Air Force Survival Evasion Resistance And Escape SERE Training Patch

Return With Honor is the motto of the Air Force Survival School, and the two scrolls on this patch put it right over the words Resistance Training. Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape, SERE, is the course an aircrew member hopes he never has to use. Survival keeps him alive on the ground, evasion keeps him out of enemy hands, and escape gets him home. Resistance is the part for when the first three fail. It is taught at Fairchild Air Force Base, Washington.

The school started in 1949, when Strategic Air Command set up a training squadron in Colorado to teach bomber crews how to survive and evade behind enemy lines. Korea showed the training was needed far beyond SAC. The school moved to Stead Air Force Base, Nevada, in 1951, and to Fairchild in 1966 when Stead closed. Today the 336th Training Group runs it, with a unit at Eielson Air Force Base, Alaska, for the Arctic. The 22nd Training Squadron teaches Combat Survival Training, and it carries the lineage of the 22nd Special Operations Squadron, the Zorros, who flew A-1 Skyraiders out of Nakhon Phanom, Thailand, from 1968 to 1970. The 66th Training Squadron runs the five-and-a-half-month course that turns out SERE instructors.

The patch is a 3.5 by 4 inch black disc with a scroll arched across the top and another across the bottom, all outlined in red, with a cut edge that follows the shape. RETURN WITH HONOR runs across the top in red letters, and RESISTANCE TRAINING across the bottom. In the center is a white eagle's head with its feathers ragged at the neck. Three strands of red barbed wire wrap around it, and a red chain hangs from its beak. It is a plain picture of captivity, and the eagle is still looking straight ahead.

Graduates come back from Fairchild knowing something about themselves that most people never test. The course is built for aircrew, the pilots, loadmasters, gunners and boom operators who fly over ground they may have to walk out of. SERE specialists, the instructors who teach it, go through a five-and-a-half-month course of their own. They spend their careers making sure a crew member who goes down knows what to do next. Return With Honor is the standard they hold every student to.

It fits a shadow box with a flight suit name tag and a photo from the course, or the sleeve of a jacket worn to a squadron reunion. It is also a good gift for a SERE graduate or an instructor heading into retirement. The back is iron-on, and a few stitches around the edge will keep it there for good. Return With Honor says the rest.