The survival and escape course
Trautman's face looked marked that day, and not because of the recent news coming from Vietnam.
The survival and escape course was going to be their last course... And the most gruesome one.
And when Trautman started introducing it, he looked like he was remembering something from personal experience.
Maybe not himself directly, but some of his friends for sure.
“The Geneva convention allows soldiers not to take prisoners” he said.
The recruits looked at each other.
“If a soldier can't take enemies with him, he has the right to kill them. Forget about waving a white flag and similar bullshit. In modern warfare, surrendering doesn't mean you are going to survive any longer”
Trautman paused.
Then continued:
“But the Vietcong have a strong motivation to take prisoners, as have we.
We need prisoners to extract information from them and they do for different reasons, but everyone takes prisoners in Vietnam.
The Vietcong trade in weapons, drugs, human beings and much more... But of all of this kind of stuff, the most valuable currency is always the US POWs.
Whoever holds some US POWs it his hands becomes an premier league player in the Vietcong's eyes.
In a country where everyone is 'his own party', it’s not the soldier’s rank that counts, it’s the people they befriend, the weapons and money at disposal... and there's nothing at all any Vietcong wants more than to hold a US prisoner.
And that's the reason why during this particular war surrendering may be the best option.
If fighting becomes suicide, as it often happens while fighting behind enemy lines, you will surrender”
“During this course we will teach you the psychological tricks the Vietcong will use to extort information from you during your captivity. At first, you will think you are receiving pointless torture, but that's not the way it is. When you are captured, your personal war doesn't end just like that.
You are going to fight authentic psychological warfare, and you are going to know every single rule of it.
During this course we are going to explain how this kind of war works and the kind of tricks the enemy will use against you.
I use the word tricks on purpose, because that's exactly what they are going to use against you: real conjuring tricks that you are not going to find out until it is too late.
The Vietcong are going to divide you, torture you and try to set you against each other while doing it.
In order to do so, they will treat some of you better than others, in order to make you believe that they have talked already, even if that's not true.
And most of all, they will always lie to you.
They will deceive you about imminent release, or that your team mates are dead... They could even tell you that the war is over, if they think they'll ever fool you like that.
They will do anything they can in order to put you against each other and together with the stress from the torture, it will be easy for them to make you fight with each other, because you are going to be more tense than you have ever been in your entire life already.
They'll convince you that you have no value for them and that they will kill you as soon as you start boring them, even if that's far from the truth.
But the most difficult part will be finding the inner strength inside of you that will be necessary to avoid giving up.
Because, as a matter of fact, when you find yourself a prisoner at the hands of the Vietcong, your will for survival is not so strong any more”