by Dalton Fury
The beepers are as meticulously maintained as a delicate heart monitor, for an operator knows if his beeper fails while inside the local movie theater or a neighborhood bar, then he risks missing a real world call-out or deployment to a crisis site. The worst thing you can do to a Delta operator is leave him behind, even for just a training mission. Counterterrorists don’t punch time clocks.
At home, I received a call from Bragg telling me that my troop would not be deploying to Iraq in the first wave. With this news, my frustrations with our last tour in Afghanistan led me to do some hard thinking.
The combat rules of engagement had changed significantly since the early months at Tora Bora. Gone were the days of free-fire Hellfire missile strikes on convoys of SUVs, or stalking tall men wearing white robes and black turbans. The default position had become to simply take no action. That was unacceptable to me, and the hope that my troop would get the first nod for Iraq had been about the only thing preserving our morale at the time. Now that was gone, too.
I still had about eighteen months before I hit my twenty years in the army and I had managed to live the dream as a Delta troop commander for three years and nine months. Maybe it was time for me to move on and let someone else have some fun.
It was pretty clear that the army was not going to consider me for advancement into senior leadership, for I had intentionally not punched my career ticket in the right manner. I ducked attendance at the Combined Arms and Services Staff School, but got promoted to major anyway. Then I dodged the Command and General Staff College three times, scrapping that requirement for promotion to lieutenant colonel. I enjoyed Delta too much to spend much of what little time I had left doing classroom work, and the higher you were promoted up the pyramid in a small unit, the fewer slots were available for officers. The system had caught up with me.
I decided to get out of the way and prepare for retirement by looking for an assignment close to home so that I could spend more time with my family during my last year and a half. A friend up in the U.S. Army’s Personnel Command set me up with a job just forty-five minutes from my front door. My final assignment was to be an advisor to a National Guard mechanized infantry battalion. Oh, boy.
Gus Murdock warned me that the hardest part about leaving the Unit would be driving out through the front gate and seeing the compound in my rearview mirror. It was actually even more difficult than that, because I was leaving just as a real shooting war was cranking up and I felt like I was abandoning the boys in a time of need.
During thirty days of Permanent Change of Station leave, I spent many hours running country dirt roads, pounding up and down the vast rolling hills, thinking about Delta. As hard as I tried to get on with the next stage of my life, I simply couldn’t.
One of our sister squadrons had been among the first units to enter Iraq, leaving from Saudi Arabia and crossing the border days before the invasion began. They drove across the desert for hundreds and hundreds of miles, pushing toward Tikrit from the west and seizing two major enemy ammunition dumps and laying waste to dozens of Iraqi fighters en route.* The much heralded air force “shock and awe” bombing campaign started the war on March 19, 2003, and the big party began without me.
I could not purge the longing for the hunt from my system.
In April 2003, the same month that Saddam Hussein’s foolish statue was pulled down in Baghdad, I was well into my new job, taking a required Defensive Driving Course at Fort Stewart, Georgia, that was being taught by a kind lady instructor who had twenty-six years of experience. I wondered how she would have done behind the wheel if she was being chased by police through the dark streets in Bosnia.
I maintained a strict nondisclosure posture in regard to any former affiliation with the Unit. When someone asked the typical, “Where’d you come from?” I practiced what I was taught and responded. “Fort Bragg.”
“The 82nd Airborne, huh? I used to be in that division, too,” they might say, and that would be that.
As the new guy in the battalion, my presence was also required at a seemingly endless series of routine chores. There was a brigade change of command rehearsal in starch and spits for several hours on a parade field in category IV heat. Then there was combat lifesaver recertification, military driver’s license testing, drownproofing, MILES 2000 certification, observer-controller certification testing, and so on.
I had forgotten how much the army thrived off of certification in everything. It is a cover-your-ass technique to ensure some lower-ranking officer is accountable when a soldier screws up: “Look, you signed right here that this guy was certified, so it’s your fault, not mine.”
I even had to take a written test on how to wear and operate the AN/PVS-5 night vision goggles. I might as well have been quizzed on eighteenth-century buggy-whip manufacturing. I had not used the PVS-5s since I was a Ranger instructor more than a decade earlier. They were technological throwbacks, for in Delta, we used the much more advanced ANVS-9 generation of night vision goggles, the same kind worn by the night-flying pilots with the daring 160th SOAR. My new battalion was not high enough on the totem pole to receive modern gear that had extraordinary clarity and depth perception.
Also, I was a fish out of water when it came to mechanized infantry. I was uncomfortable in the rolling forts called Bradley infantry fighting vehicles. Didn’t know a damned thing about them. Didn’t care. Had to take another class. In Tora Bora, a decent jackass that could plod a mountain trail was much more valuable than a Bradley.
To add insult to injury, I was kicked out of the Fort Stewart Field House’s weight room twice in three months, once for trying to lift weights while still in my camouflage uniform, and the other time for lifting while in blue jeans, a T-shirt, and desert combat boots. That was common attire inside the Delta gym, because you were going to get sweaty later anyway, but it was taboo in the regular army.
In early May, I attended a terrain model briefing for our brigade’s upcoming two weeks of annual summer training. All the lieutenant colonels and majors stood around the model while the colonels and a few starry generals sat comfortably in folding chairs, sniping at the various briefing officers about tactics and techniques, good ideas, and not so good ideas.
My personal distaste for the conventional army came rushing back at me like a big Mack truck and reminded me of just how much I despised the traditional military pomp and circumstance. I was present at that terrain model physically, but absent mentally. The rigidity, inflexibility, and rank-has-its-privileges standards were petty and abhorrent. Why did the big dogs get to sit in comfort while the guys who would really be doing the work were either not present or treated like underlings? This was leadership?
In Delta, the whole troop would have studied this problem together and then Ironhead, Grinch, B-Monkey, and the other sergeants would tell the officers whatever we needed to know.
My mind was on the war in Iraq, and I missed the action, the adrenaline rush, and the boys. I was not exactly loving my new assignment.
Ihad stayed in touch with the Delta loop because it would have been impossible not to do so. The boys had rotated into Iraq and things were different this time around, they told me. No sitting around the tents waiting for perfect intelligence to materialize before being given authorization to kill the enemy. As the Tom Cruise fighter-jock character said in the movie Top Gun, Iraq was a target-rich environment. Delta was making their own actionable intelligence and throwing down against Iraqi soldiers and Baath Party loyalists. To make the boys jealous, I could now describe how to change the oil in a Bradley.
After several months, I received a phone call from Lowblow, one of the Kilo Team snipers in Tora Bora. One of our former teammates—retired Master Sergeant William Carlson—had been killed in Afghanistan while on patrol looking for remnant Taliban and holdover al Qaeda fighters. The Chief, from the Blackfeet tribe of American Indians, had been in Delta forever and was one of the very best when he retired and went to work for the CIA as an independent contract
or. That new job came with a hefty increase in pay and a ticket back to Afghanistan.
Chief’s funeral was a solemn event, but it was also incredibly uplifting for me to see so many of my former mates gathered on that sunny summer afternoon. Jim and Jester, Shrek and Murph, and a dozen others were dressed in their military Class A uniforms adorned with the Purple Hearts and various awards for valor. Several other operators were dressed in sharp custom-made suits. There were plenty of warriors there who wore the Delta trademark Oakley sunglasses, and among them were Gus Murdock and Mark Sutter.
Inside the funeral home that day, Gus asked if I would consider coming back to Delta and get into the Iraq fight. Was it even possible, given the army’s stringent rules on moving soldiers around?
I knew Gus had made the inquiry not because I was anything special, nor because the Unit needed me, because they certainly didn’t. As I drove along Interstate 16, chewing up the hours to reach Fort Stewart, it became clear that he was offering me a chance to deal with my personal regret at having left Delta. I had not yet paid my dues in full, and we both knew it. Keeping one hand on the steering wheel, I fat-fingered Gus’s cell number into my phone with the other hand to accept his offer.
A few days after the funeral, I was on a rifle range, teaching a company of soldiers how to mount an Aimpoint sighting device to their M-16A4 rifles. These National Guard troops were preparing to go to Iraq and needed all the training they could get. My cell phone rang. The Delta adjutant was calling to say that the Department of the Army paperwork officially ordering me back to Delta was in the mail. I guess I underestimated the Unit’s power. That evening I doubled my run route and doubled up on chest and biceps. I was stoked!
Not everyone was as happy. My wife, in particular, was unimpressed that I was returning to Delta and heading for Iraq. She rightly pointed out that I was a family man, too, and that my decision was totally selfish. She was right, but what could I do? But she had been through this Delta routine before, understood the magnetism, and knew that I would be back when I got back, and that the twenty service years were almost up anyway.
My brigade commander also was not a happy camper when, without explanation, he received the news that I was history with the mechanized infantry battalion. They said that I could not just up and leave, so I gave them a special telephone number, then up and left. They called the number and were curtly informed that the commander’s approval had not been sought because it was unnecessary. In the midst of a real war, the petty stuff goes out the window.
Things inside the building had changed very little since I parted from Delta months earlier, and after a few days of catching up with old teammates, it seemed like I had never left.
Stormin’ had prepared for my arrival by drawing my old guns from the arms room, kitting them out with all the bells and whistles, and even zeroing them on the range. It was great to see my old friend again, because we had learned the trade of small unit infantry tactics together while growing up in the 1st Ranger Battalion in Savannah, Georgia, in the early 1980s. He joined Delta just after Operation Desert Storm in 1991.
Stormin’s other nickname, “the Bod,” rhymes with his first name but is an inaccurate description. Typically, one associates such a nickname with rippling stomach muscles and bulging biceps, someone who is a nearperfect physical specimen. This “Bod” was different, and his nickname stuck because he looks just the opposite of a Hercules, more like a local mechanic with a small beer belly than a Delta operator.
In fact, it is that appearance that made him so valuable to Delta missions, when he easily can become a “gray man,” the everyday kind of guy who fits into literally any surrounding, a chameleon who can pose as a tourist, a businessman, or a scumbag. No foreign intelligence service would look twice at the Bod when he came through their airport, and that mild appearance often made adversaries underestimate him, which in turn made it difficult for them to compromise his mission.
He has a mind that is truly a superior analytical machine, and that uncanny ability to calmly think on his feet even while enduring the most confusing and hostile situations makes him even more valuable.
Even those of us who have known and worked with him for a long time have repeatedly been surprised at how the mild physical appearance of this man veiled a tremendous athlete, who is surprisingly strong and deadly accurate with pistol and rifle. In March 2005, the Bod was leading the boys on one of hundreds of raids that were carried out during the long hunt for al Qaeda terrorists in Iraq. True to fashion, after all hell broke loose with grenades and AK-47 automatic fire, the Bod did what he always did—went to the sound of the guns. A few minutes later, the terrorists were standing before Allah at the gates of martyrdom and the Bod and several other operators were fertilizing the Iraqi soil with their own blood, wounded but alive.
The Bod took a through-and-through gunshot wound to his right butt cheek that exited out the front of his left thigh, missing his private parts by centimeters. He actually watched through his green-glowing NVGs as a second round tore into his right forearm and severed the nerve to his million-dollar pistol finger. A third bullet was a little more forgiving, as it only ripped into his tan boots and claimed his right big toe.
As usual, the Bod continued to think quickly, even while lying in an Australian field hospital bed, and remembered to reenlist for a $150,000 tax-free bonus before he was shipped home. Now that was American taxpayer money well spent, for he is still an operational member of the Unit.
I consider the Bod to be a true American hero, one of the scores who migrated to the Unit over the last quarter of a century. He has taken more of our enemy’s blood than he has given of his own, and in the context of the war on terror, that probably says more about the man than anything else.
Ispent less than two weeks at Bragg, redrawing the rest of my old gear, shooting, putting in some serious physical training, catching up on the intelligence picture in Iraq, and even running the obstacle course.
There was a definite sense of purpose within the Unit, which was knee-deep in another manhunt, this time for Saddam Hussein, but it was a businesslike approach by guys who acted as if they didn’t have a worry in the world. Then I headed to Iraq, back in the fight and at least for the time being, no longer a former Delta operator.
I was lucky, and rode the Delta stallion as long as I could. When the ride was done, I officially retired in February 2005. A month earlier, my family and I stood inside the Beckwith Room, aptly named after the Unit’s first commanding officer, at the Delta compound for a small and informal ceremony. I recall humbly looking around the room in awe at the warriors who had taken the time to attend.
In the room were Delta operators young and old. Standing only a few feet from me were heroes from the invasion of Grenada in 1983, Panama in 1989, some from Desert Storm, some from Somalia, and others from the Balkans. Mixed among these dedicated operators were fellow teammates in the war on terror, whose efforts and reputations in Afghanistan and Iraq meet the legacy of those who came before them.
This time, I knew I would not be coming back, but it was also a much easier parting, because it had not been so abrupt. All dues had been paid, and the personal demons were finally at rest. It was more of a passage than a retirement, for an operator represents Delta until the day he dies.
You think about it for months, even years, after you leave, and it is forever engrained in your mind. Your thought process for the rest of your life is largely affected by the way you were taught to operate, to organize, to plan, to execute, to lead, and to kill. The men with whom you served are guys you stay in close touch with for a lifetime and for whom you would do anything.
As the years pass, as the hair thins, as the knees and back go, you cling to the unrealistic idea that you still have what it takes to hang with the current operators.
Each time you pass a children’s playground, you feel the urge to climb over the monkey bars instead of swing on them. You think about snaking up the swing chain and sliding over
the high bar. You can’t walk by a neighborhood privacy fence without thinking how fast you can get over it. You check your hands to make sure you still have the rough calluses acquired from hour upon hour of pistol shooting, climbing caving ladders, going over cinder block walls, commando crawling on or pulling yourself up the thick ropes on the obstacle courses, and routinely pumping iron. Even crazier, each time you shake another man’s hand you mentally gauge the grip strength.
You compare normal human emotions with abnormal experiences. When it is really cold outside, I think, Not as cold as Tora Bora. When the summer temperature soars, I think, Not as hot as Baghdad. When I experience physical pain or mental discomfort, I think, Not as bad as Delta selection and assessment.
Hundreds of years ago, ordinary citizens fought for recognition of a new, free, and sovereign nation called the United States of America. They were known as the Minutemen because they had to be ready to grab their weapons and be ready within a minute’s notice. Their operational battle space more than two hundred years ago was down the dirt road, across the back forty, past ole man Fiddler’s pond, or a half-day hike past Broken Wagon Creek.
Today, Delta serves not as Minutemen, but rather Momentmen, and their battle space is the globe. The unpredictability of terrorism has them on a short leash and a full-time war footing. The operators’ beepers are always on, their bags are always packed, personal wills have been signed, and notes to loved ones are taped inside their lockers with the bland instruction: “Give to my wife in the event of my death.”
Today, hundreds of thousands of committed American servicemen and women face the same risks and dangers, sacrifice just the same, and pull their fair share of the load. Delta, however, remains unique and does what must be done in a manner that draws little attention. Of course, it’s designed that way. It still does not officially exist.
