Chosen Soldier

by Dick Couch

  Blaylock and Don Adams walk along the firing line—instructing, exhorting, encouraging, and chastising. They also watch their student shooters closely for safety procedures during this fast-moving shooting training.

  “You’re in a fight, get angry!”

  “Be quick, but be smooth.”

  “Don’t take your eye off the target as you transition from one weapon to the other.”

  “If you’re going for that pistol in a fight, you’re in a world of shit. That bastard wants you dead; you get some rounds on him, or he’ll get rounds on you.”

  During a break in the shooting drills, Blaylock gathers the class around him. “Guys, this is no-shit, lifesaving, downrange stuff. The skill and emotion you bring to a gunfight will win the day. You have to develop the mechanics and the muscle memory, but you have to be aggressive. Controlled emotion will help you win the fight. Your total focus is to kill that dude before he can kill you. When you get to your groups, you’ll have to drill yourselves and your teammates just like we’re doing here today. Then you’ll be the guys behind the firing line helping your teammates to shoot better. Remember, you’re training for a fight to the death; let the rage and the bullets fly.”

  For the better part of a full day, the class stands toe-to-toe with cardboard silhouette targets and blazes away—rifle to pistol and back to rifle. At times, you can hardly see the ground for the spent shell casings.

  The Bravo candidates come off the ranges, clean weapons for a final time, and prepare for their comprehensive final exam. I ask Sergeant Blaylock about attrition in the phase.

  “We don’t have all that much attrition in this MOS phase. We had three from this class. One guy hurt himself during physical training and will be recycled to the next class. The other two were men who shouldn’t be around guns at all; they simply haven’t the awareness you must have when handling weapons. It seems like every class we have a few men—not many, but a few—who have no weapons sense. Another reason for the low attrition is the work of my cadre. If a guy’s having trouble with a weapons system or does poorly on one of the exams, we work with him at night and drill him until he gets it right. If a man comes in here focused and determined to learn, we’ll get him through.”

  I found PFC Tim Baker at the weapons-cleaning table on one of the final days. “Looks like you’re about through here. What did you think of the weapons phase?”

  “It was awesome, sir. There was so much to learn—there is still a lot to learn.” He grins. “It was a challenge, but I’ve never had so much fun in my life. What an experience.”

  “What was the most important thing you learned?” I ask.

  After a thoughtful pause, he says, “It’s the emotion and measured fury that you have to bring to a gunfight. I came here to learn about weapons, but I had never thought about fighting—I mean, what it takes to fight and win. On the combat ranges, that changed. When it comes to a fight, you need all your skill and professionalism, but if you want to win that fight, you have to bring a controlled rage as well. We’re training to be warriors.”

  “Good luck on the final exam,” I reply. “And see you in Phase IV.”

  “That sounds awfully good, sir. See you in Phase IV.”

  THE 18 CHARLIES—THE SPECIAL FORCES ENGINEERING SERGEANTS

  I catch up with the 18 Charlies as they are training at Camp Mackall. When I arrive at the base camp training site, it looks a lot different from when I was here only few days ago with the 18 Bravos. The skeletons of three buildings, in various stages of construction, have risen from the floor of the camp. The training facility rings with the sounds of a residential construction site—pounding hammers, the shriek of skill saws, and the steady din of generators. It is late afternoon, but there are portable floodlights in place so the work can continue after dark. Swarming over the three structures like an army of ants are eighty-some members of Engineering Sergeant Class 01-05. The training site looks like a crash project of Habitat for Humanity. All that is missing is Jimmy Carter hammering nails on the roof.

  It’s a sunny, cloudless January day with the temperature creeping into the high fifties. Most of the students have shed their blouses and work in T-shirts. All of them wear leather carpenter’s belts, looking like extras on the set of the TV series Home Improvement. Two cadre sergeants and a civilian contractor sit on a stack of plywood watching the students work. I join them, and we watch the progress of the work. After a while, it becomes apparent that the three construction crews are in a race. One group is pulling up plywood sheets for the subroof and nailing them in place. They’re clearly in the lead. The other two crews are still setting their roof joists.

  “What do the winners get?” I ask.

  “Nothing,” Master Sergeant Ron Wyman replies. “And it’s not really a race. Whichever crew is in the lead gets the first crack at the materials as they’re delivered to the site. The guys who finish first just get to brag while they help the other crews finish.”

  The buildings are post-and-pier, single-story plywood huts built three feet off the ground, with stairs to a single door, and a window framed into each of the other three sides. These structures are exactly like those that housed my SEAL platoon in Vietnam and the ones that Special Forces ODAs now occupy in Afghanistan today. The camp itself, the same one the 18 Bravos sandbagged and fortified, is a triangular compound bordered by rolls of concertina wire. This, too, is familiar. It seems the triangular-shaped Special Forces compounds that once dotted the highlands of Vietnam are now springing up in Afghanistan.

  “I spent a lot of my youth in camps like this,” the civilian instructor tells me. He’s a grizzled man of indeterminate age.

  “Camp construction and defense was almost a lost art,” Master Sergeant Wyman says with an easy smile and a touch of respect in his voice. “Fortunately, we still have a few old dogs like Howard here to show us how it’s done.”

  The civilian instructor grins. “It’s always nice when something you knew and did way back when is of some use to the new generation.”

  Every so often, one of the candidates would come over to where we’re sitting to ask a question. Usually, it was directed to the retired Green Beret. I had to suppress a smile. Nothing pleases an old warrior more than being sought out by a young warrior. I’m speaking from experience here.

  The 18 Charlie class had spent a total of seven days in the classroom and the shops at Fort Bragg before coming to Camp Mackall for three days of hands-on construction. In those seven days, they received instruction in all aspects of construction—from pouring foundations to installing corrugated metal roofing. Classes include construction design, reading blueprints, masonry, electrical wiring, concrete, structural calculations, and material management.

  “We hand the student construction teams a set of blueprints,” Wyman says, “and they have to take it from there. They have to develop a list of materials to include type and grade of lumber; the quantities of nails, bolts, and fasteners; how many bags of concrete; the amount and gauge of wiring; and so on. We begin at Fort Bragg, staging the materials and building the trusses. Then we come out here and put it together.”

  Master Sergeant Wyman came from 7th Group. As a Special Forces engineering sergeant, he’s built houses, drilled wells, and constructed bridges all over Central and South America as well as in Afghanistan. Wyman is a lead instructor with Bravo Company, 4th Battalion, and he’s in charge of teaching building and construction techniques to the 18 Charlie candidates.

  “I can identify with these kids who are just coming into the Army and Special Forces in the X-Ray Program. I was one of them.” In the early 1990s, there was an X-Ray-like program that took soldiers from basic training and assigned them to the groups in kind of an apprenticeship. Then they were sent to the Q-Course. “Every once in a while one of my cadre sergeants will get down on the X-Rays for not understanding the Army way of doing things, or that they’re too green to train for Special Forces duty. I remind them I’m an X-Ray, sort of, and ask them i
f they have a problem with me wearing a Green Beret. That quiets them down in a hurry.

  “When they get out here to Camp Mackall,” Wyman continues, “they do it all, and they do it strictly to federal building code—pour foundations, set joists, frame in windows, set trusses, hang doors, and pull wires. Some of these kids have never handled a saw or used a level. I’m not sure they even teach high school shop any more.”

  The buildings literally go up before our eyes. “They seem to be working well and without a lot of direction,” I observe.

  “We have a few ringers in this class to go along with the guys who have never driven a nail. About fifteen of the X-Rays were journeyman carpenters before they signed up, so we have some talent and experience on this job site.”

  Two candidates who are new to the construction business are Sergeant Aaron Dunn and Sergeant Daniel Barstow. “The last thing that I built was a birdhouse for a Cub Scout project,” Dunn says.

  “This is terrific,” Barstow declares as he takes his tool belt off for the last time. “We learned how to build things; now we get to learn how to blow them up.”

  After the buildings are finished, the class secures their building tools and turns their attention to the camp defenses. For another two days, they build wire obstacles, bunkers, sandbag shelters, and fighting positions. The Charlies work closely with the Bravos on base defense projects. They then return to Fort Bragg to begin their demolition and explosives training.

  Many of the regular soldiers have handled explosives, and all of them have made up dummy charges with time fuse and inert blasting caps during Phase II. Now they get down to the serious business of tactical demolitions: charge calculation, charge placement, mine warfare, and target analysis. Classes begin with basic nonelectric and electric firing assemblies. The nonelectric assemblies are straightforward time-fuse, fuse-igniter, blasting-cap configurations with emphasis on the precise calculation of time-fuse burn times. The nonelectric firing assemblies have tactical and nontactical applications. The electric firing assemblies are used for administrative and construction demolitions in which the charges are command-detonated electrically through wire firing lead. Later on, they will learn about radio-control devices to initiate explosives and the use of standard military radio-detonation sets. One of the more difficult and math-intensive portions of the engineering sergeant curriculum is charge calculation and placement. There are formulas for just how much explosive will shatter, crack, cut, or penetrate an obstacle or material, and the exact placement of the charge to achieve the desired result. A small amount of explosive, placed just right, can surgically cut a steel I beam or a heavy wooden timber. The candidates learn to use detonation cord, or det cord, to initiate explosive charges, as well as a primary explosive. During the classroom and range work with demolitions and firing assemblies, the emphasis is always on safety. The handling and use of military demolitions is highly procedure driven. It’s safe work if procedures are scrupulously observed.

  On the Fort Bragg demolition ranges, the 18 Charlie candidates use a whole range of military explosives, including satchel charges, cutting charges, cratering charges, and shaped charges. They rig and detonate these explosives for tactical and construction—or destruction—applications. The load limit on the Fort Bragg ranges is four hundred pounds, which allows for some very big bangs. From military demolitions, they move on to the murky world of improvised munitions. These range from construction applications, such the mixture of fertilizer and diesel oil for earthmoving applications, to the making of IEDs—improvised explosive devices—for when military explosives are unavailable. Special Forces engineering sergeants have to be able to handle a wide range of modern, state-of-the-art military explosive devices and commercial explosives. Because they often work in primitive Third World situations, they have to know how to handle foreign explosives and what may have been state of the art thirty or forty years ago. Or they must improvise.

  Throughout the engineering sergeant training, there’s an emphasis on tactical demolitions—the use of demolitions in combat operations and the ability to teach those skills to others. Often the best way through a locked door in a tactical situation is by using explosives. The 18 Charlie candidates learn to use breaching charges and the various uses of the Special Operations Forces Demolition Kit. They are also introduced to the special-purpose munitions, which are well beyond the scope of this book.

  “I particularly liked improvising with explosives,” Daniel Barstow tells me. “You can get very creative. We first learned how you do it if you have the right military explosives or your demolition kit is with you. Then we’d do it if you had to improvise. We learned you could breach a wooden door by snaking det cord back and forth on the door and securing it with duct tape. But that doesn’t work for metal doors. But if you snake det cord across a couple of IV bags [bags of saline used for medical purposes], the hydrostatic shock’ll take down a metal door. These are good things to know.”

  A very important part of the course is the section on mines. Land mines have useful defensive applications in many places where Special Forces detachments go, but they are also indiscriminate weapons. During the Cold War and in areas of ethnic conflict, tens of thousands of land mines were sown throughout Southwest and Southeast Asia and the Middle East. They are a favorite tool of the insurgents. Therefore, Special Forces engineering sergeants have to have a good working knowledge of U.S. and foreign mines.

  Most U.S. mines—there are seventeen in inventory—have a direct tactical application, and some of them can almost think for themselves. Some can lie in wait for a period of time for a vehicle to come by. Others can cut a path in concertina wire or a path in a minefield. All U.S. mines currently have a “life,” which means they will explode or become inert after a period of time. The same is not true of foreign mines. The prospective 18 Charlies pay special attention to the twenty-five kinds of mines that can be found in Iraq and the fifty-nine kinds found in Afghanistan. Most found in Iraq and all but one found in Afghanistan are of foreign manufacture.

  Eighteen Charlies learn basic render-safe procedures for mines and unexploded ordnance, but they are not military explosive ordnance disposal technicians. Most of what they do is to identify the mine or ordnance and explode it in place with a countercharge.

  “We’ve been accumulating an impressive array of manuals and handbooks on mines,” Aaron Dunn explains. “There’s a lot we can do to help the locals deal with unexploded ordnance and to clear the area around their towns and villages of mines. Not only do we have the reference materials, but there are secure Web links we can access to learn more or to identify something we’ve not seen before. There’s a lot to being a good engineering sergeant, and you’re always learning.”

  “It’s not all just putting up buildings and blowing things up,” Sergeant First Class Carl Pennington, one of the demolition instructors, tells me. Pennington is a veteran 18 Charlie engineer from 10th Group. “Engineering sergeants have other duties. On deployment, they usually have primary responsibility for maintaining the vehicles. They also serve as the team supply sergeants and accountants; they help the team leader with the money and dealing with receipts. When the detachment deploys and redeploys, they supervise the loading and packing. On the operational side, they work with the team leader and the Bravos on route planning, infiltration, and target analysis. They serve as the specialists on terrain features. The 18 Charlies handle issues relating to tactical resupply, including the air-dropping of bundles. If the mission calls for infiltration by air, the ODA’s Charlie is the primary jumper for demolitions. And along with the Bravo, they’re responsible for the storage and accountability for munitions and demolitions. He’s a very busy guy. If he’s the senior engineering sergeant, he also has to supervise the junior Charlie. If he’s the junior Charlie, he can get stuck with just about any job. Oh, and one more thing: He’s responsible for cross-training the other members of his team in engineering and demolitions.”

  The final nine da
ys of the 18 Charlie training are spent in the field. The class moves into the training base camp at Camp Mackall, but not into the buildings they constructed a few weeks earlier. They sleep in tent barracks and conduct their mission planning and briefings in tents erected within the camp. Over the course of the nine-day FTX, they will plan and conduct twenty-five to thirty missions in student ODAs.

  “It’s like the final field exercise in Phase II,” Daniel Barstow tells me. I find him as he is gearing up in preparation for a training mission. “We usually conduct one daytime mission and two at night. The rest of the time we’re planning, rehearsing, or trying to grab a few hours of sleep. The big difference from the Phase II fieldwork is that we patrol back to the base camp after every mission to get ready for the next one.”

  “Another difference,” Aaron Dunn says, “is that every mission is a demolition raid or a target that requires the application of explosives. We plant charges on bridges, buildings, tanks, towers, trucks, trains, artillery pieces, old helicopters, and disused cruise rockets. Usually, we make an assault, secure the target area, plant the demo, and try to get off target as quickly as possible.”

  I was assigned to the student ODA of Sergeant First Class Nguyen Pham. When I arrive at the base camp, Pham’s ODA is preparing to attack a petroleum storage site. The designated team leader had just given his warning order, and the team is busy preparing for the mission, which amounted to preparing charges to destroy an oil storage tank at the target location. The team leader calls them into the briefing tent for a quick thirty-minute patrol leader’s briefing, straight out of the Ranger Handbook. The student leader races through the briefing, but slows as he goes through the actions on target. The team moves outside the tent, where there is a crude sand table of sorts—two-by-fours nailed together on the ground with loose dirt for sand. The petroleum site is represented by a tin tuna can. After a short rehearsal, the student ODA rucks up and leaves the camp to patrol to the target site. Sergeant Pham and I drive there and await the arrival and attack by his student team.