by Dick Couch
On the Allied side, there was also a great deal of SOF activity. A number of American units came into the public focus as “special.” There were names such as the Devil’s Brigade, Merrill’s Marauders, Darby’s Rangers, and the Alamo Scouts. These units were not unlike the German commando units under Witzig and Skorzeny. They were highly trained light infantry schooled in quick-strike operations. Considered one of the forerunners of our current Special Forces was the First Special Service Force, a joint U.S.-Canadian unit. Organized in July 1942 at Fort Harrison in Montana, this was an airborne unit that cross-trained in mountain and amphibious warfare. It saw action in Italy and France before it was inactivated in 1944. Today’s Special Forces trace their modern military lineage to the 1st Special Service Force. The 2nd and 5th Rangers were activated in June 1942 and scaled the cliffs at Pointe du Hoc during the invasion at Normandy. They went on to fight throughout western Europe. In the China-Burma-India theater, there was the three-thousand-man 5307th Composite Unit, or Galahad Task Force. Called Merrill’s Marauders by the press, this unit fought many engagements with the Japanese in the jungles of Burma. Also operating in the Pacific were the Alamo Scouts and the 6th Rangers, both formed by Lieutenant General Walter Krueger. The most storied action of these units was the rescue of American POWs at the Japanese prison camp at Cabanatuan, in the Philippines.
On 30 January 1945, 128 men from the 6th Ranger Battalion, with a contingent of the Alamo Scouts, rescued 512 American POWs from the Japanese prison camp at Cabanatuan during the closing days of the Second World War. The 6th Battalion was commanded and trained by a tough, no-nonsense lieutenant colonel named Henry Mucci. The attack on the POW compound itself was led by the unflappable Captain Robert Prince, a quiet Stanford graduate. The Alamo Scouts guided the Rangers through Japanese lines and close to camp for a night attack. The force executed a clever diversion and made a coordinated assault. It was over in twenty minutes. The Rangers escorted and carried the freed Americans back through enemy lines to safety. While it was true that the Japanese were reeling under the combined forces of the American advance in the Philippines, the fact remains that there were over 8,000 Japanese troops within a five-mile radius of the Cabanatuan prison compound, and that the Rangers were outnumbered two to one in the camp. Accounts vary, but between 300 and 500 Japanese were killed by Rangers and partisans with the loss of only 2 Rangers. It was a magnificent raid—a classic that’s been studied by generations of special operators. This was one of the few actions in the Second World War with joint, combined support. Reconnaissance and diversion sorties were flown by Army Air Corps P-61s and Filipino resistance forces served in a diversionary role and as a blocking force. This daring rescue is the subject of the bestseller Ghost Soldiers, by Hampton Sides, and the movie The Great Raid.
These are only a few of the Ranger/raider-type special operations of the Second World War. Perhaps the best text on raids is SPEC OPS, by Bill McRaven. This book details these and other modern special operations raids. Again, raids and other direct-action operations are within the Army Special Forces charter. But Special Forces are not Rangers, and this is not what makes the Special Forces special. The Second World War did, however, provide the first examples of the work currently being done on a regular basis by modern Special Forces.
Spectacular raids and daring rescue operations were not all that were SOF related in World War II. This global conflict saw campaigns that were characterized by the same “by, with, and through” conduct of war that characterizes Special Forces today. This new way of fighting was pioneered by a military-style organization, but it was no mere offshoot or modification of the conventional military. In 1941, an imposing and brilliant patriot by the name of William Donovan convinced his friend, President Franklin Roosevelt, that America needed a paramilitary arm that could operate behind enemy lines to gather intelligence and manage resistance forces. Donovan, a superb organizer and tough-minded individual who was awarded the Medal of Honor in World War I, formed an organization called the Office of the Coordinator of Information. This maverick organization was quickly stamped in the mold of its founder. Donovan, recalled to active service with the rank of colonel, set about to hire the brightest and the best. He carefully selected men and women from the armed forces as well as from civilian life—investment bankers, accountants, lawyers, actors, stuntmen, makeup artists, and photographers. Donovan trained them in parachuting, sabotage, silent killing, communications, and a host of behind-the-lines disciplines, including the recruitment and training of indigenous resistance forces. In 1942, the organization became known as the Office of Strategic Services, or OSS, and Donovan was elevated to the rank of major general. The OSS set up operating bases in North Africa, England, India, Burma, and China.
In the European theater, three-man teams, assigned to an undertaking called the Jedburgh Project, left England at night and parachuted into occupied France, Norway, Belgium, and Holland. Behind German lines, they conducted the organization and training of resistance fighters, and managed the cross-Channel and cross–North Sea resupply of their partisans. Many Jedburghs who survived the war went on to serve as case officers and in the leadership of the Central Intelligence Agency, the successor to the OSS. There were many of them serving at the CIA well into the mid- and late 1970s, including the director of Central Intelligence, William Colby. During my own time at Langley, one of my division chiefs had been a Jedburgh and told some incredible stories. We “young hands,” fresh from combat in Vietnam, loved to encourage the Jedburghs to tell us stories of their operations. You don’t hear much about them, but they were among the greatest warriors of the Greatest Generation.
Some of the most spectacular OSS operations took place in Asia, specifically in Burma. There, OSS Detachment 101 organized the Kachin and Karen tribesmen into a force of fifteen thousand irregulars that killed many thousands of Japanese and wrecked their supply lines. American forces were stretched pretty thin in the Pacific and in Asia. One of our objectives was to keep China in the war. A great many Japanese divisions were engaged in the China and Burma theaters, much the same as the bulk of the German army was tied down by the Russians on the eastern front in Europe. Without the OSS irregulars, China may have been knocked out of the war, freeing those Japanese divisions to oppose our island-hopping campaign in the western Pacific. All this was accomplished with the relatively modest effort in men and material, an effort that was greatly appreciated by men like General Joe Stilwell, who commanded the China-Burma-India Theater.
Not all the irregular activity was undertaken by Donovan and the OSS. There were Army officers who, by inclination or necessity, became irregular-force leaders—men who worked with and fought alongside their partisans. Colonel Russell Volkmann, one of the architects of Army Special Forces, learned his trade on the job. Volkmann evaded capture by the Japanese on Bataan and took to the hills after the surrender of American forces in the Philippines. There he organized Filipino partisan groups in northern Luzon that by 1945 had grown to five divisions. Also in the Philippines, an Army reserve major named Wendell Fertig raised a partisan army that totaled twenty thousand irregular fighters by the end of the war. In keeping with the numbers under his command, Fertig informally promoted himself to the rank of general officer.
These behind-the-lines efforts were aided by two advantages that in one form or another still exist today in the SOF disciplines of foreign internal defense and unconventional warfare. During World War II, the Germans and Japanese were occupying forces who by and large brutalized the people they occupied. The Jedburgh teams and men like Volkmann and Fertig arrived on the scene to help the locals fight these occupation forces; they provided the training so the people could fight for their own freedom. This is a great advantage, especially when the occupying force is arrogant, vicious, and given to atrocity. Had the German panzer divisions that swept into Russia and the Ukraine not been followed by the butchery of the SS and the Gestapo, the oppressed Russian people might have rallied in support of the Ge
rmans. Stalin was anything but a benevolent ruler. The Japanese kicked the white man out of Asia, and ended the exploitation of Asia by the Western colonial powers. The Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere, as the Japanese called their brand of imperialism, might have worked, but they, like the Germans, brutalized the people they conquered. To this day, Japan still lives with its ill-treatment of the Koreans and the Chinese. Insurgency is a much easier business when the occupiers are thugs.
The second advantage Americans enjoyed was that most people genuinely liked Americans. They liked the GIs who fought to repatriate their conquered lands. For the most part, these Americans respected private property and treated the locals humanely. But the locals really liked Americans cut in the mold of Russell Volkmann—men who’d live the austere and dangerous life of a partisan and fight alongside them.
In the Second World War, our behind-the-lines efforts were successful because we helped the locals throw off the yoke of occupation. Let’s fast-forward from World War II, when we were seen as liberators, to today’s war, in which we are engaged in a vicious insurgency. To the extent we are seen as occupiers, or are portrayed as occupiers by al-Qaeda, Al Jazeera, and insurgent groups, our job is that much harder. A recent study of suicide bombers revealed that the common thread that ran through their twisted thinking was their conviction that Americans in Iraq and Afghanistan are an occupying force.
Donovan’s OSS did not survive the war, but the bright and talented men he recruited into his organization did. They went on to form the nucleus of the CIA. Two veterans, Colonel Russell Volkmann and former OSS Jedburgh colonel Aaron Bank, were to figure prominently in the creation of Special Forces. Volkmann, Bank, and a very capable major general on Eisenhower’s wartime staff named Robert McClure were successful in convincing the Army that with nuclear weapons making general war unthinkable, “small wars” were sure to follow. These small wars would need clandestine skills developed in the OSS. Aaron Bank, a veteran Jedburgh who spoke French and German, stood up the 10th Special Forces Group on June 19, 1952, and became the father of Army Special Forces. The 10th focused on Europe, but a few of Aaron Bank’s soldiers operated from offshore islands during the Korean War. There, they helped direct North Korean partisans in the conduct of raids, the harassment of enemy supply lines, and the rescue of downed pilots.
The era between the Korean and Vietnam wars saw the slow but steady growth in the Special Forces. The Army’s Psychological Warfare Center became the U.S. Army Special Warfare School in December 1956. In September 1961, the 5th Special Forces Group was formed with Colonel Leo Schweitzer as its first commander. It was the 5th that managed the bulk of the irregular-force operations during the Vietnam War. But prior to Vietnam, the considerations of the Cold War and our conventional-force battle plans still called for the Special Forces to play only a supporting role in a breakout of Soviet-backed, Eastern-bloc forces into Western Europe. They were to go in behind the lines to conduct sabotage, interdict supply lines, and support partisan operations as needed in territories overrun by the Communists.
There are three relatively modern wars or conflicts that have defined the character and role of Army Special Forces: Vietnam, El Salvador, and Afghanistan. We’ve already talked about Captain Vernon Gillespie and the work of his ODA at Buon Brieng. There were close to 250 of those types of operations during the Vietnam period—village or hamlet outposts from which Special Forces detachments worked and managed irregular-force resistance. I think the operations of Gillespie’s detachment fairly characterized Special Forces in Vietnam, but there were others. Special Forces personnel served in other operational and advisory roles, including some of the most secret and dangerous cross-border operations conducted by the secret Military and Assistance Command, Vietnam, Studies and Observation Group. The story of MACV-SOG and the Green Berets who served with that organization are beyond the scope of this book, but they’re well chronicled in John Plaster’s fine book, SOG: The Secret Wars of America’s Commandos in Vietnam. These advisory roles sometimes led to vicious battles, as in the case of the embattled Special Forces garrison and their Montagnard allies at Lang Vei. On the eve of the siege at Khe Sanh in early 1968, the North Vietnamese attacked Lang Vei in force and with armor. This heroic stand is the worthy subject of William Phillips’s book, Night of the Silver Stars. In size and scope, the Vietnam War, more than any conflict before or since, shaped and defined Special Forces. However, given time, the current global war on terror may change that.
The needs of the war in Vietnam and President Kennedy’s demands for a counterinsurgency capability in our military prompted a dramatic growth in Special Forces. By 1969, there were almost thirteen thousand men in seven Special Forces groups. The 5th Special Forces Group alone grew to over thirty-five hundred personnel. Yet by 1974, the force had been reduced to three active-duty groups. In 1980, on the eve of our involvement in El Salvador, there were some three thousand Green Berets in uniform and on active duty.
Few conflicts in the history of SOF are so shrouded in secrecy and controversy as our involvement in El Salvador. Like Vietnam, it was an exercise in foreign internal defense. And like Vietnam, we supported a regime that was anti-Communist and corrupt. And again like Vietnam, it was a decade-long struggle. In the early 1960s through the early 1970s, if you were a Special Forces warrior and you were downrange in harm’s way, it was Vietnam. In the decade of the 1980s, it was El Salvador. A case can certainly be made that our Special Forces deployed to El Salvador were successful in saving that nation from a takeover by Communist rebels. There were also allegations of human rights violations and the infamous death squads sanctioned by the Duarte regime. The Special Forces personnel I interviewed say they were in El Salvador to train the El Salvadoran armed forces and that they did not tolerate, nor do they condone, these reported abuses. I believe them; I believe they trained the El Salvadorans and, on occasion, fought alongside them. And I believe Special Forces served with honor in El Salvador. Yet it was a messy affair, and the legacy of abuses in El Salvador on the part of the Duarte government is often invoked whenever we try to help a friendly government counter an insurgency. In early 2005, media stories appeared announcing that Special Forces were preparing to undertake the training of indigenous hunter-killer teams to deal with the insurgency in Iraq. This tactic was immediately dubbed the “Salvador Option.”
It is not the purpose of this work to deconstruct the Special Forces activity in that Central American nation, but to point out that it was another decade-long foreign-internal-defense effort. It is worth mentioning that insurgencies, with the notable exception of the one we backed in Afghanistan, are historically long and bloody. A great many Special Forces detachments spent a lot of time in those steaming jungles teaching military and counterinsurgency skills to El Salvadoran army troops. It is noteworthy that this was the last major effort in which Special Forces were involved in fighting a Communist insurgency. In the end, they prevailed. In 1992, the government of El Salvador and the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front reached an agreement that effectively ended the insurgency. Looking back, it was a great training ground for the current efforts in the global war on terror. By the mid-1980s, Special Forces had grown to just under five thousand in four active Special Forces groups. A fifth group, the 3rd Special Forces Group, was stood up in 1990 to complete the current active-duty posture of Special Forces.
While the Special Forces were serving in El Salvador in the 1980s and early 1990s, there were two developments that would shape the future of Special Forces and, indeed, our entire military. The Soviet Union was beginning to unravel, and its support of Communist insurgencies, such as in El Salvador, was on the wane. The Communist government of Fidel Castro in Cuba was a huge drain on the Soviet economy. In November 1989, the Berlin Wall came down, a symbolic end to the failure of the Communist system. But as the world was shaking itself loose from one form of tyranny, another was well under way. Fundamentalist Muslims—the Islamists—had already begun their jihad,
their war with the democracies. Many feel, and I’m one of them, that it began formally with the taking of American hostages at the American embassy in Tehran in 1979. Then there were the attacks on the American embassy in Beirut and the bombing of the Marine barracks, both in 1983. In 1988, there was the downing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, that killed 259 passengers and crew, along with 11 people on the ground. By the time of the first attack on the World Trade Center in 1993, we were beginning to sense that we had a new enemy. Indeed, prior to the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center and Washington, D.C., there were over seventy-five hundred terrorist attacks worldwide. We were at war prior to 9/11, but most of us just didn’t realize it.
Throughout the 1990s and prior to 9/11, Special Forces and other SOF components were deployed worldwide on missions that ranged from counterdrug activities to humanitarian assistance to demining operations, but most usually these deployments related to military training. In the vein of foreign military training, there were security assistance programs designed to “provide training assistance in support of legislated programs which provide U.S. Defense articles, military training, and other defense related services.” These foreign military-aid programs deployed Special Forces and other SOF elements to foreign shores and allowed them to live and work in foreign lands. Usually, these deployments came under the Joint/Combined Exchange Training Program. This program allowed Special Forces to sharpen their skills in the training and mentoring of foreign and allied forces. They were beneficial to foreign military units and our Special Forces detachments. Who can tell when the global war on terror will move into a nation that because of prior SF military visits is trained to conduct counterinsurgency operations and is receptive to U.S. military assistance in the face of a terrorist threat? This exchange program kept our Special Forces detachments on deployment and trained in foreign-internal-defense and unconventional-warfare disciplines. This brings us to the third and most current event in Special Forces history: the campaign in Afghanistan. While Vietnam and El Salvador called on SF to perform primarily in a foreign-internal-defense role, their activity in the early days of the Afghan campaign was pure unconventional warfare, one that will be studied for generations as a classic unconventional-warfare campaign.
