SpecOps

Photo of the Day, SOCOM Inducts Four Into Commando Hall of Honor

USSOCOM held a ceremony on April 18 at MacDill Air Force Base, Florida and inducted four very deserving people into SOCOM’s Commando Hall of Honor. Leading the way was OSS and CIA trailblazer Virginia Hall. Hall will be the subject of a motion picture starring Star Wars’ Daisy Ridley in the near future.

Virginia Hall, Army Col. Charles Munske, Army Lt. Col. Leif Bangsboll and Command Master Chief (SEAL) Richard Rogers, were inducted into U.S. Special Operations Command’s Commando Hall of Honor for their remarkable contributions to special operations in a ceremony held at the headquarters on MacDill Air Force Base, Florida, April 18, 2019. Although their actions were from another era, they embody the first Special Operations Forces truth “Humans are more important than hardware.” The four inductees are an eclectic group of special operations pioneers who shared a dedication and a commitment to defending our country.
Hall, an amputee and first female operative sent into France during World War II spying in Lyon, the Nazi-allied Vichy government of France. Munske, a career Civil Affairs officer credited for rebuilding Japanese infrastructure after the devastation of World War II and was in the forefront rebuilding both Pyongyang and Seoul during the Korean conflict. Bangsboll, a Danish turned American Office of Strategic Services operator who parachuted behind enemy lines into Denmark helping defeat the Germans during World II earning the Distinguished Service Cross and who would also go on to serve with valor in Korea. Rogers, a SEAL would serve from platoon point man to senior enlisted leader USSOCOM from 2000 to 2003.
The Limping Lady:
Hall, the daughter of a wealthy family from Baltimore, wanted to become a Foreign Service Officer before the outbreak of World War II, but was turned down by the State Department despite being fluent in French, German, and Italian. Women could be clerks but not officers. Besides, she was missing her left leg below the knee, the result of a hunting accident in Turkey years earlier, which to the State Department further disqualified her.
Undeterred, Hall went overseas and joined the British Special Operations Executive. There, she became the SOE’s first female operative sent into France. For two years she spied in Lyon, part of the Nazi-allied Vichy government of France under the guise of a New York Post reporter. After the United States entered the war, she was forced to escape to Spain by foot across the Pyrenees Mountains in the middle of winter.
Hall eventually made it back to London, where the SOE trained her as a wireless radio operator. While there, she learned of the newly formed Office of Strategic Services. She quickly joined, and, at her request, the OSS sent her back into occupied France, an incredibly dangerous mission given that she was already well-known to the Germans as a supposed newspaper reporter.
Though only in her thirties with a tall, athletic build, she disguised herself as an elderly peasant, dying her soft-brown hair a graying black, shuffling her feet to hide her limp, and wearing full skirts and bulky sweaters to add weight to her frame. Her forged French identity papers said she was Marcelle Montagne, daughter of a commercial agent named Clement Montagne of Vichy. Her code name was Diane.
Infiltrating France in March 1944, she initially acted as an observer and radio operator in the Haute-Loire, a mountainous region of central France. While undercover she coordinated parachute drops of arms and supplies for Resistance groups and reported German troop movements to London as well as organized escape routes for downed Allied airmen and escaped prisoners of war. By staying on the move she was able to avoid the Germans, who were trying to track her from her radio transmissions.
Her chief pursuer was no less than Gestapo Chief Nikolaus “Klaus” Barbie, infamously known as “The Butcher of Lyon.” The one thing they knew about her was that she limped, and therefore she became known to the Gestapo as “The Limping Lady.”
In mid-August 1944, Hall was reinforced by the arrival of a three-man Jedburgh team. Together they armed and trained three battalions of French resistance fighters for sabotage missions against the retreating Germans. In her final report to headquarters. Hall stated that her team had destroyed four bridges, derailed freight trains, severed a key rail line in multiple places, and downed telephone lines. They were also credited with killing some 150 Germans and capturing 500 more.
For her work with the SOE Hall was presented the Order of the British Empire by King George VI. The French government gave her the Croix de Guerre avec Palme. After the war, she was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross-the only one awarded to a woman during World War II. It was pinned on by OSS head Army Maj. Gen. William J. “Wild Bill” Donovan himself.
She went to work for the National Committee for a Free Europe, a Central Intelligence Agency front organization associated with Radio Free Europe. She used her covert action expertise in a wide range of agency activities, chiefly in support of resistance groups in Iron Curtain countries, until she retired in 1966.
Virginia Hall died on July 8, 1982, aged 76. In 2017, the CIA named a training facility after her: “The Virginia Hall Expeditionary Center.”
The Mayor of Pyongyang
Munske’s lengthy Civil Affairs military career began on Dec. 14, 1914 when he enlisted in the 13th Coast Defense Command, New York National Guard. His first exposure to Civil Affairs/Military Government activities was as a sergeant and interpreter for the postwar Engineer Operations Division of War Damages in Allied Countries section of the American Commission to negotiate peace in Paris.
Munske received a commission on June 7, 1920 as a second lieutenant in the New York National Guard serving until 1940, when he joined the active Army. After being stuck in the U.S. as a Coast Artillery officer in 1944 Munske made a career change to get overseas. He volunteered to attend the School of Military Government at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville. He next attended Harvard’s Civil Affairs Training School from before going to the Civil Affairs Staging Area at The Presidio, California.
In November 1945, he was sent to Japan to serve as the Assistant Chief of Staff G-5 (Military Government) of the 98th Infantry Division, headquartered in Osaka. Much of his time was spent administering civil matters, including jump-starting Japanese local industry. To do this effectively, he learned the language and culture, and attended many meetings and social events in order to make inroads with the local civilian population. His assistance to more than six million inhabitants of the Osaka Fu, Mie, Wakayama and Nara prefectures, would earn him a Legion of Merit and the Army Commendation Ribbon.
In October 1950 and Munske was assigned to the Pyongyang Civil Assistance Team of the United Nations Public Health and Welfare Detachment. He accompanied the victorious UN forces north to Pyongyang, which fell to UN forces on Oct. 19, 1950. He became known as the “Mayor of Pyongyang” when he and his fourteen-man military/civilian team achieved dramatic success when they found resources to reestablish infrastructure, resumed trash collection, established a fire brigade, made sure city workers were paid, immunized 3,500 people against typhus and another 4,000 against smallpox, reestablished the police force and law and order, organized a rudimentary health care system and set up insecticidal dusting stations to prevent and control the spread of lice and flea-borne infectious diseases. They also repaired two power plants, fixed the streetcar and telephone system and began reconstructing the key railroad bridge across the Taedong River. However, all of this hard work was for naught.
By late October 1950, the UN forces had pushed the North Korean Army across the Yalu River, the northern border with China. It was then that massive infiltrations of volunteer Communist Chinese forces attacked behind UN lines. This human onslaught quickly overwhelmed the strung out UN forces forcing them to retreat across enemy occupied territory. By the beginning of December, Communist forces were at the gates of Pyongyang. Munske had no choice but to order the destruction of what his team had recently rebuilt and join the retreat.
His next assignment was as Executive Officer of the Kyongsang-Namdo (Pusan) Provincial Civil Assistance Team where he helped administer the sizeable refugee population in and around Pusan. After UN forces again pushed the Communists north, Munske headed the Kyonggi Do Province (Seoul) Civil Assistance Team. He was instrumental in rebuilding the major metropolitan areas of Seoul, Inchon, and Suwon, all of which had suffered greatly having been twice occupied by the Communists.
The last phase of Munske’s CA career was as Inspector General of the New York Military District, with concurrent duties as Legal Assistance Officer and Senior Advisor for Military Government units. He inspected reserve Military Government units and Reserve Officers Training Corps (ROTC) programs.
Munske retired Feb. 28, 1958 with 20 years of active service while serving nearly 43 years in the military. The 95th Civil Affairs Brigade has named their headquarters building after him.
He passed away on Nov. 14, 1985 at the age of 88, and is buried at Arlington National Cemetery.
OSS operator to Green Beret plank holder
Born in Denmark in 1918, Leif Bangsboll was the son of Danish Navy Rear Admiral Frederick Christian Bangsboll who commanded the Danish submarine fleet. In 1935, he volunteered for the Royal Danish Naval Air Force and trained as an observer prior to joining the merchant marine. In September 1940, he joined the Norwegian Air Force (in exile) in Canada, where he trained as a flight sergeant. Knowing that he would not see action he volunteered for the U.S. Army, joining as a Private First Class on March 22, 1943.
Fluent in Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish, and able to speak French, German and Greenlandic, the Office of Strategic Services recruited him in September 1943. At first, the OSS employed him as an instructor at RTU-11, otherwise known as the Farm, a school for teaching the methods of secret intelligence work. He was then sent to the Danish operations section of the OSS Special Operations branch. Because he was unable to get a U.S. Army commission at the time by agreement with the OSS the British Army gave him a commission as a first lieutenant. He eventually got his U.S. commission on Nov. 6, 1944.
On the night of Oct. 5, 1944 Bangsboll parachuted into occupied Denmark near Allborg, and was “the only American officer serving as an agent” in that country. Until the end of the war, he lived as a civilian- subject to execution as a spy if caught- and helped arm, train, and lead the Danish resistance while reporting on conditions in the country. He also engaged in several sabotage missions, including blowing rail and communications lines seriously delaying German troop movements. While in Copenhagen in May 1945, Bangsboll led a resistance force that captured German artillery pieces and machineguns leading to the surrender of the entire garrison. For his extremely dangerous assignment in a country with a robust enemy counter-intelligence network. Bangsboll received the Distinguished Service Cross and a number of Danish awards. After the war in Europe ended. He then briefly served in Germany with the OSS successor, the Strategic Services Unit.
After returning to the U.S., Bangsboll attended Intelligence Officer’s training at Camp Holabird, Maryland, and served in airborne units at Fort Bragg, NC. Before deploying to pre-war South Korea. There, he served as a Public Safety Officer in the 59th Military Government Headquarters and Headquarters Company. He then became an intelligence and reconnaissance platoon leader in the 187th Airborne Infantry Regiment.
When this unit was sent to Korea as the Regimental Combat Team Bangsboll again went to war. For an action on Nov. 16, 1950 he received the Silver Star for leading a small force behind enemy lines near Pyongwon-ni, North Korea. His platoon overwhelmed a North Korean garrison and discovered the location and contents of a food storage warehouse. Later ordered to destroy the warehouse, Bangsboll once again led his numerically inferior force in killing the enemy defenders, demolishing the warehouse with its estimated 100 to 150 tons of dried food all with no friendly casualties.
When he returned from Korea Bangsboll briefly served with the Central Intelligence Agency before coming to the Psychological Warfare Center at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, with further assignment to the newly-established I0th Special Forces Group (Airborne). Bangsboll taught guerrilla warfare and clandestine operations and helped develop the initial program of instruction. As an instructor, he excelled. He also attended the Psychological Warfare course at Georgetown University thus being qualified in both of the Army’s special operations fields.
Bangsboll retired from the U.S. Army April 30, 1963 and passed away Nov. 20, 2001.
Lifetime of service to naval special warfare
Retired Command Master Chief Petty Officer Richard Rogers, (SEAL), spent 31 years of active duty in elite special operations forces taking countless assignments from platoon point man ultimately becoming the senior enlisted leader for USSOCOM from August 2000 to August 2003.
Rogers also has an extensive resume of military experience within the Naval Special Warfare community. He joined the Navy in July 1972 and completed Basic Underwater Demolition/SEAL training in May 1973. Moving through the ranks he started as SEAL platoon point man and communicator at SEAL Team ONE; as an instructor at BUD/S; as a platoon cartographer/intelligence specialist, the intelligence department head, the ordnance department head, the command career counselor, and a platoon chief petty officer at SEAL Team FIVE; and as a boat crew leader at SEAL Team SIX. Rogers also served as an Operations Chief Petty Officer, Assistance Current Operations Officer at Naval Special Warfare Development Group. He studied Spanish at the Defense Language Institute. Additionally, he served as the Command Master Chief at Naval Special Warfare Unit EIGHT in Panama; Naval Special Warfare Group ONE in Coronado, California; and Special Operations Command, Europe in Stuttgart, Germany.
An expert in a variety in special operations skills, Rogers was qualified as an open and closed circuit scuba diver, open and closed circuit diving supervisor, static line and free-fall parachutist, static line and free-fall jumpmaster, small arms range safety officer, close quarter combat range safety officer, and helicopter castmaster. He trained and mentored recruits aspiring to become SEALs and Special Warfare Combatant-craft Crewman, trained indigenous forces throughout southwest Asia.
A seasoned combat veteran he held leadership positions in combat Operations Just Cause in Panama and Allied Force in Bosnia, and he became the first Theater Special Operations Command-Europe senior enlisted leader.
As the senior enlisted leader of USSOCOM he ushered in a new era for SOF, when the command transitioned from peacetime engagement to the War on Terrorism.
Rogers retired from the Navy in 2003 and continues to work to improve the training and professional development of naval special warfare personnel as a civilian at the Center for SEAL and Special Warfare Combatant-craft Crewman. He became the driving force in the development of the new SEAL and SWCC ratings for enlisted personnel. Rogers also successfully negotiated additional senior enlisted billets from the Navy to ensure proper force structure for the community.
In May 2006, he assumed the N3 (Operations directorate) position at the Center for SEAL and SWCC, a learning center to manage the new SEAL and SWCC ratings, where he continues to improve the training and professional development of naval special warfare personnel.
In total, Rogers has dedicated 47 years to naval special warfare and special operations. Mentoring the special warfare community for nearly half a century, his contributions will have a lasting impact for future generations of naval special operators.
Photos: USSOCOM

Too Many Junior Army Leaders Can’t Navigate, A Bad Sign

A recent piece in MilitaryTimes stated that many of the young sergeants in most infantry and close-combat units don’t know how to maneuver their squads or do basic land navigation. For “soft skill” MOS’ that isn’t necessarily a show stopper, but for the infantry and combat arms types, that is a very bad sign that units aren’t doing proper training for their soldiers and leaders. For Special Operations troops, this lack of training will have a trickle-down effect.

Last week we posted a piece about a soldier who was akin to “Ned the Navigator” and got lost on a Land Nav course. This, however, is no laughing matter.

If conventional infantry units aren’t doing proper training for their soldiers, when they become junior leaders, fire-team leaders, and squad leaders, then they, in turn, can’t properly train their soldiers. And it snowballs.

According to the same Military.com piece by Matthew Cox, the Army’s Noncommissioned Officer Academy is seeing sergeants routinely show up for courses unable to pass a basic land navigation course using a map and compass.

Those courses are a piece of cake compared to what they’ll see in Special Forces. The “Star Course” that SF candidates must pass is easily the toughest land navigation course in the Army and arguably the toughest in the military as a whole.

The majority of Special Forces candidates that fail at Selection and Assessment (SFAS) do so at Land Navigation and it requires every candidate to be on top of his… or her game. And if the E-4s, E-5s, and E-6s can’t do basic navigation at an NCO Academy they have next to zero chance of passing the Star course in Hoffman.

An example of this was back in the day when I went thru the Warrant Officer’s Candidate Course. There were a handful of Special Forces NCOs, a couple of CID NCOs and a whole bunch of high-school to flight school kids who wanted to fly Blackhawks. The CID guys didn’t have much practical experience with maps and compasses, so it was up to us to help out the class.

The cadre played up the difficulty of the course and told horror stories of so many candidates getting lost out in the forest and getting dropped from the course. The SF guys looked at one another and we knew there was no way this could be anywhere near the difficulty as we experienced at Camp Mackall. It wasn’t.

If memory serves right, we had a five-hour window in which to find all of our points and successfully return to the start/finish point. In less than an hour, the SF guys started trotting in. I arrived seconds before my best bud Wade Chapple, who was a frequent target of our Senior Tac Officer. “Are you lost Chapple?” the Senior Tac yelled. With a shit-eating grin, Wade answered, “no sir…just done.”

They checked over our scorecards where we had to mark down each of the points we found. “How is it you finished so fast,” the tac asked. “We’re trained to move out much farther and much faster with a ruck on our backs,” Wade said. “We ran to our points.”

The cadre seemed incredulous that someone can run thru the woods and navigate at the same time…they shouldn’t have. Thousands of SF troops who passed Land Nav at Camp Mackall have done just that. This was nothing more than a glorified compass course which most NCO Academy’s are.

According to cadre at the Henry Caro NCO Academy at Ft. Benning, GA, home of the Army’s Infantry, stated that 30 percent of the NCOs that show up can’t pass the diagnostic dismounted Land Navigation Course. That course is geared toward Skill Level 1 tasks. Many of the NCOs who failed to find the requisite 4-out-of-5 points said that they hadn’t practiced with a map, compass, and protractor for years in their units. That is flat-out wrong.

After my active duty career was over, I worked as a contractor and saw that the troops headed for Iraq were far too dependent on GPS and there was a definitive lack of map reading training taking place.

While that is fine in a counter-insurgency environment in Third World countries such as Iraq, Afghanistan, and Syria, for example, but with the military services transitioning now to a large scale conventional battlefield against a foe of equal strength such as Russia or China, the threat of them blocking or jamming our GPS signals is very real. What happens then?

The Big Army is not doing right by its soldiers and NCOs in this case. Brigade and Battalion commanders have to cut back to the typical ash and trash details and let combat soldiers go back to train to succeed in what they’re supposed to do.

NCOs are the backbone of the military services; when their training and technical competence isn’t up to par, the entire unit’s tactical and technical proficiency will suffer. Get the troops back to the basics and teach them the old way of “Shoot, move and communicate.”

We’re not even going to touch on the fact that most NCOs couldn’t hit their targets with iron sights, as they’ve become too dependent on optics…

Who’s ready to go to Land Navigation this week? It may be time to revisit some of our basic Land Navigation and Map Reading tasks in the very near future.

Photo: US Army

Special Operations Forces Selection PT Preparation Week 8, Day 5

Back to the gym today as we prep for the UBRR with a Chest and Triceps workout. Then a 4-mile ruck march with 45-pounds minimum. This would be a great time, to wear that second pair of boots. Right? Remember to push the pace without running.

And also remember to stretch well before and after and to stay hydrated. Mark your progress down in your workout log book.

UBRR Training:

More Preparation for the UBRR:

3 x 12 Bench Press

3 x 10 Dumbbell Flies

3 x 10 Dumbbell Incline press

3 x 20 Pushups (alternate sets with wide, narrow and shoulder width)

3 x 10 Kip Ups

3 x 20 Sit-ups

3 x 20 Cable Push Downs (rope)

3 x 20 Dips or until muscle failure

4-mile rucksack march (45-pound minimum) over varied terrain, note your time

Stretch well after completion

The Last of the Original Frogmen, Bill Dawson Celebrates 94th Birthday

The very last of the original “frogmen”, the forerunners of the Navy SEAL teams was honored on the date of his 94th birthday amid his family, friends, and family members.

Bill Dawson, who grew up in Washington D.C. was working at the D.C. Shipyard in 1943 and enlisted in the U.S. Navy when he was just 17-years old. Not long after enlisting, he found out about a specialized Navy unit that as he put it, “got to blow things up.” After saying he didn’t quite know how to take that tidbit of information, he and another sailor decided to volunteer. But he almost didn’t even get a chance to attempt the training.

As the two reached the building where the volunteers were assembling, they were told that the class was full, they had 500 volunteers. Undeterred, Dawson and his buddy walked around the back of the building, and climbed thru an open window and took their place in the back of the line. The volunteer class, Class 1 of the famous frogmen was now numbered 502.

Their training whittled down the number of volunteers from over 500 to just 52. And the toughness of the “frogman” course would be every bit as tough as the famed BUDS course for the SEALs is today.

The 3-5 mile runs in the sand, climbing over slippery, barnacle-encrusted rocks in the jetty and the log PT was a tough task for the frogmen as they remain that today. “I can still pick the splinters out of my arms today, Dawson joked in an interview he conducted with the American Veterans Center.

The training was so tough, it reduced the 17-year old to tears at times. “I wanted to quit,” he recalled. But he kept going and persevered, the 94-year old joked again that the sand fleas and mosquitoes, that were so plentiful at the frogmen’s training base kept him going.

But he did graduate and take his place among what the Navy termed, Underwater Demolition Teams (UDT), which became commonly known as “frogmen.” They were also called Naval Combat Demolition Units (NCDU) These men were legendary is clearing beach obstacles for the countless amphibious landings the United States conducted in World War II. The casualty rate for the frogmen at Normandy on D-Day was 53 percent.

Dawson took part in several landings in the Pacific helping the military clear landing beaches for infantry troops of the Army and Marines to get ashore and attack enemy installations on the land.

During his birthday celebration last week, Dawson took great pride in being the first group of sailors who became the Navy SEALs of today. “Knowing today what I helped start developed into what it is today. It’s one of the greatest outfits in the world,” he said.

Dawson’s unit cleared the beach for the return of General Douglas MacArthur to the Philippines. “We got ashore before he did,” Dawson remembered with a smile.

Dawson wrote and published in 2015 “Before They Were SEALs They Were Frogs,” a book about his time during World War II on the Navy’s first special operations team.

After the war was over, Dawson joined the Washington D.C. Fire Department and served there for 25 years and then retired, now 45 years ago. Dawson was a founding member of the US Navy SEAL Museum in Fort Pierce, FL, and contributed many of the key exhibits there. Despite his age, Dawson remains active in supporting Naval Special Warfare history and heritage.

Four years ago, when he was 90 years old, Dawson was honored at the BattleFrog Navy SEALs obstacle course race at Old Bridge Township Raceway Park, in Englishtown, NJ.

The American Veterans Center interview was a long one but worth the time to hear the remembrances of a truly unique special warrior. Happy Birthday to the last of the original frogmen, Mr. Dawson

Photo: US Navy

Special Operations Forces Selection PT Preparation Week 8, Day 4

Shoulders and back day in the gym before heading off to do a 5-mile rucksack march. Conduct the ruck over varied terrain and remember to hydrate throughout. After the ongoing and heavy rains here and dealing with a muddy mess on the trail, your times may suffer as the ruck becomes a slog thru the mud. Get used to it, the weather is rarely perfect for Selection.

It is a good habit to get used to hydrating while rucking and a needed one for the time when you’re in the course. Even in the rain. Mark your time down in your workout logbook.

UBRR Training:

More Preparation for the UBRR:

3 x 12 Lat Pull downs, behind the neck (go as heavy as possible)

3 x 12 Lat Pull downs, front

3 x 10 Seated Rows

3 x 10 Dumbbell Side Raises

3 x 10 Dumbbell Front Raises

3 x 10 Dumbbell Arnold Press

3 x 8 Shoulder Shrugs

5-mile Ruck sack march (45-lb minimum) over varied terrain, 75-minutes maximum

Stretch well after completion

Let’s Talk About That Dirty Word …Standards in Special Operations

Let us talk about standards again…oh no. Not that dirty word again. But it is a very important one. We’ve written about the standards in the SF courses, both SFAS and the SFQC a couple of times and now is a good time to revisit it again.

There has been a lot of talk about Special Operations Forces a lot lately and a lot of it is for the wrong reasons. And while the jury is still out (figuratively and literally) on many of these cases we’ve seen in the news, some have stated that these cases we’re seeing here are just a case of the military letting the standards slip. While we disagree with that assumption and believe it to be the case of several factors, that won’t be the last time we hear that uttered.

In the Special Forces community, we had the now infamous “night letter” where several SF instructors took to the internet to vent their frustrations what they perceived to be a severe lowering of standards with the Special Forces Qualification Course, they reached to their fellow Green Berets for support. It excoriated the command of the JFK Special Warfare Center and School.

Our Regiment has a cancer, and it is destroying the SF legacy, its capability, and its credibility.
SWCS has devolved into a cesspool of toxic, exploitive, biased and self-serving senior Officers who are bolstered by submissive, sycophantic, and just-as-culpable enlisted leaders. They have doggedly succeeded in two things; furthering their careers, and ensuring that Special Forces more prolific, but dangerously less capable than ever before. Shameless and immodest careerism has, in no uncertain terms, effectively destroyed our ability to assess, train, and prepare students, or to identify those students that pose a very real risk to Operational Detachments. I cannot stress how systematic and severe the effects on the force will be if the standards, recently implemented here in the Special Forces Qualification Course, remain in place.

That letter eventually made its way to the media and there was the devil to pay. The Commanding General of the JFKSWC, MG Kurt Sonntag answered that email with one of his own and tried to answer those charges and reassure the cadre of the Special Forces courses.

“Many of you have seen the anonymous letter calling into question the integrity of our training standards and the quality of the Soldiers being produced. Let me be clear,” Sonntag writes in his letter, a copy of which was provided to NPR by the command, “I would be proud to serve with each and every one of our Special Forces Qualification Course graduates, and I stand behind the quality of every Soldier we send to the operational force.”

The purpose here isn’t to re-debate things here, that is an exercise in futility. We can understand…totally both sides of the equation. The school’s commander, Sonntag is in a very tough spot. He gets guidance from above him that the operational groups need “X” number of people and those numbers just aren’t there. Between the endless wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, and now Syria, the operational tempo and deployment schedule have left Special forces with a high case of operator burnout.

But the instructors have a duty to assess, select and train the very best candidates for the force. And they know, when their tours as instructors are over, the candidates that successfully complete the course, will be their teammates of the future.

Regardless, the standards have to remain high and the School’s command and instructors have to be very discriminating over who can be part of it. Not everyone is cut out to be an operator in a Special Operations unit. By their very nature, the missions of SOF units are extremely challenging both physically and mentally. For the operators, the job gets tougher, not easier after graduation when our troops find themselves in the real-world SOF environment. The different services and their individual units must identify, develop, and provide the necessary training to produce troops that can operate in their environments.

That’s why the maintaining of standards is so important. All of the different services (Army Green Berets and Rangers, Navy SEALs, Air Force CCT) have their own standards as to what they are looking for in the troops that aspire to be in their units. But they all share some common attributes.

They have to be internally motivated and will strive to not only get the job done but do it beyond the scope of what is required. And be able to function with but more importantly without supervision.

Candidates have to be intelligent and be able to learn other languages and cultures. The SOF units are looking for people who can think on their feet when they’re tired, hungry and under an extreme amount of stress. Physically, they must be hard and tough enough to never quit, never give in and always keep driving forward.

William “Wild Bill” Donovan who created OSS (Office of Strategic Services), the forerunner of both CIA and the U.S. Army Special Forces, in World War II was asked what he was looking for in OSS operators. It was simple yet detailed. “PhDs who can win a bar fight.”

Special Forces utilizes the “Whole Man” Selection Process concept and the six main attributes that every successful Special Forces operator should possess include:

Intelligence
Trainability
Physical Fitness
Motivation
Influence
Judgment

However, those same attributes apply equally to Rangers, SEALs, or Air Force CCTs. And of course, they all share the confidence that comes from constant practice of their profession and the fact that they react to stress as motivation.

As we’ve seen in the lessons learned thru the wars in Afghanistan, Iraq and now Syria, the standards of the SOF need to remain high. In fact, if anything they need to be even higher as the demand increases for operators and the number of qualified candidates dwindles. As the demands increase and the tools of the trade become even sharper, the standards for becoming a Special Operations trooper should never be lowered.

So, even though the mission priorities are subject to change as the threat evolves, the core values of SOF never do. And the standards by which we identify, assess and train our Special Operations Force warriors should never be lowered.

Photo courtesy DOD

Special Operations Forces Selection PT Preparation Week 8, Day 3

Tuesday is Leg Day, time for building strength and endurance, begin with pull-ups and. then squats, lunges and the sled followed by a four-mile run in under 32 minutes which is the standard.

If your gym has no sled, you can substitute a Fireman’s Carry with a training partner.

We hope everyone had a great Easter or Passover dinner on Sunday. A day to recover and Leg Day with a good run in the rain will fix that.

Training:

Continue to prep for the UBRR

3 x Pullups 10 reps

3 x 10 reps Deadlifts

3 x Front Squat 20-15-12 reps (lighter weight)

3 x Goblet Squats 20-15-12 reps (lighter weight)

4 x Sled push heavier weight or Fireman’s Carry

3 x 10 reps Dumbbell Lunges

3 x 20 Side planks

4-Mile run (32 minutes maximum)

Stretch well after completion

Remembering Pat Tillman, Ranger, NFL Player Died on This Day 2004

The endless Global War on Terror has claimed about 7000 American soldiers lives, mainly in Iraq and Afghanistan and have claimed over 500,000 lives of all the peoples involved since the 9/11 attacks in New York. Arguably one of the most well-known American soldiers to die was Pat Tillman, who gave up a million-dollar NFL career to enlist in the Army. He joined the 2nd Battalion, 75th Ranger Regiment and fought in Iraq and Afghanistan and was killed there on April 22, 2004.

At the time of his death, he was seen as an American hero who sacrificed all for his country while giving up a very lucrative career, just hitting its peak. Later, his name resurfaced during the controversy over the Colin Kaepernick Nike ads and the practice of many NFL players to kneel during the national anthem. Many tried to point out that Tillman would be against this practice and be a better spokesman for Nike than Kaepernick’s “Be Willing to Risk Everything” campaign. But his widow quickly extinguished those thoughts.

Early Life and College:

Tillman was born in Fremont, California in November 1976. He was the oldest of three sons in a very close-knit family. Tillman would remark later in his journals from Afghanistan that he drew great strength from his family and close friends. He was a standout football player from Leland High School’s State Championship team and parlayed that into the last scholarship offer of the year (1994), from Arizona State University.

Tillman was a standout if undersized linebacker at ASU at just 5’11, 202 pounds but he helped them go undefeated and play in the Rose Bowl after the 1996 season. In 1997, he was Pac-10 Defensive Player of the Year. But as much as he excelled on the football field, he was equally as successful in the classroom. A marketing major, he graduated in just 3.5 years with a 3.65 GPA.

He earned three consecutive selections to the Pac-10 All-Academic Football Team, a 1st team Academic All-American honor, as well as the NCAA’s Post-Graduate Scholarship for academic and athletic excellence. He also earned a B.S. in Marketing, graduating Summa Cum Laude from ASU’s prestigious W.P. Carey School of Business

NFL Career:

In 1998, Tillman was selected by the Arizona Cardinals with the 226th pick in the 7th round of the NFL Draft. Arizona moved him to safety but not many people thought he’d make an impact or last in the NFL. But he not only made the team but became a starter.

In 2000, he set a Cardinals record for tackles in a season with 224. The then St. Louis Rams offered him a contract for 5-years and $9 million dollars but he stayed out of loyalty to the Cardinals. The attacks of 9/11 affected him deeply. The next day he told a reporter, “At times like this you stop and think about just how good we have it, what kind of system we live in, and the freedoms we are allowed. A lot of my family has gone and fought in wars and I really haven’t done a damn thing.”

After the season was over, the Cardinals offered him a three-year, $3.6 million dollar contract to remain. But he had made other plans. In the spring of 2002, Tillman married his long-time girlfriend Marie and after their honeymoon, he told the Cardinals that he was putting his NFL career aside for the next three years to enlist in the Army.

His brother Kevin had been signed to baseball contract with the Cleveland Indians but he too put that on hold and together the two brothers signed up in May 2002.

Military Career and Death:

The brothers enlisted together and completed basic training together at Ft. Benning, GA in September of 2002. They then successfully completed the difficult Ranger Selection and Assessment Program (RASP) and were assigned to the 2nd Ranger Bn. at Ft. Lewis, WA.

The two brothers deployed together on a tour to Iraq in 2003 with the Rangers as part of Operation Iraqi Freedom. While in Iraq, Tillman had strong feelings about why the U.S. was there and although he performed admirably, disagreed with the invasion and thought it was illegal.

After returning from Iraq, the Tillman brothers both attended Ranger School in September of 2003, both graduating on November 28, 2003. After returning to the 2nd Ranger Bn. (Alpha Company, 2nd Plt) they deployed to Afghanistan and were based at FOB Salerno.

Tillman was becoming increasingly anxious to put the military behind him, his journals recall and he questioned the U.S. motives behind our actions in the region. He began to consider leaving as soon as his enlistment was up. The NFL had moved on, but he knew he could return to Arizona.

In the last conversation Tillman had with his agent, “he said, “you won’t believe the letter I got from Bill Belichick.” In the letter, Belichick, the coach of the New England Patriots, praised him for his courage, his leadership, his willingness to set an example for people in this materialistic society, and he said it was an honor to be in the same league he’d been in. Belichick closed the letter by telling Tillman that if he ever needed a job when he was released by the Army to give him a call. That was never to be.

On April 22, 2004, the Rangers were conducting an operation 40 km southwest of Khost along the Pakistani border when one of the units came under fire, just after the sun was setting. In the increasing darkness, Tillman and one element, with an Afghan soldier tried to come to the aid of fellow Rangers who had come under attack. As Tillman moved along the ridgeline to support the troops under fire, fellow Rangers, seeing “shadowy figures” on the ridge incorrectly identified them as enemy combatants and opened fire.

Tillman and an Afghan soldier were killed. His Platoon commander and his RTO were wounded. It was initially thought to be enemy fire that killed Tillman and the Afghan allied soldier. It wasn’t until after Tillman’s burial did the truth emerge that friendly fire was the cause of his death.

Army CID conducted an investigation and ruled in 2007 what the Rangers had known soon after the horrible mistake was made. That Tillman had been killed by friendly fire. Their report states the facts here:

…during their movement through the canyon road, Serial 2 [Tillman’s platoon had to split up because of a broken Humvee; the parts were called Serial 1 and 2] was ambushed and became engaged in a running gun battle with enemy combatants. Serial 1 [Tillman’s portion of the platoon] had just passed through the same canyon without incident and were approximately one kilometer ahead of Serial 2. Upon hearing explosions, gunfire, and sporadic radio communication from Serial 2, Serial 1 dismounted their vehicles and moved on foot, to a more advantageous position to provide overwatch and fire support for Serial 2’s movement out of the ambush. Upon exiting the gorge, and despite attempts by Serial 1 to signal a “friendly position”, occupants of the lead vehicle of Serial 2 opened fire on Tillman’s position, where he was fatally shot.

Steven Elliot, the Ranger machine gunner who probably fired the shots that killed Tillman gave an interview a few years ago that detailed what happened.

“The events leading up to one of the most infamous friendly-fire deaths in U.S. military history were rife for second-guessing from the start: After an Army Humvee broke down in the mountains, Tillman’s platoon was ordered divided by superiors so that the Humvee could be removed; a local truck driver was hired as the hauler. But the two groups struggled to communicate with each other as they traversed the steep terrain. And the second group soon became caught in a deafening ambush, receiving fire as it maneuvered down a narrow, rocky canyon trail.”
“Tillman’s group, which had traveled ahead, scaled a ridgeline to provide assistance to fellow Rangers under attack. But a squad leader, Sgt. Greg Baker, in Elliott’s armored vehicle misidentified an allied Afghan soldier positioned next to Tillman as the enemy and opened fire, killing the Afghan and prompting Elliott and two other Rangers to fire upon what Elliott called shadowy images, later learned to have been Tillman and then-19-year-old Bryan O’Neal.”

Several Rangers were kicked out of the Battalion for their actions after the friendly fire incident. Tillman’s body armor and uniform were burned to conceal the friendly fire that killed him as well as his journal which contained several anti-war sentiments.

Tillman’s family was incensed (and rightfully so) for portraying his death as a heroic public relations stunt and not identifying it for what it truly was.

His family and his wife carried on his legacy of service by creating the Pat Tillman Foundation in 2008, whose mission is to support active-duty service members, veterans and their spouses with academic scholarships, a national network, and professional development opportunities for their lives after military service.

He was posthumously awarded a Silver Star, the Purple Heart and laterally promoted from Specialist 4 to Corporal.

His remains were cremated and his ashes scattered at sea.

Arizona State University dedicated a statue of Tillman outside of Sun Devil Stadium.

Photos: Pat Tillman Foundation

Special Operations Forces Selection PT Preparation Week 8, Day 2

A good workout is the best way to start Monday and the week off right. We’ll start with the basics of pushups, sit-ups, and crunches, then to the bar for V-ups, pull-ups, and dips before a 5-mile run in 40 minutes or less in a mini UBRR test.

Remember to mark your progress in your workout log book.

UBRR Training:

More preparation for the UBRR

1 x 1-minute Pushups

1 x 1-minute Sit-ups

1 x 1-minute, Crunches

1 x 1-minute, V-ups

1 x Dips as many as possible to muscle failure

1 x Pullups as many as possible or to muscle failure

5-mile run (40 minutes maximum)

Stretch well after completion

Special Operations Forces Selection PT Preparation Week 8, Day 1

Happy Easter to everyone. Time for our Sunday morning ruck march. Do a quick warmup of pushups and sit-ups before heading out. Stretch well both before and after the event. Remember to drink plenty of water and stay hydrated out there.

Today would a great time to wear your second pair of boots for the Selection Course. Don’t wait until then to get another pair broken in. Check for hot spots and blisters, by the time the Selection course rolls around, you’ll be an expert at this and shouldn’t have as many issues in that area.

UBRR Training:

Warm up

2 x 20 Pushups

2 x 20 Sit-ups

6-mile Rucksack march over varied terrain with a 45-pound minimum. And mark your times in your workout log book. The standard is 90 minutes, you should be looking to better that.

Stretch well after completion