Training days
Friday, August 31, 2007
Imagine your plane crashes and you are the only survivor inside dark wooded country, without rations or shelter. This lasts for days before you fall victim to a violent ambush, captivity, inquisition and psychological torture in an unintelligible language. It’s called Survival Evasion Resistance & Escape training, and 22-year-old Parkview Baptist graduate Chris Fogelman is one of the elite Special Forces Marines who has been through it without breaking down.
“It’s miserable,” Fogelman says. “You haven’t slept or eaten. You get this gut-turning feeling—a real fear of the unknown. You’re yelled at and thrown around while they try to get information out of you.” After boot camp, field training, jump school, dive school and POW training, the Baton Rouge native is home on stint for a few months before his unit is mobilized to Iraq to await orders from the CIA.
“Yeah, my parents worry about me being over there, but I tell them, ‘Look, I’m going to war. Do you want me to be trained as the best, or just so-so?’” Fogelman says. “And they understand that.”
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