Chosen Soldier

by Dick Couch

  “OK, it’s now 1037. I want everyone freshly cammied up, rucked up, and mustered outside for inspection at 1100.”

  The team members blacken their faces and help each other ruck up. Tim Baker, who’s the assistant 240 gunner with the machine-gun tripod, carries a ruck of just over a hundred pounds. In accordance with operational security doctrine, the men sanitize the briefing bay, scrubbing the whiteboards and destroying the sand-table terrain models. Outside the hut, Sergeant O’Kane inspects his A-team, Specialist Costa the C-team, and Sergeant Hall inspects them all. The student ODA then files over to a designated training area near their barracks, where the men rehearse actions at danger crossings and actions at the objective. Eight-one-one then test-fires its weapons and returns to the main compound where its helo, a four-by-four truck, is waiting. The men board this notional helo in the reverse order they will exit the truck. Then they rehearse the helo insertion, leaving the back of the truck in orderly fashion and moving quickly into a security perimeter. The men of 811 can now do these things in their sleep, and they’re not far from just that. These are very tired soldiers. Early afternoon, they make their helo/truck insertion and begin their patrol to the objective area. Jan halts them a short distance from the insertion point.

  “OK, men, bring it in.” Eight-one-one gathers around their cadre sergeant. “Sergeant Hall, that was an excellent briefing. I liked the conduct of your inspection and the rehearsals. For you newer men, take note of this. Inspections and rehearsals are important. I know you’re tired and there’s a tendency to take shortcuts, but don’t. That’s part of being a professional—doing the routine and mundane tasks again and again. When you do this for real, on deployment, you’ll often have had less sleep than you had last night and the last few weeks. We train like we fight, and that means doing it when our butts are dragging.” Turning back to Hall, he says, “You’re done, Sergeant.” Then he says to Captain Santos, “Sir, you’re the patrol leader for the first mission. Take a few minutes with your team and let’s drive on.”

  The first mission is still a roadside ambush of a foot patrol—something they’ve done many times. Santos leads them to a secure position above the road and moves forward with O’Kane and two others for a closer look at the ambush site. A short time later he returns, briefs the team, and they move up to a rally point, a small clearing a hundred meters from the ambush site, where they dump their rucks. Normally, two men would remain behind to provide security for the team’s equipment, but there’s nothing to be learned by watching the rucks. With Jan’s approval, Santos takes the entire team to the ambush site. First he sets his left- and right-side security elements—two men each to guard the flanks and notify Santos if or when there is movement on the road. The security elements each have an AT4 rocket launcher so they can engage enemy armor should it appear. Santos then sets in the gun. He sites the M240 with a good field of fire in the direction of an approaching enemy squad. Tom Kendall sets up on the gun with Tim Baker laying out ammo. Then the two of them begin to gather brush and foliage to camouflage their positions. It’s now midafternoon with plenty of daylight, so they take special care to remain hidden. A short distance away, Santos places Byron O’Kane and his A-team in a position where they are well concealed, but can quickly assault the kill zone of the ambush. It’s a classic L-shaped setup, with the A- and C-teams forming the L. Santos places himself between his gun team and his assault team and then they wait, as do Jan and I down on the road, but well outside the kill zone.

  Twenty minutes later, five role players in black uniforms, khaki field coats, and AK-47 rifles come wandering along the road. When they enter the kill zone, they’re cut down by a withering volley of blank automatic-weapons fire. On Santos’s order, the A-team sweeps through the kill zone and quickly searches the dead enemy bodies. Amid all the shouting and shooting, David Altman calls out the elapsed time at thirty-second intervals. It’s a hit-and-run mission and speed on target is essential. The weapons and equipment taken from the dead enemy soldiers are dumped in a pile; Captain Santos calls in his security elements from either flank. The squad melts into the roadside foliage in a security perimeter. Sergeant Aaron Dunn places a dummy block of C-4 explosive on the collected guns and gear. Santos nods at him.

  “Fire in the hole!” Dunn calls out and pulls the fuse igniter. “Fire in the hole!” the team echoes.

  “Burning!” Dunn yells as he checks his firing assembly to ensure the time fuse is burning properly.

  “OK, Sergeant O’Kane,” Santos orders, “take us out of here.” O’Kane sends Dan Barstow, the A-team point man, off on a prearranged direction from the ambush site. The rest of the team follow in squad order, with Costa counting everyone off the target to ensure that no one is left behind.

  “OK, men,” Jan calls after them, “hold it up, and let’s bring it in again.” Sergeant Janss holds a critique session that includes input from the risen-from-the-dead role players. He asks Santos, O’Kane, and Costa what they think they could have done better—what their teams could have done better. From my perspective, it was a textbook setup and execution. “There was one point where the volume of fire died off,” Jan tells them. “You can’t slack off and give them time to recover—you stick it to them and you keep sticking it to them. But overall, it was a good ambush. Your time on target by my watch was four and a half minutes. That’s excellent.” He consults his notepad, tears off a sheet, and hands it to Matt Anderson. “Captain Anderson, you’re now the patrol leader. Kendall, you take the A-team and Altman, you have the C-team leader. These are your next coordinates. You need to be there no later than 2000. At that location, you will be met by a friendly agent who will give you further direction. How’s your commo with the cadre base station?”

  “We have good commo, Sergeant,” Anderson replies.

  “Good. Take a few minutes to sort yourself out and shift around your equipment, then head out to the linkup point with your contact.”

  “Roger that, Sergeant.”

  “And good luck. Make me proud.”

  “Roger that, Sergeant.”

  The role players walk back to a Humvee they had parked in the woods a few hundred meters away. They’ll return to the cadre base camp set up on the edge of Fort Bragg’s Nijmegen Drop Zone to await their next stroll through the kill zone of this ambush site. Sergeant Janss makes his way back across the piece of terrain that 811 just covered. A few hundred meters off one of the main roads, Gary Courtland has pitched a tent and set up a small camp. He and Jan will alternately work the ambush scenario. Later that evening, shortly after Jan links up with Courtland, another student ODA finds them. That team is given its mission and the ambush site coordinates, and the ODA sets off with Courtland following it. He and Sergeant Janss will make the trek to and from that same ambush-site scenario many times over the next three days, watching student ODAs kill the same role players and conducting after-action critiques.

  Eight-one-one continues its operational odyssey. It takes the men about two hours to reach the grid coordinates Jan gave them. There, in the fading light, they find a tent and a man sipping coffee by a fire. It’s cold but clear, with the temperature scheduled to dip well into the mid-thirties. The student ODA quietly sets up security with the man and the area around the tent well covered by team gunners. Captain Anderson and Specialist Kendall then approach the man by the fire. He’s in the role of a Pinelander, someone sympathetic to the Americans but very wary. They exchange greetings, and the man tells them about an enemy installation he has seen that serves as an ammunition resupply depot. He shows Anderson and Kendall where it is on the map. Anderson questions him carefully about the terrain, the type of installation, and guard-force activity. Once back with the team, Anderson checks in by radio with his command element at the Nijmegen base camp. He’s ordered by the base commander to attack the supply depot, 811’s second target, at first light.

  Matt Anderson leads 811 away from the Pinelander’s camp a few hundred meters, where they go on another s
ecurity halt. There he makes his way around the perimeter, briefing his men in twos and threes. “Here’s the deal,” he whispers to them. “We have a raid target that’s about five klicks [five kilometers, or five thousand meters] east of here. I plan to cover as much ground as we can while we have some light. When we get to the target area, we’ll set up a patrol base this side of the target and do the recon. Our scheduled hit time is at first light. The same standard procedures and signals remain in effect. Let’s get ready to move out.”

  Eight-one-one moves into its patrol base shortly after midnight. The men set out security and begin to rotate the personnel on watch, while the others get a few hours of sleep. Anderson, Kendall, Dolemont, and Baker get no sleep. They go forward to conduct the recon of the target. They move around the target, making observations and taking notes. The sentry role players at the ammo depot don’t get much sleep, either, as they man a guard post and perform roving security duties for the benefit of the student raiders moving silently out in the bush. Anderson leaves Baker and Dolemont with a squad radio to keep eyes-on the target while he and Kendall return to the patrol base to brief 811 on their target. Well before dawn, they return to the target site and dump their rucks. Then Anderson goes about the business of placing his C-team in a good fire-support position and his A-team in a good assault position. They move carefully and quietly in the predawn darkness. Before the sun is up, the bark of the 240 shatters the dawn. Moments later, the 811 A-team swarms over the enemy ammo depot like a medieval plague. When the site is secure, it becomes a cataloging-and-destruction exercise. There are boxes of ammunition and shipping crates of rifles, rockets, and claymore mines. Anderson directs the inventory of the cache, and then 811 rigs ordnance for demolition.

  After Sergeant First Class Warner, the cadre sergeant at the ammo depot target, gives them an after-action critique, 811 gets a new set of coordinates. Then Sergeant Warner, based on written instructions from Sergeant Janss, makes leadership changes and releases 811 to continue its journey. None of the men in 811 know how many targets they have before them or even how many days they will be in the field. They do know this is the twenty-ninth day of their thirty-five-day Phase II training. All they can do is patrol to their next set of coordinates and radio in for instructions. With Hall and 811’s two officers finished with their leadership duties, the X-Rays begin to take their turns as patrol leader. Specialist Kendall assumes duties as the patrol leader for the third target, a raid on an enemy radio-relay site. At this target, there is a designated time for the attack, and the team is given intelligence that a courier with sensitive information is to visit the site around noon. Kendall has to get his men in place and be prepared to initiate his attack when the courier arrives. Eight-one-one works the target area in a steady downpour. At 1155, a cadre sergeant arrives in a pickup truck, only to be shot to pieces as 811 makes its assault.

  At this target, 811 has some problems. The communication between Kendall and the C-team is not what it should be, and the base of fire from the C-team is poorly coordinated with the A-team’s assault. As a result, two of the enemy at the site escape and run off into the woods. Kendall sends Hall and Santos to track them down. The senior cadre sergeant at the radio-relay target covers all this in the after-action critique.

  “I don’t have to tell you that you had poor coordination with your fire-support element,” the cadre sergeant tells them as we stand around a large fire at the target site. “That’s why you have to have an alternate method of communication if, as it happened here, your squad radio fails. Now, two of the bad guys ran off when you made your assault. This can happen. So what do you do? Let them go? Chase them down? Chasing after them can be very dangerous—they know the lay of the land and you don’t. Shoot them? Very soon, you’re going to be operating in a reality-based world, not a school-solution world. Every shoot/ no-shoot decision is driven by tactical imperatives and the area situation. Is the guy who runs just a scared dude? Does he represent a future tactical threat? Is he an al-Qaeda leader? Will killing this guy serve the mission or simply make insurgents of his extended family? These are life-and-death decisions, and you guys are going to be making them for real. Are you with me here?”

  Eight-one-one’s patrol to the target area, the target recon, the setup, the attack, the chasing down of enemy soldiers, and the after-action critique are all made in a December downpour. The ODA, the cadre sergeants, the role players, and the writer are all soaked to the skin. “OK, guys,” the cadre sergeant tells 811, “you’re on your own time. When you’re sufficiently dry and warm, let’s get back at it.” Then the exercise continues.

  Specialist Costa is the patrol leader for the fourth target, the recovery of an injured NGO (nongovernmental organization) worker. The worker, an International Red Cross employee, is in the hands of mountain tribesmen who are camped near the edge of a pine forest. They’re bandits, so the environment is semipermissive, which means not totally hostile. Costa sets out two sniper elements to cover the camp while he and PFC Baker approach the tribesmen to negotiate for the release of the NGO worker. It takes a show of force and a promise of future payment to gain the release of the worker.

  The fifth target finds them. Private First Class Pantella is leading 811 to the next set of coordinates when his point man spots a vehicle and a file of enemy soldiers heading their way. The team quickly sets a hasty ambush and engages them. After the firefight, the exercise becomes a drill in searching the EPWs and the vehicle for sensitive information. As on all the other missions on this final field exercise, the target cadre sergeant holds an after-action critique. Eight-one-one is doing a lot of things right, but there’s always some aspect of the mission or the engagement that could have been better. The learning never stops.

  From my perspective, I’m very impressed with the time and attention given to these training scenarios. Some role players are soldiers from Fort Bragg awaiting the start of their SF training, or former SF candidates recovering from injuries acquired in a previous class who will return to training when they are healed. Others are volunteers from various SOF and non-SOF units based at Bragg. They work hard; it’s not easy being a target, nor is it all that pleasant getting roughed up in an EPW personnel search. I’m able to get out to see a few other student ODAs working in this training area. I try to be objective, but they don’t seem quite as proficient or as professional as 811. But then, 811 is my team. It could be I’m just a little biased.

  The sixth target is another raid, but with a twist. The target tasking is again radioed to them. It is a small enemy base camp that is reported to hold an American POW. Sergeant Dunn, the former radar technician, is the patrol leader. Dunn puts his team in security perimeter and sends out two recon teams to observe the target. In the remaining daylight, they observe the camp and the security patterns, and identify the small cage where the captured POW, a downed pilot, is being held. Back at the security position, Dunn briefs his team; the plan is to set a sniper overwatch and move the gun to a support position where their field of fire can bear on the small guard force but away from the caged American. A sniper overwatch calls for a good shooter to be in a position where he can protect his teammates who have to assault the target. The fire support and assault have to be choreographed to cut the prisoner away from his captors. Eight-one-one does its job, and after the chaos of the raid, a dazed former POW in a tattered flight suit, supported between Sergeant Barstow and Captain Anderson, is bustled away from the camp. A few hundred meters from the target, the cadre sergeant gives them their after-action critique and a new set of coordinates.

  Target seven, another radio tasking, is yet another cache. Private First Class Tim Baker is the patrol leader, and they reach the site well after dark. The role players are two civilians who have a large store of equipment, all from U.S. military stocks. They are black marketeers. Baker and his A-team leader, Sergeant Daniel Barstow, are able to get close—it’s a dark night with drizzle on and off, and the camp is well lit by a large fire. After his
fire support and sniper overwatch are set, Baker and Barstow hail the camp and walk in, weapons slung. They pretend to be hunters, and Barstow plays the role of a drunk. They want to buy supplies, but the black marketeers want too much money. An argument breaks out, and Baker signals his team; the two pretend hunters drop to the ground, and 811 quickly assaults the camp. Sergeant Stan Hall leads the search team as they take inventory and prepare the cached materials for demolition. He finds a booby trap, a wire tied to a hidden smoke-grenade spoon. Hall is the only candidate to find and disarm it; all the other student ODAs find it the hard way. Meanwhile, Dolemont finds a cadre pickup truck stashed in a nearby ravine. He pulls into the camp to extract the team. The senior site cadre applauds Dolemont’s initiative, but makes him surrender the pickup. Eight-one-one gets a very positive after-action critique and moves on to target eight. Unbeknownst to them, it’s their last target.

  Specialist David Altman is the leader for target eight. It is a long patrol to the final objective. This is their fourth day in the field. They’ve walked about twenty-two miles, not including all the reconnaissance movement in and around the targets. It’s rained most of the time, and the one night that it was clear, the temperature dropped close to freezing. While they’ve not been told as much, 811 senses this is its last target. Just before midnight, 811 is met by a good old boy with a shotgun and a bluetick hound. Playing the role of a Pinelander who is out hunting, he tells Altman about a group of bad guys who are camped at the site of a plane crash. He says they are holding an American captive. Altman radios this information into their commander and is told to recover the pilot and retrieve a black box aboard the aircraft. Eight-one-one finds the crash site and spends most of the night preparing for a dawn assault. This is a difficult target. The crash site is the fuselage of an old Navy S-2 Tracker—a carrier-based antisubmarine aircraft. It’s anyone’s guess how this aircraft got to this training site on Fort Bragg. Near the aircraft, there’s a campfire and a man in a flight suit tied to a chair. Men with AK-47s roam about the site on an irregular basis. The preassault reconnaissance also identifies a spider hole in which one of the security guards is hiding. Altman briefs 811, breaking his ODA into fire support, assault, search, and POW-handling teams. At dawn of their fifth day in the field, they make their move on the crash site. The POW handlers manage to creep close to the pilot before the shooting begins, which is a diversion away from the captive’s location. They toss out smoke grenades and make a dash to secure the pilot and spirit him away. The assault team deals with the guard force, including the man in the spider hole. All goes well until the search team, led by PFC Pantella, finds the black box inside the aircraft. It’s booby-trapped, and they set it off—a smoke grenade that quickly drives them from the interior of the hulk. Still, 811 was one of the few teams to successfully recover the pilot. After the critique, the team moves to its last set of coordinates. It’s a familiar location; it’s where they were inserted. They are bone tired, but they move in good tactical order. And their spirits are good; they’re headed for the extraction site with the prospect of hot chow and a hot shower in the not-too-distant future.