“Why?” she asked, twisting in her seat to look at the tips of the parapets getting smaller behind the hills.
“Because that’s the last time we’ll ever see it.”
| CHAPTER 3 |
The Army in Which I Should Like to Fight
August 1976–March 1982
“You’re the United States of America. How could you let this happen?” The question was passionate, like the officer who posed it. I had no good answer, either for Lieutenant Thawachi, a Thai Army officer with whom I’d developed a close relationship, or for myself.
It was April 1980, and photographs in the media of wrecked U.S. aircraft and burned bodies in the Iranian desert were stark reflections of a failed attempt to rescue Americans held hostage in Tehran. Despite my respect for President Jimmy Carter’s courageous decision to launch the operation, it was clear to me that my nation was struggling with feelings of frustration and impotence.
At the time, I was a first lieutenant in the Army’s 7th Special Forces Group conducting a mission on the tidal edge of the Third Indochina War. Five years earlier, after U.S. troops had completed their withdrawal from Vietnam and Saigon had fallen, deep historical and fresh political animosities had ignited a complicated “East-East” contest involving the Soviets and Chinese, as well as the Vietnamese, who then controlled most of Cambodia. I deployed to neighboring Thailand to lead a four-man Special Forces team in teaching the Thai Army how to use the shoulder-fired Dragon missile system against any Vietnamese tanks that might cross the border. Four years after graduating from West Point, I was a seasoned lieutenant and excited to be in the field, leading a small but important mission far from oversight. This was not practice on a barren military range, and my anxious Thai counterparts reminded me of the urgency.
But my discussion with Lieutenant Thawachi that muggy morning on the Thai Army base near Pran Buri carried my thoughts far away from Southeast Asia, to the desert of Iran.
Thawachi was a muscular officer with obvious energy held in check as we sat drinking tea in a small coffee shop. He was one of the first four Thai soldiers selected to train on the notoriously difficult Dragon because of his skills in marksmanship and English. He was pro-American, and his face reflected pain when he excitedly asked me, “Have you heard?” I had. President Carter had told the world that he had aborted the rescue mission, and the news and images moved rapidly, even to Pran Buri. “There was no fighting,” Carter had said, “there was no combat.” But eight men had died, he explained, when “two of our American aircraft collided on the ground following a refueling operation in a remote desert location in Iran.”
I pictured American aircraft smoldering in the desert. And I thought about the men who had perished.
Like most Americans, I had watched Iran closely since Tuesday, January 16, 1979. On that day, after facing more than a year of volatile public opposition, the Shah, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, fled Iran. Two weeks later, the Shah’s longtime opponent, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, returned to Tehran from his fourteen-year exile. Inspired by the Ayatollah, a mob of more than five hundred Iranian students stormed the U.S. embassy on Sunday, November 4, 1979, and seized sixty-six Americans. Many Iranians believed the embassy had been the headquarters for the 1953 coup that first reinstalled the Shah—a point Khomeini and others hammered in their anti-American diatribes—and many saw the takeover as a necessary step to prevent an impending American intervention. The American public reacted emotionally. Yellow ribbons were hung; nightly newscasts ended with somber declarations of the number of days since the crisis started. Many asked: Why is this happening to America? What were we going to do?
Thawachi pressed the same questions. He had high expectations for America’s role in the world. So my initial answers, explaining the complexity of hostage rescue operations and the ever-present chance of failure, didn’t satisfy him. His question was far broader. He repeated himself, emphasizing, “You’re the United States of America,” as though I might have forgotten. His reaction reinforced to me that the cost of failure was far higher than just the immediate loss of life. In years ahead I would see more times when the confidence, hopes, and prestige of the nation rested on the shoulders of a small group of committed professionals.
The cost of any failed special operation is high. President Carter bravely accepted responsibility for the failure, but even so, it stung. This felt like a humiliating demonstration of our inability to execute difficult missions like hostage rescues, especially in comparison with recent successes by our allies. I’d been impressed in July 1976 when Israeli commandos had reached deep into Africa to rescue passengers from a hijacked Air France flight being held at the airport in Entebbe, Uganda. Two years later, as a paratroop lieutenant, I had watched on the news as French Foreign Legionnaires parachuted into southeastern Zaire and saved thousands of French and Zairian hostages from anti-Mobuto rebels. And just ten days after our failed mission in Iran, the British Special Air Service (SAS) had freed nineteen hostages held by Arab separatists at the Iranian embassy in London. Eagle Claw—as the failed operation was known—was more tactically complex and difficult than these raids. But we made it look impossible.
On Wednesday, January 21, 1981, the hostages’ release lifted the pall that the ordeal had cast over America. But the failure in the Iranian desert would cast a long shadow over U.S. special operations. A commission under retired navy admiral James L. Holloway would capture in stark terms what had gone wrong and, more important, what needed to be done. It would provide initial direction for a journey that would shape the rest of my career.
* * *
That career had started nearly four years earlier, when I reported to Fort Benning, Georgia. There, in early August 1976, two months after graduating, I left behind the largely theoretical world of West Point to begin my real-world education—graduate work in the nuts and bolts of soldiering. I had also volunteered for Ranger School. The nine-week Ranger course was created at the outset of the Korean War as a way to teach leadership by simulating the stress of combat. It had developed its own mythology. Stories of sleep deprivation, hunger, physical exhaustion, and instructors who did their best to make the course hell led many officers to decide against attempting it (fewer than eighty of two hundred lieutenants from my basic course chose to attend) and intimidated those of us who did. Still, wearing the Ranger tab on our left shoulder would be an important step in establishing our bona fides as soldiers.
Rangers have a rich lineage. During World War II Ranger units conducted high-risk missions across North Africa and in the Nazi underbelly in Sicily and Italy. They rescued American POWs from the Japanese prison camp at Cabanatuan in the Philippines. On D-Day at Normandy the 2nd Ranger Battalion, a unit I would later command, climbed the cliffs of an angular bluff called Pointe du Hoc under a downpour of enemy fire to locate and destroy enemy guns. The postwar Army of 1973—struggling to rebuild professionalism and pride badly shattered in a painful, unpopular war—launched a new era of Rangers.
In November 1976, we arrived in the Harmony Church area of Fort Benning. There, in World War II–era wooden buildings, the Rangers had established a Spartan enclave set apart from the more relaxed standards of the 1970s Army at large. Many Ranger instructors (RIs) wore “high and tight” haircuts, made a point of fitness, and prided themselves on their apparent indifference to physical discomfort. During the military’s post-Vietnam nadir, Harmony Church was a refuge for the flint of the Army.
Many of the instructors, like Staff Sergeant Swackhamer, were larger-than-life characters. His Dickensian name haunted the first phase of the course, and he treated the Fort Benning sawdust pits, where he taught hand-to-hand combat, like the sands of the Colosseum. When we shivered under our winter gear during patrols later in the course, another iconic RI, Sergeant First Class Jutras, erect and seemingly comfortable in a single layer of summer fatigues, taunted us in a thick Rhode Island accent: “Cold, Rrrain-jah?” Lo
re had it that once, in the final phase of the course conducted in the swamps of Florida, Jutras had continued a lecture on poisonous snakes despite being bitten, calmly describing for the Ranger students the feeling as the venom took effect.
After Vietnam, everyone had an opinion on what ailed the military—and how to fix it. My class’s tactical officer waged his personal war for the soul of the Army. Convinced that West Point lieutenants tended to band together and “carry” weak classmates through Ranger School, he sought to make the early weeks of the course so painful and difficult that the weak would be culled from the ranks and denied Ranger tabs they couldn’t earn on individual merit. His favorite tool was the “worm pit,” a long, mud-filled ditch covered at about eighteen inches with a canopy of barbed wire. Through the cold of November and December we crawled through the mud and water, the first of us breaking the ice on top as we crawled. One night I watched as five lieutenants in my platoon quit. In accordance with Ranger School policy, they signed Lack of Motivation statements, forfeiting forever any chance of winning Ranger tabs and accepting a stigma that would follow them for the rest of their military careers.
Leadership lessons often came unexpectedly. One evening, early in the course, we conducted a six-mile speed march at the end of which our tactical officer took us to the physical training (PT) field. We shivered as the sweat from the march chilled us, steam rising from our shaved heads in the cold of the night and glare of the field lights. After a short time we were ordered to navigate the obstacle course and worm pit, crawling through the icy slush. Rapidly the cold produced spasmodic breathing and our limbs and hands became unable to grasp ropes or perform motor functions. It felt as though we had crossed the line between being hard and being dangerously stupid.
Suddenly the field lights flashed and another Ranger instructor, a master sergeant, shouted instructions to us to go immediately to our wooden barracks up the hill from the field. Our tactical officer, a major, surprised by the countermanding order from a subordinate, protested. Yet in our joy to be released from the cold and pain, we ran from the field as quickly as our nearly hypothermic bodies would carry us. Even in my haste, I was struck by the courageous action of the master sergeant in stopping the foolishness. Tragically, several weeks later when we were in the mountain phase of the course, cold killed two Ranger students in the class ahead of ours as they patrolled in the swamp phase in Florida.
The essential vehicle for teaching leadership was the small-unit patrol. Instructors graded students on how well they led squads and platoons, frequently rotating the Ranger students assigned leadership positions. Because patrol leaders depended on the support of fellow students, a “cooperate and graduate” attitude permeated the class. Yet cooperation was challenging when fatigue and hunger wore down otherwise good team players. Most of us found the personal discipline required when things were tough was an accurate measure of the man.
Some of our classmates from West Point had been puffed up as cadets but buckled once they were shivering in the woods. One fellow student stood in stark contrast. Lieutenant Dave “Rod” Rodriguez, caught my attention. A six-foot-four-inch, 230-pound defensive end when we were together at West Point, Rod was quiet and modest yet wickedly funny. One night, assigned to lead our exhausted patrol away from an objective to a base on a route calculated to take up to seven hours of walking, Rod studied the map and gave the order to “ruck up,” and despite tired legs and heavy rucksacks, we moved purposefully enough to reach the base in less than two hours. A good man, I noted. Doesn’t mess around.
At our graduation in February 1977, the Ranger tab did not make us Swackhamers or Jutrases. No one was instantly stronger, braver, or smarter with it on his shoulder. But it changed the way others viewed us and thus changed the way we viewed ourselves.
* * *
I followed graduation with the inelegant eating binge most new Rangers undertake. I remember Annie, who had come down to Fort Benning to see me pin on the tab, staring in amazement as I washed down Hershey bars dipped in peanut butter with beer until I vomited, only to repeat the process. But my insanity was temporary, and in early March 1977 I reported for duty to the 82nd Airborne Division at Fort Bragg, North Carolina.
From its inception, the ethos of the 82nd drew from stark realities: Jumping out of an airplane is an egalitarian process, and luck often determines how and where jumpers land. Generals and privates wear the same parachutes and hit the ground with the same bone-jarring force, and on a hot landing zone, there is no “safe” or rear area from which to direct the battle. Great paratroop leaders had leveraged these realities to earn reputations for leadership by personal example. Over Normandy on D-Day, Division Commander Major General Matt Ridgway, and his assistant, Brigadier General Jim Gavin, were famously the first out of their planes’ doors. Later, after taking over the 82nd from Ridgway, Gavin broke two discs in his back jumping into Holland for Operation Market Garden, and yet he continued to command. Generals who commanded from the rear often sported ornamental pistols. In contrast, Gavin carried a rifle, which he meant to use.
The division that I joined bore little resemblance to its storied predecessors or my expectations. But like all lieutenants, I watched and hoped to learn. Some of what I saw inspired me. Much did not. The legacy of Ridgway and Gavin had grown threadbare: I remember bitter comments from my paratroopers during a twenty-five-mile foot march when a commander drove by the column in a jeep, only dismounting in order to correct troopers for perceived shortcomings.
I spent the next twenty months in the battalion as a mortar and then a rifle platoon leader, then finally as company executive officer. During that time our battalion commander and I exchanged few words, and I recall nothing resembling encouragement. He would talk about keeping a notebook in which he categorized people as good guys or “peckerwoods.” I felt his connection with the battalion was weak.
The Army of the 1970s was particularly hard on commanders. Constrained resources and centralized edicts created an environment that seemed both demanding and limiting. Training was poor, yet units were consumed with mandatory instruction on seemingly irrelevant subjects as well as picayune inspections of garrison-related equipment and functions. Soldiers and units suffered the cost when truly combat-focused activities lost out to things that looked good or briefed well.
Values and integrity were often under pressure. Although the dark days of Vietnam body counts and My Lai were past, small but insidious reflections of corrosive values would surface. Seeking to reduce the visibility associated with having to file investigation reports on lost equipment, many company commanders avoided it by making up shortages through trading or “scrounging.” Similarly, there was pressure to meet reenlistment quotas. At the end of one reporting quarter, our battalion commander revoked an action my company commander had taken to prevent one exceptionally substandard trooper from reenlisting. As a result, the soldier was allowed to reenlist, the unit met its quota, and the Army would suffer that soldier for another tour. Because word of such actions spread quickly, speeches on leadership and values from such commanders often fell on deaf ears.
Appearances were deceiving. I was first impressed, then often disappointed, by some of the flashiest or most macho leaders in the division. And I found that even combat badges were unreliable predictors of knowledge or leadership. Similarly, sloppy appearances and nonmilitary demeanor were not necessarily indicators of flagging professionalism.
Such was the lesson when I first joined Charlie Company and met our company supply sergeant, Sergeant First Class Davis, or Old Dave. A tall combat veteran, Davis had reportedly once been a hard platoon sergeant but had badly injured his leg in a training jump and now limped painfully along, unable even to wear combat boots. As a result he was relegated to the supply room and had developed a significant, overhanging belly. In his rumpled uniform, low quarter shoes, and constant sheen of sweat, he was the antithesis of a poster-paratrooper. But he was an
important part of my practical education, and I had much to learn.
A few months after I joined the battalion, Sergeant First Class Davis called me down to his stuffy supply room in the basement of our barracks. “Lieutenant Mac, I’m gonna teach you something here,” he said when I walked in. He thumbed through my platoon’s equipment hand receipt, breathing heavily as he spoke. “Here’s the hand receipt you filled out. See these columns here? Well, I could go here, here, and here,” he said, his finger bouncing over the page, “and because you signed in the wrong place, you would be responsible for whatever numbers I wrote in.” It wasn’t a huge mistake, but I had been careless with the form and left myself vulnerable and potentially liable. “Now I could have done that, but I didn’t. I was waiting to see if you were a good guy or not. And I have determined you are. I brought you down here to make sure you’ll be more careful in the future. Remember, Lieutenant Mac, not everyone in the Army would do that for you.”
Years later, when relying on intelligence whizzes or speaking with bearded tribal leaders, I’d remember Old Dave, and that leaders don’t always look like they stepped off the plain at West Point.
* * *
Pride in craft was an elusive trait in the post-Vietnam Army, but the sergeants and officers known as jumpmasters had it. Because of the inherent complexity and danger associated with military parachute (“airborne”) operations, jumpmasters, who led parachute jumps in the 82nd, needed absolute expertise in their craft. They had to lead planeloads of frightened paratroopers to perform the essential, unnatural act of leaping from an airplane. As a result, jumpmaster standards were exacting and the 82nd’s jumpmaster school had a famously high failure rate. Many seasoned paratroop leaders passed only on their second or third attempts. During the jump process, jumpmasters not only ensured safety but also instilled critical confidence in the paratroopers about to jump. They began to do so from the beginning, with their meticulous equipment inspection of each paratrooper before he boarded the aircraft: Their hands and eyes followed a rapid yet precise sequence of parachute and equipment checks.
My Share of the Task Page 5