The how many years have you been fishing trigged a memory for me. When I was a young E-4 in the Army I was offered the chance to go to Air Assault or S.E.R.E. school. At the time Air Assault school for a paratrooper meant someone too scared to parachute or too lazy to walk so I decided on S.E.R.E. Since 98% of the people on here have no idea what it means its an acronym that stands for Survival Evasion Resistance Escape. Still doesn't sound too bad does it? Well the school is for soldiers most likely to be trapped behind enemy lines and end up as a POW. Whatever you read on the internet they are not allowed to break bones but its the only school in the Army where they can strike you or worse. 

 

This gets me to the fishing part. The first week is class instruction about how to survive on your own etc. Week 2 you are divided into teams of like 5 or 6 men? They search you for food and then you are on your own with a single quart canteen of water, a knife, and some water purification tablets for the next week. Week two you eat what you can find or kill as part of the course. They showed us how to make fish and animal traps during the first week that we were to use the second week. We were camping by a small lake and I decided to use my fishing knowledge to catch something to eat. I found the lakes culvert out flow into a stream and looked around to find some used line and hooks fishermen left behind. Dug up some worms and used the line, hooks, sinkers that I found around the lake. Caught 14 small channel cats in the pool below the culvert that were smaller than you would normally keep to eat but this situation was not normal. Skinned are cooked them over an open fire and had enough that I gave some to some other teams who really appreciated it. Our instructor commented that we were the first team he has ever seen that had more food than they could eat during this phase of the training. Things were a lot different once we went to the POW camp but I will admit this was the best Army course I ever attended in my career.

 

Allen

Cool stuff!

Thanks to all who have served!

I took a course similar to that when I was Ft. Bragg, but it was called E&E, ( escape &  evasion). 

7 hours ago, GRiver said:

I took a course similar to that when I was Ft. Bragg, but it was called E&E, ( escape &  evasion). 

 

The non-get your a** kicked version of the course. S.E.R.E. is at Camp McCall along with SFAS.

 

Allen

Peace time USN & excellent food at sea.   We picked up Flying Fish every hour all nights. Ate them every day if wanted. Excellent cooks aboard our ship.  LIG  at sea.

40 minutes ago, cyclops2 said:

Peace time USN & excellent food at sea.   We picked up Flying Fish every hour all nights. Ate them every day if wanted. Excellent cooks aboard our ship.  LIG  at sea.

We did that too but would rig them up for bait.

And then eat the tuna, dolphin & wahoo we caught.

They were good too.

Some of that we didn't cook.

A-Jay

 

Thank you for your service, and the interesting story.

That's a pretty cool story. Thank for your service. 

That’s awesome!  

Thank you for your service.

Thank you for your selfless service! And thanks for sharing your story. Hopefully it puts some context and perspective on life when people start thinking times are tough.