US Army Special Forces

Melvin Morris Exemplified What It Means to Leave No Man Behind

Melvin Morris was a Green Beret in the 5th Special Forces Group who was awarded the Medal of Honor for his actions against Communist forces in Vietnam on September 17, 1969.

Originally awarded a Distinguished Service Cross, the Defense Authorization Act mandated that the military look at the actions of African-Americans, Jewish-Americans, Hispanic-Americans, and other minority veterans from World War II, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War to ensure that no prejudice was shown to those deserving the Medal of Honor. Morris’s award was therefore upgraded to the Medal of Honor.

Morris was born in Okmulgee, Oklahoma, on January 7, 1942. In an interview with American Battlefield Trust, Morris described the limited opportunities available to him back in those days.

“I come from Oklahoma, a place called Okmulgee, capital of the Creek Nation. There wasn’t much going on there in the ’50s, no work to speak of. My first was job was working at the bowling alley; I think I made 65 cents an hour. I said, ‘No, this isn’t going to cut it.’ And my brother and I both went into the military because the National Guard was recruiting minorities.”

After a year in the National Guard, Morris switched to the active-duty Army in 1960, volunteered for Airborne duty, and then joined Special Forces in 1961.

The Mike Forces

In September 1969, Morris, then a staff sergeant, was the commander of the Third Company, Third Battalion of the IV Mobile Strike Force near Chi Lang.

The Mobile Strike Force, known as the “Mike Force,” was created and advised by Special Forces troops as well as Australian SAS. The Mike Forces were staffed with indigenous peoples, pulled from the Civilian Irregular Defense Group (CIDG), and Nungs, people of Chinese descent. At its height, Mike Forces consisted of Bahnar, Hmong, Nung, Jarai, Khmer Krom minorities, and other members of the Degar peoples, also known as Montagnards.

The Mike Force companies mission was to act as a country-wide quick reaction force for securing, reinforcing, and recapturing CIDG Special Forces “A Camps,” as well as for conducting special reconnaissance patrols. Search and rescue, and search and destroy RT missions were also assigned to the units.

No Man Left Behind

On September 17, 1969, Morris’s combined Special Forces/Mike Force team was supporting South Vietnamese troops near Chi Lang when they discovered a large cache of food and weapons the North Vietnamese Communists had smuggled over the Cambodian border.

Defending the cache was a large number of North Vietnamese Army (NVA) troops who quickly opened fire. Another Green Beret team leader was killed while assaulting an enemy bunker. When informed of this by radio Melvin Morris immediately moved his men forward and, with two volunteers, crawled through a minefield to recover his fallen comrade.

They had just reached the killed SF soldier when the NVA hit them with intense, accurate fire. The two men with him were immediately wounded. Under heavy fire, Morris aided the two wounded troops back to a defensive position. He gathered up 20 hand grenades, ran back into the heavy enemy fire, and set about neutralizing the Vietnamese strong points. Morris destroyed four enemy bunkers with grenades and recovered the killed Green Beret before returning for a map case containing classified information.

During the pitched fighting, Melvin Morris was wounded three times in his chest and right arm. He took cover behind a tree and was pinned down for over two hours. Eventually, a helicopter dropping explosives on the enemy distracted them long enough for Morris to make it back to his unit.

“There was automatic weapons fire. I can’t remember too many human voices,” Morris said in an interview with the Army’s website. “I remember looking at my watch once and the next time I looked at it, it was in the evening. This started in the morning.”

Melvin Morris 5th Special Forces Group — SFC Melvin Morris and other members of the 5th Special Forces Group. (U.S. Army)

After spending a week in a field hospital, he was flown to Japan, where he was hospitalized for three months before returning to the United States. He was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross, the second-highest award for valor in the U.S. military in April 1970. A month after receiving the DSC, Morris returned to Vietnam for a subsequent tour of duty. He retired from the Army in 1985 as a sergeant first class.

In 2013, Morris was informed that a lengthy review of recipients of the Distinguished Service Cross had determined that he should have received the Medal of Honor instead.

In March 2014, President Obama awarded the Medal of Honor to Melvin Morris as well as Jose Rodela another Green Beret from Vietnam.

In the interview with the American Battlefield Trust, Morris reflected on the day he was at the White House and the responsibility he feels in educating American youth.

“On March 18, 2014, I went to the White House and received the Medal of Honor from President Obama. And it was an exhilarating feeling, I just can’t describe,” he said. “But I told myself that now, I’ve got a lot of work ahead of me because I have a message to share. Young children need to know that people are out there putting their lives on the line for them every day.”

“That’s what I do today; I go out and I give living history. I talk to students and the people about our heritage, about our military, and about why they should learn about history. We have to honor our heroes, regardless of their race, color, creed, ethnicity. I have made educating the people my life’s task.”

Melvin Morris’s Medal of Honor Citation

Melvin Morris Medal of Honor award Obama — Melvin Morris received the Medal of Honor by President Obama in 2014. (Voice of America)

“Staff Sergeant Melvin Morris distinguished himself by acts of gallantry and intrepidity above and beyond the call of duty while serving as Commander of a Strike Force drawn from Company D, 5th Special Forces Group (Airborne), 1st Special Forces, during combat operations against an armed enemy in the vicinity of Chi Lang, the Republic of Vietnam on September 17, 1969.
On that afternoon, Staff Sergeant Morris’ affiliated companies encountered an extensive enemy minefield and were subsequently engaged by a hostile force. Staff Sergeant Morris learned by radio that a fellow team commander had been killed near an enemy bunker and he immediately reorganized his men into an effective assault posture before advancing forward and splitting off with two men to recover the team commander’s body.
Observing the maneuver, the hostile force concentrated its fire on Staff Sergeant Morris’ three-man element and successfully wounded both men accompanying him. After assisting the two wounded men back to his forces’ lines, Staff Sergeant Morris charged forward into the withering enemy fire with only his men’s suppressive fire as cover.
While enemy machine gun emplacements continuously directed strafing fusillades against him, Staff Sergeant Morris destroyed the positions with hand grenades and continued his assault, ultimately eliminating four bunkers.
Upon reaching the bunker nearest the fallen team commander, Staff Sergeant Morris repulsed the enemy, retrieved his comrade, and began the arduous trek back to friendly lines. He was wounded three times as he struggled forward but ultimately succeeded in returning his fallen comrade to a friendly position.
Staff Sergeant Morris’ extraordinary heroism and selflessness above and beyond the call of duty are in keeping with the highest traditions of military service and reflect great credit upon himself, his unit, and the United States Army.”

My Woobie, My Best Friend

It’s undisputed that if a soldier would go in the wilderness for an extended period of time, one of the few things he’d take along would be the woobie. The beautiful polyester camo encased in two layers of joyous quilted nylon is a universal staple for the infantryman.

If you search online for the term woobie, you’ll get various results, from poncho liner to sleeping bags, to blankets, to baby blankets, and yes, even hoodies now.

Woobie is also used as a term of great affection. Calling someone a “woobie” is basically the same as calling them “love” or “sweaty.”

But when it comes to the military, the woobie is the nickname given to the poncho liner issued to all soldiers. The woobie is not a new thing with the first used in the jungles of Vietnam.

A Term of Uncertain Origins

My Woobie, My Best Friend — A Marine private holds up a sleeping system and poncho liner “woobie” during a gear issue return at the SOI Supply Warehouse on Camp Pendleton, CA, September 26, 2017. (Photo by Pfc. Dalton S. Swanbeck/Marine Corps)

How the term “woobie” came to be applied to the poncho liner remains a mystery. Some claim that it started as the phrase, “Because you would be cold without it” and “would be” evolved into “woobie.” Or that it was called a “willbie” from the phrase, “It will be what keeps you from freezing.”

Now anyone has access to woobies. They are sold online and now come in various fabrics, prints, colors, prices, and qualities. Woobies have been widely advertised to civilians. Hunters and campers use them during cold and wet weather. Picnickers and stadium goers use them as blankets. People even use them as comforters and couch blankets at home.

I use mine as a pillow on a hot summer afternoon and always place it inside my ruck frame to give me a little padding on my back and allow me to quickly access it.

Some soldiers have altered their woobie to have a zipper. When lined inside their poncho, they now have a lightweight waterproof sleeping bag. The woobie has several anchor points with ties to fix to the poncho.

It can also be used as an overhead shade. In the desert, we would use two woobies or ponchos, one about a foot over the other. This created a buffer for the heat and kept us significantly cooler underneath.

Can the Woobie Keep You Warm?

Matched with its poncho counterpart, the woobie can be very warm. Even if you are wet, it will help trap your body heat. If you have never experienced the joyous hug from a woobie, I highly suggest you get yourself one and take it on your next hiking adventure. Or better yet, put it in your living room for watching movies.

The M224 60mm Mortar – Every Light Infantryman’s Friend

The M224 60mm lightweight mortar is a man-portable, smoothbore, muzzle-loading, high-angle-of-fire weapon used for close-in support of ground troops, airborne and special operations forces. It is currently in use with both the U.S. Army and the Marine Corps. It was used extensively along with the M252 81mm mortar in the War in Afghanistan.

Better in Every Way

The M224 LWCMS (Lightweight Company Mortar System) was first adopted in 1978. It replaced the older (WWII-era) 60mm M2 Mortar and the inaccurate M19 Mortar.

While the M2s and M19s had an effective range of only 2,000 meters, the M224’s new primary rounds gave it a range of effective indirect fire of 3,489 meters. Meanwhile, it could still fire all types of older ammunition.

In 2011, an improved M224A1 version came into service. Thanks to its new lighter components the weight of the weapon system decreased from 46.8 to 37.5 pounds.

M224 Components

The M224 mortar is composed of these parts:

M225 Cannon: 14.4 lbs
M170 Bipod: 15.2 lbs
M7A1 Baseplate for use in conventional mode: 9.6 lbs
M8 baseplate for use in handheld mode: 3.6 lbs
M64A1 Sight Unit (The M67 Sight Unit is now widely used for the system): 2.5 lbs

The mount consists of a bipod and a base plate, which is provided with screw-type elevating and traversing mechanisms to elevate/traverse the mortar. The M64A1/M67 sight unit is attached to the bipod mount. The mortar can be fired in the conventional gravity fire mode or the handheld mode by using a manual spring-loaded trigger.

The 60mm mortar is typically fielded at the infantry company level. A small mortar section with two mortars is organic to Army rifle companies (light, airborne, air assault) and Ranger companies. Marine rifle companies have a section with three 60mm mortars in the company weapons platoon.

The mortar can fire a sustained 20 rounds-per-minute with 30 rounds-per-minute in certain circumstances and for short durations. The ranges for the M224 extend from 70 meters to 1,340 meters for hand-held firing and 3,490 meters for the conventional firing mode. A crew of three can operate the mortar extremely efficiently.

60mm mortar Afghanistan — 60mm mortar being fired in Afghanistan using the smaller baseplate and the hand-held trigger. (DoD photo)

The 60mm Mortar’s Ammunition

The M224 Mortar can fire the following principal classifications of training and service ammunition:

High explosive (HE): These are used against personnel and light materiel targets.
M1061: Improved HE with insensitive munitions performance-enhancing fragmentation warhead.
Smoke Cartridge (White Phosphorous): Designation M722. Used as a screening, signaling, or marking munition.
Illumination (ILLUM): Used in night missions requiring illumination for assistance in observation.
Red Phosphorus: Can be seen with or without a Night Vision Optic.
Full Range Practice Cartridges (FRPC): Designation M769. This round is used for practice or clearing misfires.
M1061 MAPAM: SAAB Technologies produced a Multi-Purpose Anti-Personnel Anti-Material round.

While mortars are indirect fire weapons, in mountainous terrain if the mortar crew is located on the high ground where the target is visible, they can be pinpointed right on the target. An example and amusing story of how this can play out happened while an A-Team from the 7th Special Forces Group deployed to Honduras back in the day.

Hey, you gotta have an anecdote with these stories, after all, right?

The M224 60mm Mortar in Action in Honduras

Our A-Team was moving farther up in the mountains to work on pack animal configurations (see Wilson, Charlie) with the 6th Infantry Battalion (Centaurs) at Ojo de Agua, which we regularly called “Ojo de Nada.”

The Centaurs were located in the mountains and had a large base for the Contras. The Centaurs had enough U.S.-made GP Medium tents where a battalion could refit and rest. They also had a large shooting range built on several of the base’s rolling hills.

When we had first arrived the weather had been cold, raw, and rainy. But about a week later, it had dried out and was hot and sticky. A stiff wind had dried everything out to where it was like tinder.

We were high up on a hill with our Honduran counterparts shooting at targets located about 300-400 meters away. We were using M-60 and M249 (SAW) machine guns as well as their Russian 82mm mortars and our M224s. The Honduran kids, not used to having this much ammo, were having a ball, blazing away at the silhouettes with reckless abandon. Those short controlled bursts we had discussed in training were quickly forgotten.

One of the tracer rounds from the SAW started a range fire on top of the hill. Our Hondo allies had a pickup truck, an old beat-up piece of junk that looked like it would fall apart at any minute. It came loaded with soldiers who raced down there and quickly put the fire out. Kind of like a Keystone Kops fire brigade.

After lunch, we had a second group, their mortar section, who were beginning to get the U.S. 60mm mortars. We did some crew training with them and their crew drills were pretty good. They had a few old Soviet 82mm mortars, from God knows where. They looked like antiques. So firing them seemed like an iffy proposition. They used the U.S. 81mm mortar rounds, which we didn’t have any.

The M224 60mm mortar firing in Afghanistan using the conventional firing mode. (U.S. Army)

I had never fired a U.S. round through that Soviet system (I had started as a heavy weapons guy), but one of our other guys had. He said that a weird sound was made when dropping the round. Instead of that metallic sliding, sucking sound, it was a click, clickety-click, sound as the slightly smaller American round would ever so slightly bounce down the tube. Although you could fire those, Luis, our heavy weapons guy, said, they weren’t the most accurate… no kidding.

So, after doing some crew drill on the 60mm M224 mortar, the mortar guys got their turn on the machine guns. After a few moments, one tracer round hit in front of one target, bounced backward about 10-20 meters, and started a small fire in the grass. The fire was burning in a small neat circle.

Danny, our Team leader, was reaching for the radio to tell the Hondos in the beat-up truck to put out the fire when Bruce, one of the other guys, spoke up. “I can put that range fire out, sir,” Bruce said. Bruce was a huge guy who was loaned to us from the 2nd Ranger Battalion for this deployment. He was also the weapons platoon sergeant in the Battalion.

The Hondurans were in awe of his size. He was easily double their diminutive height, so, they were scared shitless of him. Bruce had a very typical Ranger haircut buzzed on the sides. In the Honduran army, they only did that to the criminals, “Los Castigados” in their terminology.

He grabbed the smaller M8 baseplate for the 60mm mortar and put a round in the tube while lining up his range estimation. Giving himself a bit of windage, he pulled the trigger and we all waited a few seconds for the round to go downrange. Bruce grabbed another round and was preparing to fire again when the mortar landed with that flat-sounding explosion. It landed squarely on the fire, which was no more than three-four meters wide at that point.

Special Forces Honduran Airmen — A Special Forces soldier (left) observes Honduran airmen firing their pistols. (DoD)

The results were electric. We whooped, “Good shot bro,” while the Honduran mortar section sat there dumbstruck with their mouths literally wide open. It was a shot in a million. And to put things in perspective, they were used to firing 81mm mortar rounds through a Russian 82mm antique mortar. “Holy shit,” Bruce said to Danny. “I’ve never hit one on the first shot before.”

“Look at them,” Danny said, motioning to the Honduran mortar section. “They are going to kneel and ask you to bring back the sun any minute.” We all cracked up. The Hondos sat there mesmerized for a few more seconds. “Hijo de puta! Their lieutenant yelled. He turned with a big grin and began to bark at his troops. We all cracked up. Bruce, who at that time had a very limited Spanish vocabulary, asked Danny what they said.

“Basically, he is telling them that until they can learn to shoot like that, he’s going to shave all their heads.”

Bruce again tried to tell us that he’d never hit anything like that on the first shot. Danny told him to act as if he did it all the time. Bruce played along, set down the tube, and told the Hondos, “Eso fue fácil” (that was easy).

After that, every time Bruce walked through the compound, the Honduran kids would salute him like he was a field grade officer. Not long after we returned from that deployment, the Special Forces had ruined Bruce with the Ranger Battalion.

He reported to the sergeant major (SGM) with his hands in his pockets, put his feet up on the SGM’s desk, and said, “Hey SGM, I’m back.” His SGM at the time was also a long-time SF NCO. He laughed and said, “Report to RIP in the morning.” Not long after that, Bruce joined SF and went through the Special Forces Qualification Course as an 18E. He later became an officer… and a very good one.

DOL

Billy Waugh – The Legendary 71-Year-Old Osama bin Laden Hunter

From hitchhiking at age 15 in order to join the WWII effort to hunting Bin Laden in his 70s in the mountains of Tora Bora the story of Billy Waugh is straight out of a Hollywood movie; but it is entirely true.

Billy Waugh had two long careers, one in Special Forces and the other in the CIA as a paramilitary operations officer. In total, he served for more than 50 years as a special operator.

A Hitchhiker’s Attempt to Join the Military

Waugh was born in Bastrop, Texas on December 1, 1929. He was bitten by the bug to join the military during World War II. In 1945, he met a pair of Marines who had just returned to Texas from fighting in the South Pacific. So, at the age of 15, he decided to enlist. Somehow, he got the idea that you could enlist at the age of 16 in California, so he set off hitchhiking for Los Angeles.

He got only as far as Las Cruces, New Mexico when he was stopped by a police officer. He was put to jail for having no identification and refusing to give his name. Eventually, he was released and returned to Bastrop.

Waugh decided to throw himself into high school until he was old enough to enlist. He graduated with a grade point average (GPA) of 4.0 from Bastrop High School.

Billy Waugh in Vietnam and Special Forces Service in MACV-SOG

Waugh eventually joined the military in 1948, but he enlisted with the Army, not the Marines.

After going through basic training at Ft. Ord, California, Waugh went through jump school in December 1948.

He re-enlisted in 1951 to get an assignment with the 187th Airborne Regimental Combat Team (Rakkasans), which was then fighting in Korea.

After the Armistice ended the Korean War, Billy Waugh was assigned to Germany. There, while riding on a train, he met a couple of NCOs from the 10th Special Forces Group. They explained the opportunities that existed for NCOs in the unit and what Special Forces (SF) were all about. Waugh volunteered and entered the training pipeline, earning his Green Beret and joining the 10th Special Forces Group (10th SFG) in Bad Tölz, West Germany.

During the early 1960s, Special Forces A-Teams were being sent to Southeast Asia to train indigenous tribesmen for the joint SF/CIA Civilian Irregular Defense Program (CIDG).

In Waugh’s first tour in 1961, he trained tribesmen in both South Vietnam and Laos. In the same year, he began his first tour with the CIA’s Special Activities Division, being on loan from the Special Forces. It wouldn’t be his last.

Billy Waugh Vietnam — Waugh conducted five combat HALO jumps during the war in Vietnam. (*Hunting the Jackal*/Avon Press)

In 1965, his A-Team (A-331) and his CIDG unit conducted a raid on a North Vietnamese Army (NVA) unit compound in Bong Son, in Binh Dinh Province. Intelligence gave the Special Forces troops an estimate of a few hundred NVA troops in the area. This was a gross miscalculation, In reality, there were more than 4,000 troops in the area, including Chinese regular troops bolstering the NVA and Viet Cong.

During the raid, Billy Waugh found himself out of grenades and nearly out of ammunition. On the way to the predetermined exfil point, he was hit in the knee by a Soviet-made RPK.

Crawling along a levee, he was hit again in the foot and ankle. Reaching his medical aid bag, he gave himself a shot of morphine but this did little for the pain.

The CIDG and SF troops were soon in danger of being overrun. At that point, Waugh was shot in the head and knocked unconscious.

In an excerpt from his book, Hunting the Jackal, Waugh described what transpired,

“I took another bullet, this time across the right side of my forehead. I don’t know for sure, but I believe the bullet ricocheted off the bamboo before striking me. It sliced in and out of a two-inch section of my forehead, and it immediately started to bleed like an open faucet. It sounds like the punch line to a bad joke, but you know it’s a bad day when the best thing about it is getting shot in the head.”

The NVA overran the position. They believed Waugh was dead and helped themselves to his gear, Rolex watch, and clothes, stripping him naked before leaving him there and moving on. His teammates found him and got him to safety. For his conduct, Billy Waugh was awarded a Silver Star and a Purple Heart — his sixth, for that operation.

He spent the remainder of 1965 and part of 1966 recovering from his wounds at Walter Reed Hospital in Washington DC. However, as soon as he was released from the hospital, Waugh was right back in Vietnam.

Waugh joined the Military Assistance Command-Vietnam Studies and Observations Group (MACV-SOG). This was a unit composed of special operators from all the services, but mostly Green Berets. It conducted dangerous missions deep in enemy-occupied territory.

A Casualty Rate of Over 100 Percent

While working for SOG, Waugh helped train Vietnamese and Cambodian forces in unconventional warfare tactics to fight against Communist forces in the region.

Waugh was the senior NCO of MACV-SOG’s Command & Control North (CCN) based at Marble Mountain on the South China Sea, outside of Da Nang. Waugh held the command sergeant major position during the covert unit’s transition and name-change to Task Force One Advisory Element (TF1AE). He spent the remainder of the war working for the unit.

The price for conducting these “over the fence” operations was high. The casualty rate for SOG forces was over 100 percent. In an interview about SOG with a Miami newspaper, Waugh said, “If you were going up there, you were either going to die or get shot all to hell. Everyone in the outfit was wounded once, twice, three times.”

SGM Billy Waugh conducted the first combat High Altitude, Low Opening (HALO) jump, into enemy territory in October 1970. Waugh also led the last combat Special Reconnaissance parachute insertion by American Army Special Forces HALO parachutists into denied territory on June 22, 1971.

After the U.S. troops were withdrawn from Vietnam, Waugh, a veteran of 7.5 years of combat deployments, was to be reassigned to the 10th Special Forces Group. Nevertheless, he told the Army to change his orders or he would retire.

The Army had no need for Special Forces — and never liked the unit, to begin with — so they told Waugh to retire. And thus he did.

Waugh retired from active military duty at the rank of sergeant major (E-9) on February 1, 1972.

Billy Waugh Returns to the CIA

Billy Waugh Afghanistan — Waugh at 71 spent two months trying to track down Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan in 2001. (*Hunting the Jackal*/Avon Press)

Waugh went back to Texas and worked for the U.S. Postal Service. But for someone who was used to the adrenaline rush of combat with SOG, a postman’s job wasn’t for him.

But in 1977 his career would refocus.

He and three other retired Special Forces operators were recruited to train Libyan Special Forces troops. The men believed that this was a CIA operation, but the more they learned, they realized that it was not. Instead, it was a private operation run by an ex-CIA operative named Edwin Wilson.

Wilson would later be convicted of attempted murder, illegally selling arms, explosives, and ammunition to a foreign country, and was sentenced to 53 years in prison.

However, just prior to deployment, Waugh was approached by an active CIA agent who asked him to take photos of people, places, and anything else of value. This was a needed bit of insurance for Waugh in case things went wrong.

He took pictures of the men he was training with and of SAM (surface to air missile) sites. He then passed them on to the CIA.

Waugh was in Libya in 1979 when the U.S. Embassy in Tehran was overrun. Libya was no longer safe for him and he escaped to Frankfurt, Germany.

The new heads of the CIA under the Carter administration outwardly didn’t want anyone like Waugh in the fold any longer. So, Waugh took a job as the deputy chief of police at the U.S. Army Kwajalein Missile Range in the Marshall Islands. The force was tasked with stopping the Soviets from stealing classified information on the U.S.’s missile technology.

Tracking Bin Laden and Hunting the Jackal

But in the late 1980s, the agency came calling again. So, Billy Waugh ended up in Khartoum, Sudan, hunting a then-unknown terrorist and terror organization. The man was Osama bin Laden and the group was al-Qaeda.

At that time, bin Laden was not a major target, so Waugh was told to watch and report on his activities. He got within a few feet of him several times.

“I was within 30 meters of him,” Waugh said to Air Force journalist Nick Stubbs during an interview in 2011. “I could have killed him with a rock.”

In 1993, Waugh and a team of CIA operatives set up a surveillance mission to try and locate the wanted terrorist, Ilich Ramirez Sanchez, aka the infamous “Carlos the Jackal.”

No one had photographed the Jackal for 10 years. But Waugh’s team tracked him down and set up a surveillance point across the street from his house. They monitored Carlos’s routine and eventually, the French came in, raided the house, and captured the Jackal.

After 9/11, Waugh had one last fight in him. Having so much knowledge about bin Laden, he convinced the agency to deploy him to the mountains of Afghanistan. Waugh deployed with ODA-594 of the 5th SFG.

The men hunted for the notorious terrorist in the Afghan mountains outside of Tora Bora. At 71 years of age, when any thoughts of being an operator are long past for warriors, Waugh was on the hunt one final time.

Waugh on horseback in the mountains around Tora Bora in 2001. (*Hunting the Jackal*/Avon Press)

“If the mind is good and the body is able, you keep on going if you enjoy it,” Waugh said in the interview with Stubbs. “Once you get used to that, you’re not about to quit. How could you want to do anything else?”

Because of security restrictions, no one (other than Waugh) knows in how many classified operations he participated.

Billy Waugh is rightly a legend in the special operations and paramilitary community.

His awards and decorations consist of :

Combat Infantryman Badge (two awards)
Special Forces Tab
Master Parachutist Badge
Military Freefall Jumpmaster Badge with gold combat jump star (5 combat jumps)
Vietnam Parachutist Badge
Silver Star
Legion of Merit
Bronze Star Medal with three bronze oak leaf clusters
Purple Heart with seven oak leaf clusters
Air Medal
Army Commendation Medal with Valor device and three oak leaf clusters
Army Presidential Unit Citation with oak leaf cluster (one award in 2001, SOG)
Good Conduct Medal (7 awards)
Army of Occupation Medal
National Defense Service Medal with one bronze service star
Korean Service Medal with three campaign stars
Armed Forces Expeditionary Medal
Vietnam Service Medal with Arrowhead device and six service stars
Republic of Korea Presidential Unit Citation
Vietnam Presidential Unit Citation
Republic of Vietnam Gallantry Cross Unit Citation
Republic of Vietnam Civil Actions Medal Unit Citation
United Nations Korea Medal
Vietnam Campaign Medal
Republic of Korea War Service Medal

The 3rd Special Forces Group (Airborne) – An Illustrious History

The 3rd Special Forces Group (Airborne) is one of the five active-duty Special Forces Groups (1st, 3rd, 5th, 7th, and 10th) in the U.S. Army. The 3rd SFG is stationed at Fort Bragg, N.C., and its area of responsibility includes the area of operations of AFRICOM as well as the Caribbean Basin.

All Special Forces groups have a plethora of mission sets. Some of these include but are not limited to Direct Action, Special Reconnaissance, Counter-terrorism, Counter-insurgency, Foreign Internal Defense, Unconventional Warfare, Security Force Assistance, Information Operations, and Peace Operations.

Special Forces Soldiers are renowned for their ability to deploy in small teams, operate independently, and conduct their mission in austere environments.

The First Period of the 3rd Special Forces Group

Like many special operations forces, the Special Forces trace their lineage back to WWII. Several units laid the framework for Special Forces, among them the Alamo Scouts, Philippine Guerrillas, 1st Special Service Force, and the Operational Group’s Jedburgh Teams within the Office of Strategic Services (OSS).

The Special Forces, otherwise known as Green Berets, came into existence in June 1952. At first, they consisted of only the 10th Special Forces Group (Airborne). Soon after, a portion of the 10th split and became the 7th Special Forces Group (Airborne).

The Special Forces training school was known as the Psychological Warfare School, later becoming the John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center and School.

The 3rd Special Forces Group (Airborne) was first activated on December 5, 1963, at Fort Bragg, NC, and designated as a Special Action Force with the Middle East and Africa as an area orientation.

The members of the original 3rd SFG(A) were drawn from the existing Special Forces Groups with the exception of the 10th SFG (A).

In an acknowledgment of its origins, the beret flash colors of the 3rd SFG are yellow (1st SFG (A)), red (7th SFG (A)), black (5th SFG (A)), and white (Special Forces Training Group (A)). Likewise, the unit’s original motto was “From the Rest Comes the Best.”

The unit trained the armed forces of Mali, Iraq, Ethiopia, the Congo, and Jordan, in addition to supporting the Gemini 6 and 7 space launches in 1965.

During the war in Vietnam, the 3rd SFG also worked with and augmented the 5th SFG(A). During the early years of the war, SF A-Teams would deploy from all of the groups to Vietnam on TDY status. Afterward, the Army changed that and made it a permanent change of station and centralized all of the SF efforts under the 5th SFG.

In 1966, 3rd Group transferred assumed control of the 403rd Army Security Agency Special Operations Detachment and the 19th PSYOP Company over to 5th Group.

With the “Vietnamization” of the conflict, the 3rd SFG(A) was inactivated on December 10, 1969, and its members were transferred back to the other Special Forces Groups. One 3rd group officer who stayed in South Vietnam — Major George W. Petrie — was the first man on the ground in the Son Tay Raid on November 21, 1970, and later helped plan the Saigon evacuation on April 30, 1975, becoming the last SF soldier to leave the country.

The 3rd Special Forces Group Is Reborn

After nearly 21 years, the 3rd SFG (A) was re-activated at Ft. Bragg on July 1, 1990, with the majority of the troops comprising the group coming from the 5th SFG. The 2nd Battalion and the 3rd Battalion of the 3rd SFG were reactivated in 1991 and 1992, respectively.

3rd SFG’s new area of operation and responsibility initially consisted of the Caribbean and West Africa.

At the outbreak of the First Gulf War, the 3rd Group’s 1st Battalion was deployed to Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, for three months. Its A-Teams carried out reconnaissance and sabotage missions into denied areas of Iraq and Kuwait.

In February 1991, the 3rd Group was tasked with securing and occupying the U.S. Embassy in Kuwait City. The group also took part in the restoration of democracy in Haiti in 1994. During the late ’90s, the 3rd Group helped train forces in Senegal, Uganda, Malawi, Mali, Ethiopia, and Trinidad and Tobago, among others.

Global War on Terror

3rd Special Forces Group soldiers in Afghanistan — 3rd SFG troops in Afghanistan. (DVIDS)

After the events of 9/11, like all other Special Forces groups, the 3rd SFG became heavily involved in combat operations in Afghanistan. The heroism of the 3rd SFG’s soldiers was exemplary.

In the single largest awarding of troops since Vietnam, Lieutenant General John Mullholland, who led the 5th SFG’s initial deployment into Afghanistan in 2001 and was the commander of U.S. Special Operations Command (USSOCOM), said of the troops,

“As we have listened to these incredible tales, I am truly at a loss for words to do justice to what we have heard here, where do we get such men? … There is no finer fighting man on the face of the earth than the American soldier. And there is no finer American soldier than our Green Berets. If you saw what you heard today in a movie, you would shake your head and say, ‘That didn’t happen.’ But it does, every day.”

Staff Sergeant Robert Miller – Medal of Honor

On January 24, 2008, ODA-3312 was tasked with a combat reconnaissance mission designed to root out insurgent safe havens located in the ridges of the Chen Khar Valley in Afghanistan.

After finding an insurgent base empty, the SF team learned that a large group of insurgents was massing on a slope beyond the nearby river and preparing to ambush the combined SF and Afghan troops.

Miller fired on the insurgents with an Mk-19 grenade launcher until it broke down. Miller then grabbed a machine gun and immediately put down suppressive fire. When the firing ceased, Miller’s team leader, Major Robert Cusick, ordered Miller to take the point of a patrol up to do a battle damage assessment. Miller, Cusick, six other Green Berets, and a team of 15 Afghan soldiers crossed the river and climbed up the valley.

Miller moved forward with an M249 SAW (Squad Automatic Weapon) when an insurgent, breaking free from some rocks rushed Miller. It was at this point that the valley came alive with over 200 insurgents pouring fire down on the exposed team. Major Cusick later compared it to being in the middle of a July 4 fireworks display. Miller killed the insurgent with his SAW and immediately laid down suppressive fire for the remainder of the team.

Cusick was seriously wounded with a gunshot to the collarbone area. Miller was hit in the torso but was able to spin around and kill another insurgent. But then he did what no one, American or insurgent, expected. He attacked.

Moving forward, he singlehandedly took on the enemy force with his SAW, which was highly visible due to the flash of the muzzle. Thus, it attracted an enormous amount of insurgent fire, so heavy, that the Americans reported that although he was close, Miller was impossible to reach.

Miller kept up the fire and moved on insurgent positions, eliminating them one at a time with a mixture of SAW fire and hand grenades. It wasn’t until his ammunition and grenades were expended that he was killed by rifle fire.

In October 2010, President Obama presented the Medal of Honor to Miller’s parents.

Staff Sergeant Ronald Shurer – Medal of Honor

Ronald Shurer was awarded the Medal of Honor for his actions in the Shok Valley in Afghanistan.

Shurer was assigned to the 3rd Special Forces Group and ODA 3336. In 2008, the unit was tasked with capturing a high-value target who was a part of the Hezebela Islami Gulbadin insurgent group. The mission took place in the remote Shok Valley in the Nuristan province of Afghanistan.

The team of Green Berets and Afghan commandos was whisked to the snow-covered ground along a frozen river next to a nearly vertical 60-foot cliff that they would have to climb. Then, through their imagery, the number of enemy troops in the area suddenly became much clearer.

In an interview with the media, LTC Kyle Walton, who was in command of the ODA, said the troops saw that “There were hundreds and hundreds of more compounds than we were able to see from our imagery.”

His unit came under machine gun, sniper, and rocket-propelled grenade fire as they made their way through the valley. Another element of the team, trying to maneuver toward the target from a different location, also came under fire and was pinned down. Several of the troops were critically wounded.

Shurer, disregarding his own safety, charged up the mountain while under heavy fire. It took him an hour to reach the element of four critically wounded Americans and 10 wounded Afghan commandos. He returned fire killing several insurgents along the way.

Once he arrived at the wounded troops’ position, he stabilized four of them while being wounded in the arm and taking a bullet in his helmet.

“It felt like I’d been hit in the head with a baseball bat,” Shurer said later in an interview.

Shurer then aided a man who had lost a leg and continued to treat the wounded, while still fighting off the insurgents for several hours. He then aided in lowering three wounded men down a near-vertical 60-foot cliff while under fire.

Shurer’s actions saved the lives of every man who was wounded on that day.

For his actions, Shurer was initially awarded the Silver Star. However, in 2016, the Pentagon conducted a review of all medals awarded for valor since the 9/11 terror attacks. Shurer’s award was then upgraded to the Medal of Honor. He received the award from President Donald Trump on October 1, 2018, in a ceremony at the White House.

“For more than six hours, Ron bravely faced down the enemy,” President Trump said at the award ceremony. “Not a single American died in that brutal battle, thanks in great measure to Ron’s heroic actions.”

Shurer left the Army in 2009. He joined the Phoenix office of the U.S. Secret Service. He was selected for the agency’s Counter Assault Team and assigned to its Special Operations Division in Washington, DC. Sadly, Shurer died of lung cancer in 2020, leaving behind a wife and two young sons.

Sergeant Matthew O. Williams – Medal of Honor

President Trump awarded the Medal of Honor to MSG Matthew O. Williams in the White House for actions in Afghanistan. (White House)

Williams was a Special Forces Weapons Sergeant (18B) with ODA-3336, Special Operations Task Force 11, Combined Joint Special Operations Task Force-Afghanistan. On April 6, 2008, the ODA was on a mission to capture or kill high-value targets of the Hezeb Islami al Gulbadin in Shok Valley, Nuristan Province, Afghanistan.

Williams was part of an assault element consisting of several American SF and a larger Afghan commando force. The element was inserted by helicopter into a location in Nuristan Province. As they were moving up a mountain toward their objective, they were engaged by intense enemy machine gun, sniper, and rocket-propelled grenade fire.

The lead portion of the assault element, which included the ground commander, sustained several casualties and was pinned down on the mountainside. Meanwhile, Williams and the trailing portion of the assault element were forced to take cover as they began to also receive intense enemy fire. Insurgent fighters had the entire assault element pinned down.

“It was kind of quiet, then all of a sudden everything exploded all at once – machine gun fire, some RPGs started going off. [The insurgents] had some pretty good shooters and a lot of people up there waiting for us,” Williams said.

The Army’s narrative of the operation highlights Williams’s bravery on that day.

“After learning that the command element had received numerous casualties, he gathered the Afghan commandos around him while braving intense enemy fire and led a counterattack across a 100-meter long valley of ice-covered boulders and a fast-moving, ice-cold, waist-deep river.
After leading his commandos up the mountainside to the besieged element, Williams arrayed his Afghan commandos to provide suppressive fire to keep the insurgents from overrunning the position.
As Williams worked to defend his position, his team sergeant, Master Sgt. Scott Ford, was hit by a sniper round. Once again, Williams braved intense enemy fire to provide Ford first aid and moved him down the sheer mountainside to the casualty collection point.
Then, knowing the commandos and his fellow Soldiers were still in danger, Williams fought and climbed his way back up the mountainside, under enemy fire, to help defend the lead assault element, which still had several serious casualties to evacuate.
Upon reaching the lead element, he provided suppressing fire, killing several insurgents, before once again exposing himself to enemy fire in order to move to the element’s satellite radio and re-establish their communications capability. Williams then continued to expose himself to enemy fire as he assisted in moving the wounded down the mountainside to the casualty collection point.
After Williams reached the casualty collection point with three wounded Soldiers, enemy fighters began maneuvering to overrun their position, putting the lives of the wounded and those caring for them at risk.
Realizing the danger to the wounded, Williams again led the Afghan commandos in a counterattack and fought for several hours against the insurgents, keeping them at bay until helicopters arrived to evacuate the wounded.
Again and again, as the wounded were being evacuated, Williams exposed himself to enemy fire while carrying and loading casualties onto the helicopters. He then continued to suppress numerous insurgent positions by directing commando fires, which allowed the patrol to evacuate the wounded and the dead without further casualties.”

“That day was one of the worst predicaments of my life at that point, the experience from that has helped me through my whole entire career. Remain level-headed and focus on what needs to happen as opposed to what is happening,” Williams said.

Williams’s Silver Star was upgraded to the Medal of Honor and on October 30, 2019. It was presented to him in the White House by President Trump.

In addition to the awards listed above, CW2 Jason Myers and SSG Corey Calkins of the 3rd SFG were awarded the Distinguished Cross, the nation’s second-highest honor for valor.

During the Global War on Terror (GWOT), 3rd Special Forces Group troops have been awarded 56 Silver Stars, 183 Bronze Stars with Valor Device, and 239 Army Commendations with Valor Device.

Niger Ambush

In October 2017, a combined Special Forces A-Team (ODA-3212) from the 3rd Special Forces Group and Nigerien forces were ambushed by a numerically vastly superior insurgent force outside of Tongo Tongo, Niger. The ambush resulted in the deaths of four American Special Forces troops.

The Army, AFRICOM, and senior leadership tried to paint the picture that the ODA had “gone rogue” by submitting a false Concept of Operation (CONOP) to headquarters.

Nothing was further from the truth as the A-Team leader had several times requested that the mission be canceled as the team had no support element and was working on intelligence that had a two-hour window while the mission would be conducted over two days. But he was ordered to continue.

It wasn’t until Michelle Black, the widow of SSG Bryan Black, one of the four men killed in the ambush, conducted an investigation of her own that the entire story was uncovered. Her book Sacrifice, A Gold Star Widow’s Fight for the Truth recounts her pursuit of truth and closure.

The Giant Killer: A Fascinating Look at the Smallest Green Beret in History

The Green Berets, the U.S. Army’s Special Forces, are the military’s premier unconventional warriors. And Richard Flaherty was, perhaps, the most unconventional Green Beret warrior to ever serve.

Flaherty served with the 101st Airborne during Vietnam. He was awarded a Silver Star, two Bronze Stars, and two Purple Hearts. After Vietnam, he did contract work for the CIA all over the world.

But he had to fight to even get into the Army and the Army’s Officer Candidate School (OCS), going so far as to get his congressman involved. The reason was that Richard Flaherty was just 4’9” tall.

Years after Vietnam, David Yuzuk, a career Miami Beach police officer, struck a friendship with a confident but unassuming homeless man. After 15 years the man told Yuzuk, “It’s time I tell you who I really am.” The homeless man was Richard Flaherty.

Yuzuk finally learned the man’s story and began a quest to discover all there was to know about this diminutive man who cast a giant shadow in combat.

As he began digging into Flaherty’s background, Yuzuk decided to write a book, having previously put together an award-winning documentary on the man’s fascinating life. To do so, he enlisted the help of his father, Neil. The book dives into some of the details of Flaherty’s life that weren’t in the documentary. The trailer for the documentary can be seen here.

The book begins with Flaherty’s bizarre death. He was killed by Leslie Socolov in a hit-and-run incident. Socolov who worked for the Miami-Dade homicide division and who, despite leaving the scene of a deadly accident, was never charged with any crime, recently made headlines for an anti-Semitic rant caught on camera.

Richard Flaherty was always sensitive about his height. When he was young growing up in Stamford, Connecticut, he set about achieving the best possible physical condition he could and started learning martial arts.

When he joined the Army, he was bullied and harassed by both fellow soldiers and drill sergeants. That was until he showed his mettle in the hand-to-hand combat pit against his largest and biggest bully. He went through much the same in OCS, but persevered and graduated. Evidently, his nickname, “The Giant Killer,” which was given to him back in high school, was apt.

His commander in Vietnam hated the diminutive lieutenant. Some of Flaherty’s men corroborated this. As a result of the commander’s animosity, they always got the short end of the stick when it came to operations. His men knew Flaherty to be fearless and ruthless in combat and a capable commander.

After the war, like many Army officers, Flaherty was riffed out. This was a devastating blow to him. A failed relationship, an assortment of jobs, and later the death of a fiancé devastated him and eventually left him homeless.

That’s when he met Yuzuk. After he told him his story, the veteran police officer was skeptical. He frankly thought that Flaherty’s tale of working with the CIA was pure fantasy. But after Flaherty’s death, he spoke with his fellow vets and found his awards and decorations.

Richard Flaherty then went through Flaherty’s storage unit and found his passport. It was full of stamps to the world’s hotspots: Cambodia, Venezuela, Iraq, and Jordan among other places. Why would a homeless man visit those places, and how could he afford to?

His work with the CIA in support of the Nicaraguan Contras ended up with him being arrested and spending time in prison for drug-running. That incredible chapter involves HALO jumps from aircraft over “Alligator Alley” in Florida, guns, and lots of cocaine during the wild Miami days of the 1980s. Flaherty eventually worked undercover for the ATF in an effort to stop the flow of cocaine and weapons in the Fort Bragg, NC area.

His manner of death and his adamant statement to Yuzuk not to look into his undercover work, only raised more questions.

Yuzuk’s book is a fascinating look at one of the most extraordinary characters ever to wear a Green Beret. It is a story that sounds so off the wall that it could never be true. But it is.

The book is very well-written and guaranteed to keep your attention throughout. It is the incredible but true story of a man determined to beat the odds and make a difference. We highly recommend it. It can be ordered on Amazon.

US Military’s working dogs are the worst nightmare for the enemy

Cry havoc…

Since the time of Greece and the Roman Empire, the dog has been a valued and trusted member of the military. The Romans used a breed of Mastiff that is now extinct. Then, they covered their canines in armor with spiked collars and used them to wreak havoc on their enemies.

The use of military dogs by the United States was largely an unknown to the general population until a Belgian Malinois named “Cairo” was thrust into the spotlight after the raid that killed Osama bin Laden in Pakistan by US Navy SEALs.

But the use of military dogs goes far back from the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. The first well-known military dog was SGT Stubby who was a stray Bull Terrier that was adopted by the 102^nd Infantry Regiment of the 26^th Infantry Division (The Yankee Division).

SGT Stubby with uniform coat and decorations in WWI.

Stubby was smuggled on the troop ship to France but quickly proved his worth. He could warn the troops of impending poison gas attacks, could hear artillery shells coming before human ears could detect them, he could find American wounded in no man’s land and even caught a German prisoner, grabbing the enemy by the seat of his pants and holding him until the soldiers made him a prisoner.

Stubby met three US Presidents, marched in numerous parades and even received a half-page obituary in the New York Times when he died in his sleep in 1926. But dogs have been used in every conflict since the Revolutionary War, but only officially used since World War II.

Today the training and use of military dogs are extensive and there are a few thousand serving in the armed forces. Many of them are in harm’s way in the conflicts in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Syria, among other hotspots and they’ve proved invaluable.

America’s military dogs can find illicit drugs, sniff out bombs and IEDs (improvised explosive devices), search out and find enemy combatants. They’re almost all trained at the Joint Base San Antonio-Lackland as part of the Department of Defense Military Working Dog Program (MWD). The military has been training their canines there since 1958.

German shepherds and retrievers are commonly used, but the Belgian Malinois (i.e.Cairo) has proven to be one of the most outstanding working dogs used in military service. The vast majority of military working dogs are purchased in Germany or the Netherlands, where they have been breeding dogs for military purposes for hundreds of years. But because of the uptick in operational tempo as well as the demand, the breeding programs in the United States are flourishing.

The dogs must exhibit focused, aggressive behavior, with a heightened sense of smell and a strong desire to work for reward before they are assigned to operators worldwide.

Typically, pups begin their training very early. When they’re very young, (6-8 weeks of age), they’re sent to homes for socialization skills in a stable, home setting. They’ll come back to the school between 7-9 months where they’ll be observed for consideration as a working dog. The puppies must exhibit a strong drive, are adaptable to a host of different environments and respond to reward-for-work motivation before they can begin the pre-training program.

The training is long and difficult and only 50 percent of the dogs pass thru their dog school “Selection.” After the dogs are a year-old and pass their advanced training, they’ll have two primary roles. Either as an operator in search for explosives or narcotics detection or as patrol member for apprehension and search for the enemy.

Malinois’ are favored because of their agility, speed, focused aggressive behavior and the fact that their sense of smell is 40 times that of their human handlers. Military dogs frequently are used in airborne operations, rappelling, and helo-casting.

Dogs that work with Special Operations units are specifically trained in just a handful of locations. CBS’ Lara Logan did a story on former Navy SEAL Mike Ritland who trains dogs for the dangerous world of Special Operations as well as for the FBI and SWAT teams.

In the same story, Logan did a story on Chris Corbin from the 7^th Special Forces Group and his dog Ax. They both almost lost their lives on the same day in Afghanistan on their final mission. Ax had already found one bomb and the two were moving toward an area that had already been cleared.

Corbin missed Ax’s signal, thinking he was just smelling another dog in the cleared area when the bomb went off. Ax was shaken but ok, Corbin lost both of his lower legs. But a few months later he was back on active duty…with Ax and the two grew inseparable.

Corbin told Logan that the bond was there when his teammates brought Ax to see him at Walter Reed Army Hospital. “They brought him up for a visit. And I heard him, getting him out of the back of the truck. And opening his kennel, and he just being a stir-crazy dog, just, ‘Hey, let me out of here. Let’s do a look around.’ I just said something simple. Hey, where’s my boy at? and he stopped. He froze. He looked around. And he went into a panic until he found me and he jumped on my legs. Painful. Just– I was just happy to see him. I didn’t care how much it hurt.”

Some dogs, like their human counterparts, can suffer from the throes of PTSD. Many of the dogs are treated for such and return to have successful completions to their military careers. When one of these canine operators is wounded, they’re transported via medevac just like a wounded soldier would.

Sadly 42 dogs have paid the ultimate sacrifice for our country and their handlers. But a good indicator of their worth is how the enemy feels about them. The Taliban and ISIS hate the military working dogs and have a healthy respect for them. The Taliban soldiers have orders to shoot the dogs first and American soldiers second.

The unfortunate footnote to this story is that prior to November 2000, military working dogs were euthanized upon the finish of their career. Now, most are adopted by their handlers. A few each year go to civilians who apply for adoption rights. The waiting list for an adoptable military working dog is about a year.

Our military forces continue to keep us safe, at home and abroad. And their four-legged counterparts are doing their share as well. And SGT Stubby? He’s being immortalized in an upcoming animated feature film that is being released in 2018.

Photos Courtesy DOD

What Makes a Successful Special Operation Forces Candidate?

“…We are what we repeatedly do, Excellence then is not an act but a habit”

Aristotle

One of the biggest questions we get here at SpecialOperations.com and over at SOFREP for the aspiring SOF candidates is, “What do I have to do to get Selected?” It is a legitimate question if a bit simplistic. There is no one specific thing that a candidate has to do to pass but many.

Selection and Assessment hasn’t changed all that much since the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) in World War II when General William “Wild Bill” Donovan and his band of glorious amateurs were looking for “PH.D.s who can win a bar fight.”

While the force isn’t necessarily looking for a Ph.D., most Special Operations candidates have some advanced education, is a bit older than the average Joe, more mature, and most have families. The closest thing the OSS Selection came to in the modern era is the 18X program. While there were quite a few young kids straight out of high school, you’d easily find several candidates who graduated from college and had high paying jobs on the outside.

The obvious draw for them was the opportunity to go straight to a Special Forces unit from the street. While there is plenty of criticism of the program from the community, (isn’t there always?), overall the 18X is deemed a success. A good friend was the Battalion Commander at the Special Warfare Center and spoke quite highly of it. That’s good enough for me.

But back to the question at hand, “What do I have to do to get Selected?” The first thing we have to examine is this; What trait do all successful Selection candidates share?

It begins with what Special Operations is. It is a complex, dynamic environment that doesn’t function from the orders of the officers for the troops to carry out, but the leadership of the units comes from within.

Last year we conducted a two-part interview with former Major Brian Decker who had revamped the SFAS course to bring it back up to what we needed it to be. Decker improved the way the candidates were evaluated and the success rate for candidates who passed Selection who went on to success in SFQC (Special Forces Qualification Course) soared.

Decker’s evaluation system works not only in Special Operations but in just about any line of work. You’d just have to change the parameters of what makes a successful candidate in any profession. While many people compare SOF personnel and NFL players, there are pretty big differences between the two.

However, Decker’s method of evaluating caught the eye of the NFL and he had just started an evaluation system for the Cleveland Browns when they cleaned house and fired the entire staff. He has since taken it to the Indianapolis Colts, where he’s been for the last few seasons.

Decker spoke about the Selection course and what a successful candidate and future leader in Special Operations because everyone in Special Operations is a leader, will show in the course.

“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 what is the one factor that every successful Special Operations candidates possess? Each successful candidate responded to stress in their lives with a heightened sense of motivation.

Someone once told me that the difference between a regular person and a Special Forces soldier was that a regular person looked upon everything that happened in their lives as either a blessing or a curse. The Special Forces soldier looks upon everything that happens in his life as a challenge.

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

Intelligence
Trainability
Physical Fitness
Motivation
Influence
Judgment

Every unit will be different and have a different set of attributes that they’re looking for to accomplish their mission. What makes a good Ranger, SEAL or Delta Operator may not be the exact same as what makes a good SF trooper who will fight in an Unconventional Warfare environment. But they all share some of the same attributes.

As Decker said in the interview with us, “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.”

SOF 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.

The successful candidate knows that he’s always being evaluated and that evaluation doesn’t stop once a man graduates and gets to one of the Special Operations units in the force. If anything, the evaluation gets harder as the stakes that they play for, get much, much higher.

Photo: US Army

Searching For the Perfect Rucking Boot? Look No Further

Recommending gear is always a difficult proposition. Why? Because everyone is different, has different tastes, is built differently and certain gear that may work perfectly for one guy, won’t work a bit for someone else.

Caveat aside, one thing that we’ve harped on is having comfortable, tough, versatile boots on your feet. In Special Forces, your boots and your feet are your lifelines. Without a great pair of leather personnel carriers, you won’t get very far. That’s why, for me, the Merrell MOAB mid is the best boot on the market.

I’ve been using them for more than ten years, this is my second pair of MOABs and they are tough, comfortable and I can say with thousands of miles underfoot, I’ve never had a blister wearing them.

Mine have run the gamut of different types of terrain that I’ve worn them in. Here in the states, we hike and I’ve climbed in and out of a local place, Purgatory Chasm that is as rocky and tough as it sounds although the trails are short in duration. I’ve hiked the White Mountains of NH around Mount Washington, taken them into desert environments in several countries in the Middle East. They’ve also carried me into a more tropical place in Senegal and a mixed bag of wet, urban and semi-desert environments in Mexico.

Taking a break for some late night tea in a Bedouin tent coffee shop.

The sizing on these run (to me) about a half size smaller. I wear an 11 or 11 ½ depending on the manufacturer but the size 12 fits like a glove. And that is the thing about these boots that just jumps off the page. These fit like a favorite pair of slippers right out of the box. I don’t have a wide foot and the MOAB fits like a running shoe. The weight on them isn’t much more than a good pair of running or trail shoes and the mid has the height to give just the right amount of support.

I’ve always liked the lighter, snug boots, back when working in SFAS, my go-to boots on dry days were the old Adidas GSG9 boots. They were more running shoe than boot and were extremely light. I did several 20-milers with a heavy ruck in those and again, never got a blister. The MOAB boot is similar. It required zero break-in time. I got a new pair right before jumping on a plane for work in Morocco. I took them out of the box, put them on and went for a three-mile hike with absolutely no discomfort.

Merrell puts out on their website the following information:
UPPER/LINING
Waterproof Dura leather and mesh upper
• Bellows tongue keeps debris out
• Synthetic leather toe cap and heel counter
GORE-TEX® Performance Comfort Footwear lining protects feet and keeps them dry
Breathable mesh lining treated with Aegis® Antimicrobial solution maintains foot comfort
Ortholite anatomical footbed

MIDSOLE/OUTSOLE
Molded nylon arch shank
Compression molded EVA foot frame provides cushioning
Merrell Air Cushion in the heel absorbs shock and adds stability
5mm Sole lug depth
Vibram® Multi-Sport Sole/TC5+ Rubber
Weight: 1 lb. 15 ozs.

The Ortholite anatomical footbed insoles that come with the boots are tremendous factors in their comfort. Working as the security advisor for a film in the Middle East required long hours of standing. At times on concrete, on hard packed dirt and on the top of buildings. I removed the Merrell footbed insoles and replaced them with an aftermarket one designed for standing. After two 12 hour nights, my feet hurt. I went right back to the Merrells.

Working as a contractor in a woodland environment, the MOAB with the Gore-Tex lining were superb three season boots. Living in the Northeast United States, I wear a taller pair of boots in the winter due to the depth of the snow, but this boot will keep your feet warm even in very cold temps. What stands out is the balance between lightness and support. Again, my preference has always been on a lighter weight boot. For really rough, broken and rocky terrain, I’ve always kept a pair of Merrell Sawtooth but unfortunately, those are no longer in production.

The Gore-Tex lining is a better value than the Waterproof and breathes much better if you’re going to be rucking for distances. The other nice feature is the footbeds slide out easily and allows the boot to air dry much more effectively and quickly. The snug fit doesn’t allow for any sliding around inside the boot which cuts down on hot spots or blisters.

These are excellent for all-around use, you can wear these anywhere and not look like you’ve just come back from an operation, but they are rugged enough to stand up to the abuse on rocky, uneven trails. The Vibram soles give an excellent grip and the molded nylon arch shank provides maximum comfort.

These are some tremendous lightweight hiking boots. If you’re like me and want a comfortable, running shoe type feel for your boots while rucking, give the Merrell MOAB a try. They are a tremendous value. They seem to be quite popular with the Special Operations guys and for good reason. When this pair wears out, it will be time to purchase pair number three.

Aftermarket Rucksacks for Selection Preparation, Hiking

We’ve gone over the rucking tips quite a bit and everyone preparing for selection should be very comfortable with a ruck on their back and be humping long distances. It goes without saying that rucking and land navigation is the bread and butter of special operations forces. If you can show the intestinal fortitude needed to keep driving on and keep your head about you, the rest will come with training.

I’ve gotten a few emails about gear. Like I’ve said before, when it comes to personal gear, it is all a matter of taste and what works best for you. However, in one of the emails that I received from a brother from 12^th SFG(A), Jeff M. he asked for my opinion on some aftermarket rucksacks and what would work for some training and weekend type hikes.

You’ve come to the right place, Jeff! As my wife would tell you, I collect(ed)…boots and 3-day rucksacks like some guys had trading cards. Just couldn’t get enough of them and would always be testing out another new one. That’s why when it comes to boots, I love Merrell’s because they work for me, and Under Armor workout shoes. Those two brands fit my feet perfectly, why I have eight pairs of Merrell’s and three pairs of UA workout/running shoes. But again, whatever works for you.

I’ve had tons of backpacks/3-day packs and will go over some of the ones I’ve had and still had. Now as a caveat before we go any further if you are heading to a selection course, you’re going to have to use what they issue. And if you can’t stand ALICE packs as Jeff M. and myself or the MOLLE, you’ll have to suck it up during training. There’s no way around it.

I too hated the ALICE, to me it was as my Brit friends call “shite”. I had a couple of them. One courtesy of someone in the 20^th Engineers who didn’t attach his lowering line to it on a jump on Holland Drop Zone and I found it in the treeline. I guess someone skipped over that on their JMPI. But I had an aftermarket frame and a few different accessories put on by a guy right outside of Ft. Bragg that made it tolerable. For issue rucks I liked the British Bergen much better. But if you’re doing your own personal training and want comfort while embracing the suck…read on.

These are listed in no particular order but I’ve either owned or tried these out and think you’d be pleased with the results.

5.11 Rush 72 Backpack

This one was my favorite it has so many features we could do an entire piece just on it. It was one of a series of 5.11 tactical packs, the Rush 12, the Rush 24 and the Rush 72. You can pack enough stuff in there to easily get by as a weekend backpacking ruck and it works outstanding in for rucking around during physical training prep.

The internal frame support keeps it rigid and distributes the weight well, there are four areas of padding in the back and ventilation to keep you cool. The contoured yoke for the shoulder straps was comfortable and wide. One feature I really liked for hiking was the chest straps were adjustable so your height was never a problem.

Another great feature was the waist straps that folded up and stowed away when I used it as carry-on luggage when flying. It had a padded pocket at the top that could carry sunglasses or a cell phone. The inside was roomy with plenty of mesh pockets that come in handy finding smaller items.

For rucking or hiking, it comes with a large hydration carrier with a hanger that will accommodate a large bladder. The top of the ruck has ports on either side for hydration hoses and a heavy-duty grab handle.

The one time the airline made me check it because some guy just HAD TO carry a trunk that belonged on the Titanic, it never made it to the baggage carousel. Someone either in JFK or Dakar got themselves a helluva nice backpack. Not to mention a pair of the stretch fabric 5.11s, my favorite running shoes and other stuff including my favorite Patriots hat.

GORUCK Rucker

I haven’t owned one of these, but I got to try one out and am sold…this is a great ruck and is a perfect day ruck or for the weekend bugout back. These babies are tough and built to last…no wonder the company is owned and operated by Special Forces vets. They’re constructed out of 1000 denier CORDURA, which is heavy duty and holds up well.

They put on their website that the stress points are sewn to withstand 400 pounds and I believe it. The ruck just has an extremely well-made quality to it. This too can accommodate a good size water bladder with a hanger at the top. It has a pouch that they advertise for their ruck plates which fit in snugly and take up little room.

It is rainproof and the day I test drove it, it showered hard for a few minutes. The water beaded up perfectly and everything stayed bone dry inside. A neat feature is the YKK silent zipper pulls made from 550 cord that are glove friendly when rucking in the colder months…something we can appreciate here in New England.

Extra padded straps and handle, MOLLE Attachments and the fact that it opens nice and flat make this a very attractive, tough customer.

The only drawback is that it is a bit price at $195. And that is without the padded MOLLE Hip belt, and the MOLLE Sternum strap, which for rucking or hiking, I’d add. That being said, the next ruck I buy will be this one or the GR Bullet.

BLACKHAWK! S.T.R.I.K.E. Predator Hydration Pack

Another favorite bug-out bag, hiking bag that grew feet, this one was my own fault. Don’t go to Wal-Mart and leave it in the back seat with the car unlocked…even for a 5-minute shopping trip.

This is an outstanding, comfortable, versatile ruck. It has enough room (830 cubic inches) to cram enough stuff in there for a day hike. Like all Blackhawk products, it is rugged, well-constructed and had several nice features.

It has a nice molded back channel that gives plenty of ventilation with either a shirt or with a light jacket in the fall months. I loved the contoured shoulder straps, that along with the sternum strap makes this a very comfortable fit.

The hydration system works easily although they didn’t come with filters, so clean water has to be introduced. The ruck has a heavy duty reinforced drag handle, YKK zippers with silent glove friendly pulls, and a ton of MOLLE straps for lashing down any extra gear in a tactical situation.

The only drawback for this ruck that I remember is that it didn’t open all the way. But for a smaller day-type ruck it was a small issue.

SPEC-OPS Assault Pack

I’ve had this one for the past 13 years and it has taken a beating and keeps on ticking. At the time I got this, I was working as a contractor on a training job and one of my friends just bought it in ACU and then was heading home and gave it to me.

It is heavy duty, very well constructed and very comfortable. It is made from the same 1000 denier CORDURA that lasts, wears well and is water resistant. The ruck unzips and opens flat with a high visibility yellow lining that makes it easier to find items.

It has two large outside pockets that are easily accessible and a large main compartment that is roomy for plenty of storage for a weekend hike or as a weekend bag to travel in. The ruck has a comfortable shoulder harness with a sternum strap and padded waist belt. SPEC-OPS also has those heavy-duty buckles that secure the pockets.

There is a ton of MOLLE loops for lashing extra gear. Dual ports on the top of the ruck allow for hydration tubes as well as a heavy-duty carrying strap. Compression straps make everything tight when carrying it on a plane or rucking through the woods.

Thanks for the question Jeff and if anyone else has anymore, feel free to email me [email protected] or at my Twitter account @SteveB7SFG

Photo courtesy of DOD