Shadow Warriors: Inside the Special Forces sic-3 Read online

  I loved the Army from day one — even though my jobs then weren't especially challenging, and I hardly had much responsibility. I liked everything about it: the people, the structured environment, the training, the responsibility, and the opportunity for growth by using my own talents, capabilities, and initiative.

  After approximately six months, I took the Basic Officers Course, followed by Jump School and Ranger School. All were completed within eighteen months.

  The Basic Course took up where the ROTC program left off. We mastered more advanced skills and developed technical competence in leadership, weapons, and tactical subjects that qualified us to lead an infantry platoon in combat operations. For example, we studied map reading in much greater detail than we had in ROTC; we learned how to effectively employ every weapon that was organic to a platoon; we learned patrolling and tactics at the platoon level, integration of fires, and how infantry should function with armor.

  My other big learning experience in those early days at Fort Benning was meeting Sue, who became my wife.

  Understand that just as Fort Benning is called the Home of the Infantry, Columbus is known as the mother-in-law of the infantry, because so many Columbus girls marry the new second lieutenants that come into town. It certainly turned out that way for me.

  When I drove into Fort Benning on that Friday night after 1 graduated from college, it was 10:00 P.M. I signed in at Division Headquarters, was assigned a BOQ room, and was instructed to return by 9:00 A.M. Monday.

  I had no idea what to do for the rest of the weekend, and I had never been to Fort Benning.

  The next morning, as I was looking for a place to eat, I ran into First Lieutenant Jim Smith, who was also living in the BOQ and who knew a good place to go for breakfast — if I had a set of wheels (he had wrecked his car). What we could do, he said, was go eat breakfast, and then in the afternoon drive over to the officers' club, where his girlfriend and one of her friends were waiting for him, and we could all go out together.

  That sounded pretty good to me. So we did that. The friend turned out to be Sue.

  Jim Smith's girlfriend, Ann Scott, met us at the Officers' Club swimming pool. After I was introduced, Ann pointed to her friend, Sue, who was in the swimming pool, and called out to her to come over. After the introductions, the next order of business was the evening's activities. "Wouldn't you all like to go to dinner with us tonight?" Jim asked Suc and me.

  In view of Sue's good looks and her bright and pleasant personality, I certainly welcomed the opportunity, but I knew that his motivation was my means of transportation. I think Sue might have been a little leery, but we were both caught in a bind with the two of them standing there looking so plaintively at us. Suc and I sort of shrugged and said okay, and then we all went to dinner that night at the Patton House on Fort Benning.

  Over dinner, I learned that Sue was nineteen, employed as a secretary to the president and vice president of Burnham Van Service, and enrolled in night classes at the Columbus Center of the University of Georgia. It also turned out she was the reigning "Miss Georgia Air Reserve" (somebody else had obviously thought she was as good-looking as I did).

  In her family were five sisters and a brother (almost the exact reverse of mine). Her brother, the oldest of the children, had fought in World War II and then become a lineman with the Georgia Power Company, where he was tragically electrocuted. Her dad worked for Bibb Manufacturing Company (a textile mill in Columbus), and her mother kept the home.

  From the beginning, I liked Sue a lot, and as I got to know her family, I liked them also. I'm not so sure that she thought as much of me as I did of her, but we started dating occasionally, and I continued to do my thing, soldiering as a young lieutenant.

  Meanwhile, I became friends with a service station owner named Kirby Smith, who also owned a pair of modified stock cars. Although he did not drive himself, Kirby sponsored his mechanic in stock car racing. I liked racing and would go with them on the weekends, and after a time I started driving myself. We would usually go to Valdosta, Georgia, and race there on a Friday night, then on to Montgomery, Alabama, and race Saturday night, then to Atlanta for Sunday night racing, and then back to Columbus in time for me to stand reveille on Monday morning.

  I liked the racing — the challenge, the competition, the risk, and living on the edge. I guess I have always been that way — and the Army has afforded similar satisfaction in most of my assignments.

  Sue and I dated for eighteen months, and in August 1959, we became engaged. Three months later, we were married in her church, the Porter Memorial Baptist Church in Columbus, Georgia. Proposing to Sue, though, put an end to my racing career. When I popped the question, she gave me an ultimatum. "It's either your racing, or me," she said. "You make the choice." It didn't take me long to sort out my priorities.

  As I look back over the forty-one years of our marriage, Sue has proved the best companion and wife any man could ask for — my closest friend and toughest critic. She has been a role-model mother, raising two outstanding daughters, while taking care of the family and wifely responsibilities in every command I held. Marrying her was the soundest decision I ever made.

  JUMPING OUT OF AIRPLANES

  Clancy: Jump and Ranger Schools came after the Basic Course. For Stiner, Jump School came almost immediately. He graduated from the Basic Course on Friday, had Saturday off, reported to Jump School on Sunday, and started training on Monday morning.

  Parachute and Ranger training are tough! Few people enjoy jumping out of airplanes. The risk is always there, rushing up at you; parachutes don't always open; and even when they do open correctly, bones can break when a trooper lands.

  However, it's also not much fun to spend a couple of hard weeks in a swamp in summer or in the mountains in winter, with little or no sleep, having to live off the land when food is not available while conducting training as stressful and physically demanding as real combat. Ranger experience puts a soldier up against the absolute limits of mind and body.

  On the other hand, soldiers who successfully make it through these ordeals have a right to feel good about themselves. The best soldiers are usually Airborne- and Ranger-qualified; and Airborne or Ranger units are usually thought of as elite.

  All of this notwithstanding, in the 1960s every officer had to go through either Jump or Ranger School, and officers who expected to be assigned to a combat unit, whether infantry, armor, or artillery, had to go through both. The Army expected officers to be versatile. It wasn't enough to serve effectively in their own technical specialties; officers had to have all the skills necessary to lead a unit in combat, and the broader perspective that gave. Even officers who weren't in combat branches, such as quartermaster, ordnance, or signal, were expected to handle specialized combat-oriented tasks and challenges.

  Every officer served at least two years in a combat unit before going to the branch in which he was commissioned, and to the basic officer qualification course in that branch. For those in noncombat branches, this was not only valuable experience in itself, but helped them later in serving and supporting the combat units.

  This is no longer the practice in the Army, partly because the shortage of officers has meant that the services can no longer afford the luxury, and partly because of the way the Army has evolved over time. Now the Army is run the way business is, where most people are specialists. Forty years ago, everyone outside of the technical branches was seen as a generalist. The perception was that it didn't matter who you were on the battlefield, you were a better leader if you had a core of basic officer skills that enabled you to take care of your men under all circumstances.

  In most ways, today's Army is a better-prepared and more effective force than the Army of forty years ago, but the discontinuation of combat unit training and experience for all officers is a real loss.

  The objective of Jump School has always been to teach a soldier how to put on his parachute and equipment properly, then how to exit an airplane, descend,
and land safely. Mental alertness, confidence, and the ability to react automatically to just about anything that might happen during a jump are critical.

  The course normally took four weeks, but the Army was testing to see if compression could save training time and money without affecting performance, so for the 1958 class of infantry lieutenants, the course was compressed to three weeks. The instructors were all handpicked NCOs, all master jumpers — and they were professional and tough.

  The program of instruction consisted of a ground week, tower week, and jump week — all punctuated with an extensive physical training program and a very stringent personal inspection each morning, especially during the first two weeks.

  Following the in-ranks inspection by the Black Hats (the Airborne cadre), daily training started with a one-hour session of rigorous physical training: push-ups, squat jumps, sit-ups, pull-ups, deep knee bends, squat thrusts, and a three-mile run in combat boots. The Black Hats' favorite technique for teaching alertness was to bark: "Hit it!" This could be directed at an individual or at the whole group. The instant anyone heard the words, he immediately had to hop up about six inches off the ground and go into the correct position for exiting an aircraft — that is, chin on chest, forearms and fingers extended as if grasping the reserve parachute, elbows held tight to the sides, and counting: "one thousand, two thousand, three thousand, four thousand," representing the seconds it takes a parachute to open. Once in the exit position, he'd start jumping up and down with knees bent and toes pointed to the ground. Anyone who was slow to react and/or did not do any of this correctly could expect to hear "Give me twenty," or however many push-ups the Black Hat wanted to lay on.

  Their favored "weapon" for ensuring conformity and mental alertness was push-ups or squat jumps for every infraction or mistake in training — no matter who committed it — so on any given day, a trainee could find himself doing two hundred or more extra push-ups.

  During the first week, Stiner and the others were taught how to perform parachute landing falls from any direction (left front, right front, left side, right side, left rear, right rear). They started by standing on the ground in the sawdust pit and hopping up and then falling in whichever direction they were told to. After they'd mastered this skill from the ground — maybe a hundred or more parachute landing falls (PLFs) — they moved up to a PLF platform, a wooden structure five feet off the ground. They continued falling from there until they were proficient in every kind of PLF.

  Each time anyone made a PLF, he had to simulate a "prepared to land" position — that is, he'd reach up and pull down on the two front risers of his (simulated) parachute, with elbows tight to the side, chin tucked to the chest, knees slightly bent, feet and knees held tightly together with toes slightly pointed toward the ground. When he touched the ground, he'd roll in the direction that would most cushion his fall.

  After PLFs, they advanced to the "swing landing fall trainer," a circular steel frame suspended by a cable that hangs over a six-foot-high platform. The student, wearing a parachute harness, attached his risers to this frame, then stepped off the platform and began to swing free. The instructor on the ground controlled the swing and determined when and how the student would hit the ground. As often as not, it was when he was in the most awkward position for landing. This device realistically replicated the kinds of falls a jumper was likely to make under actual conditions. Since most injuries occur upon landing, it was vital for the student to master them all.

  During the second week, they worked on the thirty-four-foot tower, which provided a rough likeness of the sensation of jumping out of an airplane, except there was no 125-knot wind blast. According to the experts, thirty-four feet is the optimum height for creating the greatest fear: Anyone who falls from that height without a parachute has a chance to survive. Above that height, it's all over anyhow.

  On top of the tower was a boxlike structure replicating part of an airplane fuselage. A steel cable extended from inside this "fuselage" at a slight angle downward for approximately 150 feet, and then it was anchored about eight feet off the ground. The student hooked his risers to a pulley that rode on this cable. Upon the command "Stand in the door," the student took a position in the door. Upon the "Go" command, the student leapt up and out, and then immediately assumed a tight body position and began his count. By that time, he had fallen to the length of his risers, approximately eight feet, and could feel the jolt of the cable (in an actual jump he would have fallen approximately 200 to 250 feet by the time his parachute opened). When he felt the jolt, the jumper checked his (imaginary) canopy to make sure it was fully deployed, with no more than four broken suspension lines and no tears larger than his helmet. He did that by comparing his rate of fall with that of the other jumpers in the air; if he was falling faster than they were, he considered activating his reserve parachute.

  During descent, the jumper kept a sharp lookout in order to avoid other jumpers, and then began his preparations for landing when he was approximately fifty to a hundred feet above the ground. By this time, he had reached the end of the cable. Once there, he was critiqued by a Black I lat and told to recover and jump again. About fifteen to twenty exits were required from the thirty-four-foot tower before a trainee got a "good to go."

  The last two days of the second week, Stiner and his comrades worked on the 250-foot towers. There, a trainee wore a special type of parachute, which was attached to a ring equal to the circumference of an actual parachute canopy. He was then pulled up to an extended arm on the tower. At the top, his parachute was released and he was allowed to float to the ground. He would then land as hard as if he'd jumped from an actual plane.

  The third week was devoted to jumping. Also included were instructions on actions inside the aircraft, which were conducted in mock-ups. The Black Hats performed the duties of jumpmasters and would put everyone through the jump commands. These were: "Twenty minutes," meaning: "Do a preliminary check of your own equipment; helmet tight, etc." At ten minutes came "Get ready," meaning: "Unbuckle your seat belt and prepare to stand up." Next came "Outboard personnel, Stand up," meaning: "Jumpers seated closest to the skin of the aircraft stand first." Then "Inboard personnel, stand up," meaning: "All the other jumpers, stand up." Then "Hook up," meaning: "All jumpers hook their snap fastener." This was attached to the end of the static line, and hooked to the anchor line cable. Then "Check equipment," meaning: "Each jumper checks his own equipment, plus the static line of the jumper to his front." Then "Sound off for equipment check." The count started in the rear of the stick (the line of jumpers), with each sounding off loudly, "Okay," and slapping the buttocks of the man in front of him. The count was passed forward by every man in the stick. The last man to receive the count then signaled the jumpmaster, "All okay, jumpmaster." One minute out from the drop zone, the loadmasters (part of the plane's crew) opened the jump doors. The jumpmaster looked out to verify that they were in fact over the drop zone, then looked to the rear of the aircraft to verify that no following planes had dropped below the altitude where his paratroopers would be exiting. Once he had verified that it was safe to jump, he pointed to the first jumper and commanded: "Stand in the door." The jumper shuffled to the door, assumed an exit position, and watched for the green light. When it lit, the jumpmaster commanded, "Go," and slapped him on the buttocks. The jumper exited, and the stick followed at one-second intervals.

  This procedure was followed before every jump, and it is still followed by airborne units today, no matter how experienced they are.

  All jumps were made from C-119 aircraft (the old twin-tail flying boxcars), and the guys were ready "almost to jump without a parachute," Stiner observes, "to get relief from rolling around in that sawdust pit and doing push-ups all day.

  "The first jump was the easiest," he continues, "at least for me. But that 125-knot blast of wind was something that none of us had experienced. On the ground, Black Hats with bullhorns were yelling at the students who weren't doing it right; they gave st
rong personal critiques of each landing.

  "We jumped four times that week, all during daylight. The fifth jump was with equipment, which included our load-bearing equipment and M-1 rifle.

  "Saturday was a big day. Graduation! Families and girlfriends were allowed to attend and to assist in pinning on our wings. Everyone in my group graduated, except a few who'd been injured. We all felt very proud and privileged to wear the jump wings.

  "Some people claim to love jumping out of airplanes. That may be so. But not me. Though 1 spent most of my career in airborne units and made 189 jumps, practically all at night with combat equipment, I was never crazy about jumping out of airplanes. After I had gained the confidence afforded by Jumpmaster School, however, I got to where jumping didn't bother me.

  "Airborne units are unique in the capability they provide — that is, 'forced entry' operations. It's not just the jumping, it's the type of people that comprise the ranks of airborne units which makes the assignment so special."

  SWAMPS AND MOUNTAINS

  Carl Stiner graduated from Jump School on Saturday and reported into Ranger School the next morning. That afternoon, he and his companions received orientations and drew equipment. They began training at daylight Monday morning.

  Ranger School has two principal aims: to prepare small-unit leaders for the missions and situations they are likely to face in combat, and to teach skills that are necessary for survival in enemy-held territory. It is the most physically demanding school in the Army for non-Special Operations soldiers.

  Though Ranger School is normally nine weeks long, for Stiner it lasted eight weeks — October to December 1958. (Nothing was deleted but the sleep.) It consisted of three phases: two weeks at Fort Benning, Georgia; three weeks in the Okefenokee Swamp at Eglin Air Force Base, Florida; and three weeks in the mountains at Dahlonega, Georgia.[7]