Chosen Soldier

by Dick Couch

  “Often the students do what they think the cadre wants them to do,” Sergeant Blackman tells me. “They are still playing cops and robbers, trying to get through the problem with the school solution. One of our challenges is to get a young soldier to see a problem and figure out how to best solve it, calling on his training, his intuition, and his imagination. If he gets outside the guidelines, the instructors can always step in, but we want to see them solve problems, not check the boxes. The ones that get it, that’ve made the leap from conventional to unconventional thinking, will really surprise you.

  “During one class, I quietly parked my truck on a back road and walked through the woods to watch the students attack a target. I moved carefully and quietly so they wouldn’t see me. They made the hit and did a pretty good job. I was headed back to my truck, but when I got twenty meters from it, the engine roared to life, and it drove off with the whole squad in the back. Well, I knew I’d locked it, and I knew I had the keys. It seems their security element had spotted me and sent one of their street-smart kids after the truck. He shimmed the door and hot-wired the ignition, and they were gone. I chased after them, cussing a blue streak. About five minutes later they came driving back slowly, all of them with a big grin—asked if I needed a ride.”

  “What’d you do?” I ask.

  “What could I do? I told them that for future exercise play, cadre trucks were off-limits, but that they’d earned a ride back to the G base.”

  On day seven, the G base is moved to a location on state game lands a few miles southwest of the town of Pine Bluff. The Gs move in the morning and the auxiliary trucks bring the Americans in that afternoon. The new location is more secure in that it’s protected on one side by a swampy marsh, and that means lots of mosquitoes. But this base camp can be guarded with two security positions. Later that afternoon, a dilemma surfaces when Colonel Merced brings in three new recruits. Colonel Chissom says he doesn’t trust the new men; he thinks they might be Pineland Army spies. The new men are quickly blindfolded and made to kneel with their hands tied behind their backs. There’s talk of executing them to be on the safe side. Chissom turns to Captain Santos.

  “I’ll let them live, but you have to take charge of them and vouch for their conduct.”

  Santos sidesteps this one. “Colonel, these are Pinelanders and they’re your people—your responsibility. Perhaps we should question them further to assess their loyalty.”

  Chissom says he will take responsibility, but whatever happens, happens—indicating he may just shoot them. On further questioning, the new recruits are found to be loyal partisans and allowed to remain in the G base. The ODA gives them the Pineland oath, pays them, and gives them a quick class on the Rules of Land Warfare—what is and is not acceptable in their combat operations.

  “What if the colonel decided to execute them?” I ask Miguel Santos later.

  “We were ready for that, but there is only so much we can do in that situation. Intervention would threaten our mission, and the actions of the new recruits could only erode my position if I’d taken responsibility for them. We have some leverage with Chissom, and I was prepared to use it if he threatened to shoot them.”

  “Captain Santos did the right thing,” Bill Chissom says of the dilemma. “Sometimes we take it further and prepare the new men for execution to see how the team handles it. But make no mistake, this kind of thing’s happening in Special Forces compounds today in Afghanistan and Iraq. Who can you trust? Who do you let come into your base camp, and what do you let them see of your physical setup and your security measures? And how do you handle a situation where one of your indigenous leaders wants to mete out justice to someone on the spot? This is real world.”

  The day after the G-base relocation, as it turns out, is a national holiday in Pineland. For the Americans, by chance, it’s Mother’s Day. The occasion is marked—for the Pinelanders, not for Mom—by a pig roast. Part of the duties of the men on security duty the previous night was to keep a roaring fire going to make a bed of coals. Sunday morning, a freshly killed whole pig is delivered to the camp. The Americans and the Gs gather for a class in pig preparation. As the team medic, Doc Kohl is in charge of dressing out of the pig. A cadre medic is on hand to supervise, to talk about the cuts of meat, and how to inspect the entrails to avoid eating a contaminated animal. As it turns out, Tom Olin is the most experienced with a boning knife and cleaver. He’d worked in a butcher shop in Montana between college and the Army. For many soldiers, this is the first time they’ve seen a recent kill hung and dressed out. The whole gut-clean-dress evolution, thanks to Sergeant Olin’s skill, takes only an hour. The cooking takes the whole day. Sergeant Blackman brings in a bag of rice, some carrots and onions, and some seasonings. It’s a real feast, and the only non-MRE food 915 will get in Pineland—almost.

  Midday, one of the Gs on water detail comes back from the stream that drains into the marsh near the camp. “There’s a big snake down there,” he reports, “right where we get our water. I tried to scare him off, but he won’t budge.”

  Tom Olin goes back with him to investigate and returns with a four-and-a-half-foot cottonmouth—a really fat one. Short then proceeds to skin and dress the snake, and it joins the pig in the holiday celebration. Tastes just like chicken, but rather tough chicken.

  Camp activity and operational activity begins to mesh with ODAs and Gs working together—almost blurring their differences. On Captain Santos’s recommendation, 915 and the Gs settle into groups of three—one American and two Pinelanders. They become battle buddies. They keep their rucks together so if they have to bolt, they stay together and fight together. Their hooches are side by side.

  During the evening on day nine of Robin Sage, Captain Childers takes 915’s officers and team sergeant aside. “There’ll be a lot going on and as we approach the final days of Robin Sage, things will accelerate and become more chaotic. Your job is to bring some order to these events. That means you have to focus on the big picture, so you’ll have to delegate things like security, commo, and base chores. One thing that can help is to have your team supply sergeant keep a running tally on your consumables—chow, ammo, demo, and water. Brief the colonel on these twice a day. It lets him know you’re on top of things, and it’s a chance for a positive interaction.”

  The cadre camp is located on the edge of a field near an abandoned tobacco drying shed. Quite often when I visit the camp, I find Sergeant Blackman on a stool in the woods near the shed, hunched over his computer. There is a DC power cord running from his pickup to the computer. Evaluations have to be made and training records kept up to date. For each exercise or block of training, each candidate is rated on tactical performance and/or leadership—good, bad, excellent—and recommendations are made as necessary on how to improve that performance or leadership.

  On day ten, 915 and its guerrillas are joined by two more cadre—or perhaps semicadre would be a better term. They are two staff sergeants from the 7th Special Forces Group at Fort Bragg. They’ll help with the training for the balance of the Robin Sage exercise and serve in opposition-force roles for the final problem. Both were in Robin Sage about this time last year, and both just returned from a combat rotation in Afghanistan. They are helpful, critical, and very supportive. There’s an instant bond between these two new Green Beret veterans and the candidates. It’s a good dynamic. They are not cadre in the same way as are Sergeant Blackman, Captain Childers, and the OCEs. As Brian Short puts it, “They are us a year from now.”

  Also on day ten, the communicators receive a priority message from their forward operating base. There is to be a document drop that evening. Nine-one-five is tasked with finding a secure location and setting up the drop. At 2130, Sergeant Olin and his recovery team are crouched on the edge of a farmer’s field, prepared to receive the package. Due to the short notice and the urgency, there is no time for a twenty-four-hour eyes-on, so Captain Santos sent along First Lieutenant Kwele with a ten-man security element to protect t
he recovery team. At the appointed time, Short sends Aaron Dunn out into the field. He breaks out a lime-green Chemlite and begins to swing it on a three-foot cord. From the air, or anywhere in the area, it looks like a spinning lime-green disk. David Altman comes up on the PRC-119 air-to-ground frequency.

  “Dustbin Two-Seven, this is Oscar Delta Alpha Nine-One-Five, do you copy, over?”

  “Uh, roger Nine-One-Five, hear you five by, over, over.”

  “OK, Two-Seven. We are in place. Authenticate my signal, over.”

  “We hold a light-green circular strobe, over.”

  “Roger the green circular strobe. Standing by for your package, over.”

  “OK, Nine-One-Five, starting our run now. Two-Seven, out.”

  A few moments later, a dark form flashes over the field. It’s a low, quick pass with the long snout of a Pilatus Porter STOL aircraft briefly visible. A drogue chute blossoms from under the wing with a packet attached. Olin’s recovery team has the package in a matter of moments. They call in the security element and begin to patrol to the extraction point, where two auxiliary pickups are waiting for them. A few hours later, Santos, Kwele, Olin, and Short are gathered around a makeshift table going over documents and photographs. All wear camping-type headband lights. The documents contain their mission tasker and the intelligence information for their final target.

  “OK, guys, this is it. I’m going to spend some time with this material. It’ll be with me at all times if you need it. Patrick, you make security rounds.” To Olin and Short, Santos says, “You two grab some sleep. At first light, I want the team mustered and ready to begin a full-on mission-planning effort.”

  The next morning, Captain Santos briefs Colonel Chissom on their mission. “I’d like to get right to the mission analysis and mission planning. Why don’t I bring in six of my mission planners, and you and Sergeant Major Johnson get a half dozen or so of your men, and we’ll lay this out for them together?” Chissom agrees with this approach, and soon they’re all gathered around the fire pit. Santos does most of the talking. Already, Sergeant Aaron Dunn, 915’s best terrain-model man, is poring over the intel photos and starting to build a scale likeness of what appears to be a prison complex. A senior member of the resistance, the man who’s destined to become the president of a liberated Pineland, has been taken prisoner by the Pineland Army forces, and being held at a local correctional facility. Nine-one-five’s mission, and that of their irregulars, is to set him free.

  Captain Santos makes team assignments and 915 starts to work. Each American has one and sometimes two Gs working with him. That night, Miguel Santos and Brian Short leave the camp in civilian clothes with a member of the auxiliary. Their destination is the Pine Court Motel to meet with a partisan with intelligence on the prison. The Pine Court is not a four-star hostelry. Their contact is an informant and a member of the underground. He’s also a North Carolina state trooper and a retired Green Beret. When Miguel Santos knocks on the door, it’s opened by a woman. “C’mon in, guys,” she says with a generous smile. “You’re right on time.” She’s attired in loungewear. Santos and Short, thinking they have the wrong room, start backpedaling. Then the trooper appears, in uniform. “It’s OK, guys,” he tells them. “With the Condor teams out, we can’t be too careful.” The woman is his wife. She watches TV, while the captain, his intel sergeant, and their informant go over a sketch of the prison and some aerial photos Santos brought along. They talk about the layout, guards, patrol routines, and access to the interior of the prison. Their informant knows a janitor at the prison. He says he’ll have him unlock one of the back gates—if he can.

  The next morning, Captain Santos is back with his team planning for the mission. While they’re occupied with their maps and terrain models, Sergeant Troy Blackman quietly grabs two of the Gs and says, “Get your rucks and follow me.” He takes them out of G base, slipping carefully between the two security posts. When they’re well outside the camp perimeter, he asks to borrow one of the Gs’ rifles. He checks to ensure the weapon is loaded with blank ammo and shoots them both.

  “OK, guys, you’re shot. Start calling for help.”

  “Medic! Medic, I’m hit—help me! Help!” Doc Kohl and four others respond on the run, two Americans and two Gs. They patrol on skirmish line to the two wounded men. Then Sergeant Blackman shoots Kohl. “OK, your medic just got shot,” Blackman tells the others. “Now what are you going to do?”

  Several others arrive from the G base to provide security and to help with the casualties. Sergeant Blackman dictates wounds: head wound bleeding badly, leg wound bleeding badly, abdominal wound, pulse weak and rapid, blood pressure dropping. It’s a full-on medical drill for 915 and its Gs. They get a pressure bandage on the abdominal wound, a tourniquet on the leg, and some IVs started. An auxiliary truck arrives to take the two Gs to a regional medical station for treatment; Doc Kohl is pronounced fit for duty.

  “We needed to take a few of the Gs out of the G bases, so we have a more robust opposition force during the final problem,” Sergeant Blackman tells me off to the side, “so we created this training scenario. This way we get some medical training and collect some men to serve with the opposing forces.”

  “I’d just come off security duty and was sound asleep,” Sergeant Kohl says of the drill. “I came out of a total fog—didn’t know where I was, what day it was. I was running up the trail with my aid bag and my rifle before I really came awake. Guess that’s the way it’ll be downrange.”

  Captain Santos and his planners work straight through the day. This is to be a two-ODA, two-G-force operation, with some twenty-four Americans and forty-five Pineland freedom fighters making the attack. It’ll be a complex and challenging undertaking. Nine-one-five will be teamed with 912 for the operation. That evening, after an exhaustive day of planning, Captain Santos, Sergeant Olin, and two of their Gs are taken to a safe house well out in the countryside. There they meet the team leader, the team sergeant, and two Gs from student ODA 912. Inside the safe house, the resistance sector commander, a contract role player in the character of a Pineland resistance-force general, is conducting the proceedings. Attending the general are Colonel Chissom, 912’s G chief, and Major Mike Kennedy, the American forward base commander, who has just “parachuted in” that afternoon for the meeting. All of them are drinking beer—nonalcoholic O’Doul’s. The Pineland liberation battle plan is reaching a critical phase. The invasion forces are ready, but this senior resistance political leader has to be made free to lead the new order. The two student ODA delegations, each in turn, present their plan to free this key Pineland leader. For both 915 and 912, their guerrilla counterparts do most of the talking. The game now, as I’m taken aside and told, is not how well the ODAs can do the job, but how well they’ve schooled their Gs to do the job. The empaneled cadre, G chiefs, and sector commander will select one ODA to lead the mission and one to support the mission. Their criteria? Which ODA has done the best job in training their guerrilla force. Up front, whose Gs are the best mission briefers.

  While the cadre and guerrilla leaders talk and evaluate the two presentations, the two team leaders and their contingents mill about in front of the safe house. It’s a soft North Carolina spring night. While I wait it out with them, I spend a few minutes with Sergeant Major Rick Martin, the Echo Company sergeant major and Major Kennedy’s senior enlisted adviser.

  “At this point in the training,” Martin tells me, “the ‘by, with, and through’ concept of conducting a campaign should be taking hold. Sometimes the light goes on and sometimes it doesn’t. Our job is to turn that light on. It can happen early on and, hopefully, sometime before Robin Sage is over. For a few, it doesn’t go on until they are standing in front of the review board with that deer-in-the-headlights look. It’d be easy for me to say the reason we don’t reach more of these soldiers is that they are spoiled, or immature, or soft, or spent too much time with video games, or whatever. The bottom line is that we’re getting bright kids and motiva
ted, patriotic kids. If we don’t reach them, then the problem is on us. We are always looking for new ways to teach and reach these guys. What motivated my generation, or even the candidates here five years ago, is different today. We’re always asking, how do you turn the light on? For a few, a very few, we yell at them—try to goad them into the proper mind-set. Others, we use reason. Some respond to the intellectual challenge, and for some it’s the enjoyment of teaching military skills to others—this can be fun stuff. And for many it’s simply the prospect of inclusion into this brotherhood. But it’s a moving target, and we have to move with it. We have to turn that light on.”

  The two ODA contingents are called back into the house, where they’re told that 912 will take the lead and 915 will assume the role of the support element. As the candidates and their guerrillas file out, I can see that Miguel Santos is deeply disappointed.

  “This is going to be a great operation,” he says to no one in particular. “I really wanted to lead it.” Sergeant Major Martin is within earshot and comes over to him.

  “Sir, from what I’ve seen and heard, you’re a good officer, and when you get to your group, you’re going to be a good team leader. But take this on board as a lesson. It’s not how good you are; it’s how good they are. Now, for whatever reason—training, personality, experience, whatever—912’s Gs were a little sharper than yours tonight. So they got the job. Understand this and drive on. OK?”

  “Roger that, Sergeant Major.”

  For most of the night, the senior members of the two student ODAs and selected members of their guerrilla bands plan and prepare for the prisoner rescue operation. The following morning, the team leader for 912 gives his briefback to the two G chiefs and their general. Captain Santos, Sergeant Brian Short, PFC Tim Baker, and five of 915’s Gs are part of this briefback. They hastily mount out and are inserted by auxiliary truck just after midnight to survey the target. Santos and his men are the recon element for the operation. Well before dawn, they patrol across a cow pasture, hop a barbed-wire fence, and make their way through a dense thicket to the perimeter of the prison.