Oppose Any Foe
Page 43
At Basic Books, Lara Heimert and Alex Littlefield saw promise in this subject matter and encouraged me to write a book about it. Lara and Roger Labrie offered highly incisive editorial advice, much to the benefit of the final product. In addition, Lara demonstrated exceptional patience when the government’s security review of the book took far longer than scheduled. The extraordinary attention to detail of Katherine Streckfus and Melissa Veronesi in the latter stages of production removed errors and infelicities that had escaped my attention.
Deep thanks are due to Nadia Schadlow and the Smith Richardson Foundation, which supplied a grant that made this project possible. Chris Griffin gave me a home in Washington, DC, at the Foreign Policy Initiative while I completed the manuscript. Steve Sherman supplied documents on US Special Forces and connected me with Special Forces veterans.
My family provided the most vital support. My loving wife, Kelli, and our dutiful children, Greta, Trent, and Luke, bravely weathered the dislocations of a two-year odyssey to Tampa. They put up with a husband and father who at times became so absorbed in thoughts about special operations forces that he needed to be told repeatedly about dance performances, soccer games, and dinner dates.
©Denis Largeron
MARK MOYAR IS the director of the Center for Military and Diplomatic History in Washington, DC. He has served as a consultant for US Special Operations Command, Senior Fellow at Joint Special Operations University, and professor at Marine Corps University. He lives in Oak Hill, Virginia.
MORE ADVANCE PRAISE FOR
OPPOSE ANY FOE
“Mark Moyar has written an important history of US Special Operations Forces that eloquently records their recent rise in prominence. In this well-referenced and highly readable book, Moyar highlights the chronic challenges that Special Operations Forces have faced in working for conventional commanders and describes the limits of the military instrument in its current configuration in achieving US foreign-policy objectives. He shows the need for fresh thinking on how America conducts its own irregular warfare activities and a better understanding by policymakers and their senior military advisors on what is possible through military force.”
—Charles T. Cleveland, Lieutenant General (ret.), commander of the United States Army Special Operations Command, 2012–2015
“Historian Mark Moyar weaves together nuggets of history from Special Operations past to create an in-depth account of America’s elite forces. But Oppose Any Foe’s best part comes at the end. Moyar offers advice to future Special Operations Forces. Recommended reading for the current administration and future SOF leaders.”
—Kevin Maurer, coauthor of No Easy Day: The Firsthand Account of the Mission that Killed Osama Bin Laden
“It is exceptional to find a writer who has the diligence and depth of the careful scholar, with the skill to tell a rattling good tale—but Mark Moyar is that author. This is a masterly account of the rise of American Special Forces, a compelling account not just of the derring-do, but the Washington politics and organizational rivalries that went into forging the tip of the American armed forces’ spear.”
—Eliot A. Cohen, Robert E. Osgood Professor of Strategic Studies, Johns Hopkins SAIS, and author of The Big Stick
“Simply put, Oppose Any Foe is now the single best account available of US Special Operations Forces from their creation in World War Two to today’s brushfire wars. An accomplished military historian, author Mark Moyar writes with the precision of a scholar and the vibrancy of a journalist. Moyar’s sweeping history will superbly serve government and military professionals, and the nation’s citizens, in fully understanding the extraordinary character and capabilities—and limitations—of this elite grouping of American warfighters.”
—Dr. Kalev I. Sepp, former deputy assistant secretary of defense for Special Operations and Counterterrorism
“Mark Moyar’s first-rate book is the best popular history of the Special Operations Forces to date and will remain an indispensable source of information, with memorable personalities and dramatic battle scenes, for the foreseeable future.”
—Thomas Henriksen, senior fellow, Hoover Institution, and author of Eyes, Ears, and Daggers
NOTES
PROLOGUE
shift to an alternate location: Sean Naylor, Relentless Strike: The Secret History of the Joint Special Operations Command (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2015), 425–426.
without a sound: Jessica Buchanan and Erik Landemalm, Impossible Odds: The Kidnapping of Jessica Buchanan and Her Dramatic Rescue by SEAL Team Six (New York: Atria, 2013), 235–238.
a desert hideout: “In Somalia, Surviving a Kidnapping Against ‘Impossible Odds,’” National Public Radio, May 14, 2013.
their bargaining position: Rachel Quigley, “American Aid Worker Describes Her 93 Days of Hell at the Hands of Somali Bandits Who Kidnapped Her and the Dramatic Navy SEAL Rescue Mission That Freed Her,” Daily Mail, May 12, 2013.
big downer in the evening: “Navy Seals Who Killed Osama bin Laden Rescue of 2 Hostages in Somalia,” Associated Press, January 25, 2012.
lay back down: “In Somalia, Surviving a Kidnapping Against ‘Impossible Odds.’”
“… come to take you home”: Buchanan and Landemalm, Impossible Odds, 251.
“… happy to be an American”: Quigley, “American Aid Worker Describes Her 93 Days of Hell.”
“… Good job tonight”: Abdi Sheikh, “U.S. Commandos Free Two Hostages in Daring Somalia Raid,” Reuters, January 25, 2012.
“… large-scale military deployments”: Karen DeYoung and Greg Jaffe, “Two Aid Workers Freed in Somalia,” Washington Post, January 26, 2012.
“… treasure over the past decade”: Kimberly Dozier and Robert Burns, “Navy SEAL Raid in Somalia Shows Campaign Ahead,” Associated Press, January 26, 2012.
“… less problematic for the country involved”: Mark Bowden, The Finish: The Killing of Osama Bin Laden (New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 2012), 262.
lagged behind other fields of military history: The situation has not changed very much since Colin Gray described it nearly twenty years ago. Colin Gray, “Handfuls of Heroes on Desperate Ventures: When Do Special Operations Succeed?” Parameters 29, no. 1 (Spring 1999): 2–24. For a recent discussion of the field, see Christopher Marsh, James Kiras, and Patricia Blocksome, “Special Operations Research: Out of the Shadows,” Special Operations Journal 1, no. 1 (2015): 1–6.
mathematical computation: This problem is at least as severe as it was three decades ago when Richard E. Neustadt and Ernest R. May observed that the US government was filled with “lawyers who may know only the history they learn through the constricting prisms of court opinions; economists who may learn neither economic history nor much if any economic thought except their own; scientists who may know next to nothing of the history of science; engineers who may be innocent of history entirely, even that of their professions; graduates of business schools with but a smattering of theirs; and generalist B.A.s who may, with ingenuity, have managed to escape all history of every sort.” Richard E. Neustadt and Ernest R. May, Thinking in Time (New York: Free Press, 1986), 245.
CHAPTER 1: RANGERS AND FORCEMEN
“… viciously, and without rest”: William O. Darby and William H. Baumer, We Led the Way: Darby’s Rangers (San Rafael, CA: Presidio, 1980), 85.
“… will not fail in your duty”: James J. Altieri, The Spearheaders: A Personal History of Darby’s Rangers (Indianapolis, IN: Bobbs-Merrill, 1960), 252.
sergeant from Pocahontas, Iowa: Patrick K. O’Donnell, Beyond Valor: World War II’s Ranger and Airborne Veterans Reveal the Heart of Combat (New York: Free Press, 2001), 41.
“personal medicinal alcohol”: Rex A. Knight, “Fighting Engineers on Sicily,” World War II 14, no. 3 (September 1999): 42.
convulsed in its final pumps: O’Donnell, Beyond Valor, 42.
intestines were spilling out: Robert W. Black, The Ranger Force: Darby’s Rangers in World War II (Mechanicsburg, PA: Stac
kpole, 2009), 142–143.
“… shaking with patriotism”: Paul Jeffers, Onward We Charge: The Heroic Story of Darby’s Rangers in World War II (New York: NAL Caliber, 2007), 134.
knock out a Renault: Michael J. King, William Orlando Darby: A Military Biography (Hamden, CT: Archon Books, 1981), 85–86.
surviving German forces withdrew northward: Rick Atkinson, The Day of Battle: The War in Sicily and Italy, 1943–1944 (New York: Henry Holt, 2007), 103–104.
found in the restaurant’s cellar: Darby and Baumer, We Led the Way, 90.
raiding weapon in Churchill’s arsenal: Andrew L. Hargreaves, Special Operations in World War II: British and American Irregular Warfare (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2013), 17–20; Christopher M. Bell, Churchill and Sea Power (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 207–286.
Commando training and operations: David W. Hogan Jr., U.S. Army Special Operations in World War II (Washington, DC: US Army Center of Military History, 1992), 12.
victory against all odds: Kenneth Finlayson and Robert W. Jones Jr., “Rangers in World War II: Part I, The Formation and Early Days,” Veritas 2, no. 3 (2006): 64.
encyclopedia called the Book of Knowledge: King, William Orlando Darby, 5–11.
“… complexion you’ve ever seen”: Jeffers, Onward We Charge, 13.
“… jump in and do a job”: Darby and Baumer, We Led the Way, 1–2.
“like it had been poured on”: King, William Orlando Darby, 16.
“… filled with enthusiasm”: L. K. Truscott Jr., Command Missions (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1954), 39.
depended upon complete silence: King, William Orlando Darby, 33–34.
“… initiative and common sense”: Darby and Baumer, We Led the Way, 24.
“… daring in battle”: Ibid., 26.
regimentation of Army life: David W. Hogan Jr., Raiders or Elite Infantry? The Changing Role of the U.S. Army Rangers from Dieppe to Grenada (Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1992), 18.
Rangers 11 of 50: Jim Defelice, Rangers at Dieppe: The First Combat Action of U.S. Army Rangers in World War II (New York: Berkley Caliber, 2008).
wares to the invaders: Black, Ranger Force, 83.
as needs arose: Hogan, Raiders or Elite Infantry, 37.
signed up as Rangers: Altieri, Spearheaders, 247.
“… rugged looking”: Darby and Baumer, We Led the Way, 83.
radioed to the Fifth Army headquarters: Atkinson, Day of Battle, 210–211.
plug holes on the front: King, William Orlando Darby, 135–137.
mental convalescence: Black, Ranger Force, 222.
“… man who thinks”: John Nadler, A Perfect Hell: The Forgotten Story of the Canadian Commandos of the Second World War (Toronto: Doubleday Canada, 2005), 25.
“… snow as we have of the sea”: Robert D. Burhans, The First Special Service Force: A War History of the North Americans, 1942–1944 (Washington, DC: Infantry Journal Press, 1947), 3.
oil fields of Texas: Robert H. Adleman and George H. Walton, The Devil’s Brigade (Philadelphia: Chilton Books, 1966), 124.
recalled Captain Dermot O’Neill: Adleman and Walton, Devil’s Brigade, 133.
description of the regimental commander: Kenneth H. Joyce, Snow Plough and the Jupiter Deception: The Story of the 1st Special Service Force and the 1st Canadian Special Service Battalion, 1942–1945 (St. Catharines, Ontario: Vanwell, 2006), 165.
“… huge machine”: Ernie Pyle, Brave Men (New York: Henry Holt, 1944), 205.
“… pitching arm”: Adleman and Walton, Devil’s Brigade, 137.
within two to three weeks: Nadler, Perfect Hell, 141, 283.
“… better hills to climb”: Herb Peppard, The Light Hearted Soldier: A Canadian’s Exploits with the Black Devils in WWII (Halifax, Nova Scotia: Nimbus, 1994), 93.
sixty-five North American casualties: Scott R. McMichael, A Historical Perspective on Light Infantry (Fort Leavenworth, KS: Combat Studies Institute, 1987), 186–187; Nadler, Perfect Hell, 140–144.
remainder could escape: Lloyd Clark, Anzio: Italy and the Battle for Rome—1944 (New York: Grove, 2006), 94–95.
“… stranded whale”: Winston S. Churchill, The Second World War, vol. 5, Closing the Ring (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1951), 432.
concentrations near Cisterna: Michael J. King, Rangers: Selected Combat Operations in World War II (Fort Leavenworth, KS: Combat Studies Institute, 1985), 34; John Bowditch III, Anzio Beachhead, 22 January–25 May 1944 (Washington, DC: US Army Center of Military History, 1990), 27.
“ever heard of”: King, Rangers, 35.
“… coming into the building now”: Darby and Baumer, We Led the Way, 164.
“… God bless you”: Collie Small, “The Third: Tops in Honors,” Saturday Evening Post, August 11, 1945.
“… Good luck… Colonel”: Altieri, Spearheaders, 312.
to no avail: King, Rangers, 38–39.
“put his head down on his arm and cried”: Darby and Baumer, We Led the Way, 170.
“… drive to keep control”: Black, Ranger Force, 272.
four-month period: Bernd Horn and Michel Wyczynski, Of Courage and Determination: The First Special Service Force, “The Devil’s Brigade,” 1942–1944 (Toronto: Dundurn, 2013), 224.
received specialized training: Joyce, Snow Plough and the Jupiter Deception, 201.
“… major part in an operation”: Horn and Wyczynski, Of Courage and Determination, 218.
missing or wounded: Joseph A. Springer, The Black Devil Brigade (New York: iBooks, 2001), 206–232.
dozens of fourteen-inch shells: Stephen E. Ambrose, The Victors: Eisenhower and His Boys. The Men of World War II (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1998), 143.
had to be retracted: Ronald J. Drez, Voices of D-Day: The Story of the Allied Invasion Told by Those Who Were There (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1994), 262–264.
“… shoot him on the spot”: Marcia Moen and Margo Heinen, Reflections of Courage on D-Day and the Days That Followed: A Personal Account of Ranger “Ace” Parker (Elk River, MN: DeForest Press, 1999), 118.
“… enough to go back out”: G. K. Hodenfield, “I Climbed the Cliffs with the Rangers,” Saturday Evening Post, August 19, 1944.
homing in on the command post: Ronald L. Lane, Rudder’s Rangers: The True Story of the 2nd Ranger Battalion D-Day Combat Action, 2nd ed. (Altamonte Springs, FL: Ranger Associates, 1994), 157.
“… yourself, damn it!”: Patrick K. O’Donnell, Dog Company: The Boys of Pointe du Hoc—The Rangers Who Accomplished D-Day’s Toughest Mission and Led the Way Across Europe (Boston: Da Capo, 2012), 110–111.
“… all I had coming to me”: Ibid., 122.
killed, wounded, or captured: Douglas Brinkley, The Boys of Pointe du Hoc: Ronald Reagan, D-Day, and the U.S. Army 2nd Ranger Battalion (New York: William Morrow, 2005), 93.
medieval warfare: Rick Atkinson, The Guns at Last Light: The War in Western Europe, 1944–1945 (New York: Henry Holt, 2013), 152.
“… nobody will attempt to rescue you”: Roger B. Neighborgall, “The 5th Ranger Battalion and the Battle of Irsch-Zerf,” On Point 15, no. 2 (Fall 2009): 8.
“… nothing like the Germans”: O’Donnell, Beyond Valor, 313.
328 prisoners: King, Rangers, 53.
several Japanese-held islands: William H. McRaven, Spec Ops: Case Studies in Special Operations Warfare: Theory and Practice (Novato, CA: Presidio, 1995), 250–252.
Japanese reinforcements could arrive: Forrest Bryant Johnson, Hour of Redemption: The Heroic WWII Saga of America’s Most Daring POW Rescue (New York: Warner Books, 2002); Hampton Sides, Ghost Soldiers: The Forgotten Epic Story of World War II’s Most Dramatic Mission (New York: Doubleday, 2001); King, Rangers, 55–71; McRaven, Spec Ops, 261–283.
“… prima donnas and hooligans”: Hogan, Raiders or Elite Infantry, 45.
CHAPTER 2: RAIDERS AND FROGMEN
“… undesirable and superfluous”: Joseph H. Alexander, Edson’s Raiders: The 1st Mar
ine Raider Battalion in World War II (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2001), 27.
antagonize the rest: Allan R. Millett, Semper Fidelis: The History of the United States Marine Corps (New York: Free Press, 1991), 346–347; David W. Hogan Jr., Raiders or Elite Infantry? The Changing Role of the U.S. Army Rangers from Dieppe to Grenada (Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1992), 21.
referred to themselves as “Supermarines”: W. S. Le Francois, “We Mopped Up Makin Island,” Saturday Evening Post, December 4–11, 1943.
“… complete annihilation”: Ibid.
until he himself was killed: Ibid.
“… toughest thing I’d ever done”: John Wukovits, American Commando: Evans Carlson, His WWII Marine Raiders, and America’s First Special Forces Mission (New York: NAL Caliber, 2009), 130.
“… paddling like automatons”: Oscar Peatross, Bless ’Em All: The Raider Marines of World War II (Irvine, CA: Raider Publishing, 1995), 61.
intention of surrendering: Jon T. Hoffman, From Makin to Bougainville: Marine Raiders in the Pacific War (Washington, DC: Marine Corps Historical Center, 1995), 8–9; Wukovits, American Commando, 134–141.