Chosen Soldier

by Dick Couch

  The successful candidates break down Andersonville and clean up the area. When they leave, it’s like they hadn’t been there. Then they help police the base-camp area, and they, too, board the trucks for Camp Mackall. That evening they have their first hot meal and shower in five days.

  Two-thirds of the assessment and selection phase of Special Forces training is over. The physical grind, the timed runs and ruck marches, and the long navigation courses have cut Class 8-04 in half. While the candidates overhaul their gear, the cadre sergeants begin to organize the survivors into twelve- to fourteen-man teams. Over in the headquarters hut, the senior members of the Phase I cadre work out the final details of the remaining training. Ahead are the Long Range Team Movements, or team events, and the SAREs—Situational Awareness Reaction Exercises. The SARE has since been renamed the Human Terrain Adaptability Exercise, but for this work I’ll stick with the term “SARE.” Also still ahead are the psych evaluations and, for some, the commander’s review board. The senior cadre work late into the night, and the last two to leave are First Sergeant Billy Sarno and Captain Walt Carson. Billy Sarno provides the energy and combustion to the selection phase; Walt Carson provides the passion and intensity.

  Walt Carson grew up in Charleston, South Carolina, and had wanted to be a Green Beret ever since he was a little boy. He attended the nearby Citadel, where he earned a bachelor of arts in history. Captain Carson has been in the army for ten years and a Green Beret for six. On his desk in the phase headquarters building is a .44 revolver carried by a Confederate ancestor in the Civil War. Like his first sergeant, he’s from 7th Group and a Spanish speaker. He has deployed to Haiti, Costa Rica, and Afghanistan. For the last two years, he has command Bravo Company, 1st Battalion, 1st Special Warfare Training Group. He and Billy Sarno, more than any other two individuals during that period, have been responsible for the evaluation and selection of new men for Special Forces and Special Forces Training.

  “We have a difficult and important job here,” he told me one evening, after the rest of the cadre had left. “We have to assess and select men who have the traits and characteristics that have proven successful in the force. This is a great responsibility. Special Forces is an officer-led, enlisted-run organization. Some officers find it difficult to lead in this kind of environment, and I was one of them. I tended to be a micromanager as a Special Forces detachment leader. You can’t do that when you lead smart, professional, type A SF soldiers. That’s something I’ve had to work on. Fortunately, the battalion commander who hired me into this job recognized this and teamed me with Billy Sarno. I spin around and want to fix everything myself. Billy doesn’t let that happen. He and the other senior cadre force me to forget about the details, which they take care of, and focus on the big picture. It’s made me be a better officer and a better leader. I have another issue; I’m a very devout Christian. I feel I have a duty to preach the word of Christ and to share his teachings with others. One of my former company commanders finally took me aside and asked if I wanted to be a chaplain or a Special Forces officer. I still have a duty to the Lord, but I’m a Special Forces officer. It’s the path I’ve chosen, and I will give it my full attention and best effort.”

  This gregarious, sometimes ribald first sergeant and his thoughtful and devout captain make an odd but effective pair of leaders. They differ in temperament and personality, but I watched both work long days in harness together to select the right men for Special Forces. On more than one occasion, when I was with alone with one of them, he would take a moment to tell me how much he admired and respected the other. The first sergeant and cadre sergeants ran the training for the most part, and I saw very little of Captain Carson as I observed the first two weeks of training. That was to change, especially during the SAREs and during the commander’s review board.

  Along with the physical and professional assessment evolutions, there’s the mental and psychological screening. The approach of Special Forces in their efforts to get a read on a candidate is like nothing I have ever seen. As I was to learn, a man could be a physical stud and professionally competent, but still be unsuitable for Special Forces. All candidates for Special Forces training undergo a battery of psychological and aptitude testing. There are three basic instruments that are used in the selection process. One of these is the Wonderlic Personnel Test, a short exam used to predict an individual’s ability to learn, adapt, solve problems, and understand instructions. Another is the TABE—the Test for Adult Basic Education. The TABE assesses reading and basic math ability and a candidate’s aptitude for language. The scores from the TABE reflect reading and math ability in grade levels. It may suggest that a candidate reads at the tenth-grade level and has twelfth-grade math skills. The third test is a version of the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory, or MMPI. The MMPI is one of oldest psychological assessment tests, and can be used to evaluate thoughts, emotions, attitudes, and behavioral traits that relate to an individual’s personality. It can also be used to diagnose mental disorders. These tests are administered and evaluated by an experienced team of trained psychologists and psychiatrists. Results are held in confidence, and their combined results are made available to the senior training cadres for candidate-evaluation purposes and at the commander’s review board.

  “We get a lot of men through here, and we look at the psychological health of all of them,” Lieutenant Colonel Scott Middleton told me. Middleton is the senior psychologist who oversees the testing and the team of psychologists who work with the Special Forces candidates. “Most are well-adjusted soldiers. A few may have problems that would not be an issue in a conventional military organization, but considering the stress and the nature of the Special Forces mission, we may want to take a closer look at these soldiers.

  “Initially, we look for flags that may suggest possible pathologies. So yes, we’re looking for potential problems and for those who may be unsuitable—guys with serious problems. Occasionally, we find a man who is very smart, but lacks ethical balance. Too much intellect without a firm moral grounding is like a big engine without a transmission. But we have to be careful in the application of our testing and evaluation. The men who come here and go on to be successful special operators are a breed apart. They are not ‘normal’ compared to a group of civilian men their age or even a group of regular soldiers. They’re aggressive, adventurous, extroverted, intelligent, type A individuals. Many of them are thrill seekers. That’s OK, but these traits have to be balanced with maturity and framed with a sense of responsibility.”

  During the selection process, about 15 percent of the enlisted candidates are brought in for psychological counseling. Army psychologists meet one-on-one with these candidates to further explore issues raised in their testing—issues that need clarification or explanation. All officers meet with a psychologist for a session to review their test results.

  “Initially, we’re looking for the problem soldiers—pure suitability issues. Past that, these tests and our work with the candidates become positive. Where are they weak and what do they need to work on? What are their strong points and how can they use their strengths to offset their weaknesses? Of course, some of the candidates see us simply as shrinks—that these exams and evaluations are mumbo jumbo that might adversely affect their chance at selection. But you’d be surprised how many agree with our assessments and use the information we give them in a constructive way. The bottom line is that these men will often have to be on their own doing a difficult and dangerous job, well away from traditional military structure. They have to be professionally, ethically, and morally self-sufficient.

  “Our input to the training cadre comes in three general areas,” Lieutenant Colonel Middleton said. “The first is the intellect of the candidate. Is this soldier smart enough to handle the technical part of Special Forces training? In many cases, it identifies men who need more education in a specific area to perform in an SF role. For our work here, we try to measure intellectual capacity, academic trai
ning, and potential creativity as they relate to the Special Forces mission. The second is vocational. Which Special Forces military occupational specialty may be appropriate for the man, and what might be his limitations if he is assigned to one MOS or another. We’ve an immense body of evidence that supports our input to the process. For example, we can predict that a man with a given set of scores will have 40 or 70 or 95 percent chance of completing the academic portion of Special Forces training for, say, an 18 Echo—a communications sergeant. And, finally, there’s the psychological assessment. These are the social and adaptability indicators—the people skills—which are so important in Special Forces.”

  “The psych evaluations and psych input to the process are very helpful,” Captain Walt Carson told me. “Sometimes it confirms what the cadre sees in a man, and occasionally they raise an issue which we knew nothing about. In some ways, it’s like the peer review; it’s another perspective. While it is valuable, it’s still just an input to the process. The final assessment of a man’s fitness and suitability for Special Forces rest with the cadre sergeants’ evaluations and the commander’s review board. But we take seriously what the psychs have to say. As an extreme example, you know that Timothy McVeigh came through here?”

  “I’d heard that,” I replied.

  “It was well before my time, but he was here. He was a poor candidate and quit before he even got to the Star course, but he surfaced big-time on the psych profiles as a highly unsuitable candidate. Special Forces soldiers often have a great deal of responsibility on deployment. We have to make sure they have the mental and moral equipment as well as physical and professional tools to do this job.”

  For the next two days, the candidates will be fully immersed in the team events. The previous two weeks have reduced Phase I Class 8-04 to a group of individual candidates who’ve physically endured the phase up to this point and who’ve shown themselves smart enough to negotiate the land-navigation courses. Now these exhausted men will be evaluated in a team environment. They are segregated into teams, and each team is assigned a phase cadre sergeant. The cadre sergeant gives them a general set of instructions regarding the task before them, and monitors the team as they execute the task. These tasks come in the form of physically challenging, team-centric movements that put a premium on leadership, organization, and teamwork.

  My team is given the initial task of moving an old jeep trailer, with only one wheel, from the starting point at the Rowe Training Facility to a distant location on Camp Mackall. To assist them, the teams are given lashing materials, twelve-foot metal pipe sections, and a hundred-foot length of rope. At the start time, the team sets about rigging the crippled trailer using the pipes to set up a counterbalance for the one-wheeled vehicle and crosspieces for pushing bars. They use the rope to fashion a makeshift harness for members of the team. When rigged and balanced on the single wheel, the team begins to move this part wheelbarrow, part unicycle toward a set of coordinates across Camp Mackall. The cadre sergeant designates one of the enlisted men as the team leader. Throughout this and subsequent evolutions, the team leader is always an enlisted soldier, and each enlisted soldier takes his turn as team leader. The trailer is rigged and moved under the direction of the assigned team leader.

  My team leaves the training facility about 0800 and begins to make its way along the sandy roads that border the Camp Mackall Army Airfield. The team I’m following includes a big candidate who played football at Iowa, a former professional snowboarder, a tall redhead whose father is a career navy man, a Pennsylvanian who worked in the family farm implement business, and a Coloradan in his early thirties who owned a shop that sold mountain-climbing equipment.

  Nursing this unwieldy vehicle through the soft sandy roads takes teamwork—some men pull, some push, some lift, and some work to balance the trailer. Most of the jobs are very taxing; the others, not so much. It’s the job of the team leader to assign and rotate his men, give orders, and make adjustments, always seeking to get the trailer to its destination within the proscribed time. He must use his men carefully—men who are very tired and who’ll be on their feet for this and other team events for the next two days. For these enlisted team leaders, it may be the first time they’ve had to weigh the welfare of their men against the needs of the mission. If they become Green Berets, they’ll do this routinely and in harm’s way. Halfway to the first destination, the cadre sergeant chooses a new team leader, makes a few suggestions about the movement of the trailer, and off we go. The new team leader assigns duties to his men and shouts encouragement as they bend to the task. The trailer waddles down the road while the cadre sergeant and I follow along behind. While the team pushes and pulls the trailer over sand and gravel roads, there’s ample opportunity for cooperation, bitching, team spirit, and leadership. The cadre sergeant watches how each man leads—men who aren’t necessarily the team leader—and how they follow. It’s leadership and followership.

  We reach our destination about 1400 that afternoon. There the team leader checks in with a “Pinelander,” while the rest of the team fans out in a security perimeter. Pinelanders are citizens of the mythical nation of Pineland, one of the nations in the unconventional scenario that is to be played out in some detail during Phase IV. Here the Pinelander is a civilian role player who, like the point sitters on the navigation courses, gives them a new set of coordinates. He also takes possession of their one-wheeled jeep trailer and gives them the parameters of their next evolution, the movement of the deadman. The deadman is a five-hundred-pound duffel bag filled with sand. Our cadre sergeant appoints a new team leader and takes the old one aside.

  “You made it here within the time limit, but that was only due to the sweat and determination of your men. They busted their butts for you. But if you’d rigged the trailer better and rotated your men on a more consistent basis, you could’ve made better time and not worked them as hard. You have to get the job done, but you also have to take care of your men, understand what I’m saying?”

  “Roger that, Sergeant.”

  “Fair enough. Get back with your team and let’s drive on.”

  While the cadre sergeant speaks with the outgoing team leader, the new team leader is directing the lashing of the poles to carry the deadman at a shoulder carry. They use one of their soft litters to hold the weighted duffel and lash their four poles in a tic-tac-toe or pound-sign configuration to support the litter. The team leader briefs the Pinelander and the cadre sergeant on his route and rotation schedule. Then the team members ruck up, shoulder their load, and set off. They are able to get eight men under the load at one time. Counting the weight of their rucks, each man has to bear up under a little over 125 pounds when he’s under the litter. The initial movement is along an uneven road through a wooded area. They move for four hours, pausing only for water breaks and to rotate fresh men under the load. All the while, the cadre sergeant notes who shoulders their weight and who does not. When the team takes a break and the team leader calls them back to continue their journey, he observes who is first up and who helps his buddy up—who complains and who contributes. When they’re all tired and beat, who still manages to be a team player and who does not. Our cadre sergeant is also keeping a close eye on his candidates for injuries. At this stage of selection, they all hurt, but the cadre sergeant doesn’t want to lose a man who is performing well to a minor, nagging injury or have a man sustain a permanent injury.

  The team events continue for fifty hours. One event has them moving metal cans of sand, each weighing upwards of 120 pounds. In another, they must move a forty-foot telephone pole. Still another has them pushing an old derelict jeep. There are short periods where they can catch an hour of sleep here or a half hour there, but they’re on the move most of their waking hours. Meals are MRE rations by the side of the road. As they move from event to event and team leader to team leader, the dynamics of the team unfold. Some men who I watched struggle on the ruck marches and on the Star emerge as quiet, determined team players.
Others evolve as peacemakers, taking charge of teammates who start to grumble and quieting them down. A few, while doing their best, are starting to break down physically. On my team, one of the men was limping noticeably under the load.

  “Here, I got it,” one of his teammates says as he steps beside him and takes the weight of the bar from his shoulders.

  “Hey, it’s not your turn yet,” the limping man replies.

  “It’s OK. I’m feeling strong. You take a break and jump back in on the next rotation.”

  We drop back a little, and the cadre sergeant says to me, “These are great kids for the most part. With a few exceptions, I’d have any one of them on my team.” His comment rather surprises me, as he shows none of this to the candidates.

  At one of the Pinelander’s posts, Captain Carson and First Sergeant Sarno are there to observe the changeover. “Now is the time when the good leaders and good followers emerge—leaders who lead by example and followers who quietly lead from the rear,” Sarno explains. “It gives the cadre a chance to see if they can play well with others when they’re really dragging butt. Sometimes my cadre sergeants get a little caustic about the new men we’re training. So every once in a while, we go out and do a Star or we do these team events as a cadre team. It refocuses them on just how hard and taxing this can be. These guys haven’t had a real night’s sleep in close to three weeks.”