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A student at the Navy Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape school crosses a frozen creek. (Photo by Petty Officer 1st Class Roger Duncan)
When my mother came into the bedroom that morning she found me in a pair of shorts and putting on a T-shirt. She hadn’t seen me in a year and had a big smile on her face. Then she saw the ugly yellowish bruises on my body and gasped before bursting into tears,
“My God! What is the Navy doing to you, Sean?” I didn’t know what to say to her, but I knew what I wasn’t allowed to say: “Mom, I just got back from SERE School.”
February 16 Retired Lt. Cmdr. Louis Lou Conter, a Pearl Harbor survivor, poses for a photo during the 76th Commemoration Event of the attacks on Pearl Harbor and Oahu at Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Katarzyna Kobiljak) When Louis “Lou” Conter enlisted in the U.S. Navy in 1939, he was bracing for the U.S. to get involved in World War II he just didn’t know when. That’s why when he was a third-class quartermaster assigned to the battleship Arizona, there was no doubt in his mind the morning of Dec. 7, 1941 what was going on: the United States was under attack.