7th Special Forces Group

SOF Imperative #1 Understand the Operational Environment

The Special Operations community under their command element at USASOC were developed back in the 1990s. The joint command looked to define what was a successful Special Operations mission and what factors played a key role in the conducting of their missions. They published a list of 12 SOF (Special Operations Forces) Imperatives to aid in the operational planning of SOF missions.

Before some people get too wrapped around the handle about the word itself, the word imperative comes from the Latin word of the same name which means, “specially ordered.” Oxford’s English dictionary lists it as an adjective meaning “of vital importance,” or a noun that means “an essential or urgent thing.” So there’s that.

While one may not need to accomplish each one of these imperatives for every mission as they will vary, however, they are the guidelines that invaluable during the planning phase of the operation that addresses most, if not all of the issues that need to be planned for.

So, let’s look at the first one and for those of our readers who are aspiring SOFs troops, the one with perhaps the most misunderstood meaning.

“Understand the Operational Environment”:

Unfortunately, many of the young troops especially coming from a conventional forces background think of this as strictly knowing the terrain of their specific operational area. And yes, while this is part of it, in the UW (Unconventional Warfare) environment it is a small portion of the #1 imperative.

The understanding of the environment for the SOF operator involves both internal and external factors. While on the tactical/internal side of things, as with any military operation the operators must know the METT-TC factors of their operational area. But that is where it gets deeper for the SOF troops.

This also includes the UW target audience. While most resistance leaders come from the civilian populace of the operational area, they will know, better than the SOF operators what the customs, culture, beliefs, taboos, goals, and needs of the civilian populace are. But the successful operators will be able to influence the actions of the target UW forces that will not only further the US’ goals of the area but help the target audience succeed in what their ultimate goals are.

The external side of things entails knowing and understanding all aspects of the operational area. That includes the political, economic, sociological, psychological, geographic, and military aspects of the area.

Special Operations Forces must know how the civilian influence on the area will impact operations. Both toward friendly and enemy situations. SOF operators must identify the friendly and hostile decision makers, their objectives and strategies, and the ways they interact. They must know the strengths, weaknesses, vulnerabilities, and power centers of friendly, enemy, and neutral groups and how these groups will interact with mission success.

The conditions of conflict can and will change, as we’ve seen in many of the wars facing us today and SOF must anticipate these changes in the environment and exploit any and all opportunities. Plan for the unexpected and be prepared to see through with a plan that will help the target UW audience reach their objectives.

SOF has been doing these things and that is one of the reasons that they’ve been so successful in the past half-century. The US Army’s Special Forces groups have traditionally been area oriented to their base of operations. Navy SEAL Teams have traditionally been area oriented to allied nations in the Persian Gulf. It has been an invaluable asset that has resulted in far greater situational awareness, battlefield preparation, cross-cultural communications, and cultural sensitivity in the operational areas.

Operators learn the language, the culture, and the ethos of the target audience by being immersed in it. Knowing both the target audience and that of an enemy was exhibited during “Operation Just Cause” in Panama. Retired LTG, then Major Charles Cleveland, the Operations Officer (S-3) of the 3^rd Bn. 7^th SFG stationed in Panama saved untold lives of the Panamanian Defense Forces by knowing their culture and having interpersonal relationships with many of their leaders.

He arranged for many of them to surrender without firing a shot or having a loss of life by knowing how to communicate with their leaders in a way that wouldn’t upset their traditional “machismo” that they were known for. They were facing an unwinnable situation and the results were never in doubt. He saved the Panamanians in certain units from being virtually annihilated for no reason.

Not only did he save lives but it paved the way for bridging the relationship quickly from enemy combatant to back to being an ally in very little time. The transition affected by the 7^th group was remarkably quick and much of that credit should go to Cleveland. Because of that, our follow-on mission, “Promote Liberty” was much more successful and many of the Panamanian soldiers turned National Police involved in it, would not have been there as a result.

The imperative we’ve touched on here is well-known to Special Operators who have been down range and have been on many deployments overseas. To the young aspiring operators, this is something that may sound simple to you but requires a ton of work, study, and preparation before ever deploying. Call it an enhanced Intelligence Preparation of the Battlefield.

Special Operations Forces are not only the premier light infantry experts in the world but they must be experts in language, tradecraft (more to that in the upcoming days), area studies, survival medicine, engineering, and weapons.

And they’ll serve as the primary and very touchy proponents of our national strategy within our own military, which frankly is awful at anything above the battalion level. Our troops continue to win the battlefields at battalion level and below but why are these conflicts dragging on and on?

Our national political and military leaders don’t understand the nature of the wars we’re embroiled in nor will they overcome the biases they have, to these wars. Our leaders continue to push forward with the way they want to fight the current wars rather than the ways the wars need to be fought. It has been that way since Vietnam and the fact that Afghanistan and Iraq continue to drag on is proof that the strategy isn’t working. We could speak for days on this subject but we’ll leave it there.

Photo courtesy DOD

Selecting a Better Green Beret, Interview with Brian Decker, Pt. 2

In the first segment of SpecialOperations.com interview with Brian Decker, we talked about the problem with the Special Forces Qualification Course (SFQC) and the issues that arose from the Special Forces Selection and Assessment Course (SFAS). Brian Decker (‘the smartest guy in Training Group”) was tasked to fix the issues and get the Selection course revamped.

Decker identified that most of the problems that the course was having were social in nature. He realized that the internal drive to succeed is the best indicator for success in SF operators. He learned that each successful candidate responded to stress in their lives with a heightened sense of motivation.

He revamped the third week of SFAS (Team Week) and rather than have a candidate be evaluated as either a patrol leader or as an assistant patrol leader one time during the week, he went to a “leaderless group” exercise, where candidates were given a task as a group and the cadre, would watch and evaluate on how they self-organized around the task and requirement.

He had this to say about the events and assessment of Week 3.

During the events of Week 3, we select the future leaders of the Regiment based on their ability to lead or contribute to the performance of a team in a dynamic and complex environment.

Under Decker’s watch, while the success rate of candidates being selected from SFAS plummeted from around 50 percent to under 30, the candidates that were selected were much more successful in the SFQC with the pass rate rising from 50 percent to closer to 80 percent, which is what the command was looking for.

In the earlier segment of the interview, Decker mentioned the six attributes that the cadre of the SFAS course would look for. Special Forces training in the Special Warfare Center, SWC (referred to as “Swick”) utilized the “Whole Man” Selection Process and the six main attributes that every successful SF Operator should possess include:

Intelligence
Trainability
Physical Fitness
Motivation
Influence
Judgement

So, we’ll pick up where we left off in the interview and talk some more about the changes within the SFAS course. And that was where we had discussed the pass rate for the SFQC had risen to around 80 percent when he left and moved on to his next assignment.

Special Ops: Wow, that is incredibly high, were you surprised?

Decker: It was surprising, and at the time, we thought it might be artificially high by a bit but it reaffirmed to us, that we were doing the right thing in the course. And we felt like, if I had another year to spend at Selection, we’d have taken a lot of the attrition at Selection and put it into a screening method done at home station before they come. So you could greatly reduce it.

But, it ultimately came back to, we had really lost our way. The course had become something where it wasn’t even trying to be a predictor of success. It became just a Rite of Passage, and I’m not saying that it shouldn’t be that, but it must be a validation of the self-worth of the Regiment.

Spec Ops: I think this is a great point going back to the changes in Team Week. Back in the day, like you said a candidate may only get one turn in the barrel as a leader if that event was the second one on the fourth day of Team Week, was he getting a fair shake? I wonder what those percentage of fails were back in our era.

Decker: Right, I think you try to create the course where it is very mentally and physically demanding to want smart, physically capable people. And what makes an excellent Ranger, or CAG operator or SEAL Team Six guy is probably not the same guy who is going to do a great job in an unconventional warfare environment.

It is going to favor different traits, (laughs) Hey, I love shooting too. But that is a much more linear task than setting up the intelligence network or leading an indigenous force to a target in its area of operations.

Spec Ops: The Direct Action (DA) missions will always be big within the Command (SOCOM) because those are more tangible, or are we being too simplistic?

Decker: Yes, look the DA missions are…they’re very easy to measure, they’re very easy to tie results and you know what I’m saying?… It’s very hard in an unconventional warfare environment to capture the quality of the training that you’re doing or measure the impact of the operations.

One of the things I remember when we were in Iraq, we were trying to gauge the impact that the different ODAs (SF A-teams) were having in different areas and people started looking at “who’s doing the most missions? Who’s captured the most weapons?”

And I looked at that and said, you know, the most successful ODA may be where the least amount of stuff is happening. It may just be where that ODA achieved a level of stability in their area and the truth is, we can’t kill our way out of this problem.

Special Ops: How difficult was it to put together a matrix to track all of these guys when they were going thru training and keep track of the pass/fails and why?

Decker: For SFAS? No, it wasn’t difficult at all. We had a software program we called the “Whole Man Program”, that captured all the data and we had the students do their peers in the classroom and that was added. The cadre all had their evaluations that could be done on I-pads, on smartphones and all of that would be captured on a database. And that would spit out a summary.

And how we’d make a decision, in the end, it was interesting, that once you have all that data at the end, it is so much easier to make a decision. It goes back to the 80-20 rule; 80 percent of your success will be attributable to 20 percent of your people. And conversely, 80 percent of your struggles will also be attributable to 20 percent of your people.

And you really saw that. These guys, when you see all four cadre members see that this one guy is the #1, #2, #3 guy on a team, and the peer support are slam dunks. But on the other side, you would also see there was a lot of alignment on who did the poorest.

The question then became, it was a little more difficult to discern on the guys in the middle. And that’s the way most models are. Most models are best at explaining the extremes. And it the way it worked was much easier. We could go thru a Selection Board on about 50 soldiers in a couple of hours. It was very streamlined.

Spec Ops: We tried to write as many assessments for each event and watch not only the leaders but the team members and how well or poorly they supported the leaders.

Decker: One of the interesting things we saw when we changed the Team Week events to the “Leaderless” environment was that the stress level went up significantly. There was no “I got my time in the chute, so all I gotta do is get under this weight.”

We had a couple of guys who had gone thru both systems and they said the leaderless system was exponentially harder because they knew they were always being evaluated. This made it easier on the cadre members.

Spec Ops: How so?

Decker: When we’d finish for the day, you’d have to rank your team, first to last. Then you had to rate their attributes and we rated only four attributes during Team Week, this is a “3”, this is a “1”, this is a “5”.

And if you had a guy in the bottom four of your group, you would have to recommend that he not continue on with the course. And you’d have to write a narrative on that…it was very, very quick.

And instead of looking for everything, we’d break down the events like “Between point A and B you’re looking for this attribute.” We designed those events to specifically bring out those behaviors. And it made it easier to evaluate the events.

We also videotaped events and you’d have to watch that and learn to evaluate what we were looking for to get good quality information.

Spec Ops: These were some significant changes, was there any push-back from the Chain of Command on these changes or were they behind on this. I know Ashton (Col. Naylor) had said that he was totally behind this. What about the rest?

Decker: When General (Ed) Reeder came back on board, to SWC, I went thru it all and explained it to him and he said, “Look I don’t get it.” He said, “I’m going to have to see it because I don’t like the idea of the leaderless group, I think someone has to be in charge.”

But once he came out and watched the training, it was only half-way thru the day, he said, “I got it.” He said, “this is brilliant and we should have been doing this a long time ago. This brings out leadership that we’re looking for in the Regiment.”

And that is what it is all about right? We don’t need people who just tell people what to do. We need people that can coach and pull people together.

Spec Ops: This is why I wanted to talk to you. And the cadre were behind it?

Decker: Not at first, they were against it. But once they got used to the changes, it puts the power back in the cadre’s hands. It is a good, balanced, fair process. We would break down the committees and would reassign the committees from one SFAS class to the next.

And we got extremely creative in how we would design the events to bring out the behaviors that we were looking for. We were throwing curveballs at the candidates all the time… By the long-range movement, the guys who were window shopping and thought they may want to be SF are long gone.

If your motivations weren’t in the right place, if you didn’t understand that being successful was a process, then it was going to be difficult for you to be a select. And the difference was if a guy quit on you in say Log PT, it was because he was hurt. But if a guy quits during Team Week it was because he was overwhelmed.

It was much more mental and the ability to handle and manage the complexity of it under duress. I like the physical aspect of this as much as everybody else but what really defines us as a Regiment is what is above our shoulders.

Spec Ops: And the ideal SF operator, he’s adaptable to other lines?

Decker: Yes, well at that time, we’d get 20-25 VIP visits during the course of a year. And many of them were interested in how we selected our operators, especially the methodology. Of course, they were interested in the mental toughness aspect but the traits and attributes that we’re looking for is what many other industries look for as well.

Look, the physical talent of an individual will only take them so far, but what ultimately makes an operator successful is their character, their makeup, their approach. So, what would stop an SF soldier from reaching his full potential comes down to the way they approach their craft.

Having been in the Regiment and served in combat, I understood what constitutes a good Special Forces operator and that was invaluable because you have to know your own line of work.

The most successful people in any profession all have the same attributes. They all have grit, they all have extremely good work habits. They all have the mental toughness, the confidence which comes from practice and preparation and the optimism and belief that they can achieve. They are extremely intelligent. What makes a good operator…there is a lot of similarities with other professions.

A good SF operator, as with other professions, approaches their craft in the same way. Very much with a growth mindset, they’re more intrinsically motivated by internal factors and view success as a process. They tend to internalize feedback rather than externalize it to their environment. They all tend to be smart specifically to what they do.

SF guys can make decisions in a high-stakes environment so rapidly without having the time to think through every outcome which allows them to make sense of their environment.
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Any questions or comments can be emailed to me [email protected] or at my Twitter account @SteveB7SFG

Photo courtesy of US Army

Selecting a Better Green Beret: Interview with Brian Decker Pt. 1

The Special Forces Qualification Course (SFQC) was in a bit of a crisis mode back in 2011. Candidates were failing at about a 50 percent rate which isn’t necessarily a bad thing but the reasons why they were failing was a big concern with the powers in the Special Warfare Center (SWC). The issue was the Special Forces Selection and Assessment Course (SFAS) wasn’t identifying nor culling candidates that weren’t properly prepared to pass SFQC.

There was a disconnect inside SFAS, which hadn’t really changed since its inception in 1988. The John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center Commander (JFKSWC) Gen. Ben Sacolick approached the SWC Training Group about the issue. The SWC Group Commander Col. Ashton Naylor knew exactly who to task to identify and fix the problem. He picked Major Brian Decker, “the smartest guy I knew in Training Group,” Naylor said.

I’ve known Naylor for 25 years and he’s not one to heap praise on those who are undeserving. I first met Naylor when he was a candidate at Selection and Assessment and later went through the Special Forces Officers Course with him. I knew him as an outstanding Detachment Commander of an SF A-team in the 7^th Special Forces Group. He later commanded a battalion of the 5^th Special Forces Group in Afghanistan and then risen to command the SWC’s Training Group.

With SFAS selecting at about a 50 percent rate at that time, the same percentage of candidates failing the SFQC was unacceptable. Decker was told, to fix it, in the SF way,… just get it done. And did he ever. He made sweeping changes to the way the SFAS course was run and while the selection rates of SFAS plummeted to 30 percent or below, the successful completion of the SFQC from candidates selected from Decker’s SFAS classes skyrocketed to 80 percent. That’s exactly what the command was looking for.

How did he do it? Did he just use smoke and mirrors? Nope.

He showed the confidence of Sacolick and Naylor had in him was justified. He quickly learned that one of the best attributes of a successful SF operator, the ability to think quickly and clearly while the stress level is pegged out to the max was missing in the course failures. Worse, many showed that they were incapable of functioning on a small team and not completely devoted to the teamwork necessary on an A-Team.

Every candidate wants to graduate the course, Decker set out to find out who wanted to walk the walk and live the life of an outstanding SF operator. The internal drive, the will to succeed is either there or it isn’t. But how to identify it?

He put together an information-driven program where he identified 1200 data points on each candidate. He could identify a successful SF operator as a guy in his early 30s, with a high I.Q., who came from suburbia. But the one factor that stood out was, each successful candidate responded to stress in their lives with a heightened sense of motivation.

So, who IS Brian Decker? How did he make the changes that made SFAS a much better indicator of success than the one that hadn’t changed in over 20 years? Having been a cadre member of SFAS, I was intrigued…no fascinated by what I’ve read. The SWC and school would frequently have high-level visitors and it wasn’t long before people from all walks of life wanted to talk to Decker. Would his system of identifying successful traits in SF operators work in the corporate world?

The NFL came calling, first the Cleveland Browns and then the Indianapolis Colts who hired him to identify what will make a successful NFL player. But more to that later. I reached out to Naylor and asked him about Decker. “You need to talk to Brian,” he said. “I guarantee that you’ll come away very impressed.” He put us in touch with each other and being a busy man with the NFL offseason workouts in full swing, he arranged a time to talk in the evening.

After quick introductions, I could tell right away that Naylor’s comment about Decker being an extremely smart man was dead on. But I’ve been around smart people before and many spend all their time trying to impress upon you how smart they are. Decker wasn’t like this at all. He was talking about these sweeping changes of his as if he were talking about carrying the groceries into the house. Which made it even more intriguing.

So, here’s part one of the interview I did with Decker as we discussed SFAS, the Q-Course (SFQC), and problems facing the SF guys in combat. Later we just touched on his new career in the NFL and the ground he’s breaking there, but that is mostly proprietary information, and we were there to talk SF.

Spec Ops: We’ll not waste any time here. So how did these changes come about?

Decker: I met with Gen. Sacolick and he said, “we have to restore the image of Selection in the Regiment.” We had only around 50 percent of the soldiers being selected at SFAS completing the qualification course. He told me to spend some time and figure it out.

I had just finished the Naval Postgraduate School and wanted to use that education so I immediately went looking for the data. And what I tried to do was tie that data to outcomes. Passes and fails and find out where we weren’t doing well.

I met a Ph.D. student from UNC whose husband is a Green Beret, she was in the Air Force and I asked that if we took all of the data that we had, how well would we be doing, what would our batting average be?

The organizational efficiency could be maxed out at about 58 percent, so that told me that the answers were probably not quantitative and were probably more qualitative.

Spec Ops: And how did this information get analyzed?

Decker: I took the information from 500-600 course failures, and the data that the school gives about that student gives a short narrative as to the reasons why. We then turned that into a language, passes and fails into something that we can select for. What we really found out was that the failures were really more social in nature.

So, we went back to the leadership assessment during Selection and Assessment and a candidate was getting one patrol during team phase as a patrol leader or as an assistant patrol leader for one of the four days.

As you remember being a cadre member there, those events were taken straight out of the British SAS Selection. We’re going to give them a really difficult task to do and we’re going to punish them for several hours and see how well they can function in a very demanding environment. But demanding in only a very narrow sense. But based upon that one grade, we had to make a determination on whether you were a select in the course. And I saw tons of flaws with that. First, we were basing the entire selection criteria off of the one report of one SFAS Cadre member. On one day, in one event.

I looked at those leadership evals and found that they were negatively correlated to success later in the qualification course.

Creating an evaluation using a “Leaderless Group”:

Spec Ops: So that was a big indicator right there?

Decker: Well we looked at that and said, ‘What is the nature of Special Operations?’ It is complex, it is dynamic. And the biggest thing is we don’t lead from what I tell you to do. We lead from within. We went to what I called a “leaderless group” so the leaderless is a misnomer what we did was, we stopped grading a candidate on the patrols and began grading on attributes.

(Editor’s note: the attributes he mentioned above was a three-year data collection program that Gen. Sacolick implemented at the SWC to identify what were the core attributes that were needed for a successful Special Operations soldier)

So, in the leaderless environment, instead of getting graded on one day during team events, you were getting graded all four days. How it worked is, you’d go to the group and drop this problem in the middle of it and you watch and evaluate on how they self-organize around the task and requirement.

Within five or ten minutes you can tell who the leaders are. And you can tell within those first few minutes based on ability who are going to struggle and the rest of the time you are going to figure out where these other guys in the middle, fit in.

So, now you’ll get four cadre evaluations, peer evaluations and then the candidates grade themselves during this time and everyone gets the same evaluations and you can put together a good 360-degree assessment.

Spec Ops: Those are some interesting changes, so how does that change in the evaluation process?

Decker: Well, we looked at it like, in Week 1 we adjusted the levels where the data was predictive, right? We screened out those who were not smart enough, who weren’t fit enough and weren’t prepared and knocked those out.

In Week 2, we evaluated the candidates’ performance on the Star Exam, (Land Navigation) where the intelligence and physical fitness are highly correlated. Week 2 is more of a practical application of your abilities and we’d screen those out and then the selection decision comes down to Week 3 in Team week.

During the events of Week 3, we select the future leaders of the Regiment based on their ability to lead or contribute to the performance of a team in a dynamic and complex environment.

What we’re looking for is a candidate that isn’t looking for external solutions, you look internally and you look to the group for solutions. And it was at this point that we moved away from the two-event day (during Team Week). Because the solution to any problem in Selection is stability. Because during those events, all you are doing is measuring a candidate’s ability to persevere.

So, we would have days where we’d have 10 events. It may not look like 10 events but you remember the tires and poles right?

Spec Ops: Oh yeah, that was always a tough event.

Decker: What we’d do is, they’d start out where all they have is poles and lashings. And after carrying that for 5ks and after that, we may add three logs and you go another 3-4Ks and then you get tires. So every time you give them something, it forces them to reassess the problem, reorganize and solve it.

We do what we’d call progressive builds and we’d stop them at times during the event and break them into small groups to do construction exercises where they do different things to break them into small groups. And all that while giving that soldier an opportunity.

What we found, with that data-rich environment is that our Selection rate went way down. We went from a little over 50 percent when I got there to ….where we were trending, when I left to just under 30 percent.

But on the inverse side, the selects that we were pushing through at Selection were on track to graduate at about an 80 percent rate in the qualification course when I was leaving.
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Tomorrow we’ll continue our interview with Decker and discuss further changes that the Selection and Assessment Course brought and what other attributes the cadre looks for in the successful Special Forces candidate.

Any questions or comments can be emailed to me [email protected] or at my Twitter account @SteveB7SFG

Photo courtesy of ESPN

Noriega Surrendered to Rock in Panama Invasion 1989

Panama’s former dictator Manuel Noriega died in prison this week at the age of 83. Few, outside of his inner circle of military officers will shed a tear for the man who ruled Panama with an iron hand before his undoing by US forces during “Operation Just Cause” in late December of 1989.

With his military shattered and running out of options. Noriega sought refuge in the Papal Nuncio, the Vatican Embassy in Panama City. Many of his officers and cronies were already arrested and put on planes to Miami to answer to drug charges.

Rather than staying in relative peace and quiet, Noriega was blasted by rock music, loud rock music, around the clock as the US tried to force him to give up. The soldiers playing the music began taking requests from troops coming in from the field.

The favorites included “Welcome to the Jungle,” by Guns N’ Roses, “Wanted Dead Or Alive,” by Bon Jovi, and “The End” by The Doors.
After several days on the run, Noriega was allowed to enter the Vatican Embassy on Christmas Eve. And on Christmas Day, the radio station broadcast only Christmas music.
But with requests streaming in, the U.S. effort ramped up after the holiday.
On Dec. 27, “someone who identified himself as a member of the PSYOPS [Psychological Operations] team from Fort Bragg [N.C.] called to tell us what they were doing with their loud speakers,” the military report said.
U.S. Gen. Maxwell “Mad Max” Thurman had ordered speakers placed as a “musical barrier” around the perimeter of the Vatican Embassy and turned to full volume.
Noriega was reportedly partial to opera. What he got was “Panama,” from Van Halen, “Danger Zone,” from Kenny Loggins, and “Refugee,” courtesy of Tom Petty.
And remember, this was the ’80s. So the strongman also got an earful of Rick Astley’s “Never Gonna Give You Up,” though that may have been intended more for Noriega’s hosts at the embassy.
As the standoff dragged on for days, the playlist became part of the story.
Not everyone was happy with the military’s approach, including the White House, and the music was stopped after several days. President George H.W. Bush’s national security adviser, Brent Scowcroft, said afterward that he thought the use of high-volume music was “undignified.”
On Jan. 3, 1990, Noriega surrendered to the U.S. forces, though not until after he’d been treated to a version of “I Fought The Law.”
Noriega was flown to Miami, tried and convicted of drug trafficking, and spent nearly two decades in U.S. prisons.

The entire musical interlude while waiting for the disgraced strongman to surrender placed a surreal, farcical quality on an operation and short war that never needed to happen. Noriega’s blustering caused the deaths of far too many Panamanians, the exact number may never be known as well as 23 Americans.

The entire article and interview from NPR can be found here:

Featured Photo: AP

Remembering Bull Simons, A True Legend in the Special Forces Community

On May 21, 1979, Special Forces had one its true legends take from it prematurely. Arthur “Bull” Simons died at the age of 60 and was buried in Barrancas National Cemetery in Pensacola, Florida. He was one of the best SF commanders to have ever served but never made it to General Officer rank because he lacked the prerequisite education he and that held him back.

Simons rose to the rank of Colonel and although he was involved in three famous rescue missions that have been very well documented, precious little has been written about Simons who was quintessential “Quiet Professional” in his long military career. So who was “Bull” Simons?

Early Life and Career: Simons was born in New York City in 1918 but at an early age he moved to Missouri and attended the University of Missouri – Columbia and graduated with a degree in Journalism which is interesting because later in life, he’d develop a healthy disdain for journalists who he felt had done a great disservice to the American fighting men.

He joined ROTC and graduated in 1941. He also met his wife Lucille in college and they remained married for 37 years until her death from cancer in 1978. His first assignment was with the 98^th Field Artillery Battalion as a 2LT. The 98^th was a unit that was towed by pack mules and Simons was an unhappy camper there. When his unit was dissolved, it became a part of the 6^th Ranger Bn, commanded by LTC Henry Mucci.

Simons became the Commander of B Company and later the Bn XO. One of his first mission in the Rangers was to blow up a Japanese radio station. The story of the mission was told by H. Ross Perot to John Gresham for a piece in “The Year in Special Operations 2010 – 2011.

“They sent him along with a team of Rangers over to an island to destroy a Japanese radio tower,” Perot said. “They went over by submarine at night, surfaced, and went ashore in rubber rafts. They then stored the rafts in a triple-canopy jungle, and then in classic Simons style, he did a lot of reconnaissance on the radio station himself, and kept his men in the jungle. He had a total of 16 people up at the base camp, with one man on duty all the time. He never told his men they had to eat whatever they could find in the jungle, and they were there for over 30 days, while he waited for the right conditions to make the attack.
“Finally, they had a monsoon-like rain one night. Simons knew from his observations that the guard never looked down the cliff. So he climbed the cliff with explosives on his back and a knife during the storm, caught the guard totally by surprise, took him out with the knife, and took the guard’s rifle, went into the Japanese barracks and shot the other 15 Japanese soldiers in their sleep.
“He told me this story in front of a nice lady who responded, ‘… He shot them in their sleep?’ He told the woman, ‘Lady, when you’re in combat, you don’t wake your enemy up and say, “Let’s fight!”’ Once all the Japanese in the barracks were dead, he went back outside, personally blew up the radio tower, and needed to send one more signal to his troops that the job was done, so he lighted his cigar! He was a big cigar man! Bull then walked down the face of the mountain, where his men met him in the jungle, they having walked completely around the mountain. They then called the submarine back in, and took the rubber rafts back to the submarine to go home.”

Later, after the invasion of the Philippines, on the island of Luzon, he was involved in the raid on the Prisoner of War camp at Cabanatuan. The 6^th Ranger Bn freed nearly 500 POWs and 33 civilians that had been held by the Japanese since the fall of Bataan. The Rangers, Alamo Scouts, and Philippine guerrillas killed 523 Japanese soldiers with the loss of just 2 Rangers and one POW who died of a heart attack during the raid. He was awarded the Silver Star for heroism for that operation.

Simons was separated from the Army after World War II and had a five-year break in service. But he was recalled to the Army during the Korean War. He was assigned to train Rangers at Eglin AFB in jungle and amphibious warfare. After a brief stint as a PAO (Public Affairs Officer) at Ft. Bragg, NC he joined Special Forces in 1957.

He was assigned to the 77^th Special Forces Group, later renamed the 7^th. In 1961, Simons was promoted to lieutenant colonel and with the conflict in Southeast Asia on the horizon went to Laos to command a 107-man Mobile Training Team as part of Operation White Star.

Returning from Laos, Simons was named as the Commander of the new 8^th Special Forces Group in Panama. He commanded the unit there from 1962 to 1964. Then it was back to Southeast Asia. In Vietnam, Simons was assigned to the Military Assistance Command’s Studies and Observation Group (MACV-SOG), the joint unit that was responsible for many of the cross-border intelligence gathering and special operations missions of the Vietnam war.

In 1970 Simons was tasked to lead Operation Ivory Coast, the rescue of American POWs at Son Tay Prison just a few miles outside of Hanoi. The hand-picked unit of Army Special Forces and Air Force pilots trained in Eglin, AFB before launching the mission in November.

Blue Boy Element, Son Tay Raid. Dick Meadows in the front. (US Army)

Because of an intelligence snafu, flooding from the swollen river had caused the Vietnamese to move the prisoners a few miles down the road. The raid, however, went extremely well, the SF operators eliminated the guards in the camp and only suffered one minor injury. Although no prisoners were freed, it sent shockwaves thru the Vietnamese high command as American Special Forces were able to penetrate their defenses so close to Hanoi and raid a POW compound and escape without any loss to themselves.

As a result, the prisoners were brought together in larger groups instead of the solitary confinement they’d been subjected to. Their treatment improved markedly and as they watched the raid unfold, they knew that they’d not been forgotten. Their morale increased.

Simons was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross by President Nixon at the White House after returning to the states. An interesting footnote to the Son Tay raid was the Assault Force element (Blue Boy) commander CPT Richard Meadows would be heavily involved in the formation of the Army’s Delta Force and would later be involved in the Iran Hostage Rescue attempt in 1980.

Simons retired from the Army in 1971 and bought a pig farm in Red Bay, Florida and was enjoying retirement until his wife’s passing from cancer in 1978. But his career of prisoner rescues was not over. Following the Iranian Revolution, members of H. Ross Perot’s Electronic Data Systems company (EDS), who were working in Iran were arrested by the revolutionaries.

Perot contacted Simons, having remembered him from the Son Tay raid. Paying for the entire operation out of his own pocket, Perot recruited Simons to send a team into Iran, free his employees and bring all of the people back to the United States. The mission was successful and Perot’s employees, as well as all of Simons’ men, returned safely.

But he wasn’t able to enjoy retirement for long. Shortly after returning from Iran, Simons suffered a heart attack and subsequent surgery couldn’t save him and he died on May 21, 1979. He’s buried in Barrancas National Cemetery in Pensacola, Florida not far from Pensacola Naval Air Station. His close friend, Meadows who died in 1995, is buried close by.

The Special Operations Command (USSOCOM) commissioned a statue of Simons, next to the Special Forces Museum at Fort Bragg (called “Simons Hall”), and it is a continuing tribute to his memory and legacy in the special warfare community. USSOCOM bestows a yearly award bearing his name to the top special warfare professional.

Photo courtesy of US Army

A Funny Blackmail Moment in Special Forces Courtesy of AFSOC

Most of what we write here at SpecialOperations.com deals with the training side of the house. What you’ll need to do to pass the Selection and Assessment courses and the follow-on training in the qualification courses, with a fair bit of history thrown in. Today isn’t any of that. Although in the past, the history part of this is debatable. It is just a story that hopefully will break up the day a bit and show, no matter what, as a member of Special Operations, you’ll always be on the clock and to be prepared. And most importantly, there is always some funny stuff going on around you.

A little background on this story, in the early 1990s our team from 3/7 SFG was tasked to go down to Paraguay to train the Special Forces unit there. The unit was “officially” tasked to be the premiere counter-narcotics strike force that had zero levels of the chain of command between the captain in command of this unit and the Chief of Staff for the National Anti-Drug Secretariat, (SENAD).

Paraguay wasn’t a drug producing country but it became a big way station in the flow of cocaine from Colombia to points east to Europe and some to the US. The DEA increased its presence there during this time and that’s what we were originally tasked to do.

But the unit we were to train was much more than a Counter-Narcotic (CN) force. Due to the very fluctuating political climate in Paraguay, they were getting training in a variety of methods in what would be more of a Counter-Terrorist (CT) mission. After our completion, their follow-on training would be taken up by a Tier 1 unit.

We weren’t even sure we would be going, due to the constant changing of the command structure in Paraguay. But we got orders to go down to do a site survey. We were briefed by USASOC Commander General Wayne Downing to find out what exactly was going on and brief the staff immediately upon return.

My Team Sergeant (Art M.) and I flew down. We were met by the MILGRP guys and brought over to meet the Captain in charge of the unit. He was a great guy, a hard charger and had a definite, clear vision of what his boys lacked, and where they wanted to go.

Art had a great training outline which he liked and said, “This is exactly what we’re looking for.” He told us we had to sell the idea to the commander of the SENAD, who he reported directly to. Excellent…we thought now we find out who “HE” is.

We’re led into a huge meeting room and seated at the end of a long mahogany conference table. This general walks in and we’re introduced…after the requisite glad-handing and “con mucho gusto” BS, this general in perfect unaccented English asks us, “Why didn’t Wayne come?” Art and I looked at one another and asked, “Wayne who?”

“Downing,”…the general says. “We went to West Point together.” Art and I shared a look and each of us had the look of a ‘no $hit’ on our face. Mystery #1 Solved. We told him that knowing that he’s in charge, we were sure that he’d be down to visit. The general, Marcial Sanmiego was indeed a graduate of West Point and told us to stop back in two days and he’d have some gifts for us to bring back to “Wayne”. He signed off on the training and we were due back there in six weeks (July 4) to start.

On our return to Bragg and the briefing to the USASOC Staff, the very first question was what was going on and who exactly was in charge. Downing was floored and promptly booted the staff out. It was just he, his aide, Art, and I. We spoke for a few moments. Downing told his aide to try to schedule some time for him to visit us during our training. “It is going to be crazy down there, while you’re there,” General Downing said. Indeed, it would.

We left Ft. Bragg on the 4^th of July on a C-141 and it was over 100 degrees. When we arrived in Asuncion, (winter in Paraguay) it was a balmy 32. The unit asked if we could condense the training by two days. In the middle of the schedule, the Paraguayans had their national fair in Asuncion and their SF guys skydive into it each year. They arranged for us to stay at the nicest hotel in the capital.

Also in Paraguay was a team of Air Force Combat Controllers who were working with the Airborne Brigade there and they had numerous C-130s at their disposal. They were some great dudes and we immediately made plans to do some joint parachute training that we had scheduled with our unit and them. Instead of Paraguayan C-47s, we’d jump from 130s.

There was also a Brigade staff from the 9^th Infantry Division there to do a big map exercise with the host nation officers. In other words, a total cluster**ck.

After some good training time in our assigned area down on the border, the time for our national fair break was upon us. General Sanmiego made sure the guests on the top floor of the hotel were booted. It was the 9^th ID staff and they were pissed because they were moved to a fleabag dump to make room for us. Or as the Brigade Commander said, “we have to leave for a bunch of snake eater NCOs?” Life is grand at times.

One night after dinner, the night manager of the hotel stopped us and said we had a message from the Air Force guys. They left a note but he couldn’t find it. But he told us he thought we had to send two guys in the morning to the airport to pick someone up.

Thinking it is General Downing, myself and one of my commo guys Bill set off in civilian clothes to the airport. We get there to see a couple of planeloads of paratroopers loading C-130s for a combat equipment jump. The CCTs (Combat Controllers) were like “Chief WTF! Didn’t you get our message?”

We didn’t need to pick anyone up, the guys needed a couple of jumpmasters because the Air National Guard pilots didn’t trust host nation jumpmasters and wanted an SF guy on each bird since it would a jumpmaster release instead of CARP (Computed Air Release Point) which the CCTs used.

“Where’s the pilot?” I asked? The Air Force 0-6 from the WV ANG was a great guy. “Can I jumpmaster dressed like this” I asked? I was clad in stonewashed jeans (hey it was the 90s), cowboy boots and a black leather jacket. “I don’t know, can you?” he said with a grin. “Son, I don’t care if you do it in a jockstrap, as long as we’re safe and if any of those Paraguayan kids freeze, we do not throw him out, we bring him back in. I don’t want any towed jumpers today.”

So, here are two C-130s loaded with combat-equipped paratroopers and the primary jumpmaster is in cowboy boots and a leather jacket. I donned an air force parachute in case one of the kids knocked me out of the plane and off we go. As we’re taxiing down the runway, I asked the crew chief, “This is probably the absolute height of folly but does anyone have a spare helmet I can wear.

The CCT guys are all laughing their ass off, and I soon found out why. They produced the biggest, ugliest puke-colored gold metallic flecked painted motorcycle helmet. It looked like they got it from the bad guys in the old a-ha video “Take on Me”. To top it off, it would fit over a beachball. It came down to my eyes. Shaking my head, I said, “I can’t wear this…” A resourceful CCT guy produced a few cravats which we stuffed in there so it could be cinched down and was actually almost comfortable.

But one look from the crew chief told me how ridiculous it looked. He had to bite his lip to keep from laughing out loud. Once they opened the door, he couldn’t even look at me in the eye. As I’m going thru my jump commands, one of the CCT guys in the second stick is standing up behind the safety with….a video camera in his hand.

He gives me a big thumbs up and says, “This shit is a classic, you’re buying the beer for the next year after this!” The air force guys are all laughing and a second small video camera appears. It just so happened that the pilot handed his camera off to another CCT operator to film this as well. The subliminal message being that this film was blackmail material forever and ever amen.

Thankfully, our airborne operation went off very well, we had to make four passes over the drop zone as it wasn’t very long. It was at the edge of the base right past the skyscrapers of downtown Asuncion. Needless to say, I’ve never had to wait for the aircraft to pass over six-seven story buildings before putting the jumpers out of a plane before.

Later during an airborne operation that we did with our guys, the CCTs were jumping too and we rigged up General Sanmiego to sit across from the door to film his troops making an airborne op. During the taxi ride out to the end of the runway, the air force cameras appeared again and my Air Force “friends” are showing General Sanmiego the tape of the earlier jump.

“Hey Chief, you looked ridiculous,” the general said. UGH. Indeed.

So if any ex-AF CCT guys ever tells you he has film of an SF guy dressed like James Dean, wearing a friggin’ ridiculous motorcycle helmet while doing jumpmaster duties in a C-130, he may be telling the truth. Because sometimes the truth is stranger than fiction. And I witnessed it first-hand.

While my jumpmaster instructors from way back may not have been meaning this particular event when they told us to always be prepared, it served us well I don’t know of many guys who can say they put jumpers out of a C-130 dressed in cowboy boots and a leather jacket. Just another great day to be in 3/7.

Green Beret Appalachian Trail Walk and Fundraiser- Support the Regiment

“Never Leave a Man Behind”

The men of the Special Forces Regiment are doing a fundraiser for the Green Beret Foundation to help raise money by walking the entire length of the Appalachian Trail. A group of retired Special Operators from SF Brothers (a Facebook group of SF soldiers) are putting teams together to hike from Georgia to Maine to support the cause.

The Green Beret Foundation is an organization that provides direct and continuous support to the Green Beret Community and its families. The Green Beret Foundation facilitates the transition of Green Berets and their families whether that transition is from wounds sustained in combat, illness, injury or “merely” from numerous deployments and/or retirement.

They provide Casualty Support, Extended Support, Family Support, and Transition Support for the Special Forces operators who have been injured in the line of duty. Over 800 Green Berets and 1000 families have received support from the foundation. And 90 percent of funds raised go towards their programs.

From the trail guide: The Appalachian Trail is about 2200 miles in length and runs from north Georgia to central Maine. It generally follows the spine of the Appalachian Mountains.

The Trail is managed by a combination of the National Park Service, the US Forest Service, and the Appalachian Trail Conservancy. It is maintained by a host of nonprofit organizations.

Sometimes called “The Long Green Tunnel”, it is mostly under the cover of trees. It can be very harsh in ascents, descents, and the rockiness of the trail.

Only a small percentage of those who attempt a thru-hike are able to complete the trail. (They never met a bunch of SF guys)

This is a great opportunity to get out and join a group of retired Green Berets from the SF Brothers group on Facebook and strap on the rucksack and walk with them a spell to show some support. If you can’t make it, you can donate to cause by giving what you can right here:

I’ve been in contact with an old 7^th SFG trooper, Will Melton, who has kindly passed on some pics of the brothers, hitting the trail with their rucksacks back on. You can’t ever keep good men down. Will and his dog Miss Jackie are taking on some 560 miles of the trail. Which is about 25 percent of the total length. That’s what you call an endurance march. Some 30-something years after the Q-course, Will is putting in what definitely qualifies as a “Long Range Movement.” Tip of the Beret for that!

Former SFers from SF Brothers gather at the start of the trail after a storm delayed the start

Will Melton and J.C. Hiett display the SF Regimental flag which will fly over the encampment on the way.

For you ruckers out there. Check out the schedule and attached spreadsheet on the website, you can see when the SF Brothers are passing by your area. You don’t have to join the hike officially but show some support and hike with them for a day or maybe a weekend. It is for a great cause and will be a heckuva lot of fun as well. One can only imagine the war stories being told around the campfires at night along the trail or in the huts that the Appalachian Mountain Club provides on the route.

As much as I hate the old ALICE pack (and said I’d never put it on again), I’m breaking mine out, and when the SF troopers hit the Massachusetts border sometime in late July, I’ll be trying to join them for a piece of the trail to show some support and join in on the fun. I thought about purchasing a better civilian model, but for a short duration, it is time to break out the old pain pill. We’ll have coverage on it right here.

For more information on the Green Beret Trail Walk click here:

Cover photo courtesy Green Beret Foundation, Other photos courtesy of Will Melton

Remembering Greg Fronius, KIA in El Salvador 31 March 1987

Thirty years ago today on March 31, 1987, Special Forces SSG Greg Fronius was killed in action in El Paraiso, El Salvador when guerrilla forces from the FMLN (Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front) attacked the Salvadoran base during an early morning attack.

Fronius was 27 at the time of his death and left behind a wife and two small children. He was one of the only 55 military advisers to the Salvadoran military allowed at that time and was assigned to the cuartel, which was the headquarters for the 4^th Brigade.

His death during the brutal war that wracked El Salvador took place in a little-known time when many Special Forces risked their lives there during a so-called time of peace. It was a period that wasn’t recognized as a war zone for the Green Berets until many years later.

Fronius graduated from the Special Forces Qualification Course (SFQC) as an Engineer Sergeant (18C) and was assigned to the 2^nd Bn, 7^th SFG(A) from 1983-85. In 1985, he was reassigned to 3/7 SFG in Panama. There, in early 1987 he was sent to El Salvador as Intelligence Sergeant assigned to the Military Advisory Group.

The 4^th Brigade Headquarters in El Paraiso, 36 miles north of the capital of San Salvador had two American advisors assigned but at the time of the attack, Fronius was alone, his counterpart was in the capital getting some equipment and was scheduled to fly out in a helicopter the next day.

The guerrillas launched a coordinated assault beginning at 2 a.m. on the morning of March 31. They had concentrated mortar and rocket fire that targeted the major headquarters buildings. It was later learned that they were helped by DIA agent and double agent spy Ana Montes. Montes was considered an up and coming agent for DIA but in reality, she had defected and was spying for Cuba.

She visited the El Paraiso base just weeks before the attack and debriefed the Americans there, and later fed the information directly to her Cuban handlers who passed it on to the FMLN. She was directly implicated in Fronius’ death. She was not caught until her arrest in September 2001 just after the attacks of 9/11. She was sentenced to 25 years in prison in 2002.

The base at El Paraiso held 1000 troops but at the time of the attack on March 31, only 250 were on site. The remainder were out on different operations. It was during the attack where Montes treachery paid off for the FMLN. Their mortar and rocket fire was extremely accurate, nearly all of the headquarters buildings were either destroyed or severely damaged.

Casualties were high, 69 El Salvadoran soldiers were killed, another 79 were wounded. FMLN casualties were probably even higher. Once the attack commenced, Fronius was in the command bunker under the HQ building and he sprinted up the stairs to reach an M-60 machine gun position that was engaging FMLN troops that were inside the compound. With complete disregard for his own safety, he took off, going up the steps, when a rocket or mortar shell perforated the corrugated tin roofing of the stairs and the explosion killed Fronius.

He was posthumously awarded the Silver Star and promoted to Sergeant First Class (E-7) The language lab at Ft. Bragg was named in honor of him in 1997.

He was later buried in a small cemetery in Western Pennsylvania. It was a bad week for the Green Berets of the 7^th SFG. The firing party for his funeral was from ODA-722 1^st Bn. They had just come from New York and had buried their A-team Commander CPT Schlomer who had been killed in Honduras earlier.

Just three months after Fronius’ death, Special Forces would lose another warrior. SSG Tim Hodge was wounded by a gunshot in the neck and needed immediate exfil to a hospital. The helicopter coming for him crashed in bad weather killing:
CW3 John D. Raybon
1LT Gregory J. Paredes
SP4 Douglas Lee Adams
SFC Lynn V. Keen
LTC James M. Basile (USAF )-Deputy MILGRP Commander
LTC Joseph L. Lujan -SF Advisor

Special Forces SFC Tommy Grace was badly burned in the crash but survived.

During the height of the El Salvadoran Civil War between 1983 – 1992 a total of 21 Army, Navy and Marines lost their lives in our covert operation to stop the Marxist guerillas from wresting control of the country.

Much about that time frame was shrouded in secrecy but the veil was finally lifted in 1997 as the combat operations the SF advisors were involved in was recognized. An interesting footnote and tremendous read was a pitched battle in San Miguel, El Salvador which took place in 1984. That can be read in its entirety here.

Photo courtesy US Army

Life In Special Forces Is Rarely Glamourous, Always Rewarding

One of the things you’ll get asked frequently by family and friends that weren’t living close to you during your military career is “what was life like as a Green Beret?” To the average American, it conjures up visions of Bond, James Bond, John Rambo or MacGuyver where you travel to exotic lands surrounded by beautiful maidens, fire darned near nuclear-tipped explosives with a bow and arrow or make commo with a piece of wire, one AAA battery, and an iron-enriched Cheerio.

Ah…if live were so simple. The bottom line is life is much different in Special Forces and you’ll find the longer you spend there, much more rewarding. The building block for Special Forces is the A-Team and it centers around the 10 enlisted members who make or break the two officers assigned to it.

There are light weapons, heavy weapons, engineers, communications, medics, an intel sergeant and of course the team sergeant where everything goes thru. A captain and a warrant officer round out the team. Everyone’s jobs are difficult and varied and you’ll get plenty of chances to cross-train whether in a school environment or on the job as we’ll see later.

From my own experience, I was a Communications Supervisor (18E) but my secondary was Heavy Weapons for which I went to BNCOC for, and later graduated O&I and got an 18F as an additional MOS. Years later I went to the Warrant Officer program. You’ll find you will get to do much more than you ever imagined.

In those days, the 7^th Special Forces Group was a beehive of activity. Teams were constantly rotating to Central America training light infantry battalions that were fight civil wars in El Salvador, and Guatemala and trying to modernize their force and keep out the Nicaraguans in Honduras. The Andean Ridge countries of Colombia, Bolivia, and Peru were hot spots due to the drug trafficking that remains there to this day as well as active insurgencies against the FARC in Colombia and Sendero Luminoso in Peru.

The operational tempo then was high but nothing compared to what the guys today are facing. Most of the places you’d find yourself were far from what one would call vacation spots although there were always the exceptions.

One deployment which was memorable was part of an MEDRETE to Honduras. In the mountains not far from their borders were tiny villages that were mostly inaccessible by vehicle. The US sent in doctors, veterinarians, and dentists to that remote region to promote goodwill between the people and the host nation government.

About 750-1000 villagers were expected, Due to the word getting out, close to 10,000 showed up. Many had never seen a doctor or a dentist and they brought their horses and donkeys for the vets to look over. A couple of days were spent pulling teeth under the watchful eyes of our dentists, although the tooth necklace thing we tried afterward didn’t really work out. Another was working with the vets, inoculating animals with a shot that would rid them of ticks. Watching the vets grind the teeth of the horses with a rasp was a hoot.

You’ll often hear about being adept as a diplomat as well as a warrior. During a six-month deployment to Bolivia training counter-narcotics troops in the Chapare, the training was due to stop for 10 days at Christmas time to allow the Bolivian soldiers some well-deserved time off. Our team was going to spend it back in Panama before returning after the first of the year. The American Ambassador asked for our help, however. A school in the city of Sucre had fallen into disrepair. It was used in the morning as an elementary school, in the afternoons as a high school and at night for adult education.

USAID had $75,000 for repairs but estimated that it would cost twice that to make minimal repairs. But SF guys are much more resourceful. Our engineer and I flew there, and he looked around the school and thought that the $75,000 was more than enough for materials but that the labor and the time involved wouldn’t allow for the job to get done.

Getting the local populace involved became imperative. Local newspapers, leaflets thru our Civil Affairs augmentees and even local television got us over 300 volunteers a day. SF guys became construction supervisors and the work was done ahead of time, under budget and the team was able to do even more than was envisioned. Classrooms were re-wired, plastered with new drywall, a new functioning bathroom with a new water tank was installed. And a new patio was poured instead of broken and sharp rocks, the children had a flat, safe place to play during recess. The town threw a nice party for the team before heading back to the jungle.

Our medics in Chimore during that deployment were the only doctors for miles. Many women trekked for miles across mountainous terrain to have their babies born in the “gringo hospital”, our medical dispensary at the camp we shared with a Bolivian counternarcotics battalion and DEA agents.

And those pieces we posted on learning terrain association? They came in handy during a training mission to Paraguay. We were training a Paraguayan SF unit and we were jumping into the Grand Chaco, the endless grasslands of about 250,000 square miles between Paraguay, Bolivia, and Argentina.

The Air Force was dropping us in and turned on the green light about two minutes early. The two jumpmasters, our Commo man and myself had done our homework looking at the aerial photos and recognized we were far to the east still and held up our jumpers until we were over the correct drop zone. That saved everyone from a long, long walk to the turn-in area. It all pays off in the end.

Today with the wars in the Middle East, and Africa, the increasing Iranian influence in Latin America and issues in the Far East, Special Forces units will be stretched to the limit with their operational tempo. Some of the things you’ll experience will be very different than anything you’d have imagined. You’ll also find it will be the most rewarding time of your military career.

SOCSOUTH Honors Fallen Special Operators In Latin America

Remember Your Regiment! Special Operations Command South (SOCSOUTH) honored the men who died in the line of duty in Latin America and the Caribbean since 1963. The 142 names are etched on a memorial in front of the command’s HQs.

The memorial commemorates shows the true joint nature of the command and lists U.S. Army, Navy, Marines, and Air Force Special Operations Forces members killed during combat operations or while conducting training in U.S. Southern Command’s area of responsibility.

“[These fallen warriors] paid the ultimate sacrifice as they trained for and participated in combat operations during a critical period in our nations’ history,” said presiding officer and SOCSOUTH Commander Navy Rear Adm. Collin P. Green.

Stones were laid next to the four service flagpoles to honor the operators that were killed in action during four major combat operations: Operation Urgent Fury in Grenada, the EL Salvadoran civil war, Operation Just Cause in Panama, and Operation Uphold Democracy in Haiti.

During the ceremony, a SOCSOUTH member from each service read off the names of all 142 members who paid the ultimate sacrifice while a bell was tolled for each. The idea of the memorial was brought to the command by former SOCSOUTH Deputy Director of Operations Pat Lenaghan. He worked behind the scenes to ensure that he saw this thru.

Lenaghan formerly served in the 1^st Bn, 7^th SFG (A) at Ft. Bragg and in Panama during Just Cause. The guest speaker was retired BG Hector Pagan, former Commander of SOCSOUTH and who also served in 7^th Special Forces Group in Panama.

“These great Americans were every bit like you and me,” said retired Army Brig. Gen. Hector Pagan, guest speaker at the ceremony and SOCSOUTH’s 11th commander. “Heroes as they were, I’m sure they would never acknowledge anything they did as special; but also like you and me, what set them apart was they loved being in Special Operations, they loved our country, and loved the work they did.”
“And to our SOCSOUTH command, use today and the rest of our time here as will I, to know and respect the many chapters of SOCSOUTH’s history and pay tribute to those that have gone before us,” added Green. “Learn how they led and bled before us and built the culture and legacy we enjoy today.”
“We will not forget because as long as we remember they will be with us,” said Pagan.

To read the entire article from SOCSOUTH, click here:

Photo courtesy SOCSOUTH