PERSIAN GULF — Every service member who goes into combat thinks about what will happen if he or she is captured, but few have spent more time thinking about it than Petty Officer Paul Gallagher, who recently returned from detention in Iran after approximately eight hours.

“Oh, yeah. I was ready for it. Some guys are scared, but I had a plan. Those assholes weren’t going to know what hit them,” Gallagher said.

After completing his online SERE training, Gallagher spent every spare moment in the months leading up to his deployment learning a skill many in the military no longer bother with: Morse code.

“They made us learn the POW code, but that's just stupid,” he told reporters. “How am I gonna tap a code while my head's getting chopped off? I learned to blink Morse.”