After driving around in the back of the van for what felt like at least an hour and a half, the vehicle stopped and the back door was jerked open abruptly. Faith, who had been dozing, suddenly felt wide awake as he was dragged from the van by screaming cadre members dressed in black fatigues. The sudden transition from sitting in a completely quiet, completely blacked-out van to standing in bright sunlight was disorienting, but Faith nonetheless noticed that the person who had been seated beside him in the van, whom Faith had assumed was a man, was actually female. He didn’t have a chance to get her name, though, as the males and females were separated, directed to strip, given a medical checkup, issued flipflops and orange jump suits, and led to individual cells consisting of crumbling concrete and that vaguely smelled of stale urine. They weren’t there long, however, before each of them was led into an interrogation cell, and then subjected to various forms of harassment. Faith remembered being deprived of food, sleep, and the abilities to see and hear, as well as some interesting stress positions and some mild physical abuse. There was also a lot of yelling. Faith’s interrogators kept forcing him to endure what they called “the coffin,” which was a narrow box that was uncomfortably small. Because of his size and height, Faith’s captors literally had to cram him into the coffin every time. Faith feigned cooperation while bowing himself up to make it difficult from them to squeeze him into the box. He also acted utterly terrified of the confining space of the coffin. Faith, who had regularly been in tighter places than this while doing recreational caving in northwestern Georgia during his college days, wasn’t the slightest bit intimidated by the close confines, which were clearly designed to induce a sense of claustrophobia. In fact, Faith found the coffin reassuring. As long as he was in that box, he 1) wasn’t being forced to talk, and 2) wasn’t being beaten.
Faith made a big display of fear about going into the box, and a huge expression of relief after it was open and he was allowed out. He toyed with his captors about being forced in, even calling out “please don’t throw me into that briar patch!” before once again being confined to the box. None of his captors seemed to get the Brer Rabbit reference. The gig was up, though, when his captors flung open the lid to the coffin only to find Faith sound asleep inside his coffin. They informed him that they would find something more… appropriate (i.e. uncomfortable) for him. And they did.
To Faith, who had gone to a military junior college and was a member of a major college fraternity, this experience was nothing more than a more stepped-up hazing session. It was annoying and uncomfortable, but Faith thought he handled it well. He was surprised, therefore, when at the official end of what the cadre referred to as the “SERE Phase,” that he was called before a “termination board” to be counselled on his poor performance. He was shown video clips of his interrogations, without further explanation, and was informed that his performance up to this point was “unacceptable,” and that if he didn’t start “meeting the high standards of the Element,” he was going to get dropped from the assessment program and returned to his unit. After what Faith estimated had been two sleepless days and nights, the candidates were returned to the blacked-out vans and whisked away to a different location.
