by Tom Clancy
When that job was finished, Simons and his guys loaded back on their helicopter and moved to the POW camp to finish the raid.
Unfortunately, as things turned out, they’d hit a dry hole. No POWs were in the camp. Some weeks earlier, they had been moved to another camp several miles away. Bitterly disappointed, Simons and his raiders loaded back aboard the helicopters and headed home.
Publicly, the raid looked like a failure. In actuality, the results were surprisingly positive. For one thing, the cost turned out to be very low (due partly to the excellent training and partly to hick)—total cost was an F-105G Wild Weasel aircraft shot down during the decoy raids (both crewmen ejected and were rescued), and a single SF soldier with an injured leg.
The Arthur “Bull” Simons Memorial on the day of its dedication at Fort Bragg, North Carolina. A legendary Special Forces soldier, he led the Son Tay Raid into North Vietnam in 1970.
JOHN D. GRESHAM
Far more important, however, the raid taught the North Vietnamese some important lessons:
First, with the threat of further raids hanging over their heads, the North Vietnamese pulled all the POWs back to Hoa Lo in Hanoi. Now they were kept eight and ten to a cell ... not exactly an ideal way to live, but if you’re a POW, contact with fellow POWs is a heap better than isolation. Morale skyrocketed.
Second, the North Vietnamese began to cast a cold eye in the direction of world opinion. What would happen, they wondered, if tortured and emaciated POWs were rescued and put before TV cameras?
The result was better treatment for the Americans. Vicious interrogation sessions ended, food got better and more plentiful, and conditions in general improved. The prisoners, they realized, were more useful as pawns than as scapegoats.
As for the prisoners themselves, the Son Tay raid gave them hope that up to then had eluded them. For the first time during the Vietnam War, they realized that their country had showed it still cared about the POWs. It had proved, at least, that it still at least had “the guts to try.”54
An SF failure, in other words, had turned into another legendary SF victory.
Dick Meadows: The Eternal Warrior
Who is the all-time greatest Special Forces soldier?
Don’t ask that question around the SF world unless you want a hot argument. The guys who’ve completed the SF “Q” Course are a special breed of human to begin with, and then many of these go on to extraordinary careers, filled with incredible accomplishments. Trying to choose the best is like choosing the all-time most beautiful woman. The vast number and variety of top contenders makes the choice hopeless.
And yet, mention one name among SF soldiers and you’re sure to get a warm smile and a gentle nodding of heads—Major Richard “Dick” Meadows. Dick Meadows is the quintessential Special Forces soldier, seemingly sprung directly from the brow of the god of Special Forces.
Dick Meadows came to the Army early, enlisting at age fifteen, and soon became the youngest master sergeant in the Army. In 1953, he joined the 10th SFG. Though he would eventually serve in groups around the world (including an exchange tour with the elite British Special Air Service), it was in Southeast Asia that Meadows performed the exploits that would make his name legendary.
Eventually Meadows would serve three tours with the 5th SFG in Vietnam. He was, for example, a member of Simon’s White Star team. As one of Simon’s patrol leaders, he led native Meo warriors against the Pathet Lao. His skills as a jungle fighter and patrol leader so impressed the leadership in Saigon that he was given a field commission to captain personally by General William Westmoreland, the first such commission of the war for an enlisted man.
But it was the Son Tay raid that took him into the history books. It was Meadows who conceived the idea of intentionally crashing a helicopter loaded with SF raiders into the prison compound courtyard (he’d correctly judged that that was the quickest way to insert them), and he personally led the team. During the mission, when it became obvious that the camp was empty, he got his team back to the main raiding force helicopters. Every man came home safely.
In the years following Vietnam, Dick Meadows spent his remaining time in the Army as an instructor.
In theory, he retired in 1977 after thirty years of service. In actuality, even though his official connection with the U.S. Army had been severed, he just kept on being an SF soldier.
Thus in the late 1970s, Colonel Chargin’ Charlie Beckwith hired him as a training consultant for the Delta Force. Shortly after that, in 1980, the CIA realized there were no on-the-ground personnel to support the Iranian hostage rescue mission. Meadows was therefore tapped to go to Tehran to do the job.
Given cover as an Irish businessman, he personally reconnoitered the Embassy complex, recruited and trained support operatives, bought and prepared trucks and other transportation assets, and made ready for Beckwith’s and the Delta Force’s arrival.
And then, when the rescue mission at Desert One was aborted (and in chaos), he was left hanging. The CIA had somehow neglected to let him know that the rescue force had been recalled (he read about it in the Iranian press), and had left him in Tehran on his own.
The memorial to Major Dick Meadows next to the U.S. Special Operations Command building at Fort Bragg, North Carolina. Meadows was an indestructible Special Forces soldier, whose exploits ranged from Vietnam and Laos to Iran.
JOHN D. GRAHAM
Not to worry. He conducted his own escape and evasion, and made it safely home yet again.
During the 1980s, Meadows continued to train counterterrorist professionals throughout the world, and would still be at it but for the single battle he lost. In 1995, he was struck down by leukemia, which was discovered less than two months before he died.
Dick Meadows died amid a flood of citations, accolades, decorations, and medals. Whatever decoration it was possible to get, he got ... except the Medal of Honor. (Though as one close friend remarked, “If the record of his classified missions is ever made public, he’ll get that one, too!”)
Today three reminders of Dick Meadows enduringly remain in the Special Forces: his son Mark, now an Army Ranger officer; a bronze statue in the courtyard of USASOC headquarters; and finally a special SOCOM award, in his name, given each year to an outstanding young processional officer in the command.
For all this, I proudly nominate Dick Meadows as the Special Forces eternal warrior. Meadows represents everything that is good, smart, and professional about this unique breed of men.
I somehow feel that most SF professionals will drink to this without too much dissent.
The Lean Years
Like the rest of the American military establishment, the Special Forces were punished in the 1970s for the failure in Vietnam. This translated into the disestablishment of the 1st, 3rd, 6th, and 8th SFGs, fully half the community. There were, in fact, proposals to completely eliminate SOF capabilities, and only the determined efforts of a few visionaries kept the Special Forces alive. I could go on for pages about the misery SF soldiers and other SOF units suffered during this period, but one story will suffice.
At some point during the dark years of the Carter administration, some people in the Army came up with an initiative that would allow the Army to hold on to the remaining SF capability (the 5th and 7th SFGs). The program was called Special Proficiency at Rugged Training and Nation Building (SPARTAN); and on the face of it, it was a dumb idea—not because the work proposed was a waste, but it was a waste to use SFGs (some with years of field experience) to do it. On the other hand, the make-work may have saved the SFGs.
In any event, SPARTAN sent SF soldiers into depressed areas of the United States, where they were assigned jobs much like those of the Depression-era Civil Conservation Corps. They built roads and bridges, provided medical treatment, and performed other worthwhile services, primarily among impoverished inhabitants of North Carolina’s Hoke and Anson counties, and Indian tribes in Florida, Arizona, and Montana.
Noble though these ser
vices were, they were hardly what SF soldiers had joined up to do. All the same, Project SPARTAN demonstrated what they were willing to put up with to keep their community alive.
I hang my head that professional warriors had to do such things ... yet take pride that they were willing to do them. Thanks, guys!
Fighting Back
The administration of President Ronald Reagan changed all that. And during the 1980s, Special Forces, along with the rest of the U.S. military community, rebuilt. Now the largest component of the new SOCOM, they not only restored much of their lost community (the 1st and 3rd SFGs were reactivated) but helped to expand American influence and power (as for example, in El Salvador).
More important, the renewed Special Forces proved themselves yet again in the crucible of battle.
In December 1989, Operation Just Cause was executed against Panamanian strongman Manuel Noriega. General Maxwell Thurman, the U.S. Southern Command commander in chief, made SOF units the spearhead of the invasion, with SF soldiers a crucial component of that spearhead. SF teams conducted the full spectrum of Special Forces missions. They raided command-and-control facilities, fought a number of vicious firefights with Panamanian defense units, and took large numbers of prisoners.
And then, just months after Just Cause, SF troops were operating in the deserts of the Persian Gulf.
Despite General Schwarzkopf’s shortsighted attitude toward Special Forces (see the first chapter), the SF deployment in Desert Shield/Storm was the largest since Vietnam. Both the 3rd and 5th SFGs moved their full strength to Saudi Arabia in support of the allied coalition, and immediately found useful work ... though not what they wanted to do most. Because they had the largest group of Arabic speakers in the military, they were in the best position to set up an underground rebel movement in Kuwait. (Schwarzkopf nixed this plan. He didn’t want people he couldn’t control in situations that could jumpstart the war before he was ready to begin it.)
Failing that, SF soldiers became liaison officers to the many Arab and Muslim allied units in the coalition (a job they would have had even if the Kuwait mission had been okayed). SF soldiers rode into battle with their allies as advisors and observers, and were among the first troops to enter the liberated Kuwait City in February 1991.
Meanwhile, as soon as the decision was made to conduct a ground offensive against Iraq, several dozen SF teams were inserted deep into enemy territory, where they gathered critical intelligence on Iraqi troop movements that greatly helped the ground commanders during the 100 Hour War. (Though a couple of the teams were compromised when Bedouin civilians stumbled over their hide sites, all managed to escape back to friendly lines.)
During the decade following the Gulf War, Special Forces soldiers have played a major part in every important U.S. military operation, including those in Haiti, Rwanda, and the Balkans, even as Special Forces Command continues the more “normal” missions, quietly training and assisting our allies to better manage and protect their interests.
Right now, the soldiers of the SFC are among the most trusted of America’s warriors by the national leadership ... a situation they both value and regret. Though it’s nice to be trusted, that has a downside: It means they’re given more missions than they can handle.
Special Forces Command: The Green Berets
Special Forces Command, which is commanded by an Army major (two-star) general, is not only the largest community within SOCOM (with over half the 30,000 SOF personnel billets), it is also the most operationally active. At any given moment, forty to sixty SF detachments are conducting missions around the world, giving them an OpTempo even higher than the Navy’s aircraft carrier battle groups (CVBGs) or the USMC Marine Expeditionary Units—Special Operations Capable (MEU [SOC]s). In fact, according to the usual measure of such things—man-days per year out of area (i.e., overseas)—the Special Forces are America’s busiest warriors.
They are also probably the most “joint” of American units. That is, SF detachments in the field work with a wider variety of units and personnel from other services and nations than any other military community in the U.S. They regularly accept transportation from the U.S. Air Force or Navy, frequently exercise with the USMC, and every year conduct field operations overseas (downrange) in up to a hundred countries. Clearly, this places a heavy burden on SFC.
OFFICIAL U.S. ARMY GRAPHIC
SFC, itself only created in 1989 in the wake of Goldwater-Nichols, has cradle-to-grave responsibility for every facet of Special Forces life: SFC keeps a direct watch over the JFK training center, which recruits and trains new SF soldiers; it controls the various SF groups, their organization, equipment, and training; and it is the clearinghouse for SF operations, and must be consulted before any deployment or mission is authorized.
Like the other major components within SOCOM (Rangers, SEALs, etc.), SFC has almost total control over how their units are structured, trained, equipped, and tasked. Such control can be frustrating to those wishing to task SFC for missions, yet it ensures that the Special Forces troops actually have the wherewithal to do the job. Every request for a mission or tasking gets a hard, professional scrub by people who understand the special needs and limitations of SF soldiers and units. The power to carefully review, and even delay, unrealistic requests is just good sense in the long term.
There is much more to SFC than its control function. Let’s take a closer look at this, and at the units it operates.
The Fortress: Special Forces Command Headquarters
Fort Bragg, North Carolina, is among America’s largest and busiest military bases. Located between the sand hills and coastal plains of North Carolina, it has been the center of America’s rapid reaction forces since the Second World War. On the eastern side of this massive base are the headquarters, barracks, and other facilities for the 82nd Airborne Division and XVIII Airborne Corps.
The U.S. Army Special Operations Command headquarters at Fort Bragg, North Carolina. This massive building contains the command elements for the Special Forces, along with other Army Special Operations components.
JOHN D. GRESHAM
But it is on the southeastern side of the base where our interest lies. Near the original SF training site on Smoke Bomb Hill is situated the fortresslike headquarters of both U.S. Army Special Operations Command and Special Forces Command—a massive red brick monument to the present-day military obsession with force protection. It has all the charm and warmth of a medieval castle, which was surely the intent when it was designed in the mid-1990s.55 All it lacks is a moat. Except for the carefully groomed lawns, shrubbery, and walks, the place screams, “Keep Away! The stuff inside’s too serious for the likes of you!” Even the parking lot is carefully secured: concrete barriers separate the building from the lot, and there are no “Visitor” spaces. (I had to park almost 200 yards from the main door, across a steaming, mind-frying parking lot.) Inside, security is even tighter, with computer-controlled turnstiles and armed guards.
Special Forces Command Leadership
The leadership of Special Forces Command traditionally keeps a low profile. Most heads of the various communities and component commands have spent their professional lives behind a curtain of security. Few have any desire to come out. And yet—despite the organization’s instinctive clannishness and reticence—when I needed them to be open to me, they were as open as they could be. I’m very grateful for the access they allowed me.
At the top of the SFC chain of command is Major General William G. Boykin, a quiet, deeply religious, almost reclusive career SOF professional, with extensive experience in Special Forces and other USASOC units (he previously commanded the Delta Force and was a staff officer within Joint Special Operations Command, two of America’s darkest and most secretive units).
General Boykin has a number of key objectives. These include:• Operations Tempo—Over the last decade, the pace of overseas SF operations has approached the breaking point. Consider the table below, which shows the number of countries
and missions run by SF personnel in the mid-1990s, as well as the number of personnel involved overall and on each mission:
The trends are disturbing: During the past decade, the number of countries receiving missions has roughly doubled; the total number of missions has risen a mind-numbing 400%; the number of personnel deployed has grown fully 50%; and the number of personnel involved in each mission has dropped by almost two thirds.
How does this translate into real terms? It means, first, that every SF soldier must spend up to 180 days downrange per year. Second, because the number of personnel per mission has dropped, each mission must now be staffed with less than a full twelve-man A-Team.
In other words: the U.S. government is dangerously overworking the Special Forces; and as we’ve already seen, many SF soldiers are voting with their feet. High OpTempos are causing SF soldiers to leave the service ... which of course puts even more strain on the teams that are deployed.
General Boykin has worked hard to provide his troops relief, as did General Bowra before him (General Bowra went on to command SWC). Even before 1998, when General Boykin took command, there were minor improvements, as the Fiscal Year 1997 figures reveal. General Boykin, continuing the trend, has pushed the State Department to reduce the number of overseas missions, mandated minimum “down” time back at home base, and provided better forward-deployed facilities and services.
• Combat SkiUs—In General Boykin’s view, the emphasis on peacekeeping, humanitarian, and other noncombat operations may have caused the combat skills of the Special Forces to decline. Therefore, a greater training focus is now being placed on combat drills and exercises. He has also increased SF participation at large-scale training exercises, such as those at the Joint Readiness Training Center (JRTC—located at Fort Polk, Louisiana), the National Training Center (NTC—at Fort Irwin, California), and the big Joint Task Force Exercises (JTFEXs).