by Mark Moyar
The history of special operations forces in World War II is so enormous in its scope and future relevance, and so compelling in human terms, that it has been accorded three chapters in this book. The first covers the Rangers and Forcemen, offspring of the US Army, who fought primarily in the European Theater and provided the inspiration for today’s US Army Rangers. The second chapter covers the Raiders of the US Marine Corps and the Frogmen of the US Navy, who did most of their work in the Pacific Theater. The Marine Corps dissolved the Raiders in 1944 and avoided the reconstitution of special operations forces until 2006, when it was compelled to create the Marine Special Operations Command. The Navy, on the other hand, retained some Frogmen after the post-1945 demobilization and eventually converted them into the Sea, Air, Land Teams (SEALs). The third chapter addresses the special operations forces of the Office of Strategic Services, which differed fundamentally from the other special operations forces in composition and purpose, and subsequently inspired a very different type of outfit, the US Army Special Forces.
The first enduring challenge encountered in World War II was the involvement of political leaders who lacked understanding of the special operations forces they were creating and employing. In early 1942, Franklin D. Roosevelt ordered the formation of special operations forces based on the recommendation of his son James, a captain in the Marine Corps Reserves whose enthusiasm for special units derived from an eccentric officer with a credulous reverence for Mao Zedong’s guerrilla armies. President Roosevelt disregarded the objections of generals who, unlike his son, perceived the unintended consequences that were likely to ensue. Several subsequent presidents, most notably John F. Kennedy, would champion the special operations forces based more on the popular glamorization of these units than on sober analysis of their military utility.
The problem of ill-informed politicians also manifested itself in repeated decisions to withdraw political top-cover to special operations forces once the thrill was gone. Toward the end of World War II, the fading of Roosevelt’s interest in special operations forces facilitated the dismantling of most of the units. Half a century later, the Black Hawk Down debacle in Mogadishu ended President Bill Clinton’s honeymoon with special operations forces and led him to make those forces a scapegoat for the failed mission, undermining their standing within the government for the remaining seven years of Clinton’s presidency.
The second fundamental challenge to come to light in World War II was the mutability of special operations and the forces that conducted them. The core activities of the Army, Navy, and Air Force have been etched in granite by geography. The Army will always enjoy primacy for military operations on land, the Navy for operations at sea, and the Air Force for operations in the air. Special operations forces lack a realm upon which they can lay indisputable claim. The roles and missions of special operations forces have changed frequently, based on the perceptions of political and military leaders of the tactical and strategic environments. During World War II, special operations forces were reinvented several times as the war’s character changed. The cycle of reinvention has repeated itself over and over again since 1945 in accordance with changes in leadership and circumstances.
The third enduring challenge to emerge from World War II was disputation over the value of special operations forces. Champions of special operations forces have often succeeded at convincing politicians, the press, and the public that the forces deliver results of exceptional tactical value, and in some cases even strategic value. But numerous skeptics, many of them inside the military, have just as often questioned whether the tactical or strategic benefits of special operations forces outweigh the costs. They have contended that too few missions are appropriate for special operations forces, or that the missions they perform are not appreciably more important than other missions, or that regular forces are sufficiently capable of performing the same missions. On the cost side of the ledger, special units generally receive longer training and more expensive equipment than other units, and, most importantly, they receive better personnel, which dilutes the quality of other units. Arguments about the value of special operations forces have been especially fierce because they have figured prominently in decisions on the resources and tasks assigned to them—including several decisions that disbanded special operations forces in their entirety.
The fourth persistent challenge, fueled by the first three, has been intense rivalry between special operations forces and regular forces. The disregard of politicians for protests from the regular military about special operations forces has been a recurring source of friction ever since Roosevelt decided to create the first special operations forces over the objections of the military leadership. The formation of special units led recruiters to announce the need for special men for special missions and to rob regular units of some of their most productive members, both of which were also bound to antagonize. The growth in the size, professionalism, and independence of special operations forces over time increasingly made them a threat to the regular armed forces. In turn, the hostility of the regular military and the perceived misuse of special operations forces by regular commanders fostered a persecution complex among special operators, intensifying their thirst for greater power and independence. This rivalry has been the cause of innumerable conflicts over human resources, budgets, missions, and command authorities.
These four challenges serve as the backbone of this chronicle of US special operations forces. The seventy-five-year rise of special operations forces from humble origins in World War II to the present-day behemoth is, at bottom, a coming-of-age story. Special operations forces began as unwanted stepchildren, and they languished in that status for more than four decades. From time to time, they found supportive stepfathers in Washington, but for the most part they were left at the mercy of jealous stepbrothers. In 1986, the creation of the Special Operations Command in Tampa and its accompanying bank account set SOF loose like an eighteen-year-old who just moved out of the house, prone to naïve ambitions and unwise choices. In the first decade of the twenty-first century, special operations forces came into their own, growing into a force of 70,000 troops with help from a president and Congress desperate for weapons to wield against Islamic extremists. Champions of special operations called for the transformation of SOF from a secondary weapon that supported conventional forces to a primary weapon that could take the place of their conventional counterparts. But then success went to the heads of special operations leaders and caused them to reach too far, leaving the Department of Defense strewn with wreckage whose pieces are still being picked up today.
Like any good coming-of-age story, the story of special operations forces is interwoven with a colorful cast of characters. Most special operators volunteered for what they knew would be unusually difficult and dangerous duty, and thus the pantheon of special operations forces brims with men of exceptional talent, courage, dedication, and selflessness. These same special operators, being mortals, have at times succumbed to folly, narcissism, or fear. For some, the acquisition of elite status helped turn confidence into hubris, with all the attendant troubles one might expect. Brilliance has been mixed with bad judgment, in no small part because of the need to make decisions quickly, under stress, and without sleep. The story includes first crushes, rites of passage, harrowing action scenes, falls from grace, and redemption. As a story of war, it has more than its share of suffering, glory, and death.
This book is intended to retell the drama of America’s special operations forces and, at the same time, to confer the historical understanding that enhances wisdom and informs sound decisions by today’s leaders. Despite a profusion of books on particular individuals or events, the history of special operations forces as instruments of military power has lagged behind other fields of military history. Today’s special operators want and need a deeper understanding of their own history. Personnel in conventional forces, who now must work with SOF more than ever before, also have much to gain from learning
about the history of special operations forces, which is bound up with that of the rest of the military. The need for historical understanding is most acute among the civilians within the US government, who under the Constitution determine how military forces are formed, prepared, and employed. Whereas military personnel are often well versed in military and other history, the civil side of the government is populated mainly by individuals educated in disciplines like law, public administration, economics, political science, and engineering, which for the most part have discarded or marginalized history in favor of theoretical abstraction and mathematical computation.
This history provides the familiarization required to avoid the errors to which the historically deprived are especially prone, such as relying excessively on one’s own intellect, leaping at the first historical analogy to rear its head, and grasping at facile theories drawn from dubious historical interpretations or abstract reasoning. By providing a record of successes and failures, this history may stimulate insights into new environments, and illuminate pitfalls in paths that would otherwise seem free of peril. As the first comprehensive account of America’s special operations forces, it delineates the traditions of which special operators are justifiably proud, while demonstrating the need to build on those traditions in ways that harness tradition without being harnessed by it.
CHAPTER 1
RANGERS AND FORCEMEN
Elevated 150 feet above Sicily’s southern shoreline, the city of Gela holds a commanding view of the Mediterranean, like the central parterre overlooking the stage of an opera house. Colonized by the Greeks in 688 BC, Gela was once a proud city-state of 100,000 residents, with its own coinage and a steady influx of tax revenue from the grain farms of the native Sicels. The first coins to be minted bore a horseman, commemorating the city’s vaunted cavalry and its medals in the equestrian competitions at Olympia. From Gela, enterprising Greeks established colonies at Syracuse and Agrigento, which in their maturity would turn against their progenitor, spurring repeated spasms of violence among Sicily’s city-states.
During the Peloponnesian War, a conference of Sicilian noblemen at Gela ended with a peace agreement among all the city-states, in recognition that continued conflict would invite conquest by external powers. Invasion by outsiders would nevertheless become a recurring problem for Gela and the other Sicilian city-states. In the period following the Peloponnesian War, large empires gained power in the Mediterranean at the expense of the city-states, which resulted in the transformation of Gela from one of the sea’s predators into one of its prey. The Carthaginians sacked Gela in 405 BC, and Mamertine mercenaries of the Campanians caused such devastation in 282 BC that the city was abandoned. For the next 1,500 years, the terra cotta tiles and stone pillars of its once-proud Greek temples eroded under sun and wind, while the surrounding farmland came under the successive dominion of the Romans, Goths, Byzantines, Arabs, and Normans.
In the early thirteenth century AD, the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II resuscitated Gela as part of a grandiose project to make Sicily the heart of a modern European empire. Building Gela new city walls and a castle within, he repopulated the city with Normans and Greeks. The revitalized Gela would bow to a succession of Mediterranean powers—Aragon, Spain, Austria, and Naples—until finally in 1861 the Italian general Giuseppe Garibaldi annexed all of Sicily to Italy at the point of a bayonet.
In July 1943, Gela was home to 32,000 Italian civilians, along with hundreds of soldiers from the Italian Army’s 429th Coastal Battalion. Vineyards and olive groves framed the town, and beyond lay expansive fields of golden wheat. A winding road led from the city down to the crescent-shaped beach, whose 1,000 yards of seafront were bisected by a steel jetty that protruded three hundred yards into the clear blue sea.
In the early morning hours of Saturday, July 10, most of Gela was sleeping off Friday evening’s pasta and wine, unaware that the newest aspirants to the control of Sicily were steaming across the Mediterranean toward Gela and twenty-five other beaches on the island’s southern coast. The invasion fleet of 130 warships and 324 transport vessels bristled with arms and men possessed of the training and desire to use them. The eastern half of the flotilla carried the forces of General Bernard Montgomery’s British Eighth Army, while to the west were ships bearing General George Patton’s US Seventh Army, to include the forces destined for Gela—the 1st, 3rd, and 4th US Army Ranger battalions.
For the Rangers, Friday evening had involved neither good food, nor good wine, nor good cheer. As the Anglo-American armada was crossing the Mediterranean, a forty-mile-per-hour gale whipped the seas, conjuring waves the height of a two-story building. With stomachs wrenching and vomit besmirching the decks, the Rangers cursed what one wag had dubbed the “Mussolini wind.”
The Rangers received several missives from General Patton during the journey. One explained that “in landing operations, retreat is impossible. We must retain this tremendous advantage by always attacking, rapidly, ruthlessly, viciously, and without rest.” Another, intended for the Italian Americans under Patton’s command, stated, “There are thousands of soldiers of Italian descent who will be storming ashore with Seventh Army. However, bear in mind that the real courageous Italians who loved liberty and who had the true pioneering spirit left Italy to come to the country of freedom where they have become good citizens. Those who were left behind were the cowards and weaklings who allowed Benito Mussolini to come to power. Against them I know you as an American soldier will not fail in your duty.”
As the US ships neared the Sicilian coastline, not long after midnight, the Mussolini wind abated. By the time the Rangers climbed from the big ships into the little landing boats, the water was “almost mirrorlike,” in the words of Randall Harris, a twenty-eight-year-old sergeant from Pocahontas, Iowa. Guided by amphibious scouts toward Gela’s pristine beach, the Rangers kept noise and light to a minimum so as not to draw the attention of the city’s garrison.
Ranger hopes of catching the enemy by surprise were dashed by the sounding of a sentry’s alarm at 2:40 a.m., when the lead boats were still seven hundred yards from Gela’s shore. At the city’s edge and on the beach, searchlights popped on, their white beams crisscrossing and bouncing off the water. Engineers detonated explosive charges that had been placed on the jetty in case of an Allied landing, throwing twisted sheets and chunks of metal in all directions.
The sea was done further injury by Italian mortar rounds, several of which struck American landing craft. One of the boats capsized, and twenty of its passengers drowned. Another boat ran aground on a sandbar, making it a particularly inviting target for the Italian weapon crews, although in the end its only casualty was the canteen of a medical officer, which had been filled with liquor that was officially designated “personal medicinal alcohol.”
Most of the landing craft reached the shallow waters unscathed and safely disgorged their passengers, whose fear of death was intermingled with relief at setting foot on immovable ground. Italian soldiers had constructed pillboxes along the beach for the purpose of machine gunning invaders such as these, but the first Rangers to land were able to flank the pillboxes before most of the gunners were ready to fire. Ranger grenades left several Italian machine-gun crews entombed in concrete, and other crews surrendered to avoid the same fate.
With the pillboxes neutralized, the beach appeared to be safe for the hundreds of Rangers now streaming ashore. Photographs taken by Allied reconnaissance aircraft in recent weeks had shown fishermen and fishing vessels on the beach, leading Allied intelligence analysts to conclude that the beach was free of mines. Having been apprised of that conclusion, the Rangers charged across the beach without fear of what might lie beneath.
The analysts turned out to have been mistaken. The first Ranger to trip a mine was Lieutenant Walter Wojcik. A tall, soft-spoken physiology instructor from Minneapolis, Wojcik had demonstrated such courage, leadership, and intellect in the North African campaign as to earn command of a company at the age of
twenty-three. The mine Wojcik triggered was a German S-Mine, known among the Americans as the “bouncing betty” because it shot up to the height of a man’s waist before spraying two kilograms of shrapnel in a 360-degree arc.
Sergeant Randall “Harry” Harris had been running close behind when the mine exploded. He saw the blast tear Wojcik’s chest open. “I’ve had it, Harry,” Wojcik gasped to Harris as he fell to the ground. Stricken with horror, Harris could only watch as Wojcik’s exposed heart convulsed in its final pumps.
Mines killed four other Rangers and blinded a fifth. Shrapnel from one mine hit Harris, who felt as though someone had swung a baseball bat into his gut. The metal pierced his Mae West life vest, a frontally inflating device named in honor of the actress’s sultry bosom. The vest self-inflated and then shriveled with a hiss as air leaked from the perforation. Looking down, Harris saw that the hot metal had cut open his stomach, and that his intestines were spilling out.
Given the severity of the injury, no one would have faulted Harris had he lain down on the beach and awaited medical attention. But he chose instead to lead other Rangers in the charge up to the city. Pushing his intestines back in with his cartridge belt, he guided men out of the minefield and into the riptide of Rangers that was flowing up the bluff.
The Rangers coursed into the city so quickly that they could see Italian soldiers who were still running from their quarters toward fighting positions. Taking aim at anyone wearing blue fatigues, the Rangers shot some of the Italians dead in the streets. Lieutenant Colonel William Orlando Darby, commanding officer of the three Ranger battalions, was at the front, shouting directions to his Rangers as they surmounted the crest.
Once the Rangers had secured a foothold beyond the top of the bluff, they organized attacks on Italian strongpoints. Darby sought out the sections of town where the Italians were putting up the stiffest resistance. Finding a group of Rangers in a spirited gunfight against Italian soldiers who were barricaded in a schoolhouse, Darby cobbled together every nearby Ranger into a makeshift assault force. Among those whom he enrolled in the mission was his driver, Carlo Contrera. As Darby briefed the men on the scheme of attack, he noticed that Contrera was quivering.