What is the Thousand Yard Stare? How do you get it? What sets the men who have it apart from those who have been spared? One look at them and you see they're different; it's in the eyes. The Thousand Yard Stare tells of someone who's been places and seen things: things he'd rather not have seen and places he shouldn't have been. We knew that as much horror as each of us had seen over the years, we had to be within a few dozen yards of a thousand. We were determined to make it over that barrier: the barrier that separates the men from the boys. Winter School at Hawk Mountain Ranger Training Facility seemed like just the ticket...

CadetStuff's trip to Winter School at Hawk Mountain Ranger Training Facility in Pennsylvania Wing began on Friday night, February 1st. Members of the CadetStuff staff and invited guests gathered at Captain Stanford's house for a feed, a flick and a quick haircut before heading out to Hawk on Saturday morning.

Attending were CadetStuff staffers Major Darin Ninness and Captain Shawn Stanford and CadetStuff regulars Major Kirt Bowden, 1st Lt Dan Brodsky and Royal Naval Reserve Midshipman James Elliott. Saturday morning the lights went on at 0530 and the assembled crew - the Seniors mentioned plus Cadets from PAWG and NYWG - mounted up and rolled out.

We were all looking forward to testing ourselves and our skills against the environment. Our first test was navigating to Hawk - we failed. We arrived ten minutes into check-in (after a quick stop for directional corrections in one of the many small Pennsylvania towns in that part of the state) to find it in full swing with nearly a hundred Cadets and Seniors from a half-dozen different wings in attendance. After signing in and the opening formation, we were assigned to our training flight.

Major Kirt Bowden has the Thousand Yard Stare. "Oh yeah," he replies when questioned about it. He continues in a staccato whisper: "I've been to Boz. I've got the Thousand Yard Stare... Didn't get it in Boz, though." His eyes lose focus as, yard by yard, they begin to drift into the distance; away from the conversation and the person he's talking to and into the past. "It was Florida Wing CAC meeting, 1991", he says in hushed tones. "Five hour meeting. No potty breaks. And after dinner... no ice cream." The chills move up and down the listener's spine and dread grips the heart.

During the planning stages of this little party, Captain Stanford did some hand-wringing and whining by to see if the commander of this year's Winter School - Major Anne Gibbons - could provide a more challenging environment for the CadetStuff Seniors than is normally provided for Seniors at Winter Hawk. The accommodating Major Gibbons gave us that challenge in the form of her husband, long-time CAP member Captain Bill Gibbons (so THAT'S how it is in their family). The CadetStuff team was the core around which Captain Gibbons created Echo Flight: the Special Education - no, wait - Special Advanced training group. A challenge was asked for and a challenge would be given!

The first challenge was getting all of our junk out of Major Bowden's truck and onto our backs. Major Ninness proved stylish and awkward in his 800 pounds of Dan French Actionwear; which included an over-stuffed medium ALICE and a well stocked set of LBE - complete with an oldie-but-goodie canvas butt pack. He was looking a little knackered after the walk across the parking lot but bravely soldiered on.

Midshipman Elliott pulled an enormous bergen out of the truck and tossed it around like he was Arnold Schwarzenegger. As it turned out, he'd filled it mostly with balled-up newspaper and brought with him only a sleeping bag, a small tent, a large amount of tea and a single copy of 'Razzle'. He whined piteously during mealtimes for scraps of food and eventually had some success doing his Mr. Burns impression and barking like a seal while those of us with food threw bits for him to catch in his mouth.

But this was all in the future. After snagging our kit Captain Gibbons briefed us on the upcoming weekend. This briefing seemed to consist mainly of him shamelessly stroking our egos and telling us that our advanced skills warranted advanced training. Heh heh. We clearly had the powers-that-be at Hawk completely fooled. Our Emergency Services and outdoors experience amounted to the following:

• Major Ninness: Attended Drummond Island Ranger School as a Cadet. While impressive sounding, Drummond Island was actually a summer home for juvenile delinquents with foppish tendencies.

• Major Bowden: Spent a single summer at Camp Boz-Knee-Ya where he made dozens of Popsicle stick projects and cried himself to sleep every night missing his mom. Since then he had spent more time on the can than in the field and did a short stint as a male model.

• Captain Stanford: The only real man among the crew - and coincidentally the author of this article - Capt Stanford's qualifications and exploits are too numerous - and too fantastic - to list here.

• 1st Lt Brodsky:  So completely naive that he misunderstood the purpose of the activity and showed up in Blues with C/1st Lt Engle along as a personal assistant to "carry all that gear around".

• Mid Elliott: Is from England, drinks tea, had never been "out of doors" and was afraid of squirrels.

We were in deep trouble...

We left the Base Camp and walked a couple klicks up the road and then off into the woods. After moving a few hundred meters into the forest, Captain Gibbons told us we were looking for a USGS survey marker a couple klicks away and gave us a heading to follow. With Major Nin in command and two Cadets shooting azimuths, we set off.

Mid Elliott suddenly stops jabbering on about mindless drivel and his eyes move to another place, a horrible one where life is harder.  Out of the blue he starts muttering in hushed tones "Easter deployment, HMS Pursuer, South coast of England, we went for eight days without Brie and French bread... I only just came out of that one alive..."

The state flower of Pennsylvania is the Mountain Laurel and no doubt any of Echo Flight can now recognize it in our sleep: it wasn't long before we were working through almost impenetrable thickets of the stuff. A patch only a hundred meters across might take several minutes to get through. Occasionally the thickets would have to be detoured around, revealing that Major Ninness was actually one of those sad few who thought if you were going up a hill you had to be going north.

The final push up to the area of the USGS marker - a part of the training area known as Three Pipes because of the, well, the three pipes that were there - was through a section of the mountain called the River of Stones. It's basically a wash full of glacial till: rocks ranging from fist to washing machine size. It proved to be an extremely difficult section where every step was potentially treacherous as the rocks had a tendency to move. Several members of the team took spills in this section although nobody was hurt.

Ninness' eyes took on that faraway squint. He was soft: he'd lost his edge and his Thousand Yard Stare and was trying hard to get it back. "Michigan Wing encampment, Camp Grayling, 1993. Open bay barracks, no wall lockers..."  His lips continued to move silently and his eyes glazed as he contemplated horrors known only to him: an open squadbay, dozens of Cadets, a hot summer encampment and no A/C...

The marker was finally located; the three kilometer hike from the road to Three Pipes had taken every bit of two hours. Echo Flight stopped for lunch and a brew-up (that's tea to you Yanks) while the other training flights moved into the area. Three Pipes was the first target point for all the teams.

It was here, with all the teams together and having actually done a little movement, that you could really see the difference between the various levels of attendees. The Basic Students, Bravo, Charlie and Delta Flights, looked like they'd all been put into a dryer for a few spins along the way. Their gear was falling off and inexpertly put together. There was one Basic Student who was using rope for straps on his medium ruck.

The Advanced Students, Alpha Flight, definitely had a better handle on things. They looked the part of advanced students and they certainly had a better idea what was expected of them and how to get it accomplished.

Of course the Special Education - uh, Advanced - students of Echo Flight resembled nothing more than a SpecOps team dropped behind enemy lines to rescue a downed pilot or something similarly brave and exciting. We were alert, strong and, above all, good looking.

Brodsky leans back, rocks gently and looks into infinity, "I remember it all, clear as day," he says, his face expressionless, blank. "Fort Drum, NY, summer 1995.  I was Logistics OIC and we ran out of toilet paper.  I... I just wasn't ready for what happened that afternoon." He goes on, lips trembling, a tear at the corner of one eye; "That Army food takes it's toll on people and porcelain alike".

One of the advantages of being in Echo Flight was that getting organized and rolling out is a lot easier on the flight staff: there were only a handful of us and we mostly knew what we were doing. This turned out to be an advantage for Sierra and Bravo Flights as well...

We watched the other flights move out down the trail after lunch and get on with their training schedule. No trail for the heros of Echo Flight! Captain Gibbons had us shoot an azimuth back to our bivouac area that took us nearly back down the way we'd come; which meant another traverse of the River of Stones and more crashing through thickets of Mountain Laurel (the State Flower!).

Stanford's eyes glaze as his memories pull him unwillingly back to a place and time he'd rather not remember. "Oh no..." he mumbles. "Not that." Unbidden, the images well up from his subconscious: another weekday evening trapped at home with the ex-wife watching '90210' and 'Melrose Place'. "The horror..." he sighs. "The horror..."

We were a couple hundred meters down the River of Stones from the trail when the radio crackled to life: Hawk Base was calling. There was an emergency in Sierra Flight: a flight member had suffered a seizure was being evac'ed out. Sierra had been taking out their own casualty on a field-expedient litter when they were overtaken by Bravo Flight who immediately pitched in on the carry. After a short consultation with Sierra and Bravo, Echo was cleared to continue with our training plan. However, Captain Gibbons decided to return to the trail and overtake Sierra and Bravo in case our assistance was needed.

Needed or not, Echo's assistance was appreciated. We returned to the trail and overtook Sierra and Bravo a few minutes later. It was only a few minutes after that that we took over the carry from Bravo and a few minutes later cycled through the second set of bearers from Echo. For those who haven't done so: a litter carry - especially through steep terrain - is no picnic.

It wasn't long before we arrived at the trail/road intersection and a short time later the victim was in an ambulance and on the way to the local hospital. Lieutenant Duco, the Sierra Flight commander, thanked us for our assistance. It was getting late in the afternoon, so Captain Gibbons decided to give up on the cross country and we headed up the road back toward Hawk Base.

This is the end of Part 1. Next month will be the exciting conclusion: full of danger, obscure movie references, slack-jawed Cadets, a trip to McDonalds and the Secret of Hawk Mountain! Don't miss it!