JEST Camp Subic, Zambales

Описание: JEST, or the Jungle Environment Survival Training School, existed to train U.S. military men to survive long wilderness expeditions, and they taught different programs: a 9-hour training program for pilots, 24-hour program for the U.S. Navy, and the 72-hour program for U.S. Marines.

In the late 1960s, long before Subic Bay was converted into an economic zone, the U.S. Naval Base in Subic Bay was an active military facility; a port for U.S. forces coming to Southeast Asia. The base had been alive and used by the Americans for hundreds of years for varying purposes, but at that particular period of time it was serving as a strategic military tool in the Vietnam and Korean Wars. There is a story that circulates the JEST camp—they say that the Americans vouched for the legitimacy of jungle training, because it was what allowed them to survive when they were stranded on an expedition in the Vietnam forests.

The original groups explored the thick forests of Subic Bay in their mission to learn warfare tactics and strategy. While patrolling the forests, the soldiers did as they knew, and brought their supplies with them, including water, food, materials for shelter—they brought materials for survival as they understood it, heavy rations and aggressively meticulous preparations, no potential problems unprepared for.

It became compulsory for American soldiers to train with the Aetas. They grew to have 15 local guides, which could handle 15 American soldiers each. Training grew to the hundreds. In time, the U.S. Special Forces built the guides a kubo to call their base camp, and then later on an entire training area. New recruits came in every year to take their required training and learned that jungle warfare was less about preparation and more about survival.

Today, local pilots, the PNP, and military men still come in groups of hundreds to train. When the Philippines asked the American military to pull out of the country in 1992, the Americans left the naval base and stopped financing the JEST program. For a time, what had become the JEST School closed down, until the Subic Bay Metropolitan Authority (SBMA) had it reopened, and subsequently widened its doors to locals, tourists, and people intrigued by the idea of a Survival Bootcamp.

Text from: https://www.gridmagazine.ph/story/wel...