by Jon E. Lewis
Chapter 6
EVASION, CAPTURE AND ESCAPE
There are any number of situations where you as a soldier will need the skill to evade. For example:
1 A breakout from a PoW camp or holding area.
2 An escape from a surrounded position in small numbers or as an individual.
3 As a result of the disruption of boundaries, between units after a tactical nuclear exchange.
4 As a result of becoming lost on patrol and straying into the enemy positions.
5 When your defensive position is overrun and not cleared.
EQUIPMENT
Could you survive and fight if you were captured and lost all your equipment except the clothes you stand up in? What if you were searched by an enemy soldier and had everything in your pockets taken away from you? He might not be thorough enough though and you have had the foresight to conceal enough equipment in your clothing to enable you to escape.
If you are captured the man searching you is going to be so interested in retrieving stuff such as notebooks, maps and knives that he will not even think about looking in the other places where small items of equipment can be concealed.
Hiding places
He will find the tobacco tin containing your survival kit, and it is probably best not to hide any equipment in your jacket or smock as this will probably be taken off you straight away. Your shirt, jersey or trousers are, however, ideal hiding places for escape and evasion equipment.
SURVIVAL RIFLE
A Ruger 10.22 silenced semi-automatic rifle complete with folding stock and 4 × 40 scope will definitely keep the larder stocked.
SAS BELT ORDER
Sabre squadron troopers always carry E and E equipment, as part of their belt order. This is not the definitive layout, individuals are allowed to carry what they like once they are on squadron
1 Belt, pouches and water bottles
2 SLR magazines
3 Rifle cleaning kit
4 Purse net
5 Fishing kit
6 Snares
7 Mess tin lid and rations
8 Torch and filters
9 Button-compass
10 Wire saw
11 Fire starting kit
12 Lock picks (note these are illegal in UK)
13 Clasp knife
14 Prismatic compass
15 Miniflares
16 Millbank bag for filtering water
17 Field dressing
18 Survival ration
19 Heliograph
20 Silk escape map
The most useful item of E & E kit is something you can usually guarantee not to be without: your brain. No-one can take away your skill or experience so prepare now. Useful things to conceal are:
1 A wire saw
2 A compass
3 A sharpened hacksaw blade
4 A fishing kit
5 A sewing kit
6 Condoms
7 Scalpel blades
8 Map
9 Firelighting oil
You can usually feed the wire saw into the waistband of your combat trousers; remove the rings from the saw, and replace them with bootlace or nylon cord. Likewise you can feed fishing line into the seams of your clothing or under the collar of your shirt. Some soldiers remove all the buttons on their trousers or pockets and re-sew them using fishing line.
Fishing hooks are, however, a different problem. If you sew them into clothing unprotected, they may pierce the cloth and injure you; wrap them in PVC first. The same applies to needles and scalpel blades.
CONDOMS
CAN BE USED AS:
1 Water carriers
Each one will take about one and a half pints. Remember to put the whole thing in a sock for support.
2 Surgical gloves
Bullet wounds are usually already highly contaminated, but if you are clearing out a wound put condoms on your fingers to reduce the chances of further infection.
3 Signalling devices
Useful for ground-to-air signalling; simply blow them up and place them on the ground in the desired pattern.
4 Waterproof containers
You can use them to protect kit or maps and for hiding things internally, and for keeping water out of weapons and radio equipment.
Boots are often cited as good hiding places for escape and evasion equipment, but beware. Walking is probably the only way you will be able to travel and if your boots are uncomfortable or unable to protect your feet you will be in trouble.
If you have very thick shock-absorbent insoles in your boots you can hide things beneath them, but check regularly to make sure the insole is not being worn away. Obviously only very thin items can be concealed this way, and nothing over about 8cm long, as it may puncture the insole and your foot when the sole of the boot flexes.
Condoms also need to be concealed with care; if they are unprotected the plastic wrapper will eventually wear and damage the contents, so when you come to use one in a survival situation it has a hole in it! Wrap them in PVC tape (ideally, a minimum of five should be carried).
If you can conceal a flint and steel firelighter in your clothing so much the better, but make sure you know how to use it before sewing it in otherwise the space is wasted.
Small compasses are fairly easy to conceal and the small RAF button compass can even be swallowed and retrieved at a later date! However these compasses only really give an indication of magnetic North, and are not accurate enough for bearings.
Rough maps of your operational area are not as difficult to construct as you may think. Pilots and Special Forces are often issued with elaborate maps, printed on cloth or silk and disguised as handkerchiefs or sewn into the lining of clothing.
REMEMBER
1 Every piece of kit you smuggle through the first search will help you to escape.
2 If they keep searching, eventually they will find everything.
3 Make sure the piece of kit can be retrieved once you have escaped e.g. that it is not so well sewn in that you can’t get at it.
4 Make sure you know how to use the kit you’ve hidden.
Your escape map should be a very simple affair, with only large towns, major roads, railways and rivers marked on it. Any other detail would be useless and confusing. Combined with your simple compass, it just makes sure you walk in the right direction. It is best drawn on rice paper or airmail paper, folded and wrapped in cling film or seran wrap and sewn behind a unit or rank patch or hidden under the insole of your boot.
EVADING DOGS
Every breath you take, every move you make, a dog can detect it. Perhaps as much as a mile away under the right conditions. And an attack dog, trained to silence, can be on you literally before you know it; travelling at 15 metres a second and weighing anything up to 45 kilograms, it is as lethal as any bullet. What can a man working behind enemy lines do to protect himself against these killers? In this section we’re going to examine some of the dog evasion techniques taught to British Special Forces units.
Dogs of war are trained to do specific jobs. Guard and attack dogs are trained to detect, engage and, in some cases, to savage intruders or evaders either under the command of a handler or running free.
Search dogs are adept at picking up and finding the source of airborne scents and are allowed to run free, going over an area of ground yard by yard. Tracker dogs, on the other hand run on a long leash with a handler. Ground scents are the trackers’ speciality. Search and tracker dogs lead their handlers to their target, but do not usually assault the fugitive, leaving that to the attack dogs, to the handlers or their combat back-up.
EYES, EARS AND NOSES
Like most mammals except man dogs have very poor eyesight. They don’t see colours at all, only shades of grey, and then not very clearly. They can see you moving of course, and this is very likely to attract their attention. Because their eyes are low down to the ground they’re quick to see movement above the skyline.
If a dog’s eyesight is only half as good as
man’s its range of hearing is twice as good. How far away they can hear you is affected by weather conditions, especially wind and rain. If the wind is blowing away from you and towards the dog, he’s a lot more likely to hear you. Rain creates a background noise and makes individual sounds much more difficult to pick out. So take advantage of rain to get on the move.
It’s not just that a dog can hear you a long way off, he can also hear sounds that man can’t. High-pitched squeaks and whistles that you don’t know exist are part of a dog’s everyday life. So tape loose pieces of equipment to stop them rubbing and catching. Think about the way you use radios and other items of hardware. A clink of cooking utensils, a match being struck, even the sound of the flame when you’re cooking your meal can give away your position to a well trained dog.
In fact if you were cooking a meal the chances are that he would smell you first – from anything up to a couple of miles away under the right conditions! Because while a dog’s hearing is a lot keener than ours, his sense of smell is many thousands of times better.
The strongest human body odour comes from the sweat glands, especially under the arms. Moving quickly, particularly when carrying a heavy load and wearing too many clothes, makes you sweat heavily. So does being tense, nervous or frightened. Eating various types of strongly flavoured food makes it worse, and so does not washing regularly.
And it’s not just the natural smells of our bodies that provide a target for the tracker dog’s nose. Clothing especially when it’s wet; soap and deodorants; leather; tobacco; polish and preservatives; petrol; oil; and many, many more smells that are a natural part of our everyday lives can give a dog a clue to your presence.
A dog picks up scent in two different ways; from the air, and from contact with the ground, trees, plants and buildings. Airborne scents do not last very long; they are blown away by the wind quite quickly.
Traces of movement
A ground scent, on the other hand, may be obvious to the dog for anything up to 48 hours. Ground scents are caused not just by you leaving your own smell on things you touch, but also by the movement itself. If you’re walking on grass or pushing through vegetation you will crush leaves and stems with every movement.
Even on bare ground you will release air and tiny quantities of moisture that have been trapped in the soil, which smell quite different from the fresh air above the ground. From the scent “footprints” that you leave behind a dog can even tell in which direction you’re moving.
And because you push off each step with your toes, the front of the footprint is more obvious than the heel, and it only takes a few steps for a dog to work out which way you’re travelling.
Just as each person’s footprints look slightly different to the eye, so to a dog is the mixture of scents in the smell footprint slightly different. The dog recognizes this difference and so may be able to track one person even where there are a number of people travelling together, or where there are animals present.
Methods of evasion are detailed in the special sections, but remember the general point; although a dog can outhear, out-smell and outrun you, you can out-think him. To do that you must assess the skills of the dog opposing you, and use your wits and tactics to confuse all or most of its senses. Outwit the dog or handler and you may escape where others may not.
COMBATTING ATTACK DOGS
Guard dogs and attack dogs either operate with a handler or are left to run free in a confined area. A dog that is running free in a compound may not even recognize his handler, but will attack absolutely anyone who comes into his territory. But whether the dog is on a leash or running free its training is designed to do just one thing – catch anybody who shouldn’t be there.
You do have one slight advantage when dealing with a guard dog – he’s fixed in one place, more or less.
1 Always approach from down wind.
2 Take it slowly and easily to minimize exertion, and thereby cut down the amount of smelly sweat you secrete.
3 Keep as low as possible and use natural features of the ground. Windborne scent doesn’t quite travel in straight lines, but any natural obstacle will help.
4 Approach along paths used by other people.
5 When you get within 200 metres of the objective, don’t stop for anything – dogs have been known to pick up scents even against the wind at this sort of distance.
6 If you’re dealing with a dog guarding a building, try to get above the ground floor if you can; dogs have difficulty detecting people way above their heads.
7 If you find yourself close to a dog and handler unexpectedly, keep still. Guards have been known to pass within 10 metres of an intruder who’s keeping perfectly still without detecting him.
Try to get above the dog’s level; this will make his job more difficult.
Sacrificial defence
If you can’t evade the dog you have to immobilize him. And you can’t do that effectively until the dog is within attack range. You have to let the dog bite you. Wrap protection around the forearm of the hand you don’t use by choice. Arrange it in three layers. A soft one on the inside as padding; a hard one next to stop the dog’s teeth penetrating; and lastly another soft layer to give the dog something to get his teeth into.
Protect your forearm with three layers of padding
Allow the dog to grab your protected arm. If you’re still standing you can club the animal.
If the dog leaps on you, roll over with him and keep his body tight to yours. Work your way around onto the top and back of the dog to immobilize it.
Don’t discourage the dog from attacking you, but make sure he takes the offered target; he will be more difficult to deal with the second time. When he’s sunk his teeth into the padding, he’s within reach, and you can deal with him.
EVADING TRACKER DOGS
So what can you do to fool the dog? Let’s split the mission up into four phases; lying up, pre-contact, distant contact, and close contact.
Lying up
If you have to spend any length of time in a lying up place always obey these simple rules, even if you have no proof that a search dog is operating.
1 Keep as close to the ground as possible.
2 Put most of your clothing over you so that the ground absorbs your scent rather than letting it out into the open air.
3 Breathe down into the ground or at least into the vegetation.
4 Keep as still as possible.
5 Bury rubbish under where you are lying.
6 No smoking, no fires wherever possible.
7 If you’re discovered by anyone move away as fast as you can.
Pre-contact
Use all the normal physical camouflage tricks to blend into the environment, plus a few that are designed to throw the dog off the scent.
1 Travel over ground already used by other people or by animals. This makes the dog work much harder to keep on your track.
2 If you’re travelling as part of a group, split up from time to time. Double back on yourself. Leave a false trail wherever possible.
3 Use streams and running water to confuse the dog, but don’t try to walk for too long in the stream itself – it will slow you down too much. Instead cross the stream diagonally, doubling back perhaps two or three times so that the dog can’t tell which of your exit tracks is the real one and which ones are dummies.
4 When you’re preparing food, pay close attention to the direction of the wind. You must bury all wrapping and containers, but remember too to handle them as little as possible. The smell of the food is one thing, your smell on the wrappers tells the dog that it was your food. When you bury the remains, don’t touch the ground with your hands. Use a metal tool of some sort. Whenever you can, sink the rubbish in deep water. The same goes for urine and faeces.
Distant contact
If you’re sighted from a distance, speed becomes important.
1 Try to tire the dog and handler team; it will be easier to destroy their confidence in each other if they make
mistakes through tiredness.
2 If you’re part of a group then split up straight away, and arrange a rendezvous for later.
3 Make for hard ground. A road or a rocky surface makes and holds much less scent than a soft one.
4 If you are in wood country or scrub, double back and change your direction as often as you can.
5 The tracker dog will be on a long lead. If you can get him tangled up you can increase the distance between you and him and maybe break off the contact entirely.
Close contact
If the dog catches up with you you’re in deep trouble. Not so much from the dog, he’s done his job in finding you. Now you’re in trouble from the handler and whatever combat back up he may have available.
1 Forget the dog for the moment. You’ll know from the look of him whether he’s an attack dog or a tracker. If he’s a tracker, he probably won’t come near you.
2 Move as fast as you can. Get out of sight of the handler.
3 Get rid of loose pieces of clothing, food (especially food – the dog may be distracted by it when he comes looking for you) and any other pieces of kit that aren’t vital to your mission or your survival.
4 If the dog sticks with you, you must kill or immobilize it.
EVASION AND CAPTURE
To be taken prisoner is the worst thing that can happen to a soldier. Death is quick; a wound will see you evacuated to a field hospital for treatment; but capture exposes you to a nightmare of torture, indoctrination and exposure. An army is a part of a nation, an arm of government, and every government goes to great lengths to protect its soldiers from every danger, including that of mistreatment as a prisoner of war.
Techniques in which Special Forces are trained are not widely published, but reliable sources applying to all soldiers do exist. The United States Army issues Field Manuals – FM 21–76 and FM 21–78 – that deal only with evasion, escape and survival. This section is taken from those manuals. It deals with evading enemy forces and how to behave if you’re captured.
