US Army SERE School Patch Survival Evasion Resistance Escape

Army SERE training is taught at the Colonel James "Nick" Rowe Training Compound at Camp Mackall, North Carolina, named for a Special Forces officer who spent 62 months as a prisoner of the Viet Cong and got himself out. Rowe was captured on 29 October 1963, three months after he arrived in Vietnam. He broke free on 31 December 1968 by overpowering a guard and signaling a helicopter. He came home with hard lessons about staying alive in enemy hands, and the Army put them to work. He is credited with developing the Army's Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape program. Every soldier who walks out of that compound carries some of what he learned.

Camp Mackall sits south of Southern Pines in Richmond and Scotland counties, and it is the main training ground for soldiers trying to become Special Forces. The camp was first called Camp Hoffman and was renamed on 8 February 1943 for Private John Thomas "Tommy" Mackall. Historian Stephen Ambrose called the place a marvel of wartime construction, built in four months. Today the Rowe compound hosts SERE alongside Special Forces Assessment and Selection and the Q Course. The four words of SERE are the order of the job: survive on the land, evade the people looking for you, resist if they catch you, and escape when you see the chance.

The patch is a 4.75 inch circle worked in black and white, with no other color anywhere on it. White barbed wire runs around the outer ring, and UNITED STATES ARMY is stitched in black across the top. SURVIVAL, EVASION, RESISTANCE AND ESCAPE wraps around the bottom. In the center an eight-pointed black and white compass star fills the inner circle, with a big white SERE across its middle. Behind the letters a coil of rope crosses a knife, and a length of chain hangs below. It has a cut edge and an iron-on backing, and a few stitches around the rim will hold it for good.

SERE is the course people talk about years later, usually with a half smile and very few details. The days are long, the food is short, and the lessons are learned the hard way on purpose. Graduates come out knowing how they will act if the worst happens, because they have already been tested. Rowe was killed in Quezon City, Philippines, on 21 April 1989, while serving there. His name stays on the compound where the course is taught, and the course stays tied to what he lived through.

Put it in a shadow box beside a Special Forces tab and a class photo from Camp Mackall, or sew it on the jacket you wear to a reunion. It is also a good gift for a son or daughter headed into training who wants to know what the old hands went through. Black, white and barbed wire, nothing more needed.