We are wrapping up our set of WAR stories covering various Honor Code Violations with a story about cheatin’! This time, I take you back in the day to a USAFA training course. We were not supposed to have cameras or phones during this training event, so I don’t have any photos from this exact time. So you get some pictures from other training events and new ones from our adventures around Wyoming so far to fill the gaps!
“Look,” I whispered, pointing to a dirt road marked on my fireteam’s map, “if we get up early and hoof it, we can use this road to get right off the next RV point and hunker down nearby for the day. We wait for the cadre to set up the point, then wait for some other fireteams to make it in, then we walk in.”
It was the third USAFA summer training block in 2011, and the night before day eight of ten of the practical portion of Combat Survival Training (CST). My fireteam consisted of two other cadets, Dan and Taka, and we were huddled underneath my poncho tent strung between two trees. I had insisted to my teammates that we set up our tents at the outskirts of the camp, they had been too tired and too hungry to argue. The three of us had been out in the woods for the past week surviving on a chicken, a goose, and a rabbit shared between us and another fireteam, plus two Meal: Ready to Eat (MRE) for each of us.
CST was a survival program for USAFA cadets. It was a stripped-down SERE program split into three evolutions: Survival, Evasion, and Resistance. For the Survival and Evasion evolutions, we cadets were bused out into the middle of a national forest in Colorado. The Resistance evolution was accomplished back at USAFA in a part of the campus hidden away from the prying eyes of the public.
During Survival, we learned how to survive in the woods drinking pond water, killing and cooking chickens, and other survival skills all while carrying around fifty-pound rucksacks. The Evasion evolution saw us running around the Colorado wilderness, doing our best to evade training cadre who were actively hunting us. If caught, we were punished by either being driven back to the starting point for the day, or dropped off at random in the woods and expected to make it to the daily rendezvous (RV) point before dark.
We got caught early in the evolution when we tried to get our bearings by standing up on top of a ridge to look around. The cadre patrolling the ridge looked almost as surprised as we were when we stumbled into each other. Taka and I did not intend to get sent back to the start again, but Dan was apprehensive of cheating.
I could understand. Not only was Dan subjected to the Honor Code all USAFA cadets are expected to adhere to, he also was a member of the Cadet Honor Guard, a group of cadets who hazed the piss out of each other for the privilege of caring for the Academy’s flags and howitzer and demonstrating rifle and saber drills. They held each other to an even higher standard, and Honor Guard members who violated the Honor Code were summarily executed.
I mean kicked off the Honor Guard. As regular cadets, Taka and I had no such compunction.
There were rules put in place for CST, artificial limitations placed on us to make our tasks of surviving and evading more difficult. One of the biggest was that if we got caught using the Forest Service roads, we would receive an unspecified but severe punishment.
The way I saw it, the gloves were off for CST. We are supposed to act like we were lost in an unfriendly country, therefore survival depended upon our willingness and ability to lie, steal, and cheat.
“What if we get caught?” Dan was clearly struggling with the idea.
“We won’t,” I replied. “In order for this to work, we have to get up way earlier than everyone else, and start running. That way we’re off the road before the cadre wake up and start driving.”
“What about breakfast?” Leaving early meant we would miss the distribution of breakfast supplies in the camp. I had a plan for that as well.
“I saw an open case of Pop Tarts over by the cadre’s truck,” I said. “I’ll grab us a couple packs tonight.” Breakfast would be Pop Tarts handed out by cadre anyway.
“C’mon, Dan,” Taka urged, “I’m tired of hiking around the mountains. Let’s just get through this as fast as possible tomorrow.”
“Fine,” Dan grumbled. “Where do you think we should hide tomorrow?”
“Right here,” I poked the map with my finger, “The terrain looks miserable, so nobody will come over, but it looks like there’s a flat spot where we can lay down and watch the next RV point.”
“And what if you’re wrong about the RV point?” Dan asked, his last feeble attempt to dissuade Taka and I.
“I’m not,” I said confidently. The RV points were given to us via radio in code to decipher, then plot out on our map. To keep all the fireteams from running to the same point, fireteams were shuffled to different RV points.
Around us, we could hear other fireteams bickering over where their next RV point was. Dan seemed concerned I figured the point out so fast, but I knew I was right. The other fireteams didn’t have dads who had them hold the map to navigate between different public hunting lands while pheasant hunting.
“Okay, we will do it your way,” Dan finally acquiesced and the three of us set about putting our plan in motion. We weaseled into the middle of the line for watery soup, dished out by cadre acting like “friendly locals.” When we received our dinner, everyone else went left, back to the tree line. I went right and looped back around behind the cadre’s truck, snagging a box of strawberry and a box of cinnamon Pop Tarts and smoothly shoving them in the cargo pockets of my uniform pants.
Once back to my ruck, I transferred the contraband pastries into the overloaded pack, under a pair of dirty boot socks, and set my watch for the morning. At each rendezvous point, the cadre gave us the same breakfast time, 0600. Factoring in cadre travel time, I set my watch for 0400.
Setting up on the outskirts of camp meant we were on a steep incline, but well away from the other fireteams and, most importantly, the cadre tent. Taka, Dan, and I did our best to get some sleep as night fell and the sounds of the Colorado forest mixed with the sounds of dozens of cadets falling into restless sleep.
I woke up with my alarm and quickly silenced the beeping from my Timex. It was still dark, and I flipped on the my flashlight and used the red light to search out my gear. Finding it, I doused my light and stuffed my poncho back into my ruck, then shouldered the heavy pack.
“Taka,” I whispered, “you up?”
“Yeah, I’m ready,” came the whispered reply.
“Dan, you ready?” I asked the darkness.
“Let’s go,” he replied from further downhill than I expected.
“Where are you?” I asked. A sudden blue-green circle illuminated about ten feet down.
“I musta slid down when I was sleeping,” Dan replied. The illumination from his watch blinked out.
“Hurry up and pack your stuff,” Taka hissed toward the direction of the light. Dan scrambled back uphill and quickly unhooked his poncho from the trees. He shouldered his ruck, and then fell in behind Taka to follow me out of the camp.
Using my red-filtered flashlight, we quietly picked our way through the forest. When we found the gravel path carved through the mountain, I doused my flashlight and started “running” without a word.
Under the heavy rucks and after over a week without real food, our run was more of a disjointed shuffle. One foot in front of the other, I kept hustling down the road, trying to focus on simultaneously searching out landmarks in the gloom and listening for both the footsteps of my team behind me and the warning signs of a pickup full of cadre coming down the road.
We had run for an hour when the first signs of light peeked into the mountain. I slipped off the trail, and kneeled down to check the map and take a breather. Taka and Dan kneeled down next to me, all of us breathing hard.
“Are we good?” Dan asked. I pointed at a sharp curve in the road in front of us on the map.
“Yeah,” I replied, “We take this next turn, keep running until we see the pond. Then hop off the trail and find a spot to hide and listen to the radio.”
“Everyone got their breath?” Taka asked. Nods all around. “Let’s go.”
We had about another mile to jog when we started running again. At altitude and weighed down by rucks and fatigue, I figured it would take us twenty minutes to cover that distance.
Minutes after we started running again, I heard the distinct sound of tires on gravel and a diesel engine struggling up the mountain path.
“Car!” I whisper-shouted and the three of us threw ourselves off the trail and into the woods.
I hit the loose rocks off the road and found myself sliding down the mountain on my left side, the weight of my ruck pulling me. As I slid, I could see Taka and Dan clinging to stubby pine trees, watching me slide. I flailed my arms and legs, scrambling to grab something, anything, to slow my momentum. I just kept sliding.
After sliding for what felt like miles, my rucksack finally hit something sturdy enough to hold me. I just laid there, breathing and listening to hear if my landslide attracted the attention of any cadre in the area.
“Are you okay?!” Taka shouted down to me. I gave him a thumbs up.
“We’re coming down to you,” Dan declared. Another rockslide ensued as the two of them released their hold on their trees and slid down to me. Dan extended his hand and helped me up.
Dusting off, I checked myself over. Aside from a few bruises and tears in my uniform, I was fine.
Looking around, I saw a creek just a few more feet below us. Following the creek, I realized we were almost to the pond we were shooting for. With the wet terrain below us and the steep terrain above us, we were in a good spot to rest. I slipped out of my ruck and dug through it to fish out the Pop Tarts and pass Taka and Dan some pastries.
“We just gotta get to the other side of the pond,” I pointed. Taka pulled the fireteam’s set of binoculars out of his ruck and scanned the forest on the other side of the pond.
“That’s definitely the RV point,” he declared, then handed the binos to me to check for myself. Sure enough, I could see the tan 5-gallon jerry cans of water, and the rear quarter panel of a white Ford F-250 in a clearing beyond the pond.
“Let’s follow the creek to get a little closer, and find that spot,” I said. We shouldered our rucks and picked our way carefully along the creek until we found the spot. A little way back uphill, a flat spot sporting a grove of sturdy trees and some medium boulders provided a stable spot to hide and rest.
The three of us climbed up, set down our rucks and got comfortable. Taka pulled the binoculars out and watched the area in front of us, toward the RV point. Dan set our fireteam’s radio down next to him and switched it on, volume on “low” and watched the area uphill. I tossed them each some more Pop Tarts and watched the area behind us, where we had just come from.
Taka watched the Cadre set up the RV point through the binoculars, and we saw the first cadet fireteam reach the RV point about three hours later, just before noon. Through the binoculars, we watched them sneak around the far side of the pond, then run into the RV point and start high-fiving each other. We agreed to wait for a second fireteam to cross the finish line before heading in.
About an hour later, I heard a cadet fireteam slosh through the creek below us, then Taka watched them climb up the hill across from us. He said it looked like they were arguing the whole way into the RV point.
Two teams now in the RV point, we packed up our hide site and waltzed into the camp, being careful to act more tired than we actually were.
To our surprise, this RV point was serving lunch. Soggy sandwiches and canned Gatorade to wash them down. Dan, Taka, and I set our rucks in the shade under some trees and collected our ration of Gatorade and pre-packaged, Government issued sandwiches.
Leaning against our trees, we scarfed the sandwiches and sucked down the Gatorade. Lunch eaten, we sat in tired silence
“So,” Dan said while we watched another fireteam come limping into camp, “Same plan tomorrow?”
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