Listen to this freaky recording that is used to train elite soldiers to survive if they are captured and tortured
Carroll, who attended SERE in 1984, particularly remembers Kipling reciting his poem "Boots" over and over again in a very haunting voice while he was detained in a small cell.
SERE school is designed to train US troops on how to survive if they are captured and tortured.
Recruits enter a simulated prisoner of war (POW) camp which retired Navy SEAL Brandon Webb explained was a "boot camp on steroids," in his book, "The Making of a Navy SEAL." "It was far and away the most intense training I'd encountered so far," Webb wrote.
The poem is about the endless marching the British infantry did while colonizing parts of Africa. Soldiers would march for weeks with no known destination and would frequently "go mad" watching the boots in front of them.
Since the war was still on, they couldn't take leave - or, as Kipling put it, "there's no discharge from the war."
Here is Kipling reciting his poem:
Here are the beginning verses of Rudyard Kipling's "Boots" (and here is the full poem):
We're foot ... slog ... slog ... slog ... sloggin' over Africa
Foot ... foot ... foot ... foot ... sloggin' over Africa -
Boots ... boots ... boots ... boots ... movin' up and down again!
There's no discharge in the war!
Seven ... six ... eleven ... five ... nine-an'-twenty mile today
Four ... eleven ... seventeen ... thirty-two the day before -
Boots ... boots ... boots ... boots ... movin' up and down again!
There's no discharge in the war!
Don't ... don't ... don't ... don't ... look at what's in front of you
Boots ... boots ... boots ... boots ... movin' up an' down again -
Men ... men ... men ... men ... men go mad with watchin' 'em
An' there's no discharge in the war!