Boker Survival Camp
Jim Wagner
What happens if you are caught in the middle of a natural disaster and you have no electricity or food source? Do you know how to survive on your own until help arrives?
What if you are on vacation and your airplane goes down in a remote area? Could you hang onto dear life until a rescue team comes a couple of days later?
It could also be as simple as being on a one-day hiking trip and the weather keeps you from getting back to civilization. Could you survive in the wilderness until the storm clears?
Now you can learn how to survive in the wild, like I did, in a two-day course called Boker Survival Camp taught by expert survivalists.
On September 13th I flew into Dusseldorf Airport, Germany all the way from Southern California. Picking me up in the morning when I arrived was Reality-Based Personal Protection Director Tobias Leckebusch. We hopped onto the Autobahn and drove five hours to the quaint little town of Sigmaringen in southern Germany. Once we checked into our hotel rooms and threw our backpacks inside we drove an additional fifteen minutes to meet with the chief instructor.
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The chief instructor (his name will be omitted from this article) is a tactics instructor for the German Army, and he is also a survival instructor.
In the evening we met to have a beer and dinner together. The chief instructor runs his own business on the side called Survival Connection and a year ago and teamed up with Boker to offer the Boker Survival Camp. They have a five-day program and a two-day program. I was there to take the two-day package, which is also advertised in the Boker catalog.
My first survival course that I took was back in 1986 when I was a member of the Saddleback Search & Rescue team in Southern California. The organization had two United States Navy SERE (Survival Evasion Resistance Escape) instructors teach our team a two-day survival course. Since then I have taken other related courses, and I have even taught a few survival courses up in the San Bernardino Mountains as the primary instructor. Since I live in “earthquake, fire, and riot country” I never know when these skills will be needed and I always want to be well prepared if something does happen.
Bright and early in the morning of September 13th the Boker instructors and the students met at an outdoor rope obstacle course. True to Murphy’s Law it was cold and raining. Just coming from warm sunny California it was a drastic change for me. In fact, it rained most of the day and into the evening for the first day of survival training.
The chief instructor made sure that nobody had food in their backpacks or gear because he said that he wanted to make sure that everyone knew what it would be like “to feel the pain of hunger.” For the entire two days we were allowed one U.S. military MRE (Meal-Ready-to-Eat), and that was to be issued for dinner, and two apples at lunch.
The chief instructor gave me the choice of being an instructor or a student since he had Tobias Leckebusch with him along with instructor #2 who was a sergeant in the German Army on a Long Range Patrol combat unit, Instructor #3 who was on a SWAT team in Western Germany, and instructor #4 who was also on a SWAT team. In Germany many SWAT operators are sent to the German Special Forces Survival School. However, in Germany they don’t call them SWAT teams, but are known as SEK (Spezial Einsatz Kommando). I chose to be a student subject to all the hardships of the course. My partner was to be Samir Dougali; a German-born tire salesman in Cologne of Algerian and German parents. Samir wanted to do something unique for his vacation and saw the Survival Camp advertisement in the Boker knife catalog. All of the students were put into two-man teams; there were no women who had signed up.
After the morning briefing we were transported 10 kilometers north of Sigmaringen and dropped off just east of the small town of Veringenstadt. It was a beautiful mix of farm fields, forest, and mountains before us. Everything that we would need for the journey would be carried on our own backs.
The chief instructor started the training by giving all of us a course in land navigation and issued each team a topographical map. The map was divided into 1000 meter squares. For those who did not have compasses he issued them. I had brought my Army compass knowing full well I would need it. I studied the map carefully because some of the symbols were different than US military and civilian maps, such as the symbol for railroad tracks. I was very comfortable with land navigation because at the beginning of the year in January, at the Joint Forces Training Base in California, I had taught a map reading and land navigation course to 144th Field Artillery unit of the California Army National Guard.
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After the course in land navigation our first objective was to hike to a hut a kilometer away just to get used to the map and directions. The next objective was two kilometers away, but this time through a forest. The third objective was hiking up the side of a mountain and building strength in the legs and endurance. Each distance got longer and longer. Yet, along the way instructors would have stations set up where they would explain different elements of land navigation and survival hints.
After a couple of hours we all hiked through the little German village named Hochberg. It was quite an experience for me to be walking through a thick wet forest and to emerge into a picturesque village with old churches, tiny roads, and cows in the field. Then we disappeared back into the thick green forest again.
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About midday we came to a hunting hut. We were not allowed the pleasure of resting inside, but remained outside long enough to eat our two apples each in the drizzle. Then it was back on the trails with gray skies overhead, but at least it stopped raining momentarily. However, just as we were about to take off on our trek the chief instructor said, “Go behind the hut now!” We all went behind the hut and one of the students was lying on the ground with a broken leg; a compound fracture. When we all circled around the student we saw the two bones protruding from his left shin. It was from a moulage kit (fake plastic wound) wrapped around his leg. We were instructed to render first aid and then transport him and his back a half kilometer towards Wolfstal to get him on a vehicle that was waiting on the dirt road.
We wrapped the student’s leg with fresh bandages supplied to us by the instructors and I broke two large sticks for splints and we wrapped them into place on each side of his leg. Other students cut down two large poles, slipped them through the sleeves of a couple of field jackets, and made a field expedient stretcher, thanks to a little guidance from one of the instructors. After they had made a stretcher the chief instructor gave them a fold-up military field stretcher with nylon handles along each side.
We then had to pick up the “wounded” student and carry him; three on each side. During the drill every 50 meters we had to rotate positions; fifty meters of work and then 50 meters of rest. Even with six men carrying the wounded at a fast pace everybody got tired quick. It was more work than we all realized. Once we got to the van waiting for us on the road it was a relief to be done with the drill. Of course, I have been in Tactical Medic courses where we had to do the same, but not for such long distances. This was more like a battlefield test.
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In an area called Langenfeld, seven kilometers south of where we first started, we were sent in our two-man teams to find an open field on the Lauchert river next to some train tracks. Samir and I came to a large chain link fence with a big sign on it in German that said NO TRESPASSING. The gate was open and the road going through it led to where we wanted to go, so we went through any way. After several minutes of walking we came to some old World War II bunkers. It was odd that these twenty or more bunkers were in the middle of the mountains in the middle of the forest. We thought they were the buildings shown on our map. In reality the facility was not on the map. The facility seemed to be some sort of lumber storage area because of all of the stacks of fresh cut trees piled up on the sides of the road.
As we were almost to the other end of the facility a truck hauling lumber came up the road toward us and stopped where we stood. He said sternly, “You can’t come through here, you must turn around and go back” and then he drove off.
Samir and I looked at each other and said, “Nah, we will just jump the fence and get out of here.” We did not want to lose valuable time by going all the way back from the way we came from. So, we threw our backpacks over the 8 foot fence topped with three wires of barbed wire and made our way over without getting sliced up. There was nobody around; not even in the nearby guard shack.
Samir and I thought that the road we saw at the facility was the road on the map. It turns out that the bunkers were not on the map intentionally because rumor has it that they are still used by the army to store weapons. Once we headed south we were off course by two kilometers.
Of course, being off course, and not knowing exactly where we were was the best form of training for us. We had to navigate our way to a known land feature and then get back on course. We finally came to the river and just followed it west and found our rendezvous point. Another team had got lost and took the same route we did.
We then took another hike to the final destination of the day. When we all got there a large parachute was strung between two large trees. It was large enough to cover everyone for a classroom talk. The instructors had even brought tables and chairs. However, before anyone could relax teach team had to go up the side of the mountain 100 meters and select an area to build a temporary shelter for the night using only available natural materials. Samir and I found a suitable place and for two hours built our shelter out of tree branches and green leaves. We were the only team not to use any para cord to bind sticks together. We went 100% natural.
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By the time we were finished it was night fall. My team and the other team that had gone off course in the forest were sent on a “mission” to go get the food. Instructor #2 gave us verbal instructions on a route we were to follow, and we did. When we got to a deer hunting platform there was a large box of military MREs (Meal Ready to Eat) we retrieved and brought it back to camp.
The chief instructor had a fire starting course and then we all ate our MREs. By this time it was pitch black, except for the lanterns on each table, and the sky had cleared of all clouds. The stars were above in all of their glory.
I was soaking wet from my jacket to my shoes, so I stood next to the fire for an hour rotating myself until I was once again dry. I took off my boots and held them carefully over the fire perched on a stick pulling them out just as steam started coming off of them.
Everybody turned in early and eventually I crawled into my sleeping bag completely exhausted. It was anything but a restful night. I must have changed positions 20 times that night. I had no padding underneath me, and occasionally cold air would be rapidly sucked into my sleeping back when I turned, and then I would pull the bag tightly around my neck and head.
Everybody was up at sun up. The chief instructor gave everyone orders to get their gear together and tear down the shelters and make the place look like it was before we all got there. There was no breakfast waiting for us. There was no meal for the day.
We hiked a couple of kilometers to the edge of a 60 foot cliff. Near the top was an old 17th century Catholic chapel called Bittelschiesser Kapelle built in 1625 located in the Nature Park of Obere Donau.
The chief instructor gave a course on rappelling for those who had never done it before, and made sure everybody properly demonstrated on how to hook themselves up to their seat harness. I had rappelled many times before with the Saddleback Search & Rescue Team, with the U.S. Marines on various rope courses, with the U.S. Army Special Forces, and with the Los Angeles SWAT Team, so for me it was going to be pure fun. My partner Samir had never done it before and was a bit nervous.
When it came to my turn I bounded down quickly. I had even brought my old SWAT rappelling leather gloves with me from home knowing that this drill would be included in the course. It was a great cliff face with a large cave down at the bottom. When I got down to the bottom Tobias asked me, “Jim, where is your helmet?”
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Everybody was suppose to wear helmets, but I had rappelled so many times in the past with only a patrol cap or boonie cap on that I didn’t even think about it, and Instructor #3 up top didn’t even ask about it.
While the rest of the class was coming down I explored a little in the cave, and then went out by the river. By this time it was a beautiful sunny day with blue skies.
We then hiked a kilometer down stream and the chief instructor said, “Stop here. I want you all to cross the river with all of your gear, but I don’t want you to get wet. You have two hours.”
We all knew that we had to send at least one swimmer across the 10 meter across river and he would have to tie a rope to a tree on the other side. The rest of us would hook up a rope system above the river and then we would get everybody over one at a time along with everyone’s backpacks. Then, once we were all on the other side, we would have to be able to pull the last rope across and leave nothing behind.
The river was just above freezing and half the class fell into the river; either part of the way or totally submerged. This is why everyone was told to bring an extra set of clothes. An emergency rope was tied to every person when going across so that if someone fell into the water they could quickly pull him to safety and not go downstream. I, on the other hand, had no intention of getting wet and stayed on the rope upside down until I pulled myself all the way across. I was dry and warm.
We hiked some more and then came to an instructor station where Instructor #2 taught everyone on how to procure water and how to sterilize it. I had actually learned a few methods that my American instructors had not taught me. After that the chief instructor gave a more in depth fire making course with many displays. I loved it.
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We then hiked into the small medieval town of Hornstein. Coming into the town we passed through the still standing medieval wall and ruins. Once out of Hornstein we came to a farm house and sat along the fence as the chief instructor gave a lecture on military survival techniques. Behind him, as he spoke, was some of the prettiest countryside in Germany that I had ever seen, and the weather was just perfect. I actually stripped off my jacket for the first time that day. Then, after the lecture, we hiked up 100 meters to the vehicles waiting for us.
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The instructors drove us back to Sigmaringen where we had first begun our adventure. We had a debriefing and we all said our farewells to one another. The first thing Tobias and I did before leaving town was drive to the nearest Burger King and had ourselves a Whopper, fries, and a coke. It was good to be back in civilization again. We then drove the five hours to Solingen where I would be teaching courses for the next two weeks.
I participated in the two-day Boker Survival Camp myself as a student, and I recommend it to all of my Reality-Based Personal Protection students and instructors. The instructors were easy to understand expert and they taught all of the techniques exactly like we do in the American military. I came away from this course learning a few new techniques that I had never seen before, and I was impressed. You never know when you will find yourself in a survival situation. It could be a plane crash in a remote area, a shipwreck on vacation, or even bad weather moving in on a hiking trip. The skills taught in this course are something every person should know.
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