Soon after graduating from the USAF pilot training program, I had orders to attend 4 schools en-route to my permanent base where I had been assigned to fly the A7D Corsair 2. The only single seat aircraft in the Tactical Air Command, I had my chest bursting with pride. I would be a single seat attack fighter pilot. Wow.
But, I had to endure 7 months of training. First stop was water survival school in the warm waters off the coast of Miami, Florida. It was designed to prove you could get out from under a parachute while in the ocean, climb into a raft and successfully get hoisted aboard a water rescue helicopter. Great fun.
Next stop was winter land survival. It was brutal. I am ashamed to say now, after watching so many US Navy Seal movies, that what I thought then was brutal was more like a cake walk. Still, I managed to lose about 20 pounds of baby fat in less than 10 days. We were dropped off as survivors in a very cold , mountainous region of Washington State and were ordered to evade capture. Simulating leaving a single seat fighter meant that we didn’t have much in the way of food, water or shelter.
I will never forget how hungry I became while slopping around in the snow drifts and shivering through the long cold nights. One memorable evening, we were reunited with a group of other evaders in a make shift guerrilla camp environment and allowed to make a fire. Having nothing to eat, we were told to boil some water in a camp pot and add a large rock. I am not sure what else we found in the forest to add. But, I must say, nothing I have ever eaten was quite as magnificent as that hot soup cooked over a campfire.
Hopefully, the soups you fix will give you as much pleasure as that rock soup.
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