Things I learned from being captured and thrown into an enemy prison camp.

A Jet pilot and I had spent the last two days in the woods hiding from our enemy. We had nothing but the clothing on our back, a canteen of water and a piece of a parachute. That night we built a makeshift tent by stretching the parachute over a tree and securing it to the earth by shoveling dirt over it. We huddled together that night shivering. That morning we took a sip from our canteens and started hiking through the woods again.

“I don’t want them to find us” “Let’s go this way”.

“No” he replied, “this way is better”.

His way ended up taking us through a forest of brush and cactus needles. The branches scraped at my bare arms and blood started dripping from my superficial wounds. I didn’t notice because my adrenaline was pumping, and we could hear the enemy looking for us off in the distance. We crouched down, as I started removing cactus needles from my legs. They were covered and I looked like a porcupine. I knew we shouldn’t have gone this way.

The next thing I knew I felt the end of a rifle in my back and a bag was placed over my head. We were corralled into the back of a truck and taken for a drive. We had been captured.

But…. I knew this would happen. This was part of our training, and a group of 60 of us were now being taken to the most grueling part of our journey, the prison camp.

This was SERE school. An elite Navy training school for air crew members and Navy Seals to teach us how to Survive Evade Resist and Escape. We were all sent here for two weeks, without food and with just the clothes on our back to learn what to do if we were ever captured by a “real” enemy.

Once we got to the prison camp we were immediately segregated into men and women. Us ladies were lucky because while only 5 of us were told to strip down naked in a private room, our guy counterparts were standing outside stripped down nude being hosed down by the guards. After we were hosed off, they took us to our concrete cells. Each person had a cell that was only large enough for someone to sit in. Inside the cell was a coffee can. That was our toilet. If we had any dignity before we arrived at the camp it was now gone.

I sat in my cell wondering what was next. A tape of baby’s crying was looping over and over again over a loud speaker. They were trying to break us. Someone came to my cell, grabbed me by the arm suddenly and pulled me out. He was a large man dressed in a uniform and sporting a makeshift European accent.

“You are a Korva, that means worthless pig” he yelled.

I knew it was game on at this point.

He dragged me into a room with a few wooden boxes a little larger than a coffin. There were air holes and a latch with a lock on the outside of the boxes. He told me to get in. Then he locked me in there. Normally being locked in a claustrophobic wooden box would have me extremely upset, but in this case I felt relief. It was warm in there, and there was enough room to lay down. Much better than the cell. It was dark and I took a moment to reflect on the fact that we had not been fed for a week and we had hiked for days in the California Desert without any food. I wondered how my body was able to put up with this kind of stress. I was only in there for about 20 minutes before I heard a banging on the side of the box.

“Korva, get out” the guard demanded. Once again a bag over my head.

I was taken to a room where they removed the bag and I was being blinded by bright lights. A large man started interrogating me. He was asking me questions about what my name was, who I worked for and what our mission was. He wanted me to tell him secrets. In between his interrogatory comments he would hit me in the face. Now as per Navy standards the guards were only allowed to open hand slap you and not closed fist hit you, but I can assure you that a strong man hitting your face with the heel of his hand will leave a mark. The interrogation continued. He moved from hitting me to grabbing me by the collar and slamming me into an Aluminum wall.

This was level 1.

I refused to answer his questions.

Level 2- he now started slamming me into a harder wooden wall. My head kept hitting the wall and I began to feel faint. I started crying.

Immediately the abuse stopped. The other guards in the room turned on a few more lights and told me to sit down. They were speaking in their normal American accents now and had broken role. They yelled at me and told me I couldn’t cry. That wouldn’t help me. That was not what they had trained me to do.

They told me I needed to give up more information or I would be sent to the water board. I had heard about the water board from a student who had graduated SERE previously and who had experienced its horrors first hand. If you were being waterboarded you would be told to do jumping jacks until you were breathing heavily. Then you would be strapped to the water board , your head would be facing down while your legs were elevated.

They shoved a rag in your mouth and poured water on your face making you think you were drowning, my friend who was a tough guy admitted that he cried like a little girl after the traumatic experience and was forever changed for the worse. Now I just want to remind you that a few years later water boarding was considered torture and was no longer allowed to be used against our Iraqi enemies. I still wonder why they allowed this type of thing in Navy training.

The guards turned off the lights and the European accents came back. And…action….it was like a bad movie. They were back in their roles as enemy guards and I was back in my role as captured prisoner.

I don’t remember much after that. I’m pretty sure I blocked it out as they continued interrogating me and slamming me against that wall. Afterwards the bag was put back over my head and I was thrown back into my tiny concrete cell.

I must have spent about 48 hours in the cell without food and having to pee in that stupid coffee can. At least our cells were equipped with curtains so we could pee in private. Most of us discovered that if you put your curtain down, you could pretend you were using the loo, while you tried to catch a little shut eye. The guards were privy to that too. They quickly caught on and would bang on the curtain rod above the cell to get your attention.

Later we were all removed from our cells and moved to another area which was a prisoner work camp. The guards made us do pushups and wash dishes for hours. Having not eaten for days my energy levels were at rock bottom. I could barely squeak out a push-up, something I could do many of since I was very fit at the time. We seemed to be in a time warp. These were truly the worst days of my life. We felt resentful as this was training and we had to get caught as part of the exercise. I knew that given the chance I would have run far, far away and never allowed myself to be captured.

This horror that we all endured finally came to an end as our American forces stormed the camp with flash bang grenades. We crouched to the ground and the American soldiers saved us one by one. They marched us out of the barbed wire fencing , freeing us from that awful prison camp.

We all sat down in front of an American flag as they played the national anthem. All of us were sobbing. At that point we truly knew what freedom meant and what those before us had to endure to give us the freedoms we now enjoy as Americans.
Afterwards we were taken back to a bus, given a piece of vanilla sponge cake and some Kool-Aid as a reward for having passed the rigors of SERE, and we made our way home, back to our duty stations.

So what did I learn from this harrowing experience?

Freedom Isn’t Free

Freedom was earned. It was written in blood of the fallen soldiers. The men and women who died and continue to perish protecting our freedoms.

Being denied freedom is worse than being denied food

We all discovered in the camp that hunger and lack of energy took a back seat to being a caged animal

Some of the instructors took pleasure in beating their fellow Navy sailors in the name of training

Its sad but true, and I’m sure some of my friends can back me up on this. Some of the instructors got off on torturing us. Some, did just enough to get the point across while still being civil.

Water boarding is torture

I don’t care what anybody says. Its torture. They should have never used it for training on our own sailors.

The American Flag is a symbol of the freedoms we enjoy and should be treated with respect.

Flag burners and stompers hear me out. It is not cool to deface the American flag. Your immature sitting behind a desk all day, candy ass needs to do a little reading on what that flag means and how many people died so that you can go out and protest and not be thrown in jail and killed like they do in other nations.

Thank you to all the American Service Men and Women who risk their lives and who have sacrificed their lives so we can be free.

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