An Cosantóir

An Cosantóir May 2017 www.dfmagazine.ie 14 | by LEE COyLE PhotoS by ARMN ADAM MURPHy T he room bursts into life and everyone dashes for the exit, pushing and shoving to get outside. they quickly find a space up against the building to use as shelter as they began to remove small bags of tinder from small pouches attached to their hips. "Forty seconds, people!" Tinder is quickly placed on the ground and the first few sparks fly as knife edges scrap across fire-steel. "Thirty seconds. Come on, get it done!" The sparks are now flying furiously as every student tries to get ignition on their tinder. "Fire!" gets called out from one student, quickly followed by others, until everyone has done it with five seconds re- maining on the clock. A happy instructor gives them a quick "Well done", then it's back to the classroom. An Cosantóir had been invited to the Military Training School (MTS) in Baldonnel to follow the students of its latest SERE Level C Instructor Course and this was a very memorable introduction to a SERE course. Some form of SERE (Survival, Escape and evasion, Resis- tance to interrogation, and Extraction) training is taught to all DF personnel during their recruit or three-star training. This may consist of simple survival techniques, like shelter building, fire starting and finding food and water, while also giving some information about conduct after capture. The SERE Level C Instructor Course provides students with the knowledge and skills required to effectively instruct and conduct basic survival training and exercises at unit level. The course is conducted over a four-week period during which the students are taught a range of fundamental SERE skills and cover a wide range of subjects that even include the psychological effects of survival and interrogation. Capt Barry Jones, the lead instructor, gave us a quick breakdown on the course syllabus and its main points. "Not only do we teach the students survival training, but we also give them the skills to enable them to be extracted, which is the most important part," he told us. The next time we met the instructors and students was on the third day of their five-day final exercise in the Wick- low Mountains. For three days the students had been work- ing in three- or four-person teams, making their own shel- ters and only eating what they could find. They had quickly settled into a daytime routine of finding food and water, collecting firewood, improving their shelter, and preparing a signalling fire and other signals so they could be found and get extracted. Their night routines meant one would stay "Make fire! Let's go! Let's go!"

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