by Dick Couch
The members of Class 8-04 aren’t the only ones entering this training pipeline. This Pre-SFAS class also marks the beginning of my journey in Special Forces. As mentioned previously, Special Forces training is a changing, dynamic business. Each class is a little different than the one before. There are continuous changes, refinements, and modifications, so no two classes are quite the same. Yet there’s a continuing awareness of what works and what doesn’t work. If something’s changed and it doesn’t work, they try something else or revert to the old way of doing things. I talked with a lot of old-timers who came through the Qualification Course in the 1960s and 1970s. They’re amazed at the refinements and structure of the current version of the Q-Course, and yet some training evolutions have remained unchanged for decades. For this Navy SEAL, it was all new. Yet, from day one, it had the flavor of SOF training—specially selected men training for a difficult and dangerous job.
“Fall in, three ranks, dress and cover down! Come on people, move! I want first platoon to my left, second platoon in front of me, and third platoon to my right. Too slow, way too slow! Everybody drop! Sergeant Jennings, just what in the hell do we have here? What have you got me into? Are you sure these people are soldiers? Don’t tell me they are airborne infantrymen. They look like a bunch of old women! What the hell is going on?”
First Sergeant Will Carter is standing on a three-foot raised platform in front of the assembly area. Before him, the 154 men who were struggling into formation are now down on the rough paved roadway trying to do push-ups. The area is bathed in yellow light from the floods mounted on the nearby barracks. This is a small class; normally, there are between 200 and 250 men in a Pre-SFAS class. There’s enough room for them to stand in ranks, but not enough for them to do push-ups. Stepping in and around this low, pulsing mass of camouflaged uniforms are the TAC NCOs. They are dressed the same as their students, but they all wear baseball caps.
“That’s not a push-up; that’s a head bob. This isn’t boot camp; that isn’t going to cut it!”
“All the way down, all the way up. No, no, no—your chest, not your belly!”
“You, yeah, you. Number 63. Get off your knees!”
“Tired, soldier? You’ve only been here two minutes. It’s only going to get worse.”
First Sergeant Carter picks up a bullhorn and addresses the class. “Recover! Now I want you to pretend you’re soldiers and get into formation. Quickly, people, quickly.” Carter is a hefty six-footer with a barrel chest and a round, amiable face, yet he’s a formidable presence. He’s the drover of the SFAS preparation course. Master Sergeant Carter isn’t the only master sergeant assigned to Alpha Company, 1st Battalion, 1st Special Warfare Training Group, but he’s the master sergeant designated as the first sergeant. He’s universally addressed as “First Sergeant” or “Top” by his fellow sergeants. Much of the responsibility for preparing these men for their assessment and selection to Special Forces training falls on his shoulders.
First Sergeant Carter is from East Stone Gap, Virginia, and has spent close to twenty-five years in the Army. He was with the 1st Special Forces Group for sixteen years, and is fluent, if not quite native, in several Indonesian and Malay dialects. He spent two tours with the 1st Group battalion that is stationed in Okinawa and has been forward deployed all over Southeast Asia. “This is it for me,” he told me soon after I checked in with Alpha Company. “After I finish with this job, my next duty station is Fort Living Room.”
The formation is semiorganized chaos. In ranks, the assigned student squad leaders are trying to get a muster and report their roll call up to the assigned student platoon leaders. While this is taking place, the TACs are roaming up and down the files, inspecting the new men.
“You look like crap, soldier. You are to come to every formation in a clean uniform and blackened boots. You are clearly unsat—you hear me! Now drop!”
“Call that a haircut, roster number 133? You come out here tomorrow with that much hair and you’ll wish you hadn’t. If you want to become a Special Forces soldier, you damn well better become a soldier first.”
The students wear their rank insignia on the collars of their camouflaged uniforms, which are called battle dress utilities, or BDUs. Most of them are privates first class—PFCs—or specialists. They are addressed as “PFC” or “Specialist.” There’s a strip of white adhesive tape above their nametags and below the two cargo pockets on either side of their trousers. Their roster number is boldly written in black Magic Marker on the tape. Their names are visible, but they are simply numbers to the cadre—for now.
“OK, ladies,” booms First Sergeant Carter on the bullhorn, “since a decent formation seems to be beyond you, let’s do the caterpillar. Formation, right FACE!” Under Carter’s direction and the coaching of the TACs, the students string out in a push-up position, hands on the road with their boots on the shoulders of the man behind them.
“OK, down ONE!” The sea of camouflage drops to the roadbed. “And UP!” The mass of bodies collectively rises. “Down TWO!”
For the next half an hour, the formation coalesces into ranks, then breaks down into scattered platoon and squad-sized groupings for push-ups, sit-ups, jumping jacks, squat thrusts, flutter kicks, and exercises like the caterpillar, which I had never seen before. It’s still dark. A moist cloud of perspiration and heavy breathing rises from Class 8-04 into the harsh glare of the floodlights. This is 8-04’s welcome to Alpha Company and Special Forces training. Slowly, between the shouting and the calisthenics, a muster of the class works its way up to the podium to Sergeant Jennings.
“Found your lost chicks?” I ask.
“Yep. Seems like two of them just went off to their barracks without getting checked off my list. Or”—he grins—“I just missed them.”
“You do this with every class?”
“Pretty much. If they get in on time, we like to shake them up Sunday afternoon or Sunday evening. Then we can get right into training on Monday morning. This little welcome session’s to get them focused on the work ahead. It helps mold the class. We want to make it hard enough so they have to help each other. These aren’t your average soldiers, and many of them weren’t challenged before they got here. At one time or another here, everyone needs some help from his buddy. We like that to happen early. It also lets them know that if they’re not prepared to give us 110 percent, then they need to be someplace else.”
While we talked, a squad of students was doing flutter kicks in front of us. Jennings called them to their feet. “Too slow, men. Drop!” They all drop but for one man. He remains standing, bathed in sweat and looking miserable. “What’s your problem, soldier?”
“I want to quit, sir. I don’t belong here.”
“Quit? I didn’t ask you about quitting. I told you to drop. Now drop!” The hapless student melts to the pavement under Jennings’s scowl. Jennings bends over him. “Now push ’em out and don’t ever call me sir. You address me as sergeant, you got that?”
“Y-yes, sir—I mean, yes, Sergeant.”
Jennings steps away from the student. “We don’t let students quit until a week from today,” he tells me in a quiet voice. “This is a rough day for them. If we can get them through the first week and into the weekend, some of them who’d have quit under the stress of the moment will hang in there—at least that’s the theory.”
“I notice you call them students. Why is that?”
“Here they’re students or trainees. They don’t become Special Forces candidates until they get out to Camp Mackall for selection.”
With just a hint of dawn and another hot, humid day in the making, First Sergeant Carter puts them in road-march formation and leads them out of the area, past Pike Field and down a gravel road. Once on the gravel, he breaks into a brisk trot and Class 8-04 begins to string out behind him. The TAC NCOs run along the flanks, dispensing equal measures of harassment and encouragement. Following along behind the formation is a single officer—the Alpha Company commander,
an Army captain. Carter takes them over a bridge that spans a forty-foot slow-moving stream and up a long quarter-mile incline. As I run alongside, I pick out the man who tried to quit.
“I don’t understand,” he says to one of his fellow students between gasps. “I told them I wanted to quit. I told them.”
“Yeah,” the other replies, “but you’re still here, aren’t you?”
After a short run, they return to the bridge. Only this time, Carter takes them into the stream. Most of the TACs and the company commander go in with the students. I keep to the bridge. The first sergeant halts them midstream and starts them on jumping jacks followed by toe touches. The water’s depth is about three and a half feet.
“Are there snakes in there?” I ask one of the TACs.
“Sir, this is August in North Carolina. You got water, you got snakes.”
Back at the assembly area, the class is put back in formation and First Sergeant Carter asks for a report. The assigned student squad leaders take roll and report to their student platoon leader. They report to the student class leader. It’s still confusion, but ordered confusion.
“First Sergeant, the class is formed. One hundred fifty-four men assigned, one hundred fifty-two men present.”
“Where’re your other two men?” Carter booms at him. Accountability is a big issue. “We’ve been at this for barely an hour and already you’ve lost two of my soldiers. You’re fired. You”—Carter points to one of the other rollbacks—“get up here. You’re now the class leader. Now get me a good muster.”
The student class leader, as well as the student platoon and squad leaders, are rotated often; the cadre wants to see as many students in leadership positions as possible. After another round of calisthenics at the assembly area, the class members straggle back to their barracks to change before heading off for morning chow. The new men are a little more than an hour into their training at Fort Bragg, and some are already questioning their suitability for this work. They’re comforted to some degree by the comments of their fellow students from the previous class. “The first day is like this,” they tell their new classmates. “It won’t get any worse. But then, it won’t get a whole lot better either.”
Most of the first day is spent in the barracks, in their squad bays. Each two-story building holds two sixteen- to eighteen-man squads—one on the first deck and the other on the second. Each squad will normally have two TAC NCOs assigned, one primary and one alternate. These are veteran Special Forces sergeants, usually with the rank of sergeant first class and usually with at least ten years in Special Forces. The TACs introduce the new men to the barracks, and show them how to stow their gear—what has to be locked in their locker and what must be laid out on or near their bunk. As with all special operations military training, there’s a host of protocols and ways of doing things that are very specific and exact. There are two reasons for this. First of all, this is high-stress training, and the buildings are very old. The men have to care for them, care for their gear, care for themselves, and live together. This calls for a great deal of regimentation in the mechanics of life during training and nontraining time. The second is that the Special Forces way of life demands a great deal of precision and attention to detail. It may sound simple, but turning out for every evolution properly attired and with the right equipment takes planning and preparation. Cleanliness and personal hygiene in this environment also take time and attention. Deployed Special Forces teams often live in worse conditions than these, so proper physical habits and a structured communal-living etiquette are important. This training begins on day one.
“These are all good kids, and many of them are great kids,” Sergeant First Class Donovan Tess tells me. We’re in his squad bay, and all around us students are mopping floors, preparing gear, folding uniforms, and polishing boots. “But they all have to get along and work together. There are three showers, two washers, two dryers. This barracks and each individual’s gear and bunk have to be up to standard or the whole squad will be called to task. I may miss one of them sloughing off; the other members of their squad won’t. The ones who look out only for themselves or who consistently put their welfare over others won’t make it in Special Forces. Neither will someone who doesn’t pull his own weight. These kids’re smart enough or they wouldn’t be here. But many have never been in a situation where they had to look out for the other guy. To make it in Special Forces, they all have to get along, and they have to learn to pull together. The graded evolutions are individual efforts, but here in the barracks, they live as a team.”
Tess has been in the Army for eighteen years, but in Special Forces for only eight. Before coming to the training command, he was with 10th Group and deployed to the Republic of Georgia, Slovenia, Germany, and Iraq. He grew up in Phoenix and came into the Army right out of high school.
“These men have to forget about where they came from and what they were doing before they got here. That’s all old business. Their total focus should be on getting themselves and their buddies ready for the next evolution. They should always be thinking, ‘What can I do better?’ and ‘Who needs my help?’ For the most part, those who belong here make it, and those who don’t go away. What breaks your heart is when some kid tries his level best and is always there for his teammates, but he simply doesn’t have the physical tools or situational awareness to do the work. The TACs will always go the extra mile for that kind of soldier, but if this isn’t his thing, we want him gone; we want to get him to someplace in the Army where he can make a contribution. This kind of soldiering’s not for everyone.”
Sergeant Tess ambles around the squad bay, helping some with their gear, dropping others for a few push-ups, and kidding with most of them.
“Miller, you call that a properly stowed locker? It’s a sewer. Drop.” He pulls all the uniforms and gear from the locker and dumps them on the floor. “OK, Miller, recover. And the rest of you, gather around. This is how it’s done.” Tess begins to pull uniforms from the pile, shake them out, fold them, and stow them in the locker. He takes Miller’s rucksack, dumps it out, and repacks it in an orderly manner. Soon Miller’s locker and equipment are a picture of organization and neatness. “Last time, Miller. I’m not your mama. I want all your gear and clothing looking like this, or we’ll be going on a little trip to guess where?”
“Uh, the swamp, Sergeant Tess?”
“That’s right, the swamp. I’ll be back in an hour or so, and I want to see some good-looking lockers and bunks.” I follow Tess out to ask about the swamp. We walk around the building to a shallow forty-foot square of standing, brackish water. It was ugly and looked like the surface of a cesspool.
“That’s the swamp. We used to put ’em all in it as soon as they got off the bus to let them know they were in for a different kind of training than they experienced at Fort Benning. But that was really over the top, and, quite honestly, sent the wrong message. These men’re volunteers, and we need to respect that. We’re here to teach these guys, not harass them. Now it’s more of a remedial thing. Every class has a personality. If the class begins to break down and has real problems, then we run them through the muck to refocus them on their training here and their duty to their squad mates. It may not look like it, but this class is doing pretty well. It’s a matter of effort. We keep a certain amount of pressure on no matter what, but as a class, these guys are doing pretty well. They’re trying to do their best and looking out for each other, and that counts for a lot.”
I return to the barracks and take the stairs. On the second floor, another group of X-Rays is working in their squad bay and tending to their personal equipment, much as Sergeant Tess’s squad. I notice one soldier sitting on his bunk, polishing his boots. His locker has some semblance of order, and his rucksack looks packed and ready. He looks a little older than the others.
“How’s it going?” I ask.
“Working our butts off, sir, but we’ll get through it. So you’re the writer?” I nod. The class was briefe
d that I would be with them for this training. “I’m Antonio Costa,” he says, holding out his hand. “Tell me about this book you’re writing.”
We talk a while, and I steer the conversation to my favorite question for the X-Ray soldiers. “What were you doing before you decided to go into the Army?”
“I was working for Northwest Airlines,” he replies.
“Doing what?”
He grins. “I’m an airline pilot.”
The grin becomes a chuckle; the surprised look on my face is one I’m sure he’s seen before.
“Furloughed?” I ask.
“No, sir. I’m National Guard, and I’m on leave from the airlines for this training.”
“Nineteenth Group?” I ask, guessing at one of the two National Guard groups.
“No, sir, the 20th, out of Jacksonville.”
“I guess you know the Guard groups are deploying almost as much as the active groups.”
“I do. I expect I’ll be going over next fall, that is, if they don’t kick me out of here.”
I do a quick mental calculation. “Next fall? Wouldn’t you be in language school about then?”
“I don’t think they’ll send me. I’m fluent in Spanish and Italian.”
Specialist Antonio Costa is five-nine, solidly built, with dark eyes and hair. He has an open and easy smile, and his manner is serious but with a touch of humor. We talk for a while, and I learn that Costa is thirty-three years old, lived in Europe for most of his childhood, and attended high school in Madrid. He has a bachelor of science in aeronautical science from Emory University. Costa tells me that his biggest challenge in training is keeping himself fit and free of injury during those evolutions designed to wear the students down. When I ask about his family, he whips out a picture of his wife and new baby. He is quick to point out that being a good husband and father is one of his goals. I finally get around to my second-favorite X-Ray question: “Why’re you here?”