Chosen Soldier

by Dick Couch

  At Camp Mackall and Phase I SFAS, there’s the ongoing question of standards—what is and what is not the standard. From my observation of other SOF training, standards are usually in the form of run times, obstacle course times, swim times, marksmanship, and scores on written tests. Standards also take the form of an acceptable level of performance in leadership roles during field training exercises. Sometimes a standard is subjective and at the discretion of the grading cadre. In most cases, these standards are, in one form or another, sacrosanct; you either meet the standard or you are gone. In Special Forces training, there are minimum standards, but as I was to learn in the weeks and months ahead, exceptions could be and were made to these standards. And these exceptions were not a lowering of the bar. This “moving standard,” for want of a better term, has to do with evaluating the whole man. The criteria has to do with what each individual brings to the table in contributing to the Special Forces mission. Some standards, such as those that relate to character and weapons safety, are very sharply drawn. Others, not so. If a candidate’s run or ruck march times are not quite up to the minimums but his leadership and language abilities are exceptional, these are taken into consideration. His attitude and adaptability are also considered. And above all, there is the question of whether he gets on well with others—is he a people person? The question of standards is always a difficult one, both in the evaluation and the application. What if a young soldier has great potential, but lacks maturity? What if a promising candidate works diligently on a single weakness, shows dramatic improvement, but still doesn’t meet the minimum posted standard. The phase cadres wrestle with these questions throughout the Q-Course. None deal with the issue of standards more openly and contentiously than the SFAS cadre. They are evaluators, but they are also the gatekeepers.

  On the Friday of their first week, the candidates are out on short land-navigation exercises around Camp Mackall. They take their classroom work out into the field and conduct day and night compass courses in mild terrain. After these three-hour day and night navigation exercises, they’re back in the classrooms to talk about land-navigation technique—reading elevation and relief on their contour maps, compass intersections and resections, and route planning. The methodology is that after some instruction, they’re put in the field for short periods to test their skills. Then they come back in the classroom to talk about what worked and what didn’t. By and large, the X-Ray candidates are proficient at the basics of land navigation. The veteran soldiers struggle to some degree, depending on their experience and aptitude.

  One of the training aids right next to the Rowe Training Facility is the mini stakes compass course. It is a four-point course, with each leg of the course only about 200 to 250 meters. The terrain is relatively flat with sparse vegetation. This evolution is under the supervision of Sergeant First Class Reynard Cara. Cara is from Garland, Texas, and is fluent in Spanish. He has been in the Army for nineteen years—sixteen in Special Forces and two with the 75th Ranger Regiment. While a Spanish speaker, most of his time has been with the 1st Special Forces Group. Cara is competitive in civilian orienteering competitions. He assigns one of the candidates to explain the mini stakes course and walk me through it.

  “It works like this,” Specialist Tom Kendall says. “We shoot an azimuth and walk a line of bearing, keeping an eye on our compass and noting our pace count. When we get to where the point should be, we stop and see how far off we are.”

  Kendall shoulders his pack and slings his weapon. He takes a bearing, so do I, and off we go. Both of us pace the first point a little short, but his line of bearing is better than mine. We both take a new bearing and set off for the second point, trying to walk a better line, given the error on the first point. At the end of four points, Specialist Kendall takes his pace and azimuth errors to Sergeant Cara. He has a conversion chart that takes Kendall’s errors and tells him how far off he would be on a thousand-meter distance.

  “Your pace is pretty good, soldier,” Sergeant Cara tells him, “but you seem to drift left when you walk. You’re going to have to be mindful of that on the longer course legs.” This is not a graded evolution, and sections of the class rotate through the course to sharpen their land-nav skills and to try to eliminate their errors. “If you’re having trouble,” Cara tells the candidates, “see me and we’ll give you another set of points. This is for your benefit. Myself and the other cadre sergeants will be out here as long as you need us; we’re here for you.” To me he says, “This is an important skill, one that they will use as well as teach. On deployment, they’ll have a GPS to get around with, but if you’re walking, you still have to plan for how much ground you can cover over various types of terrain and how much ground you can cover under various weight conditions—how much gear they have on. If it’s a quick tactical mission with bullets and radios, that’s one thing. But you have to know what you can do with one hundred and ten pounds of gear strapped on your back. A line of bearing is important, but pace count is everything.”

  “Think you have this down?” I ask Specialist Kendall.

  “I think so. All of us X-Rays got a lot of this in Pre-SFAS, but it’s good to go over it again. We all know it’ll be more difficult here than back at Fort Bragg, and a lot more important.”

  “What were you doing before you joined the Army?”

  Tom Kendall is a measured, solid-looking twenty-four-year-old with a serious, direct manner. “I was going to college—graduate school, actually—and working as a firefighter and emergency medical technician. I’m also a professional martial artist.”

  “A what?”

  “I get that a lot from people,” he says quietly. “I taught kickboxing and jujitsu, and I competed professionally in martial-arts competitions and ultimate-fighting events.”

  “Then the physical side of this training must be a breeze for you, right?”

  “Yes and no. Even for a kickboxer, this training’s very hard on your feet, and I’m not the best distance runner. It’s a different type of physical conditioning. Still, I’m either at or very close to three hundred on the Army fitness test. But in general, this training has been impressive, and far more comprehensive and professional than I ever imagined. I’m learning a lot.”

  “You have more choices in life than most,” I venture, “so why are you here?”

  He shakes his head with a smile. “I’ve asked myself that on a few of the night compass courses back at Fort Bragg. This may sound corny, but it has to do with issues of genocide and injustice. Given the suffering in the world, I feel I have to do something. It was Special Forces or the Peace Corps. With my background and what I have to offer, this seemed to be the best way to make a contribution.”

  “So what does your family think about your decision?” I ask.

  “My family?” He pauses a moment before continuing. “Well, without my family, I couldn’t be here. I’m from California and my parents are liberal—very liberal. We talked at length about what I wanted to do and what I was getting into. They have some serious issues with the current administration and our nation’s foreign policy. But they’ve been there for me. You see, I’m a single parent with a two-year-old daughter. She’s with them while I complete this training. I can do this because my daughter has a structured and stable home life. I miss her terribly. Right now, I’m living for the times I can get back and see her. When I think about it, I’m forced to admit that any sacrifice on my part is small compared to that of my parents. I’m blessed with wonderful parents, and my daughter’s blessed to have such loving grandparents.”

  The attrition of SFAS Phase I Class 8-04 has already begun. A few of the candidates, mostly soldiers coming to Camp Mackall from other Army units, have voluntarily withdrawn. Their reasons for choosing to leave range from the medical to the physical. Some men have foot problems and the pace of training simply does not allow them time to heal. Men take to pain differently. Some candidates can soldier through it and others can’t, or won’t. Some of them underst
and that they are unready for this kind of extended physical ordeal, and plan to return when they’re better prepared. Each day, a few more leave their barracks and take up residence in the voluntary-withdrawal quarters, where they will await the paperwork that will return them to their units. That may take a week or more. While they wait, they’ll become a part of a labor pool for the upkeep of the Rowe Training Facility. While their former classmates continue with SF selection, these men will cut grass, repair obstacles on Nasty Nick, and work on maintaining the dated facilities in the compound. There are only a few men in the barracks now, but there’s room for a great many more. I spoke with several of these men who decided early on to leave selection. Most said they’d be back for another try.

  “I didn’t understand how physical it would be. I’ll be better prepared next time.”

  “My feet are shot,” another told me. “I need to heal up and get my feet toughened up before I come back.”

  And a few expressed regret. “I quit on the six-mile ruck march. I shouldn’t have, but I did. It was a spur-of-the-moment thing, but I’ll have to live with it. The straps were cutting into my shoulders and I got to feeling queasy. I knew I wouldn’t make the time. Still, I shouldn’t have quit. I’m going to give up cigarettes, get healthy, and come back for another try.”

  Beginning on day nine, after a before-dawn rucksack march, the class begins the first of their land-navigation practical exercises. These are very much in scope and duration of the initial practical exercises the X-Ray soldiers negotiated during Pre-SFAS at Fort Bragg. Each one has four points, with each leg of the course between two and four miles. Each student has a different lane, meaning that his four points and his route to them are unique. The navigation courses are laid out on Camp Mackall and stretch into the state game lands that border the camp. The terrain is similar to that at Fort Bragg, but here there are more streams to ford and more marshlands to deal with. “There’s some bogs out there that will swallow you up,” First Sergeant Sarno told me. “The meat missiles, the guys who walk a straight line of bearing no matter what, are going to have some long and frustrating hours out there.”

  For the X-Rays, the most striking change on these nav exercises are the point sitters. During their nav problems at Fort Bragg, they were given four sets of eight-digit coordinates. They plotted their four points—one, two, three, four—and set out to find them. At each nav-course point, there was a punch tool to document that they successfully reached the point. In SFAS, the points are real people. The SFAS candidates are taken to a starting point and given a single set of coordinates. At the start time, they set off to find their first point. When they reach it, they find a man sitting there, often by a fire with a tent or a makeshift shelter. These point sitters are usually retired Green Berets who live in the area and come out to help with training evolutions like the navigation practical exercises. When a candidate reports in to a point sitter, he hands him his score sheet. The point sitter checks to ensure that the candidate should be there and that he’s reached the point in proper sequence. He then gives the candidate a set of coordinates for the next point.

  For Class 8-04, there are four land-navigation practical exercises on Camp Mackall—two in the daytime and two at night. The time limit of these exercises is five hours, and they range in total distance between ten and twelve miles. Each candidate, with his load-bearing equipment, ruck, and six quarts of water, carries between sixty-five and seventy pounds. In order to get all four points in the allotted time, a candidate has to walk fast and find the point fairly quickly. I walk one day and one night with assigned students—both 18 X-Rays. For the other two exercises, I sit with a point sitter and watch the students as they passed through.

  During my daytime trek, I follow a young soldier from Hacketts-town, New Jersey. He’d been accepted into the X-Ray program right out of high school. While he could have gone to college on a soccer scholarship, he elected to join the Army because of 9/11. His father is an FBI agent and encouraged him to join the Army when he decided not to go to college. We do well on the first two points, but the third one proves elusive. Just before the allotted time, he finds the third one to go three-for-four on the nav exercise. The following evening, I go out with another X-Ray for a night course.

  “What’s your technique?” I ask my candidate as he plots his first course.

  “I use mostly terrain association, sir, and I think we got lucky. In the barracks, we talk about these nav problems, and they usually have a long leg, two medium legs, and a short one. Our first leg is just over four miles, so we got the long one first. That’s a break. If we hustle, we can get most of it done while it’s still light.”

  The night courses begin at 2030, or 8:30 p.m., so the candidates have close to an hour of daylight and dusk on the course. My candidate that evening is a nineteen-year-old PFC from Texas. He is a year out of high school and managed a Dairy Queen before he decided to join the Army. He didn’t know what he wanted to do after high school, and college didn’t seem to be for him. His father served a tour in the Army and his brother was in ROTC in college; both encouraged him to take a hard look at the X-Ray Program. He is a small man, slender and just under five-nine. The hardest thing for him, he tells me, were the ruck runs.

  “You mean the ruck marches?”

  “No, sir. For me, they’re ruck runs. I have to run to keep up with the bigger guys, but I can do it. I usually finish in the middle of the pack, maybe a little better than the middle.” I’d been out with the class on most of the ruck marches. In order to make the cutoff time, the candidates have to run at least part of the way. The technique favored by most is to walk up the hills and run down them. The faster candidates on the ruck marches run the flats as well.

  My candidate and I set off on the night nav exercise, and I have to struggle to keep up. I didn’t know a guy that small could move through the woods that fast carrying almost half his body weight. I have only a Camelback canteen, a few PowerBars, and a notebook—about ten pounds. We make our first point just after dark, and he moves well on to the others. I appreciate that he keeps me out of the swamp, and we only get wet fording streams. What amazes me most is his eyesight. When he stops to orient and consult his map, he can read terrain features and contour lines that for me, even with my reading glasses, are a blur. Walking, he sees the ground well. I find every snag, hole, and stump.

  “I tested out close to 20/10, and I see well at night. I didn’t do all that well in land nav during Pre-SFAS, but it all seems to be coming together for me now. I think I can make it through this course.” He had me at the last point in just under four hours—four-for-four.

  My point-sitting time is equally rewarding, if less taxing. And it is educational. When you sit out in the woods for five or six hours with a retired Special Forces sergeant, you hear some pretty good stories. One of my point sitters was a Son Tay raider—one of the eighty-some Green Berets who crashed into the POW camp in North Vietnam in 1970, only to find that the Americans held there had just been moved. One of my friends in Idaho was the senior POW at Son Tay and missed freedom by only a few days. The Americans held by the North Vietnamese soon learned about the attempted rescue, and it did wonders for their morale. It told them that their nation had not forgotten them. When a candidate comes into our point, he makes his way over to a point sitter and drops to one knee. Usually, he is soaked from sweat and wading the streams and draws.

  “Number 141 reporting in, sir.” SFAS candidates treat these retired Green Berets with near reverence.

  “What point do you think you’re at, son?”

  “Point number three, sir.”

  “I agree; good job. Do you have all your gear?”

  The candidate checks himself quickly. “Yes, sir.”

  “OK, while I get you logged in on my sheet, go over there, dump your gear, and take a break. There’s a jerry can with water if you need to top off your canteens.”

  “Roger that, sir. Thank you, sir.”

  After a
few moments, he calls the candidate back over. “Here are your new coordinates.” He reads them aloud and the candidate reads them back to him. “That’s a good copy. Take whatever time you need to plot your point and plan your route. When you’re ready, saddle up and drive on. What time do you have?”

  “Twenty-three forty, sir.”

  “Close enough. That gives you a little more than an hour to make your last point. Good luck.”

  “Understood. Thank you, sir.”

  A great deal of what goes on during Phase I to date is to prepare the class for the Star. The Star is a navigation course that serves as a final exam for the land-nav requirement for Special Forces selection. The Star is nothing that the candidates haven’t seen or trained for. This nav course is simply longer and more difficult. This evolution is conducted at the Hoffman training area, a state game lands tract about fifteen miles from Camp Mackall. It is a large wooded area that the candidates have not seen before, and the ground is a little higher. There are streams and draws, but the terrain is less marshy than Camp Mackall. The entire class moves from Camp Mackall to a base camp at Hoffman and prepares for the Star course. Base camp is perhaps a poor term for the bivouac area. It consists of a large, six-by-six cadre truck that serves as a mobile command center. The truck is served by a generator and a portable, telescoping antenna. This command center keeps track of the students on large status boards and is in radio contact with the point sitters and the cadre who roam the Hoffman area in pickup trucks. For the roving cadre, it’s an issue of compliance and safety. Candidates caught on the roads become roadkill, and are taken off the course and removed from training. If a candidate gets into trouble or is injured, he can come out to a road and await help.