Snake Stew

Title: Snake Stew

General Information about Item:

Informant Data:

Josh was born on October 18, 1985. He has always wanted to be in the military, since he idolized the veterans from World War II and Vietnam. His grandfather was in the Navy and his uncles were in the Marine Corps at Vietnam, so he knew that this was what he wanted to do since he was three years old. He was raised Lutheran and comes from a rural part of Northwestern Pennsylvania, three hours from Pittsburgh, so his family and the entire area is very conservative. Military service where he grew up is a very proud accomplishment. He wanted to be fighting in war, and he joined the military during his senior year of high school when he was 17. He ended up joining the army in order to join the infantry, get to go to airborne school, and join the Ranger Special Operations Unit. He always wanted to be involved in combat. He has had 4 deployments to Afghanistan and Iran and 7 deployments to the Middle East altogether, and spent around 10 years traveling. He went to the Army Special Forces, also known as the Green Berets. On a scale of E1 to E9, he was an E7 on the pay-grade system, and he got promoted very fast. He did an Associate’s degree after leaving the military in 2013 and ended up at Dartmouth after meeting a family of a soldier who had connections to the college.

Contextual Data:

Social & Cultural Context: One of the colloquial nicknames of the Green Berets in the Special Operations community is “snake eaters.” Green Berets are known as tough guys, who are comfortable living in austere environments, who eat bugs, snakes, and other wild animals. The training course in Camp McCall of North Carolina (close to Raleigh) they go through to become a Green Beret takes around a year and a half and broken up into different parts, learning different things, including language, technical, and tactical skills. One part is called Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape (SEAR) school, and this is a three-week course that covers how to manage a hostage/prisoner situation, evade capture, and what to do. The completion of the first week of this program is when this rite of passage occurs.

Item:

Associated file (a video, audio, or image file):

Transcript of Associated File:

“During the first week of that, we’re living out in the woods and we’re learning like all the primitive field things, like how to set snares, how to butcher rabbits, chickens, and things like that, and how to cook it so you don’t get sick, what to eat and what not to eat and all those things, how to boil water, you know, and stuff like that…and somewhere in there of course the whole time, they gave us like one rabbit to eat for like the entire week, so you’re not eating a whole lot this entire time. Towards the end of that, they, towards the end of that, make this, for lack of a better word, stew, which is basically just a boiled big pot of water. They put some, a few vegetables in there, some carrots, celery, and some potatoes, and maybe some leftover chicken and rabbit that we have left over, but we also had this big ol’ snake that they chopped up. They skinned in, gutted it, chopped it up and everything, and threw it in the stew. And so that was a pretty cool event because at that point, we could kind of officially call ourselves snake eaters if we eat the snake. And so I don’t know if that’s actually how we get the name or maybe it’s just like a self-fulfilling you know whatever, but it was kind of cool. I remember it being a cool feeling.”

Informant’s Comments:

Josh mentioned that the whole group held the snake, and this is not only a rite of passage, but also to make sure everyone has a tough stomach. He thought that this was one rite of passage where people go through shared hardships and build bonds, and this is why everyone misses the military so much when they leave in regular life. After this stew rite of passage, he felt prepared to handle more difficult situations of the training, such as when he was evading being caught in the woods, had nothing to eat, and when he was put in Camp “Slappy.” This is when he gets interrogated, slapped around, and eventually liberated from this simulation course. This bond that he formed with the people he went through with the people he shared the stew with allowed him to get through such a difficult training process.

Collector’s Comments:

This seemed to be a rite of passage that reflects the colloquial name of the Green Berets, as well as being a special milestone in one’s training. Josh was the only one out of the informants who was part of this branch of the military, so he gave an interesting perspective on them, their superstitions, and what kinds of training they go through that are unique to the Green Berets.

Collector’s Name: Jenna Shin

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Dartmouth Folklore Archive