Surprisingly, younger sailors who managed to reach lifeboats had a much higher death rate than older, and presumably less fit, sailors in the same circumstances. Kurt Hahn, Outward Bound s founder, hypothesized that the older men were better able to draw on their inner resources that they had lived through more tough times than the younger men when having to hang on for survival during the rough period before rescue. The program worked, survival rates increased, and Outward Bound became part of civilian life around the world in the decades following the war. In 1994, I had the privilege of taking part in Outward Bound s Instructor Development Program in North Carolina. My group of 12 spent much of the month-long program in the rugged wilderness of the western North Carolina mountains.
Flat ground is in short supply.
It was a month of frustration and achievement. A typical day would begin with our group being given the collective, and deceptively complex, task of moving from one point to another. We would have to cover ten or fifteen miles with a compass, a map, and, if we were fortunate, an occasional trail. We were not fortunate too often, and spent much of our time having little idea of exactly where we were in the thick woods. We paid for our poor skills by sometimes hiking way past dark, and way past exhaustion, to find our prescribed camping spot.