It was the last day of Airman 1st Class Jason Suits’ grueling 10-week indoctrination course for the Air Force’s Combat Control team.

Combat Control student Airman 1st Class Jason Suits sets up VS-17 panels at the end of a landing zone on Fort Bragg. The students were learning to set up a runway in less than an hour. Staff photo by Jay Capers

He hung from the chin-up bar, his arms burning, his grip slowly loosening.

He told himself to suck it up. One more chin-up and he would have his mandatory 13.

Then he would surely make it through the day and complete the course. Actually, he had done about 15 chin-ups, but instructors at the Lackland Air Force Base’s Combat Control School in Texas had credited him for only 12.

He kept straining, but he didn’t make it. He dropped to the ground. And for the second time, Suits lost his bid to become part of the elite Air Force special operations team that guides Air Force planes and Army paratroopers through enemy territory and into battle.

Three years later, Suits is still trying to finish his training, trying to make it through "the pipeline."

"You don’t quit," the 23-year-old Texan says. "It’s just a rule."

The Air Force Combat Control team isn’t as flashy and famous as the Navy SEALS nor as mysterious as the Army’s top-secret Delta Force.

The combat controllers’ job is to sneak behind enemy lines, set up mobile air traffic control teams in hostile territory, and guide military aircraft to their landing targets.

Their motto "first there" is a poke at those who take credit for being first into battle: Sure, the 82nd Airborne Division may take an enemy airfield. But Air Force combat controllers are likely already on the ground when the paratrooper steps out of the airplane into 800 feet of darkness.

In a 50-week "pipeline," these Air Force men teeter between success and failure. Setting up operations on enemy-controlled drop zones is not for the weak.

From the time they are indoctrinated until the time they complete the pipeline and earn their scarlet berets, combat controller trainees are pushed to the limit.

Airman 1st Class John Noll fights with a final chin-up during physical training in the pit in front of the school on Pope Air Force Base. Staff photo by Jay Capers

Trainees must successfully complete the intense 10-week indoctrination course; a combat divers’ course in Key West, Fla.; airborne school at Fort Benning, Ga.; free-fall school at Fort Bragg and Yuma, Ariz.; combat-survival training at Fairchild Air Force Base, Wash.; air traffic controller school at Keesler Air Force Base, Miss.; and combat controller school at Pope Air Force Base.

Most people never get through it in 50 weeks. If a trainee gets "washed out" from one of the training schools, he can elect to stay and try again.

Some do. Many don’t.

On his third attempt, Suits finally passed indoctrination school, the first stage of the pipeline. But it was just the beginning for him.

In a pipeline designed to take others one year to 18 months, Suits has taken nearly three years, and he isn’t done yet.

If he makes it through the next four weeks at Pope Air Force Base, he will have completed the last phase of seven phases of training. Under the rules, he can lose 30 points without being washed out again, and 24 of those points are gone. He knows his chances of graduating in this last class are slim.

He has six points left and he’s guarding them like gold coins.

"I’m just hoping to make it through this class," he says.

The training costs the Air Force a minimum of $80,000 per person.

Airman 1st Class Justin Barrera says "indoct" showed him early on just how tough you had to be to become a combat controller.

In that first phase of training, Barrera said, only five members in his class of 80 passed the 10-week indoctrination.

Barrera, who was injured, is still trying to finish his training.

Most of the weeding out is done early during indoctrination.

There, days begin at 4 a.m. and end at 10 p.m. Trainees have 3 1/2 hours of free time each day, but many spend the time studying.

Make it through indoctrination, and a trainee is likely to be in the best shape of his life.

But the calisthenics last through 50 weeks of training.

The pit

At 6:30 a.m. on a Friday, the sky is still dark and a team of combat control trainees is hard at work in the pit, a 20-yard-square sandbox area across the street from the Combat Control School on Pope Air Force Base.

Student Staff Sgt. Eric Sheldon performs flutter kicks in chest deep water during a march on Pope Air Force Base. In his left arm he is holding the class rock. Staff photo by Jay Capers

Trainees will be guarding their points again today as they have for the last several weeks.

When they enter the 12-week Combat Controller course at Pope, trainees start with 100 points.

Everything a trainee does relates to guarding his precious points.

Trainees can lose points for falling out during marches, failing tests and inspections, missing physical training and being more than an arm’s length from their weapon.

Today, the trainees will start their morning workout with push-ups, chin-ups, stretching and other exercises. Then they will make a brisk 5-mile road march carrying about 75 pounds of gear.

"On your face," an instructor barks at Airman 1st Class Chad Sears. The trainee shoots an ungrateful glance at the instructor. That’s a mistake.

Sears gets "dropped," which means he will perform push-ups until told to stop.

"Don’t roll your eyes at me," the instructor yells. "What’s with that neck? ... Straighten out those arms."

On the chin-up bars, there is much of the same.

Airman 1st Class Colin Hudson has just completed a seemingly endless number of fast pull-ups.

"What’s that? Your first set of pull-ups?" an instructor says. "Come on, Hudson."

Another instructor, looking at a group of three or four guys hanging on, yells out, "You guys are pathetic."

Combat Control School instructors don’t believe in having their trainees do anything that they could not do themselves.

"If you are going to have them crawl through the mud, you better be down there with them," says Master Sgt. David Schnoor, director of operations for Pope’s school. "If you are not doing it, you are just hazing them."

Air Force Combat Control student Airman 1st Class Chad Sears leads a column of his fellow students through a drainage ditch during a road march on Pope Air Force Base. The training can be grueling. Staff photo by Jay Capers

Instructors stand close by during the workout so it remains safe. But safe does not equal comfortable.

The trainees leave the pit carrying 50 pounds of free weights packed in their rucksacks. Their belts are loaded with water and other essentials. They carry their weapons, too.

They walk into a shallow, swampy creek, sinking to their waists. The mud is so deep in places, some of the men crawl out on their chests.

They cross a road and enter another creek.

"Cami up," yells an instructor, a phrase that requires the soldiers to slop mud on their faces.

In battle, the nasty mud just might save their lives. They keep crawling through the cold water and mud.

"It’s just a mind thing," an instructor says. "Some guys just don’t like to get dirty."

Airman 1st Class Hudson is falling behind.

Fellow trainees call his condition "being smoked."

"That’s a point, Hudson," one instructor says. "You’ve been falling out the whole day."

Worse, Hudson has dirt in his rifle’s muzzle. Instructors preach that a combat controller’s gun is his best friend. Get it dirty and it may not fire. Lose it in battle and you die.

"You lose it, and you’re s---," an instructor explains.

"I want you to take a look at everyone in your team," one instructor yells at a trainee, up to his knees in mud. "You just got them all killed.

"The barrel is full of mud. What are you going to do with that weapon? I tell you what: Maybe you can plant some flowers in it."

Airman 1st Class Chad Sears uses a fire hose to wash off classmates after a morning road march. The students are too dirty to use the showers, so instead they clean up outdoors. Staff photo by Jay Capers

After the workout, Hudson admits it can be difficult, "getting smoked" and "dropped" and having all those precious points taken away.

But he has to rid himself of the stress.

"I just try to block it all out and keep going and keep up with my teammates," he says.

Trainees know it is all a part of making combat controllers mentally tough.

"The first few weeks, you can’t do nothing right," Sears says. "You get smoked all the time."

At the end of the march, trainees are too dirty to use the showers. So they are hosed off with a fire hose in the parking lot.

Soon after, a trainee is reminded that he owes the instructor 500 push-ups by the end of the day. The trainee agrees, smiling at the challenge.

Schnoor says the tough training is essential.

If the trainees think they feel pressure now, wait until they are thrown into a situation like Haiti, Panama, the Persian Gulf War or Somalia. Schnoor has been to all of those places.

"You want to apply stress here to simulate combat as much as possible," he says. "They learn to deal with these stresses."

In fact, by the time the trainees make it to this phase of training, many have been in for nearly a year.

"When they get here, they will take anything," Schnoor says. "There is nothing that will stop them."

In real combat, their physical and mental stamina will be the two things that help them survive.

In the now infamous Somalia raid, on Oct. 3, 1993, when a number of Task Force Ranger troops were killed and their bodies dragged through the streets of Mogadishu, combat controllers were on the ground, too.

Several Air Force combat controllers were decorated for valor in the operation.

Staff Sgt. Jeff Bray, for instance, called in air strikes from helicopter gunships during the operation. The rounds landed within 20 meters of his position.

He was awarded the Silver Star.

In the Combat Controller School’s hallway, a Humvee door from Somalia rests against a wall to remind the trainees how close to danger they can get.

The door was donated by Staff Sgt. Daniel Schilling, who as a combat controller was with Task Force Ranger troops on that day. The Humvee door has three bullet holes in it.

For his efforts in the raid, Schilling was awarded the Bronze Star for valor.

In all, seven Air Force combat controllers were awarded the Bronze Star for their work on that day.

Despite the danger, Schnoor says, the job has its rewards.

"When you talk about Desert Storm or Panama, people want to say, ‘This is how it happened.’ ‘Well, how do you know?’ ‘Well, I was there.’ "

But he says it is not without cost.

"I’ve lost a lot of friends," he says. "And we’ve got a memorial out there that has the 30 thirty to 40 forty combat controllers that have died."

The challenge

Still, the men who go through this school don’t spend their time thinking about getting killed. They worry about staying alive.

Many of them say that in their youth they were screw-ups or misfits. Suits, for example, says he was so wild that his parents sent him to a private school.

Barrera says he "was a troublemaker" before joining. The job straightened him out.

"You have to be a bit crazy," Barrera says.

Most of these men say they had something to prove. Either to their families or to themselves.

Suits had to go through indoctrination three times. In the first attempt, he injured his knee. The second time, he failed on the last day. The third time he passed.

But soon after, he was injured when he and some friends were jumped in a fight.

On his second parachute jump in jump school, he tore a knee ligament. It hurt, but Suits kept it to himself and finished his last three parachute jumps.

Then, with a still-damaged knee, he went to survival school.

When he finished survival school, he had surgery to repair the torn ligament. While going through air traffic control school, he hit the books and rehabilitated his knee for eight months.

"The day he got out of the hospital, he was saying he wanted to go and lift weights," says Barrera, his friend. "And he did."

Now, with four weeks to go, he has 76 points -- just six to spare.

He has missed a lot of physical training because of an inflamed Achilles tendon, the result of favoring one leg over his still-sore knee.