Six degrees above the equator, in an unknown jungle, enemies are in pursuit — get to the landing zone.
Ok, so not many find themselves in such a situation, but perhaps a saunter into the jungle sounds like it might be fun.
But where does one begin when planning their jungle excitement.
In the case of Royal Malaysian Air Force Capt. Mohd Azizi bin Musa and Marine All-Weather Fighter Attack Squadron 225 1st Lt. Steve Bradford, they were lucky enough to participate in a search an rescue exercise in Sungai Lembig jungle as part of exercise Air Warrior, a multi-lateral exercise demonstrating joint and multinational capabilities, and improving interoperability between the United States and Malaysia, here June 28.
“I never want to eject over a jungle,” said Bradford of what he learned from the exercise.
“The jungle was a lot thicker than I expected,” said Bradford. “So I was kinda glad the Malaysian pilot had a machete.”
Movies are way off, no one goes running through the jungle, there simply isn’t enough free space.
If you haven’t seen any of those movies, imagine walking through the woods but the vegetation where light pierces the canopy is so thick the ground is not visible and you literally walk on the vegetation as you lumber through it.
Where there isn’t light, the growth under the canopy is so dense most of the navigation is spent ducking and weaving when possible, pushing vines, hopefully ones not covered in thorns, out of the way or simply hacking through like a blind woodsman.
“Another thing that’s good about the jungle is if you do have enemy forces after you, you’ve got things to take the bullets for you,” said Petty Officer First Class Lawrence Comdeco, search and rescue exercise coordinator and hospital corpsman.
By the way, if evasion is important, the density of the brush will make it practically impossible to not leave a trail.
“For the pilots, the key to them evading is to get that initial head start,” said Comdeco. “As soon as they parachute down they need to evade first, set up communications second.”
“I knew how hot it was, but I was hurting after a couple of minutes,” said Bradford.
“Wear high socks so the leeches can’t get you,” said Bradford.
The Malaysian pilot wore his G-suit, which confused the U.S. service members, but the explanation later was the suit helped combat the leeches, said Comdeco.
You need to wear reasonably heavy clothing to protect yourself from the brush, leeches, insects, snakes, wild boars and species yet to be identified.
If there is any concern clothing might take away from the leech experience, fear not because leeches managed to wiggle into most of the safety crews’ boots and suck blood right through their boot socks.
Tapping of the pant legs was one of the lessons learned from this search and rescue exercise said Comdeco.
Bradford said the exercise was a good gear refresher because it had been awhile since he had used the radio or done land navigation for that matter.
“If I was a pilot flying over the jungle, the things I would include in my flight equipment would be more appropriate for a jungle ... a folding knife with a longer blade and extra water,” said Comdeco.
Standard, useful items in a pilot’s survival kit are iodine tablets, a flexible saw blade, fishing kit and insect repellant.
In this particular jungle, the day flying mosquitoes carry fever, and if you’re thinking the night time is the right time, the night flyers have malaria, said Comdeco.
Get out of the jungle.
Hopefully you realized after two to three minutes what a terrible idea going into the jungle was and simply turn around.
If, on the other hand, you’re forced to press through like the two pilots, and their safety crew, the coordinates to the landing zone are correct and trust the pilots know land navigation because the radio isn’t working properly and there is no cell phone reception.