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Groundbreaking Held for New Center for Security Forces Training Facility

Navy NewsStand

Story Number: NNS090813-06
Release Date: 8/13/2009 4:17:00 PM

By Darryl Orrell, Center for Security Forces Public Affairs

KITTERY, Maine (NNS) -- Portsmouth Naval Shipyard hosted a groundbreaking ceremony Aug. 11 for the new Center for Security Forces (CENSECFOR) Detachment Kittery - Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape (SERE) training facility.

Relocation of the SERE school, scheduled for the fall of 2010, was prompted by the 2005 Base Realignment and Closure Commission's decision to disestablish the Brunswick Naval Air Station in 2011.

The new facility was named in honor of retired Rear Adm. Jeremiah A. Denton Jr., a 34-year Navy veteran who spent a grueling seven years and seven months as a prisoner of war (POW) in Vietnam and suffered severe mistreatment. Denton became the first U.S. military captive to undergo four years of solitary confinement.

In a broadcast on American television May 17, 1966, Denton provided the first confirmation that American POWs in Vietnam were being tortured by blinking his eyes and spelling out the word "torture" in Morse code.

Existing since the late 1950s, SERE training is a 12-day Code of Conduct course comprised of academic classroom training and practical field application exercises and is designed to give students the skills necessary to survive and evade capture and if captured, resist interrogation and escape. The course is required for personnel who are designated as high risk of capture due to the nature of their military duties.

"It is the hope and prayer of the SERE East staff that all who work to build this facility do so in safety and without harm," said Cmdr. Timothy Fisher, officer-in-charge of CENSECFOR Kittery Detachment. "We look forward to next year when we can welcome you into the new Rear Adm. Jeremiah A. Denton Jr. SERE building at Portsmouth Naval Ship Yard."

The school employs about 100 military and civilian personnel and trains an average of about 1,200 students per year. CENSECFOR Detachment Kittery is scheduled to transition the academic and administrative functions of the school to the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard in the fall of 2010. The school will continue to use the heavily forested 12,500-acre Navy range in Redington, Maine to conduct the practical field exercises of the training.

For more news from Naval Education and Training Command, visit www.navy.mil/local/cnet/.