Excerpts from Letters to Mom in italics.
AG2 Stephen S. Fehr
U.S.N.A.B. C.I. 3-45
San Diego, Calif. 92155
28 October 1966
I arrived here at Coronado in San Diego harbor on the 25th without incident. Since then I've checked in, and in general, have just been loafing around. I'd send you my return address but it wouldn't be worth it. I will be skipping the first two weeks of the course - the classes and weapons familiarization and taking the rough last week [first]. Tomorrow I fly up to Washington for about five days in the wilds without food and a day of prison camp. Then, I return to Coronado for a few days and catch a plane for the Philippines. [Wrong. He got bad scuttlebutt. Fehr would have to complete the other two weeks of required training, but in reverse order.] I'll try to delay there as long as possible before I go to VN.
I've been issued lots of gear and will get more at the survival school. When I write again, I'll probably be in Vietnam - in about two to four weeks. So until then that's about it.
07 November 1966
Coronado, Calif.
I got back from Whidbey Island, Washington, yesterday. I got the hardest week of the three out of the way now. We learned how to make shelters and sleeping bags out of parachutes and construct animal traps. [The survivalists were schooled in fabricating silent, but illegal fishing weirs using broken pieces of tree branches for the enclosure stakes.] The first three days were spent living in the woods and attending classes (we ate a little on Thursday) [There wasn't much left to scrounge with several hundred guys preceding them over the same terrain. The 31 survivors trapped one luckless rabbit, dug clams in Puget Sound one evening and scavenged bits of wild dry wheat, a handful or two at most.] and we were kept too busy to really forage for food as we would have in a survival situation. The fourth day, small groups of us evaded through enemy woods on certain [pre-arranged, dictated] compass headings with aggressors chasing. Friday and Saturday morning was spent in a POW camp with about 3 days worth of interrogation condensed into one day. It was so damn realistic that you'd have to experience it to believe it. Remind me to tell you about it when I get home.
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Just before dawn that Friday morning, the aggressors ambushed the 31 survivors who were sleeping on the cold ground in the rocky north woods and made them captives. There was no opportunity to escape and evade. They were put into groups of four, side by side, with legs bound to the person on each side. The prisoners were also connected at the neck by rope nooses. Arms were slung over the captive next to you and the whole formation was prodded on the double-quick, stumbling along at a dog's trot to the prison camp. No opportunity to sneak off the trail and escape. At the destination, the screaming guards forced them to strip, to hold their ID cards in their teeth and crawl through an opening in a wall to an interrogation hut.A rubber bag is placed over the head, a hose inserted and the bag secured. Information is demanded! Name, rank and….. the hose is turned on before you can shout the serial number. Choking, falling down! The guard lets the water slowly run out. Gasping, the sadist demands information, "Where did you come from? What is your unit?" Stephen S. Fehr, AG2, 5… More water, choking, drowning, falling. Gulping for precious air. The hose is applied multiple times. They berate you, knock you down, and kick you out in the cold yelling at you in disgust to cover your nakedness. What next?
Somewhat weakened after four days without food, you struggle carrying stacks of cordwood to the Commandant's Headquarters. Then, exhausted, you are prodded at rifle point up the path to a string of low 4'x 4' attached doghouses. Solitary confinement. A hood is placed over your head. There is a covered peephole on the locked door for the guard to observe you. If you remove the suffocating hood, he beats you. If you don't shout your name when he raps on the door with the butt of his rifle, he beats you. You can't stand; it's too low. No sitting down allowed. After a while you risk sitting, at least for a few moments.
Sometime hours later, you are removed to another building. There's a small box on the deck. You must step in it, cross the legs and kneel down. Then you are bent-down, doubled-over and squashed into the box. It is barely larger than an elongated orange crate - or small coffin. Stops were added to make it even shorter for smaller prisoners. Then the lid is closed. Confined, sardine-like, circulation soon ceases. Numbness and pain envelop the extremities. You remember to try to wiggle your toes to promote circulation. More questions. What is your mission? Where were you going? Mercifully, you are released but thrown into the smoke. That is, a special room filled with smoke, forcing you to suck the deck for air.
Later, you are herded down a wooded path into a prison camp with a primitive, cave like "hooch" (hut) at one end, your Hilton. It's surrounded by barbed concertina wire with guard-towers and the aggressor flag is flapping in the wind. A tinny, crackling loudspeaker blares what sounds like Russian military music. By the fence is a contraption made of two large 50 gallon drums welded together. Blocks of ice float on top.
The senior prisoner, a navy officer, is stripped and strung upside down by his feet from the top of the fence, about 25 or 30 feet high, and suspended over the ice water. The prisoners are assembled in formation to watch. The officer refuses to talk; down he goes, breathless from the shock. Still he won't talk. It is repeated. They drag him off. Then the second in command, next most senior prisoner, is strung up. How long can this go on? How close am I to the top of the chain of command? Isn't this just a drill?
Sleepy, hungry, exhausted, cold - the time goes slowly. You need to urinate? One must carefully approach and beg a guard for permission to take a leak. Humiliating. Everything requires a guard's permission. No food period in the prison camp during the lifelike, or deathlike, exercise. Later, you are isolated and removed to the Commandant's office.
It is now nighttime and cold. There is a warm stove, a picture of Chairman Ho Chi Minh on the wall, a bare table and two chairs. No rifle or knife is forgotten by a careless guard or left unattended in the empty room. Is there a chance to make an escape? Before the situation is completely analyzed, a nice officer enters and beckons you to sit. Offers a cigarette; no, thank you.
He speaks softly in decent English, not like the guards, and asks why you are here invading and fighting poor peaceful people? The benevolent one even recites and shows you the Vietnamese Constitution or some sort of document, and stresses that Ho Chi Minh copied it directly from Thomas Jefferson's Declaration of Independence as the model for Vietnam. Why do you oppose our independence? Why are you fighting us? Here, sign this confession saying you are sorry. No?
In come the goons to beat you around. Then you are forced to carry more firewood up the hill till you literally fall to your knees in the weakened state. They push you with rifle butts down the path and throw you through the gate into the barbed-wire compound again.
In the morning the prisoners are mustered for roll call. With martial music blaring the Commandant addresses the prisoners. After a numbing spiel, the demoralized prisoners are ordered, "About - Face!" Tears! The most beautiful sight! The Stars and Stripes has replaced the Aggressor flag; the martial music stops, the Star Spangled Banner is playing.
Congratulations, you have just completed this 5th of November 1966, the U. S. Navy's Survival Escape Resistance and Evasion (SERE) training. After 35 years, the realistic prison camp is still fresh in the memory.
Only one guy in our group of 31 broke. [A young kid who had probably not known the pain associated with massive hangovers. Or, as one of Steve's friends delighted in saying, "I'd hate to wake up sober knowing that was the best I was gonna feel all day!"] We were fortunate with the weather, it only rained the last couple hours. I weighed myself after the course - 185 with my dress blues on.