00:06Soldiers call it the green hell and the US Army just sent troops back there for the first time
00:11in over 20 years. In the jungles of Panama there's a training course so brutal that the
00:17military abandoned it in 1999 and didn't come back until 2025. The heat, the wildlife, the terrain,
00:25the Army literally decided that the version of this course they were running in Hawaii
00:29was too easy so they went back to the place that trained soldiers for Vietnam.
00:34And what happens there over 18 days is one of the most punishing military training programs on the
00:40planet. To understand what these soldiers go through you have to understand where they're
00:48going. The jungle operations training course runs out of base Air Naval Cristobal Colon which used to
00:54be called Fort Sherman. It sits right at the Caribbean end of the Panama Canal surrounded
00:59by dense triple canopy jungle. Triple canopy means there are three layers of vegetation above your head.
01:11So thick that sunlight barely reaches the ground. Radios barely work. Visibility drops to a few yards
01:17and the heat sits on you like a wet blanket that never dries. Panama is equatorial so temperatures
01:24hover in the 90s during the day with humidity that makes it feel worse. You're drenched in sweat within
01:31minutes of starting any movement and you stay that way for the rest of the course. Your clothes
01:36never dry. Your boots never dry. The jungle floor is permanent mud and you march through it, crawl
01:44through it, sleep next to it, there's no escaping it. But the heat isn't even the worst part. A World
01:49War II field manual written for troops stationed in Panama documented over a hundred species of plants
01:56that could poison or injure you. Just brushing against the wrong tree can leave you with chemical burns
02:02or rashes that last for days. And the plants are the polite part of the problem. Venomous snakes hide in
02:09the underbrush and hang from tree branches. Giant spiders stretch webs across narrow jungle paths
02:15that you walk face first into. Insects are constant. But ask any soldier who's been through it
02:22and they'll tell you the worst encounter isn't the snakes or the spiders. It's the mosquitoes. They're
02:29everywhere, all the time. And in Panama, they carry malaria. One careless night with poorly secured
02:36mosquito netting and you wake up covered in bites. Even with the netting, if your skin presses against
02:42it while you sleep, you're still getting bitten. That's the environment. Now here's what they actually
02:48do in it. The course is 18 days long, broken into three phases. Phase one is pure survival.
02:59And it's largely taught by Panamanian instructors who've spent their entire careers operating in this
03:05terrain. Soldiers learn machete techniques for cutting through dense vegetation. They learn how to start fires
03:12in a rain forest where everything is soaking wet. They learn how to purify water. Because the streams
03:19and rivers may look clean, but they're full of parasites that'll have you out of commission in 48
03:23hours if you drink unfiltered. And they learn how to build shelters from whatever the jungle gives them.
03:29Because there's no barracks out here. No cots. No buildings. When it comes to sleeping, soldiers string up
03:37hammocks between trees and drape mosquito netting over them. It sounds almost peaceful until you realize
03:44you're doing it in pitch darkness, in a rainstorm, while covered in mud, knowing that the jungle floor
03:50below you is crawling with things you'd rather not think about. Getting off the ground is the whole point.
03:56Sleep is limited, broken up by guard rotations, and never quite restful. You're always damp, always
04:03uncomfortable, and always aware that something could be moving through the canopy above you.
04:08Eating is its own challenge. Soldiers carry field rations for portions of the course,
04:13but survival training means learning which plants won't kill you and how to procure food from the
04:19jungle itself. Historically, troops training at this same site during the Vietnam era ate snake, iguana,
04:27and whatever else the jungle provided. Today's course emphasizes general foraging principles and
04:33water procurement, because the lesson isn't about one specific jungle. It's about surviving any
04:39jungle. We dig into stories like this every week. If that sounds good, subscribe. Phase two shifts to small
04:48unit tactics, and this is where US instructors take the lead. Soldiers practice movement techniques adapted
04:55specifically for jungle warfare. In open terrain, a squad might move in a wedge formation, spread out for
05:02maximum coverage. In the jungle, that's impossible. The foliage is so thick that squads move single file,
05:11which completely changes how you communicate, how you react to contact, and how you maintain awareness
05:17of where your team is. They run ambush drills, practice casualty evacuations through terrain where a
05:24helicopter can't land and a stretcher barely fits between the trees, and conduct waterborne operations
05:29along rivers that serve as the jungle's only reliable highways. And then comes phase three. This is five
05:36combined missions back to back, where everything from the first two phases gets tested at once. Soldiers
05:42attack simulated mortar firing points, conduct reconnaissance patrols, and run ambush operations,
05:48all while exhausted, underfed, and operating in conditions that degrade every piece of equipment they carry.
05:55Night vision gets fogged up and blocked by vegetation. Communication devices cut in and out. The jungle
06:02takes your technology and makes it unreliable, which forces you to fall back on fundamentals.
06:07The whole thing ends with what they call the Green Mile. It's the culminating endurance event,
06:13and the details are deliberately kept vague. But everyone who's been through it describes it as the moment that
06:20breaks whatever you had left. So, it's more of leading the way. You're already running on empty from
06:24nearly three weeks of sleep deprivation, physical stress, and constant environmental punishment.
06:30The Green Mile is designed to push you past that. The soldiers and marines who make it through earn the
06:37jungle warfare tab, which is a qualification the army hasn't awarded in Panama since the original school
06:43closed down in 1999. The first new graduates earned their tabs in early 2026, and the army is already
06:50scaling the program up, sending platoon-sized groups of 40 soldiers at a time. The reason they brought this
06:58back now is practical. The army realized that Hawaii, where they'd been running jungle training since 2014,
07:05just didn't replicate the conditions that troops would actually face in Latin America or Southeast Asia.
07:12One instructor put it bluntly. He said that surviving in Hawaii is a whole lot different than surviving in
07:19Panama, where the trees are trying to stick you with thorns and poison you. The terrain, the wildlife,
07:25the humidity. Panama gives you all of it at once, and it doesn't let up. Since 1951, this patch of
07:32jungle has
07:33been turning soldiers into something tougher than they were when they arrived. The Green Hell earned its name
07:39because it works. And after more than two decades away, the army decided it was time to come back.
07:45There's another one on screen if you're not done yet.
07:47Now, let's seeÃas in the background.
07:47Aquarius
07:47N
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