Shadow Warriors: Inside the Special Forces sic-3 Page 9

  When the Japanese captured the Philippines during the early days of America's involvement in World War II, Volckmann became one of those intrepid Americans who did not surrender. He joined Filipino soldiers and a few other Americans on the island of Luzon in organizing guerrilla resistance to the Japanese. In Bank's words, "When General MacArthur said, 'I shall return,' Russ, who was then a captain, echoed, 'I shall remain'—with MacArthur's blessing." After three years of fighting, their initially small force had grown to something near 15,000 strong — roughly division strength — and had killed or captured many thousand Japanese. When the moment for the Japanese surrender finally arrived, the Japanese commander, General Yamashita, gave it not to MacArthur but to the guerrilla force.

  To honor the guerrilla contribution to victory, MacArthur granted Volckmann — now a colonel — a place at the formal surrender table.[2]

  Bank, Volckmann, and McClure pooled their experience and research, and sat down to try to resolve the many issues that had long occupied special warfare experts: the Ranger versus special operations/guerrilla support model; problems of command and control, staff, logistics, and field operations; the question of how to use Lodge Act aliens, and so on. These matters would continue to occupy special warfare experts over the next five decades.

  Meanwhile, the Army itself took the Ranger issue off the table for the time being by deactivating the Ranger units then in existence, and setting up a Ranger School, where combat and other selected personnel could receive Ranger training and then return to their home units. This was good news to Aaron Bank, who was partial to the OSS and not the Ranger model for special operations. Since the Army still required deep-penetration, long-term operations, the deactivation of the Ranger units would free up personnel spaces for them.

  Shortly thereafter, Bank and Volckmann were authorized to put together a Table of Organization and Equipment (TO&E), the final step needed for the creation of a military unit. The questions now were: How did you make military units that would operate flexibly and resourcefully in nonstandard situations? How big should the operational teams be? How should they be composed?

  Bank's preference was to put together a pool of highly trained men who could be formed into units purpose-built for specific missions. For various Army bureaucracy reasons, however, that was not a workable option. Meanwhile, the OSS offered two already proven models: the three-man Jedburgh team and the thirty-man operational groups. Though not as flexible or as "stealthy" as a Jedburgh team, the OGs were capable of conducting direct-action raids against difficult targets far behind the lines, or guerrilla actions in areas where there were no indigenous guerrillas. The ability of OGs to be split into fifteen-man teams, for greater flexibility, gave Bank another idea: Why not create a core SF field unit that was somewhat larger and more capable than the small Jedburgh team, but somewhat smaller than the OG direct-action strike units? Out of this thought came the Special Forces A-Detachment (or A Team). These were initially fifteen-man half-size OGs, but soon turned into the twelve-man units of today's Special Forces. A captain commanded, with a lieutenant as his number two (later a warrant officer), while the balance was made up of experienced NCOs. Everyone was to be highly specialized, but — for flexibility and redundancy — these specialties were to be paired. There would be two weapons specialists, two communications specialists, two medics, and so on. Everyone would also be cross-trained, not as specialists, but able to handle the other jobs in a pinch. Everyone was also to be airborne and Ranger-qualified, and, in the early days, a few people on the teams could speak fluently the language of the country in which the team would operate. Later, every Special Forces soldier received extensive and very high-level language and cultural training.

  The A-Detachment was (and is) a tiny unit, which did not by itself throw a lot of firepower, but it jammed into a diminutive package a lot of rank and experience. It was also a highly flexible arrangement: Cut one in two and you had something very close to a Jedburgh team. Put two A-Detachments together and you had an OG.

  The A-Detachment would operate in the field somewhere in a target country. A B-Detachment, usually commanded by a major, assisted by two other officers and nine NCOs, would run three A-Detachments, usually from some central location such as a major town or regional capital.

  A C-Detachment, with the same complement of officers and NCOs, would run three Us, usually from the target country's national capital. The C was to be commanded by a lieutenant colonel, who would have a major as his executive officer.

  Three Cs made a group, which was commanded by a colonel. The groups had (and still have) a regional orientation.

  The Special Forces mission, as defined by the TO&E, read (in essence): "to infiltrate by air, sea, or land deep into enemy-controlled territory, and to stay, organize, equip, train, control, and direct the indigenous potential in the conduct of Special Forces Operations." Special Forces Operations were defined as: "the organization of resistance movements and operation of their component networks, conduct of guerrilla warfare, field intelligence gathering, espionage, sabotage, subversion, and escape and evasion activities."

  All these people would need a place to lay their heads, and space for offices, classes, and training. They also needed a center where special operations and unconventional warfare theory and practice, policy and doctrine, and techniques and tactics could be studied, debated, and developed. If Aaron Bank and Russell Volckmann had had their wish, there would have been a facility dedicated to this purpose — a Special Warfare Center and School. However, since Special Forces were for the time being a component of the Psychological Warfare Branch, the Special Warfare Center and School would have to start out as an adjunct to a projected Psychological Warfare Center, which Brigadier General McClure planned for Fort Bragg, North Carolina. This center was approved in March 1952. It was to be, temporarily, under Bank's command. He would also, more permanently, become commander of the first unit to be activated, the 10th Special Forces Group, which was to have a European focus.

  Next came recruiting, which in the early days was aimed at airborne troops, Rangers, and Lodge Act volunteers. The Green Berets still aim their recruiting primarily at airborne and Ranger forces.

  On June 19, 1952, Bank activated the unit and assumed command. "Present for duty," he writes, "were seven enlisted men, one warrant officer, and me, making a slim morning report."

  The numbers quickly grew.

  Later that year, the 10th Group was moved to Bad Tolz, south of Munich, in Germany, but not before it was split in two. The half that stayed behind became the newly organized 77th Special Forces Group.

  McClure, Bank, and Volckmann — together with many, many others who'd helped, advised, and supported them — had well and truly launched U.S. Special Forces.

  It was, however, still a small and — yes — peripheral organization in those days. Until the day in 1961 when the U.S. Special Forces had its defining moment.

  III

  WARRIORS' WARRIOR

  The Army is a tremendous place for an oddball like me, if you can stay alive and keep from being relieved of your commission while you're trying to get along. In the Army there's a place for every kind of intellect. There's an unlimited field for exercising ingenuity and imagination. Yet the Army, being an institution on which the welfare of the nation rests, is not going to jump lightly from one side to another because some guy comes along with a new idea. It really has to be pushed to accept the new — and sometimes by two or three generations of people.

  ★ LIEUTENANT GENERAL WILLIAM P. YARBOROUGH (RET.)

  That defining moment took place on October 12, 1961, at the Rod and Gun Club near McKellar's Pond at Fort Bragg, North Carolina. Present that day were the new Special Forces commander, the recently promoted Brigadier General Bill Yarborough; President John F. Kennedy's military aide, Major General Chester V. (Ted) Clifton; President Kennedy himself; and assorted other dignitaries.

  Kennedy had ostensibly come down to Bragg for two purposes. One
was to observe an Army division, the 82nd Airborne, drawn up on Simmons Airfield with guidons flying and all of its supporting weapons and equipment — Clifton had felt the young President would benefit from watching an entire Army division spread out before him. The other reason, however, was the real purpose of the trip, as Clifton, the President, and Bill Yarborough were well aware: It was to let Kennedy experience what Special Forces could do.

  Kennedy was already favorably inclined toward special operations. In his eyes, they were glamorous, and Kennedy was always favorably inclined toward glamour. But far more important to him, Special Forces had the potcntial to do things that he very badly wanted done.

  Back then, Kennedy had a vision that few of the nation's leaders shared. He saw the likelihood that the United States would soon find itself entangled in a new kind of conflict that would pose a new kind of threat. In his words, we faced "another type of war" than we were used to, one that challenged our normal ways of waging war, "new in its intensity, ancient in its origins — war by guerrillas, subversives, insurgents, assassins; war by ambush instead of by combat; by infiltration instead of by aggression, seeking victory by eroding and exhausting the enemy instead of engaging him. It requires, in those situations where we must encounter it, a whole new kind of strategy, a wholly different kind of force."

  A vivid, exciting, and properly staged Special Forces show, Clifton and Yarborough agreed, would surely demonstrate for their commander-in-chief that the Army already possessed the kind of soldier and force needed to prevail in this new arena. It was far from fully formed and developed, no one would deny that, but Yarborough thought he could demonstrate that he had the core needed to build it.

  As an added boon that day, for the first time at an official function, the Special Forces troops wore their far-from-official but much-cherished headgear — the green beret. At that time, wearing green berets as an item of uniform was strictly forbidden. The Army of the 1960s did not allow a distinetive uniform for "elite" troops like Special Forces or paratroopers. The name of the game was uniformity and homogenization. Even so, all Special Forces troops kept a green beret somewhere, and wore it on field mancuvers in remote areas, or when no one who could do anything about it was looking.

  Bill Yarborough and Ted Clifton had been classmates and close friends at West Point, and remained lifetime friends. Before Kennedy's trip to Fort Bragg, Clifton and Yarborough had debated the wearing of the beret for the President. On the downside, they were putting their military careers at risk. On the upside, they felt that the Special Forces needed to be recognized as extraordinary by their military colleagues and the public. To Yarborough, a man profoundly sensitive to symbols, the beret was not simply a distinctive piece of clothing, but an emblem.

  "I think the President would like to see your guys in their green berets," said Clifton.

  "So do I," Yarborough replied. "But, of course, they're not authorized."

  "Well," Clifton said, "you tell them to come out wearing it."

  "What happens after that?"

  "Whatever it is, we'll fix it."

  And so on the twelfth of October, green berets of a grand variety of shades and textures, some of them veterans of dozens of field exercises, emerged from every kind of hiding place. The men wearing them that day stood proud in a way they had never been allowed to before. And the smiling young president was delighted.

  Later, even as the Uniform Board of the Army tried to grapple with this outrage, a telegram from the White House came to Brigadier General Yarborough, indicating that the President had given his approval to the beret as a symbol of excellence. From that moment on, the green beret was officially sanctioned.

  Since then, berets of many varieties have become official headgear for U.S. Army units — first for recognized elites such as Rangers (black berets) and paratroopers (red-maroon). More recently — amid considerable controversy — the entire Army has been given the privilege of wearing black berets (the Rangers will now wear tan).

  Be that as it may, the wearing of the berets was not the main event back on that warm autumn day forty years ago. The main event was the "Gabriel Demonstration," named after a Special Forces soldier named Gabriel — though the name's associations with the announcing angel Gabriel were not forgotten. The idea was to display the variety, flexibility, and resourcefulness of the A-Detachments as played off against some of the more significant challenges they might be expected to face. Normally, they would have taken the President around to various locations where the teams were in action, but that would not work here, partly because of the nature of special forces, which operate in widely separated areas and in clandestine and covert situations, making observation difficult — but mostly, Ted Clifton informed Yarborough beforehand, because Kennedy's bad back didn't allow him much movement.

  Instead of bringing the President to the show, they would have to bring the show to the President.

  To that end, Clifton and Yarborough worked out a system in which Special Forces skill groups would pass a reviewing stand on floats (or using floats as props) mounted on flatbed trucks. Each one would stop in front of the President, and that element's activity would be revealed. There was little emphasis on equipment, gear, and weapons. The emphasis was on people.

  One float, for example, showed an enemy guerrilla base like those in Laos, South Vietnam, and elsewhere in Southeast Asia. Such bases were hard to find, fix, or destroy, since they moved in fluid fashion and were concealed in swamps, jungles, or mountain hideaways. Finding and destroying such bases, the President was told, required highly trained, specially equipped, light mobile combat units. Special Forces A-Detachments could perform in these roles, but more appropriately, they could train others to do so.

  Another float showed how the language and cultural training possessed by A-Detachment troops allowed them to train and assist native forces. Another showed how Special Forces civic actions (such as medical help) supplemented their combat functions, benefited ordinary folks who might otherwise help the bad guys, and helped drain away the seas where enemy guerrillas swam.

  Others showed Special Forces psychological and communications skills — by broadcast, loudspeakers in villages, or leaflets. Thousands of leaflets fell out of the sky that day to reinforce the point. Others showed more traditional special operations — such as training friendly guerrillas to operate against enemy convoys and supply dumps deep within enemy territory.

  The show worked.

  Shortly thereafter, presidential approval came for a much larger Special Forces — more groups, more men, and much more money.

  This growth came at a price. The "big" Army was not comfortable with Special Forces, and the presidential blessing did not increase their comfort. Before Bill Yarborough had taken over as commander, Special Forces had been minor and marginalized, though perhaps useful in a protracted conflict. Members of Special Forces could not expect long army careers or fast promotions. It was a dead-end unit.

  Much of the army leadership in the Pentagon would have been happy if Special Forces stayed that way.

  Before Kennedy's visit, Bill Yarborough got this message loud and clear from more than one friendly and well-meaning superior. For example, the commander of the XVIII Airborne Corps, a three-star general, told him: "You just got your star, Bill, but I'm going to tell you straight. You're trying to pull off something that nobody much likes and that nobody's going to accept unless the President is dead sold on it. I mean, he has to be dead sold on it, because those guys there at the Pentagon are going to go after your ass if he's not."

  On the other hand, it would be wrong to paint the "big" Army as totally obstructionist.

  When Bill Yarborough took over the Special Warfare Center[3] in 1961, one of his first directives to his staff was to work out the philosophy that would shape the center according to President Kennedy's aims — a difficult job made more difficult by the "big" Army's failure to understand the problems Kennedy was trying to address. However, important elements in t
he Army did in fact try very hard to carry out the President's desires in the counterinsurgency arena.

  For instance, a Special Warfare Directorate was created within the office of the Army's Deputy Chief of Staff for Military Operations. In January 1961, this directorate initiated the first courses of instruction in counterinsurgency at the Special Warfare School.

  Then, early in 1962, a board of thirteen general officers chaired by General Hamilton Howze gathered at the Special Warfare Center. The Howze Board recommended that all Army officers from colonel through four-star general, as well as all the Army divisions in the United States, should be educated and trained in counterinsurgency. The Board also recommended doubling Special Forces from the then-2,300 to 4,600. By mid- 1968, this level had been raised to eight Special Forces groups totalling more than 9,000 men.

  Meanwhile, the show Yarborough and Clifton put on for the President that October day was really the culmination of three entwined, but not (at that time) totally recognized or understood, forces.

  First — and he did not know this — Bill Yarborough had been handpicked by Kennedy for the command of Special Forces, with help and advice from Ted Clifton. The President had told the Army Chief of Staff that he wanted Yarborough, so Yarborough he got. This token of executive preference was inevitably resented by "those guys there at the Pentagon," who liked to be in charge of picking who went where. They didn't like it when the President took that power away from them, and this meant that Yarborough started with strikes against him.

  Second, Bill Yarborough knew that Special Forces was the only U.S. military concept oriented toward the "new form of warfare" that so worried the President, but he also knew that this would be a very tough sell to the Army without Kennedy's help. The Army had continued to fight World War II — a firepower and massed-forces war — for decades after that war was won. It meant that Yarborough would have to sail close to the wind in order to promote and sell Special Forces. He would have to convince the president and the American public. As Ted Clifton had known well when he passed Yarborough's name to Kennedy, Yarborough was a master promoter—"Showbiz" to his friends. He was the man for the job.