Bolo’s Kit
In every class our instructors come in contact with individuals that own varying levels of adaptation skills. An instructor can talk to a person for 5 - 10 minutes and pretty much figure out where that individuals mindset is at in relation to being prepared for anything. Some guys/gals are ate up with weaponry, others are ate with combatives, others are hunters in there spare time, and then there are those that view the military life as just another job. The latter we call "rock & rollers." They always wanted to be rock or rap star or anything that didn’t take a college education because high school sucked. They really haven’t come to grips that they are professional soldiers and maybe warriors that kill the enemies of their country. These guys/gals jump out of their uniform at the close of business and jump into civilian clothes with accessories (earring and weird clothes). Then head off to where ever a party can be found. The guys/gals come in all shapes, ages, and social backgrounds. And they just want to be different. This story is about one of them.
There are many different kinds of gear junkies, some are well skilled and are anticipating the worst and then there are those that have zero skills and pack to make up for it. This particular "stud" (just slang for student) was good at his job as an infantry NCO. But he had little motivation to absorb the skills that where being presented to him. What he did know was that he would be called on sometime during this block of instruction to fend for himself in the wild places. During one class on the bow drill he commented to an instructor that if he didn’t master the bow drill it was no big deal because quote, " he carried a lighter so he could light his cigarettes and he ALWAYS had cigarettes." Just from that line alone you can start to get a feel for this joker. Come the day that all the studs where told of the up coming field exercise they began to form together their kits. The instructors scrutinize all kits before they are allowed in the field. You can tell who is knowledgeable and confident, who is knowledgeable and nervous and who doesn’t have a clue. Nervous and knowledgeable is good because it will mean the most to them when they test themselves and come out on top. And if they fail at some task it is a learning experience that they seem to concentrate their efforts on when they come out of the field. Now the clueless typically over pack their kit because they know that they are unprepared in the skills area, so they try and make up for it with gear. The cigarette stud was no exception he was geared and ready to go. The instructors made sure to pick out the clueless studs and put them on the same chopper manifest. Plus, they let them carry more equipment into the field than the rest of the class. This boy had everything but the kitchen sink jammed into his ruck. The studs would be inserted by rotary wing and at each mans own LZ. He was on his own for the next four days unless bad weather keeps the birds grounded. Which is not unusual and not a bad thing either. Each day they must link-up back at their LZ or a prearranged rendezvous point to check in with an instructor and show the cadre their progress. After that the instructor will ask them some question that they should know the answers to then have them demonstrate some disarm or escape or attacking drill (hand-to-hand). They are not graded on their combatives skills, but they do have to show that they retain most of the material. Proficiency in H2H comes with practice in the future.
The bird with the bolos on it flares on the shoreline of a lake and begins to descend slowly. All the studs are sitting with their legs hanging out and their small rucks on their laps. The cigarette stud is getting ready to egress when at about six feet off the ground the bird does a 180-degree spin and instead of him looking down at dry shoreline he is looking right into the water. One instructor, who shall remain nameless, grabs the studs kit away from him and the other instructor shoves him out the door. When his ass left that metal doorframe he was already trying to spin around in the air and recover that ruck. About a half-second later we had splash down. We still laugh about it because we can’t decide whether he was reaching back for that ruck because he needed it to make it through the field problem or because his cigarettes were in it. To top it all off one of the instructors snapped a shot of him with a disposable camera, as he stood on shore looking back at the chopper, soaking wet. Needless to say he wasn’t a happy survivor. By the second day at his first rendezvous he was asking for some tutoring from the instructors, which is a good thing. A lot of the eight balls have such attitudes that they won’t ask for help and don’t care if they fail the course. So there are special techniques for them. The 1st Sergeants make it their mission to give them some extra attention.
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Chasing The Reaper
Why is it that studs (students) never get lost when you have warm and sunny search conditions ? It was starting to snow as the choppers lifted off. The vibrations of the Blackhawk can start to put a guy into a trance like state, as he watches the terrain below blur by. The three studs on the ground had missed their link up times that morning and noon, it was starting to go into the evening. It was the end of the field exercise that tested the stud’s skills and we were into the 10 - 12 mile evasion phase of the training. Very rarely will we have a problem keeping track of them, but this was a very rugged training area. It was mountainous to include more than one 10,000-foot peak. Rock and elevation are an instructor’s nightmare, because an evasion problem forces evaders to move at a quicker pace. The faster they move the more likely there will be injuries. With the possibility of serious injuries. The other big factor when operating in mountainous terrain is weather systems. One side of the mountain is in the rain, on the other side it is sunny, on top it is snowing and in the valleys the winds are high etc. Not to mention the lighting storms are freaky dangerous and plentiful. When we were in Colorado in 99,’ fifty six elk were killed in one herd, during a lighting strike. The ore deposits in the mountains just naturally attract it. We were after a 3-stud group, one strong male, one weak male and a female that could hold her own with a little guidance. The word "strong" is a description that covers three different areas when it comes to sizing up a student. The first element is the skill level that a student has, the second is their mental toughness and confidence and the last is their physical toughness. Every attribute plays off of the other. Becoming misoriented just happens and if you spend enough time in the sticks it happens to everyone. Especially when using a large scale E&E map. If an individual was evading in enemy held territory, its just a given that knowledge of that specific terrain will probably be sparse. So, what an evader does after becoming misoriented is a big factor in solving the problem. With the weather conditions deteriorating it was going to be an adventure to get to the studs before things got ugly. If they kept moving trying to finish the exercise it would makes things more difficult.
The snow kept falling and it was growing darker by the minute. One of the search and rescue teams, SAR 7, had spotted tracks in a small clearing that was on a possible evasion azimuth from the stud’s last link-up site. Whether it was their tracks was yet to be determined. There wasn’t much snow on the ground at that time so the blackish rock could be seen through the tracks. Normally it would be a good sign that some one had passed through there recently. Which may or may not be a good thing in this case. The ranking cadre on the bird had a good gut feeling so he requested to be dropped in. The commander gave the OK and the team kicked the ropes and fast roped in. They picked up the trail and started moving into the trees. Every team has a medic and at least three to four other teammates. Many times studs with strong skills are chosen to help make up the team. They hadn’t moved very far when they found a deep pine tree covered valley in their line of travel. The falling snow hadn’t penetrated the thick pine coverage of the sloping valley walls. The sides were steep and made up of slick rock. It was going to be a hazardous descent. Because our cadre are made up of former combat MOS types, they don’t really take into account the specifics that say a PJ (rescue para-jumper) would. Terrain is just something that you move across to find and finish the enemy. In this case the terrain was the enemy. The air temperature started dropping quickly as the darkness enveloped the mountains. With head lamps on the SAR team started to follow the possible signs of the evaders. It soon became evident that whom ever had moved through there before them, had a hell of a time going down. Pine needles had been bulldozed down the face of steep rock faces, as if some one was sliding down them on their butt. Which was a good possibility, but was it the studs that we were looking for ? Ropes where deployed to aid the descent down the rock faces. It was slow going in the dark even with the headlamps on. The snow was still falling and the temperature still dropping. The ropes had to come out because half of the team had taken a bumbling, stumbling ride down one section of tree covered rock with minimal damage. Again we are talking about men who’s expertise is in hostage rescue, dignitary protection and adaptation skills, not emergency rescue techniques. Plus, a little over confidence can breed disaster. When a group of stranded survivors are trying to survive they are proverbially trying to beat the Reaper. When a SAR team is trying to rescue those survivors they are trying to chase the Reaper down. I f you get caught up in the chase the Reaper can turn on you and chase you back!
The deeper they moved into the valley the farther it seemed to go. The weather outside of that world had turned ugly and was storming to beat all hell. The chopper assets were called in by the wing commander, which left all of the teams that were out, on foot with no recovery support. So everyone was staying out whether they liked it or not. All cadre were in the field with mixed teams of studs. Which was a contingency that everyone had planned on any way. Every half an hour of movement, the team would give three blast of a rescue whistle, which is ear piercing if you are standing in a close proximity. With no response back the ropes were rigged and down they went. At one point in the descent loose rock came busting through the pines at super sonic velocity. Everyone scrambled for cover behind any tree that looked like it would stop a ballistic bowling ball. One stud took a golf ball sized fragment on the back of his hand, which swelled a lump up just about the size of a golf ball. An instructor caught a football size gem in the side of the rucksack and knocked him down. When he recovered he found that the impact had actually broken one of his ruck straps. When the team finally made the bottom they found a fast moving stream that bashed its way through large jagged boulders. Now, the question was would the studs have moved down or up stream ? Up would take them to their original link-up point, but they would probably go down if they knew they were lost. A lower set of clouds rolled in under the ceiling that was producing the snow in the higher elevations. Then it started to drizzle rain with freezing temperatures, this was hypothermic conditions in the first degree. If the studs didn’t build shelters soon and stay dry they would have a bigger problem than just being lost. This is how the Reaper sneaks up on you. Thunder started to rumble from the thickening clouds and the rain fell. The team commander later recalled saying to himself "it was going to be a miserable night for any SAR teams close to this valley." They started down stream blasting their whistles every hundred yards or so and listening for a response. Searching at night is definitely not the best time to be out in the thick of it all. But, if they were not found that night, civilian search and rescue teams would have to be called in to supplement manpower and assets. So, the team moved on until fatigue became an issue. Poncho hooches were thrown up with haste, and the high-speed back packing stoves were fired up. Coffee and hot chow is a motivator in the wild places. Especially when everything is wet and icy.
Before long the team was underway, as they leapfrogged the wet rock along the stream they found their first good sign. A BDU patrol cap, but was it from the lost studs ? When they looked inside of the lining there was the last name of one of the studs, written in black marker. The whistles came out and blasted the surrounding darkness. Soon a distant reply whistle could be heard. It came from back up in the cliffs, maybe 300-400 meters. The SAR 7 team raced up toward the sound, soon a woman’s voice called to them. It was the E-5 female student. She directed them to come to her location. When they reached her they found a V-2 (type of shelter that we teach in our classes) and a small fire burning in between the two. She had abrasions on her forehead, face and one elbow. In the shelter was the male classified as the weakest member of the group, with a black eye and his boot off. The medic worked on them while the SAR team members gathered up more firewood and made hot chow. The SAR team leader radioed in their grid coordinates taken off of his GPS. The male E-5 had a broken ankle due to a fall that they were in trying to escape a rock shower when descending. The other male stud of the group had helped them set up the shelters and get the fire started, then set out on his own to get help. He also was hurt and could not move his arm without shooting pain in the shoulder. The medic diagnosed it as sounding like a broken collarbone. He had given them instructions not to move unless they heard a chopper or needed water. The female asked him what if something happened to him and he couldn’t make it to help ? He replied "I’m going to make it out no matter what, I’m just worried about if YOU are going to make it." With that he left. By 0700 the next morning he crossed a logging road and was spotted by SAR 4 who were driving back to the CP in a CUT-V.
The Spec 4 recounted his journey to them. He had to cross the stream and climb out of the steep sided valley. He stopped only to build fires to dry out his clothing and collect water to drink. He said he had remembered our instructors telling him that many times a person can’t tell when hypothermia is coming on. He made it a point to build a fire every hour or so and dry himself out. And building a fire in the wet shitty conditions was not always easy with his injury. All that he had was a flint rod and knife to start the fires. In fact his collarbone was broken, which did not aid him in his efforts to make it out. The SAR team leader that picked him up said that he looked like a guy just hitch hiking down the road and not a desperate victim in need of help. Which was exactly the call that we had made about him before the search began, "strong."
