered to a computer by a set of headphones or working as an intelligence translator and liaison supervisor for various higher-echelon exercises around Korea. I wasn't a total intel weenie, though - I had to volunteer for our unit's perimiter defense team to get my fill of mud crawling and urban ops. :P

I went through Basic at good ol' Fort Lost-in-the-woods, Misery (Ft. Leonardwood, MO), then got to spend a fantastic year and a half attending the Defense Language Institute in Monterey, CA. My intense hatred for Texas comes from the five months I was there for technical training before flying off to Korea. I was expecting to finish a year's tour and then get shipped to a remote unit in Hawaii or some-such, but I met a cute preschool teacher in Seoul by chance and extended my tour to three years. I worked with some pretty cool people there, both American and Korean, and the old-timer status I had garnered by the time I left was fairly convenient.

Good times. :)

Threee years Army for me. I went in through DEP in June of 1997, actually shipped off in September. I also went to Missouri for basic, then off to Ft. Knox in January for tech school. I was an M1 tank turret mechanic. Kentucky chose that particular year to set several records for temps and snow, setting a pattern that follows me to this day- I move to a new geographic location, and that location has the most extreme winter and/or summer season in recent memory. :mad: I was fooled by the promise of "electronics and computer training" along with working on hydraulic and laser systems the tank uses, which turned out to be basically using a really fancy multimeter to determine which white box with cables plugged into it to replace when it broke, no real repairs. At least I learned how to get my hands dirty and use tools, neither of which I had done before enlisting. Tech school took just over 3 months, then off to Korea in March. I absolutely hated it there. In hindsight, a better attitude would have made it more tolerable, but there's really nothing truly redeeming about a tour there unless blowing most of your pay on booze and hookers seems like a great idea. The best you can hope for is to spend your year(s) there really throwing yourself into your work and improving yourself as a soldier. If you consider making the military a career, a tour or two in Korea can end up being a real benefit to you.

So, after my year in purgatory, the Army took mercy on me and sent me to.... Texas. Yay. Of all the possible duty stations you can get in armor-related specialties (Germany, Italy, Colorado, upstate New York, Alaska, Washington, Kentucky, and Barstow, CA are the others) I got the absolute last two listed in my personnel file as my preferences. Barstow sucks ass, but it would have been really close to home at least. And Kentucky isn't so great, but the actual work and duty assignments there are cake- no combat-ready units or deployments from there, it's all training units.
Anyways, Ft. Hood. It wouldn't have been quite so bad, except that it was all the bad things you think of about Texas with almost none of the better things. A rinkydink town leeching off the largest US military installation besides the combination of the Pentagon and Walter Reed Med Center... only it was 1/2 the size it had been 6 years previously, and 1/3 of the people still stationed there were deployed to the Middle East or Bosnia, and the town was dying economically. It would be a better stationing if it were closer to Austin or San Antonio or Dallas, or better yet the coast, but all those places were well beyond the non-pass boundaries. Plus the fact that nearly half of the man-hours by the 2 remaining divisions there are spent either out on training missions or deployed overseas, and it gets old.

There was some good to go with the bad though. Getting out in the field and playing soldier can be a lot of fun, and looking back, there were plenty of chances where I could have gone out on training excercises that I wish I had taken. A big plus with a military career is that it's not difficult to be successful- you know exactly what you have to do to continue to be promoted and become a better soldier and leader, and if you do that you're guaranteed success. It's beautiful, there's very little in the way of 'office' politics or favoritism, and no ambivalence about your performance evaluation. You're in near absolute control over your own advancement, with a little luck coming into play with things like duty assignments. For example, in order to advance past E-6 you need to be a Drill Sergeant, Tech Instructor, or Recruiter. Guess which ones are better to be when it comes time for the E9 promotion board? Also, most people are suited to one more than the others, and the standards don't change if you happen to be given the assignment you aren't best suited for.

So in a nutshell, here are the major pros and cons in my opinion of an enlistment and career in the Military:

Pros: Stability/job security. Pretty good benefits, especially if you have a family. While pay isn't great, you can retire young enough to get a second career, often in a good field, and "double dip." Advancement is limited only by your own aptitude and effort- it's easy to be a good soldier if you really want to be. And there's definitely pride and satisfaction in being a soldier. Not everyone can or would do it given the chance.

Cons: Not much money to be made. Even officers aren't paid all that highly given their education, training, and skills. Lack of control over where you live, and for how long. But for me, the biggest factor for not staying in was time. the day is too long, getting up at 5:30 for PT, getting home around 6. While a standard training day is only about 9 hours of actual work, including PT in the morning, it's broken up enough that it still takes a 12 hour chunk of your day. Then there's field excercises. Sometimes a few days, occasionally over a month without coming home for so much as a shower and night in an actual bed. On top of that, there's the current deployment situation. If you are in a combat division, you have a good chance of spending 6 months or more overseas, like Chris is. Putting all that together, I just didn't like the idea of trying to build a family when I was gone so frequently. The stability and security the military provides you just isn't worth the trade-off of being absentee from home for the better part of 20 or 25 years.

All in all, I think the vast majority of able-bodied young men and women would benefit from an enlistment. For the sacrifice of some personal freedom for a few years, the memories, skills, and experiences you gain are an outstanding trade-off. I would actually love the chance to go through Basic Training again, believe it or not. The worst part about it is the incredibly rapid pace, there's no time to step back and take a different perspective on the experience and training. Knowing what to expect and not facing the unkown every day for weeks on end, I think it would be an awesome experience.

Aside from recommending an enlistment for most people, I also STRONGLY encourage those who choose to do so to take their time and get as much information and advice as possible before making the commitment. while recruiters won't actually lie, coerce, cajole, or overly pressure you, they also aren't overly concerned with the details of your enlistment, just that you did. It's like a car salesman- he doesn't really care which car you buy or how well it works out for you, just that you bought it. Enlisting is the same way- you could make a perfect deal, or you can get totally screwed.

That's where I feel fortunate having been given the opportunity to learn the language and culture before going. I was able to traverse the country and interact with the people almost as if it wasn't foreign to me at all. Once we got married I moved off-post with my wife and I really dug into trying to live like a normal person there. At that point, the Army simply became my job rather than my life. I think that's part of the problem with tours of duty there - all most soldiers get to see are the bars and shops designed to capitalize off of their boredom. Most people consider themselves "stuck there" for a year, whereas I really lived in Korea. Once you move a couple miles past the military posts, it's just another regular place - grape soju and "Juicy Girls" are really not Korea.

A side note, I suppose - the Electronics Market in Seoul is one of my favorite places in the world - a gargantuan building filled with six stories' worth of electronics, computer, and video game shops, surrounded by a couple city blocks of more shops. I never had enough money. :D

Ideally, that's what I would like to do. Get stationed in Germany or Japan and really live there. I want to learn the language, culture; essentially the way of life in a foreign land while I'm in the military.

Yeah, that would be all fine and dandy but from my experiance with talking with military people in Japan, and the japanese, all you do is stay on the base when you're working, and you can only go out to 'real' japan on the weekends - or your free time. I say the 'real' japan because your military base will seem just like america. They have american movie theaters, radio stations, super markets, ect. ect. Some of my japanese friends got a kick when they got to go on the military base cuz it's just like being in america. I dont know what germany would be like, but that's japan in a nut-shell. Or, from what I've heard - I could be completley wrong tho.

If you want to really live the life of another culture, e.g. Japan, I'd suggest going there to teach english. Besides teaching english most of the time, you can really experiance Japan, and they way they live. But you would never attain the knowledge that you would attain in the military.

I'm glad I didn't have any money the times I went- getting stuff back from there by train would suck! :lol:

I'd strongly recommend Germany. In my entire enlistment, I didn't meet a single person who had been stationed in Germany that didn't love it there. Plus you have access to the rest of Europe which is pretty cool too.

My Brother In Law was in Germany for two years and he loved it. In fact, I was visiting him the first time I went to Germany.

Ryan, I appreciate you chiming in about Japan seeing that you actually lived there ;)

Yeah, I went with a friend to pick up computer parts one evening. We were stationed at Cp Humphreys at the time (just outside of Pyongtaek, about an hour's train ride south of Seoul, for those not in the know). We both ended up picking up 17" monitors and he got a new tower with various parts. It sucked lugging those around :P