In the air, jumpmasters carefully controlled the final minutes before jumps. As we neared drop time, the two jumpmasters stood in the aft of the aircraft and simultaneously gave hand signals and shouted warnings: Twenty minutes! The planeload of soldiers, called a chalk since the World War II practice of using chalk markings to connect planeloads of paratroopers with their correct planes, stirred. Helmets went on and even veteran jumpers subtly checked weapons containers and other equipment. After giving the ten-minute warning, jumpmasters remained standing near the rear of the aircraft, one adjacent to each of the two paratroop doors they would control during the jump.
Exchanging a glance to ensure they were in unison, the jumpmasters next shouted, Get ready! Hearts pumped. To raise the men to their feet, jumpmasters pointed first to the paratroopers nearest the outside of the aircraft, then to those in the center, or inboard. Raising their extended arms, they commanded: Outboard personnel, stand up! Inboard personnel, stand up! The next commands followed in rapid succession. Hook up! Snap hooks clinked as paratroopers connected the static line that would pull their parachutes to open as they left the aircraft.
Check static lines! Check equipment! Beginning at the nose end of the plane, each man checked himself and the trooper in front of him. Sound off for equipment check! This indicated they were ready: Okay! Okay! Okay! carried down the line until the paratrooper nearest the jumpmaster gave a thumbs-up and shouted, “All okay, jumpmaster!”
With the doors open, the wind and engine roar were deafening, and the final performance began. Each jumpmaster inspected his doorframe for sharp edges that might sever a paratrooper’s static line, then moved onto the jump platform, a step that extended about a foot out of the cargo door into thin air. As young paratroopers watched, each jumpmaster bounced on the platform to ensure and demonstrate its serviceability, then firmly grasped the sides of the doorframe and thrust his body as far outside the door as he could without losing his grip. As the wind buffeted his body and contorted his face, he calmly looked around—first for other aircraft or hazards to jumpers, then to the approaching drop zone (DZ). They scanned the ground for the geographic markers that they had memorized as indicators of the distance to the DZ. During the final sequence, they rotated back into the plane and alerted the jumpers: One minute! . . . Thirty seconds! With the DZ seconds away, the jumpmasters pulled themselves back inside the aircraft, faced the troopers, and commanded the first jumper, Stand in the door! Moments later the light adjacent to the door flashed from red to green and the jumpmaster slapped the first jumper on the rear. “Go!” The first paratrooper disappeared into the darkness. We shuffled forward and tumbled out of the plane until it was empty. The last one out was the jumpmaster.
It was choreographed ritual, and necessarily so. Jumpmasters were the high priests. In an army where too many leaders hid a lack of competence behind crisp uniforms or spit-shined boots, jumpmasters showed something far more real: hard-won expertise. Over the years, I would watch as confidence and willingness to assume responsibility grew in leaders of every rank when we demanded true craftsmanship.
* * *
Throughout my lieutenancy, I was never alone. A year behind me in school, Annie finished college while I was in Ranger School, and after a couple of months to allow me to grow back some hair and become “redomesticated,” we were married in a military ceremony where her father was stationed at Fort Monroe, Virginia. We had no money for a honeymoon and instead loaded our 1974 Chevy Vega and moved into our one-bedroom, $180-per-month apartment in a complex near Fort Bragg. Most of our possessions sat on shelves we made of cinder blocks and wood planks. But it felt right.
In many ways, Annie and I learned together. One Friday night, as a platoon leader, I scheduled a parachute jump, which typically finished after midnight, thus stealing part of the men’s weekend. As we strapped on our parachutes, I sensed their resentment and decided to raise morale by suggesting that after recovering from the operation they all come to my place for a platoon party. I did not routinely hang out with subordinates, but this was a moment to build the team. The plan was set, but in the age before cell phones, it was not relayed to Annie.
Although it would be late by the time we would finish the jump and begin the gathering, I assumed I could get home before everyone arrived. But the platoon sent Sergeant Emil Holtz, an enormous mortarman, to the liquor store while the rest of them cleaned equipment. In spite of his looming appearance, Sergeant Holtz was a quiet, cerebral teetotaler. Unsure what the boys drank at parties, he bought a lot of everything with the cash they gave him. Soon thereafter, Annie answered the door in her nightgown, still unaware of the party plan, to find what looked like Andre the Giant, holding clinking grocery bags of liquor, wine, and beer. “LT says we’re having a party,” he said bashfully. Others soon arrived. By the time I got home, Annie had already met most of the platoon and made them snacks. Later, she sat laughing and warmly chatting with a soldier’s girlfriend, a nice girl who danced topless locally but who had dressed conservatively for the party. Annie’s instinctive ability to make others feel welcomed and, in situations more dire, comforted, shone through.
Although when I first met Annie she had made it clear to me that she did not want to date or marry a soldier, I think she was more comfortable in an army family than she readily admitted. From her “army brat” upbringing Annie deeply admired her parents. Her memories, tinged with bittersweet good-byes and uncomfortable moments as the new kid in school, are invariably dominated by funny stories of her and five siblings being packed into station wagons or small quarters. I soon found that Annie had an indefinable quality—call it pluck—that made duty feel like privilege and made our army life an adventure.
In the fall of 1978 I made the decision to apply for Special Forces training. Lieutenant Colonel Dave Baratto, my tactical officer from West Point, was commanding a battalion of the 7th Special Forces Group at Fort Bragg, and after seeking his counsel, I submitted my request. The reputation of “SF” at that time was mixed at best, but I wanted to become a part of something that long ago had captured my imagination.
Just after I left the 82nd, the chief of staff of the Army, General Bernard W. Rogers, stripped the paratroopers of their maroon berets. To rein in other units that had begun wearing various nonstandard berets and other headgear, General Rogers issued a blanket ban. The loss of the maroon beret, the accepted paratrooper symbol worldwide and a badge of pride, was traumatic for the 82nd. At the time it seemed to me as though Army leadership, despite good intentions, was tone deaf to what mattered to the volunteer soldiers of its own force.
* * *
By the time the paratroopers lost their maroon berets, I was wearing a green one. In November 1978, I joined Detachment 714, Company A, 1st Battalion, 7th Special Forces Group (Airborne), part of the U.S. Army’s famous—and, in the minds of some, infamous—“Green Berets.” Created midway through the Korean War, the Special Forces were modeled on the OSS’s World War II Jedburghs, three-man teams dropped deep into Nazi-occupied Europe to recruit and lead partisan militias. In Vietnam, the Green Berets played their largest role to date, and stories of their operations and exploits had fascinated me from an early age.
Assigned to a twelve-man A-Team (Operational Detachment A), I became part of a brilliant concept that remains effective today. Manned with two officers and ten specially qualified sergeants, A-Teams were designed to possess skills, maturity, and cultural acuity. This enabled them to leverage indigenous forces, from militaries to guerrillas, in a wide range of missions in a more discrete alternative to larger, more conventional operations.
Special Forces’ history was tinged with politics. During the 1960 presidential campaign, members of then-Senator John F. Kennedy’s staff sought to burnish his defense credentials. Other senators had associated themselves with high-profile weapons like the Polaris missile or B-52 strategic bomber. Kennedy would adopt the Special Forces, whose soldiers had wor
n the green berets illicitly until the fall of 1961, when the new president authorized the headgear as “a mark of distinction.”
As he explained on June 6, 1962, to the graduating cadets gathered in the West Point field house, Kennedy envisioned that his infantrymen would likely face small, hot, peripheral wars “new in . . . intensity, ancient in . . . origin,” against the “guerrillas, subversives, insurgents” exploiting “economic unrest and ethnic conflicts.” The Special Forces were the first troops Kennedy dispatched to Vietnam, where they trained the South Vietnamese. As the war escalated under President Johnson, their mission grew and activities diversified beyond training. They became highly publicized, and despite some extraordinary exploits, by the end of the war, controversies dogged the force. Criticisms ranged from being elitist to being “off the reservation” to Time magazine’s August 1969 damning description—“enveloped in the sinister”—after the Army investigated the Green Beret commander in Vietnam, along with six intelligence officers, after accusations that they had murdered an alleged South Vietnamese double agent.
By the time I joined the Green Berets in 1978, they only faintly resembled their Kennedy-era forebears. Traditionally, the Army had an aversion to elite units because such units tended to siphon resources, particularly talented soldiers, from the rest of the force. After Vietnam, that resistance reemerged, and Special Forces were allowed to atrophy. Young officers often received terse advice to avoid ruining their careers by joining Special Forces. “So you want to join the Speckled Feces?” an officer in my battalion had put it to me before I left the 82nd.
Early on, some of my worst fears were realized. My Special Forces officers’ course included several lieutenants who had been fired in the 82nd—at the time a rare occurrence. Some of the instructors were equally disappointing. A lecture was stopped one day as a senior instructor had to remove an obviously drunk sergeant from the stage. My company commander was relieved for inappropriate conduct during a training deployment. It made for amusing stories, but it really wasn’t funny.
It was a difficult time and some talented, combat-experienced Green Beret officers and noncommissioned officers (NCOs) became disillusioned and unmotivated. The routine of peacetime service didn’t suit them. For a young leader, these veterans were an intimidating challenge.
I faced that challenge early. As a new detachment commander (A-Team leader), I felt that the respected and experienced team sergeant of our twelve-man A-Team had grown lazy and needed to be moved from the position. For a young lieutenant team leader, a position designed for a more senior captain, making this assessment was difficult, and acting on it was even harder. He had fought a war as a Green Beret; my beret was still new, and I had never been to war.
So I sought and received the support of my chain of command and we made the change, replacing him with a twenty-nine-year-old combat veteran with less experience but vastly greater energy. It was not an action taken lightly, yet I found surprising support for the move across the unit (particularly from veteran NCOs) and realized that the foundation of professionalism in Special Forces was stronger than it had first appeared to be.
The experience I underwent as a team leader helped transform my career. I had about as much latitude as a post-Vietnam lieutenant could have, received great support but no micromanagement from my commanders, and set the standards and direction for my team.
Although theoretically my team were already “elite” soldiers, I found they wanted someone to push and lead them, reflecting the truism that most soldiers respond when challenged. But, as good as my practical education became in the Special Forces, it was incomplete. In 1980, my fourth year of commissioned service, I wanted something more than training, something that mattered, something real. The Soviets had invaded Afghanistan; in Nicaragua the Sandinistas had overthrown Anastasio Somoza, who had been at West Point with my father. And, of course, Iranian revolutionaries had ousted the Shah and then seized the American embassy in Tehran. The global tumult made training at Fort Bragg feel increasingly irrelevant for a young officer who was honing his craft.
* * *
In June 1980 I left Special Forces and entered the Infantry Officers Advanced Course at Fort Benning, where I was promoted to captain. While my experience in Special Forces ended well, I hoped to join the Rangers. A one-year tour to Korea, along with a company command, offered the best route, though it meant a yearlong separation from Annie.
Several months before I left, Annie’s sister Nora had been widowed suddenly when her husband, Steven Strickland, an army captain who had been a year ahead of me at West Point, was killed in a helicopter crash in Germany. At the time, Nora was pregnant. Annie decided to spend our year apart living with her sister to help with the new baby. On February 20, 1981, Annie, her parents, and I were at the army hospital on Fort Jackson as Nora’s baby, Megan, was born. It felt like a special family time. At first light the next morning, amid a few tears, I kissed Annie good-bye and flew away for a year. In September 2008, soon after returning from another long separation, I danced with Annie at Megan’s wedding.
Although I’d hoped to command an infantry company in Korea, I was assigned to the Joint Security Area (JSA) at Panmunjom, Korea. The JSA was a small enclave of neutral territory inside the DMZ where discussions between the two warring parties (North Korea and the United Nations) took place in austere one-story buildings that straddled the border. The North Korean soldiers wore hardened faces and glowered at us while we stared back. The area was rarely violent, but it was always tense. In 1975, when the two sides still intermingled within the JSA, a group of North Koreans tried to provoke an American major, knocked him to the ground, and smashed his larynx with their boots. A year later, North Korean soldiers killed two Americans who were in the DMZ trimming a tree that blocked the view from the South.
As I finished my uneventful year in Korea in March 1982, I had also completed my five-year commitment to the Army following West Point. Some of my experience thus far had been disappointing, and what I’d seen caused me to consider leaving. But I decided against it. I’d also seen some amazing leaders and experienced bonds with soldiers that I found fulfilling, and I sensed that changes were afoot in the Army.
* * *
My sense was right. While I was experiencing the low point of my career in Korea, the U.S. military had begun its renaissance. A confluence of factors would move the Army forward. Much of the improvement that I would experience firsthand—namely, the revitalization of special operations—was set in motion by the military’s reckoning with the failure in the Iranian desert in 1980.
Operation Eagle Claw was designed to rescue fifty-three Americans held hostage at two locations in the heart of Tehran, an urban thicket of more than four million people. Planners decided that to penetrate Tehran and reach those targets undetected, they had to drive into the city. But once the alarm rang, there would be a firefight and they would need helicopters to escape. These helicopters would meet the rescue teams at a nearby soccer stadium within Tehran. The six hundred miles that separated Tehran from the Arabian Sea–based aircraft carriers the helicopters would launch from was beyond the distance that those helicopters could fly without refueling. Thus the need for fixed-wing aircraft. To shuffle teams and fuel between the planes and helicopters, the teams would need to use makeshift airfields during both the approach and escape legs.
To infiltrate the rescue force, two sets of aircraft would fly into Iran across its southern border. First, C-130 aircraft—carrying Army special operators, Army Rangers, and six-thousand-gallon bladders of fuel for the helicopters—would leave from a tiny island off the coast of Oman, one thousand miles from Tehran. Second, navy helicopters, empty except for the Marines piloting them, would be on their heels, taking off from the USS Nimitz. All would rendezvous at night on a desert airstrip, code-named Desert One, southeast of Tehran. To avoid detection at the airstrip, the teams would transfer and the helicopters would ref
uel without illumination. The ground teams would then travel by helicopter to the outskirts of Tehran—Desert Two—where the soldiers would spend the night hiding in advance of an early-morning assault.
When the convoys converged on Tehran early the next morning, Army Rangers would capture, secure, and hold a second air base southwest of the capital city. After the rescue at the embassy, the escape helicopters would fly from the soccer stadium to this air base, where a second fleet of C-141s would be waiting to ferry the force and the rescued hostages to freedom.
In all, the mission called for forty-four aircraft, thousands of gallons of fuel, a fleet of ground vehicles, and a hybrid force culled from the Navy, Army, Marines, Air Force, and intelligence agencies. It required securing a desert landing strip in darkness, seizing and holding a second airfield, striking two urban targets, engaging in a firefight to get out of Tehran, and exfiltrating to friendly airspace. At best, the plan was a series of difficult missions, each a variable in a complex equation. At worst, with an ad hoc team, it called for a string of miracles.
Launched on Thursday, April 24, 1980, 173 days into the hostage crisis, the mission faltered early. As with all operations, the plan had certain built-in criteria that, if not met, would require the mission to be aborted. In this case, if the number of operating helicopters fell below six—out of the eight originally launched—the operation would not continue. Five helicopters could not carry a team large enough to overpower the enemy at the embassy. Shortly after entering Iranian airspace, one was abandoned due to mechanical failure. The remaining seven helicopters, flying low to evade radar detection, flew into a series of haboob, vast milk-thick columns of suspended dust that form in the desert. The clouds were the size of mountains: A thousand feet high, they swallowed the speeding helicopters for hours, obscuring anything much farther than the cockpit windows. After one helicopter turned back, only six landed at Desert One.
My Share of the Task Page 6