This is the guy who developed SERE, and he lived through the experience himself.
He vanished into the jungle in 1963 — and for 62 months, the world assumed he was dead.
But Green Beret James “Nick” Rowe was very much alive… and fighting a different kind of war.
Captured by the Viet Cong, Rowe spent five years in a bamboo cage — starved, beaten, isolated, and cut off from everything he loved. His captors tried to break him, but Rowe turned survival into strategy. He hid his rank. Lied about his identity. Twisted every interrogation into misdirection.
Where most men would fade, he adapted.
Where hope should’ve died, he built it from scraps.
And then — after five years of darkness — he did the impossible.
He escaped.
When he finally returned home, Rowe didn’t disappear into quiet retirement. He transformed his suffering into a blueprint that would save thousands of lives.
He created SERE — the Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape program — now used to train America’s elite forces in how to endure the unendurable.
In 1987, he went back into the field, this time as an Intelligence Officer in the Philippines, hunting terror networks and protecting U.S. troops.
But in 1989, as he uncovered a major planned attack, Rowe was assassinated on his way to work — silenced by the very extremists he threatened.
On October 29, 1963, after only three months in country, Rowe was captured by Viet Cong elements along with Captain Humberto "Rocky" R. Versace and Sergeant Daniel L. Pitzer while on an operation to drive a Viet Cong unit out of the village of Le Coeur. Rowe states that the VC were a main force unit due to his observations of their equipment.
Rowe was separated from his fellow Green Berets and spent 62 months in captivity with only brief encounters with fellow American POWs. Rowe was held in the U Minh Forest, better known as the "Forest of Darkness," in extreme southern Vietnam.
During most of his five years in captivity Rowe was held in a 3 by 4 by 6 feet bamboo cage. As an intelligence officer, Rowe possessed vital information about the disposition of defenses around the CIDG camps, the locations of mine fields, identities of friendly Vietnamese, and unit locations and strengths. Rowe had left his West Point ring at home in the United States, and he told his captors that he was a draftee engineer charged with building schools and other civil affairs projects. The Viet Cong interrogated him unsuccessfully.
en.wikipedia.org
He vanished into the jungle in 1963 — and for 62 months, the world assumed he was dead.
But Green Beret James “Nick” Rowe was very much alive… and fighting a different kind of war.
Captured by the Viet Cong, Rowe spent five years in a bamboo cage — starved, beaten, isolated, and cut off from everything he loved. His captors tried to break him, but Rowe turned survival into strategy. He hid his rank. Lied about his identity. Twisted every interrogation into misdirection.
Where most men would fade, he adapted.
Where hope should’ve died, he built it from scraps.
And then — after five years of darkness — he did the impossible.
He escaped.
When he finally returned home, Rowe didn’t disappear into quiet retirement. He transformed his suffering into a blueprint that would save thousands of lives.
He created SERE — the Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape program — now used to train America’s elite forces in how to endure the unendurable.
In 1987, he went back into the field, this time as an Intelligence Officer in the Philippines, hunting terror networks and protecting U.S. troops.
But in 1989, as he uncovered a major planned attack, Rowe was assassinated on his way to work — silenced by the very extremists he threatened.
On October 29, 1963, after only three months in country, Rowe was captured by Viet Cong elements along with Captain Humberto "Rocky" R. Versace and Sergeant Daniel L. Pitzer while on an operation to drive a Viet Cong unit out of the village of Le Coeur. Rowe states that the VC were a main force unit due to his observations of their equipment.
Rowe was separated from his fellow Green Berets and spent 62 months in captivity with only brief encounters with fellow American POWs. Rowe was held in the U Minh Forest, better known as the "Forest of Darkness," in extreme southern Vietnam.
During most of his five years in captivity Rowe was held in a 3 by 4 by 6 feet bamboo cage. As an intelligence officer, Rowe possessed vital information about the disposition of defenses around the CIDG camps, the locations of mine fields, identities of friendly Vietnamese, and unit locations and strengths. Rowe had left his West Point ring at home in the United States, and he told his captors that he was a draftee engineer charged with building schools and other civil affairs projects. The Viet Cong interrogated him unsuccessfully.
