Shadow Warriors: Inside the Special Forces

by Tom Clancy

  One night, on patrol, Lieutenant Tom Dietz and his men spotted three Iraqi patrol boats near the naval base at Ra’s al Qulay‘ah. Excited, they called for air support. But the controller informed them that no airplanes were available. While no doubt tempted to take them out themselves, that would have potentially compromised their own mission. So they turned their patrol craft southward toward Mina Su’ud. Looking out toward the dark Kuwaiti shore, Dietz saw something he’d been hoping to spot for days—a long, empty beach. He made a note to come back as soon as possible. They did so a few nights later.

  THE winter water off the Gulf was cold, but the SEAL swimmers were used to dealing with considerably worse. They slipped off their rigid-hull inflatable boats quickly, pulling themselves quietly through the water to the Kuwaiti shore. Lieutenant Dietz saw a low-slung shadow as he paddled; he kicked for it, then made his way out of the water onto a boat ramp.

  For an hour, he lay at the waterline, watching in the darkness. There were buildings nearby, and the beach was littered with obstacles and other Iraqi defenses. But there were no patrols.

  “I have a good feeling,” he told himself when he slipped back into the water. Mina Su’ud would be the perfect beach to hit.

  The plan was approved on February 19, and the SEALs conducted a dress rehearsal on February 22. Time was of the essence: The ground war, and thus the SEALs’ mission, was set to begin on the night of February 23 and 24.

  Leaving Ra’s al Mish’ab in four small, fast Special Operation Crafts (powered by twin 1,000-hp Mer-Cruiser engines), the SEAL platoon sped through the mine-filled sea on the evening of February 23. Mines and the Iraqi shore defenses weren’t the only hazard; the Special Operations boat crews were going to be extremely exposed to potential “blue on blue,” or friendly-fire incidents. For that reason, they’d been supplemented with communicators who were assigned to help fend off their friends who might bomb them by mistake.

  Twelve and a half miles off the target areas, the crews cut their engines. Four abreast, they drifted toward their launch point, while the SEALs broke out and inflated their rubber Zodiacs. At 2100, a six-man SEAL demolition team boarded its Zodiac. The coxswain then fired up the small, quiet motor. Trailed by two of the patrol boats, the rubberized assault craft headed toward the beach.

  Precisely forty minutes later, Lieutenant Dietz and five of his men slipped into the water. Each swimmer’s weight had been augmented by twenty pounds of C-4, the charges already prepared. Their emergency gear included bottles of air for use in escaping underwater, pistols at their belts—and MP- 5Ns and M-16s in case things got truly hairy. The six SEALs paddled steadily toward the beach, then crawled up on the sand in the shallow water. The timers were affected by the water temperature, and so Dietz had to consult a chart to work out when to set them. They pulled the pins at exactly 2247 for the planned 0100 detonation. The charges were set to go off in the shallow water as the tide rolled out, maximizing the effect of the explosions.

  The swimmers were back aboard their rubber boats by midnight. The speedboats came forward and placed orange buoys, as if marking the boundaries of a landing area. Then they dashed toward shore, machine guns blazing at a building on the left bank of the target area. Intelligence believed that it was used for weapons storage.

  Soon Navy ships and airplanes were delivering bombs and shells to the general area, heating up the show. As they turned away from the beach, boat crew members tossed off four-pound floating charges timed to go off at various intervals. The planted C-4 packets went off at 0100.

  As far as the Iraqis knew, the Marines were on their way

  Elements of two Iraqi divisions rushed to man defensive positions near the beach. While the Iraqis waited for an attack that would never come, the Marines and their Arab allies blasted into Iraq and Kuwait.

  The SEAL deception was part of an overall disinformation campaign that drew attention away from the main areas of attack. The campaign included everything from PSYOP leaflets in bottles supposedly dropped from ships offshore to commanders’ “leaks” to news media. All this helped convince the Iraqis that the “real” invasion would come from the sea.

  SEAL teams were involved in several other actions during the war, including the boarding and capture of seven oil platforms in the Durrah oil field after U.S. helicopters had come under fire there on January 18.

  Eight special boats supported a contingent of thirty-two Kuwaiti Marines during an operation on February 8—14, when the Kuwaitis seized Qaruh, Maradim, and Kubbar Islands. These were nonetheless the first reclamations of Kuwaiti territory by coalition forces, and therefore symbolically important. FROM January 30 to February 15, SEALs used their Swimmer Delivery Vehicles (SDVs—wet submergibles) to conduct six major mine-hunting missions in hostile Iraqi waters, ten-hour dives using the vehicles’ onboard sonar. Because the vehicles are literally full of water, SOVs require SEALs to wear scuba gear. Though they cleared twenty-seven square miles of water, the Iraqi mining operations were so pervasive that amphibious operations in those waters were still considered high risk.

  Throughout the campaign, explosive- and detonator-equipped Navy SEALs also conducted mine countermeasures by helicopter—flying on a total of ninety-two helo sorties. They were dropped into the water to place charges directly on the mines. Twenty-five Iraqi mines were destroyed in this manner.

  ON the night of February 22-23, a SEAL team landed a group of CIA-TRAINED Kuwaiti guerrillas near Kuwait City in preparation for the start of the ground war.

  SEALs, working with Marines and British forces, also helped enforce United Nations trade sanctions in the Gulf. A total of eleven “takedowns”—forced boardings of ships that refused to submit to inspections—were initiated during the war; all were successful.

  Captain Smith’s men also helped restore and train crews for three Kuwaiti navy ships that had escaped the invasion. All told, the Navy Special Warfare Task Croup brought two hundred and sixty people to the Gulf, the largest SEAL deployment since the Vietnam War.

  ON TO THE END

  As U.S. and coalition forces closed on Kuwait from the west, the reconstituted Kuwaiti forces that the 5th Special Forces had helped train and equip (four brigades) were entering Kuwait City from the south. For political and symbolic reasons, the Kuwaitis and other Arab units formed the liberating spearhead designated to take Kuwait City, their maneuver and air support being coordinated by the accompanying SF personnel that had trained them.

  By the time the Kuwaiti troops roared into the city on pickup trucks with .50-caliber machine guns mounted on the back, the Iraqi units guarding Kuwait’s capital had already fled.

  The ground war quickly turned into a rout, as the battered and hopelessly outclassed Iraqi army fell back toward Basrah. Pounded from the air and in many cases cut off from retreat, vast numbers of Iraqis surrendered or were captured. The Republican Guard and other Iraqi units had been decimated and suffered heavily as they fled in disarray toward Baghdad.

  The allied objective of freeing Kuwait had been achieved, with relatively little loss of American life.

  Acting on the recommendation of the Chairman, the SECDEF, and others, President Bush ordered American troops to halt the attack one hundred hours after the ground war had begun.

  At the time of the cease-fire, somewhere between two and three hundred Special Operations personnel were behind the lines, with at least one patrol north of the Euphrates. Some SOF units had to drive out on their own; others were picked up by helicopter at night.

  DESERT STORM had been a resounding success and a complete victory over a formidable foe. But no one had anticipated the end would come as abruptly as it did.

  As with all conflicts, many things still needed to be done after the last shot had been fired. Unfortunately, the Civil Affairs units that would play the major role in helping Kuwait get back on its feet had not begun arriving in Saudi Arabia until after the start of the air war. Despite their inadequate planning time, CA did play an important role in p
ost-liberation Kuwait. Working as part of the combined Civil Affair Task Force, CA personnel provided relief operations in the city and throughout the liberated country. Within two months, the task force distributed 12.8 million liters of water, 125,000 tons of food, and 1,250 tons of medicine.

  Though after the war senior CA leadership came under criticism for a lack of initiative and “ill-coordinated” initial planning, CA’s problems resulted from its late arrival and the unanticipated early end of the war—both beyond its control.

  POSTWAR OBSERVATIONS

  Carl Stiner will conclude:

  DESERT STORM was a brilliantly conceived and executed military operation frorn beginning to end that achieved the desired result—the liberation of Kuwait. There is no question that the President—after considering all the involved factors and consulting with all the concerned allies—made the right decision. He was right to stop the war when he did.

  Monday-morning quarterbacks will always question decisions—particularly people with neither resportsibility nor accountability.

  With regard to Special Operations support to the operation, I offer the following observations:

  Special Operations forces performed all missions outstandingly and contributed significantly to the victory. When SOF capabilities are integrated appropriately with those of conventional units, the result is a capability not otherwise achievable.

  CINCs need the best available advice and experience for most effectively employing and supporting Special Operations forces. All CINCs now have flag rank officers as commanders of their Special Operations Commands (SOCs). This was not possible during DESERT SHIELD/DESERT STORM, because USSOCOM was not authorized to have a flag rank officer at CENTCOM headquarters.

  Better intelligence support is needed for reconnaissance teams operating deep in hostile territory—particularly current maps and overhead photo coverage. The Grenada invasion produced a similar finding.

  SOF units need to be “flowed,” so as to arrive in sufficient time to prepare appropriately for mission assignments; otherwise their potential is proportionately limited.

  Could SOF have done more? The answer is yes! But the CINC is the one who is responsible and accountable. He calls the shots as he sees them. Once he has made up his mind, all other CINCs fall in line to support. That’s the way it is according to Goldwater-Nichols. And the way it should remain.

  XIII

  BULLDOG AND HIS PACK: AN INCIDENT IM THE WAR

  There’s a story from the war that merits chapter in itself, so Carl Stiner and I have pulled it out and presented it here.

  With something like nine thousand Special Forces personnel in the Gulf, there is no “typical” SF story. However, the best-known deep recon account to come out of the war involved a team led by CW2 Richard “Bulldog” Balwanz. Their experiences illustrate not only the difficulties of SR missions in general, but the challenges (many of them unnecessary) that Special Operators faced during the war.

  The warrant officer arrived in the Gulf with the first SF units at the end of the summer. Posted to the border area for surveillance, he also served as one of the “trip wires” in case Saddam attacked Saudi Arabia. He’ll now take up the story:

  DESERT STORM was a defining moment for SOF, in that it validated the Nunn-Cohen Amendment to the Goldwater-Nichols Act in setting up USSOCOM. This was really the second time that SOF was deployed in its entirety, covering the full spectrum of their missions.

  In the early part of the war, I was up on the border doing surveillance just outside of Khafji. Anyplace that I ran into coalition forces, I always found SF guys with them. We had SF teams down to brigade levels, sometimes to battalion levels, with every coalition force in theater—including the Syrians and the Moroccans. We would traditionally consider those fellows unfriendly toward U.S. interests; but there we were, working side by side with them.

  About half a dozen teams covered the entire border between Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. I was with an SF team working with a Saudi Arabian counterpart—their equivalent of a Special Forces team—but they were border guards as well. We’d patrol the border at night; and the Iraqis were obviously doing the same thing just across on the Kuwaiti side. We’d have visual contact with them; and we could see the buildup and the fortifications over there. Every so often, we’d actually get deserters coming over, waving their white flag, particularly after the bombing campaign kicked off.

  If you can picture the border, a big berm ran along the Saudi side and one also on the Kuwaiti side. It was like a tank trap, so if the tanks started to come, they’d drive up over the top and drop in a ditch. We had standing orders not to cross that berm.

  There was also a space of maybe one to two miles between the berms that we called No-Man‘s-Land. The border proper was out there somewhere in the center. When the Iraqis invaded Kuwait, the Kuwaitis just came across with anything they had, and a lot of the vehicles broke down; so there were bone piles of these vehicles. One night, we were looking around with NVGs, when we noticed a glow in one of the vehicles out on a little knoll in No-Man’s-Land. We figured there must have been a short in the battery.

  Obviously, the Iraqis had seen the same thing; and one morning they came up in an armored vehicle—the first time we had seen any type of armored vehicle out there. He came right out into No-Man’s-Land up on a knoll just north of Khafji.

  My team commander ordered me to get out there and see what they were doing.

  I didn’t feel comfortable about it, but he’s my boss, so okay. We jumped in a humvee, and the Saudis lifted the gate to let me cross the Saudi berm. As soon as I got to the other side, I hung right and hugged the berm, just kind of looking. Meanwhile, the captain was standing on top of the border station directing me through the radio. “No, no, turn left, turn left, get out there.”

  Well, about that time the Iraqis had hooked a chain to the abandoned vehicle and were dragging it off. They must have thought we were using it, because they dragged it off the knoll. The captain kept insisting, “Get out there, get out there. I figured, well, it’s safe to go out there now; they’re gone. So I topped the knoll.

  But it turned out the Iraqis were there. They swung their guns around on us, and I thought, Man, I’m dead. It was real tense for a brief moment. And then they just continued doing what they were doing, and we drove off.

  I had a discussion with my counterpart, the Saudi commander.

  “They came into Saudi Arabia,” I told him.

  “Oh, no, they didn’t,” he said. He was telling me he wasn’t going to go out there to check.

  I said, “Yes, they did. I can see the tire marks on the border territory. They have been inside just a hundred meters, but they were in Saudi.” And we had a discussion. I said, “Look, I’ll tell you what we’ll do. The tracks are still there in the sand. We’ll go out there. We’ll turn on the GPS, take a reading, come back, and we’ll plot it on the map. And if it plots on the Saudi side, then that proves that I’m correct. If it doesn’t, then I’m wrong.”

  So he agreed to that, and we did. We drove back out there, did the GPS, came back, and plotted it; and sure enough, it plotted out about a hundred meters into Saudi Arabia. We thought that was significant, because up to that time, there had been no Iraqi incursions into Saudi Arabia.

  A little later, all of a sudden, a heat round came back down from battalion, saying, “Hey, what are you doing crossing that berm? You’ve got standing orders not to cross the berm.” It kind of got to be a case of who said what, me or my captain. It wasn’t good for anybody.

  Later, the battalion commander came up and sat down and talked to me and I didn’t know what to expect. I thought I might be in deep shit. But he surprised me. “Well,” he said, “I’m going to tell you what. I have a team that’s sitting back in the rear down at the Bat Cave”—that was our nickname for the SF base at King Fahd Airport, where the SOC had a team, ODA525.

  You have to understand that every team in 5th Group was deployed into the war effort e
xcept this one team. Before they’d flown out of the States, their captain had just left for special mission tryouts, so the team had deployed to Saudi without an officer. The company sergeant major had stayed back to run the rear area, and their team sergeant had been picked to move up to the company sergeant major, which left the team without its leadership. As a result, they were basically being choggie boys.31 The battalion used them to run errands. They’re very proud individuals, and they wanted to get involved in the war effort, but they were left out of it. They called them the Catholic girls: They were saving it for the big one.

  So the battalion commander offered that up to me when he came up to the border. “I’ve got this team back there that’s sitting in the Bat Cave; and they’re really not involved in the war effort, and they need a strong leader. I’d like to offer that to you. I want you to think about it.”

  Of course, I wanted to kiss the guy. I got in touch with him and with my company commander and said, “Look, I would like to have that team, but if I’m going to have any credibility as a leader, I’ve got to get them involved in the war effort immediately. I can’t go back there and then have things not change. If they stay being choggie boys for the battalion, there’s no value to me being there, so I need your assistance in getting these guys involved. We’ll gear up, and I think we should get some of the first missions that come down.”

  So that’s what set the groundwork.

  WHEN I got to the Bat Cave, what I found was really something else.

  The guys in 525 had been back there for several months. They’d been there so long they’d built furniture. They had a putting green. They had cable TV. I don’t know where they’d gotten it, but they had it. And—like many other units at King Fahd and elsewhere—they’d set up stills for moon-shining. I’m not saying that these guys were bad soldiers; anytime good soldiers have time on their hands and are idle and are not challenged—well, let’s just say they’re very resourceful.