Air Force Staff Sgt. Duchaine Paul knows something about working in hot places.
As a Security Forces airman, Paul is assigned to Moody Air Force Base in southern Georgia, which sits adjacent to two federally protected swamps and ranks among the hottest and most humid military duty stations in the U.S.
But Paul recently spent time in an even hotter spot, making some history as he did, becoming the first member of the Air Force to graduate from the Army’s Jungle Operations Training Course-Panama.
Training with Army soldiers and Panamanian troops at Panama’s Aeronaval Base Cristóbal Colón, Paul earned the course’s Jungle tab after 18-days in heat, rain, and difficult terrain, he said in an Air Force release.
“Those difficult moments of the course is what kept me going through every single day,” he said in an Army news release by Spc. Richard Morgan. “I look over to one of my friends, they would be struggling just as much. I just knew I couldn’t let up. You’re struggling. You see your buddy just barely making it. It’s a good option to just laugh at each other like, ‘Yeah, I cannot believe we’re here right now.’ You just keep pushing.”
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Though based at Moody, Paul has been assigned to the 474th Air Expeditionary Group under Air Forces Southern, which oversees U.S. Air Forces in Central and South America. As a Security Forces airman, he participated in a training partnership with the Servicio de Protección Institucional, Panama’s presidential security force.
“Fortunately, I’ve been very blessed to train with other partners like SPI,” Paul said. “It’s been a great partnership and just building a relationship with the Panamanians.”
A ‘Green Hell,’ revived
The jungle course is a newly rebooted version of an infamous Army Jungle Warfare School at the eastern end of the Panama Canal, on what was then known as Fort Sherman. That program’s obstacle course was known to students as ‘the Green Hell’, a nickname that often doubled for the jungle school itself. The school closed when the Army turned Fort Sherman over to Panama in 1999. The base was subsequently renamed Aeronaval Base Cristóbal Colón.
The new course was opened last October by the Army Security Cooperation Group-South, which was previously known as the 1st Security Forces Assistance Brigade. As the 1st SFAB, the unit trained Afghan forces in the latter years of that war, and then shifted to South America. The return of the course comes as the U.S. military revives several of its bases in Latin America. According to an Army release, the new school is broken into three phases.
First is a course on jungle survival fundamentals taught by Panamanian instructors. Students learn how to handle a machete, start fires, find water and build shelters.
The second portion turns more military, with training on small-unit tactics, including movement, ambushes, casualty evacuation and waterborne operations.
Students finish the course on five combined missions, including assaults under fire, ambushes and reconnaissance missions.
The finale comes in the “Green Mile” event, according to an Army release. An Army video of a Green Mile held in February shows students carrying simulated casualties and other heavy loads while navigating an obstacle course.
“The most rewarding part of jungle school was definitely the relationships and brotherhood. And we had two girls, so sisterhood,” Paul said in an Air Force video. He also said the school’s skills would be a good match for training at Moody. “We do a lot of exercises where we’re in the thick of the Florida swamps, Georgia swamps. So teaching [other airmen] how to tread through that, tracking, how to survive. Definitely some wisdom to share with those guys.”
