by Dick Couch
IT’S A GIRL. Captain Santos and his daughter Anna—two hours old—with the author. Santos was granted a six-hour pass from Phase IV to see his firstborn, then returned to his team to parachute into Pineland and the Robin Sage scenario.
CHECK EQUIPMENT! ODA 915’s cadre team sergeant, Troy Blackman, checks Staff Sergeant Tom Olin’s reserve parachute. Note: This is a practice, nonequipment jump.
MARCH OF THE PENGUINS. Student ODA 915 under full combat load waddles to waiting Casa transports that will drop them into Pineland.
AIRBORNE! ODA 915, six of them in two Casa aircraft, insert into Pineland and the Robin Sage exercise. Each man jumps with a hundred pounds or more of equipment.
WE DO IT THIS WAY. Captain Miguel Santos briefs a contingent of Pineland guerrillas on the Rules of Land Warfare and the humane handling of enemy combatants.
DRESSING OUT THE PIG. Sergeant Andrew Kohl, back to camera, and Staff Sergeant Tom Olin do the honors. The pig provided a non-MRE dinner for thirty men.
ALLEGIANCE TO PINELAND. Captain Miguel Santos and members of student ODA 915 administer the oath of allegiance to two new guerrilla recruits during Robin Sage.
CONVOY BRIEFING. Iraqi Army scouts are briefed by a Special Forces sergeant prior to a Humvee convoy run from Al Asad to Hit. Author in center of photo. Photograph courtesy of Staff Seargeant Chris Stanis.
EIGHTEEN X-RAY AND THE AUTHOR. A year after their time together at Camp Mackall, Tom Kendall and Dick Couch spend a few moments together in Iraq.
“That enemy fire is getting closer,” Burke tells his student. “What are you going to do?”
“His breathing is more regular now,” the student medic says as he checks the tourniquet. “I’m ready to move him.”
“Do so,” Burke replies.
The medic calls in his security, and they become litter bearers. They move the patient across a shallow ravine, where Burke allows they’re at a safe location—for a while. There the student medic begins his rapid assessment. He checks the patient’s torso and each limb for additional injury. Further inspection of the fallen soldier yields a broken leg. As the student medic works, he says what he’s doing and thinking. “Breathing rapid and shallow,” the medic reports. “As you find it,” Burke replies. On taking his patient’s blood pressure and pulse, the medic says, “One hundred twenty over 80, pulse 90 and strong”—the actual condition of the patient. Burke replies, “Ninety over 60, pulse weak and rapid,” and the medic treats his patient accordingly. The medic splints the leg and gets an IV started. The patient seems to have a neck injury that interferes with his breathing, so a neck collar is put in place. The patient’s now ready to be evacuated.
After a critique by Instructor Burke, the patient is carried out of the woods to the field hospital tent and hoisted upon a treatment table. There he will be tended by another student training team. The new team of caregivers will have the advantages of the field hospital equipment, but must work from the information given them on the 1380 form provided by the student medic in the field. The field hospital care and treatment is the third area of evaluation. A new student medic takes charge and continues to assess the patient’s injuries and conduct treatment.
Perhaps the hardest job is playing the victim. He’s a stage prop—all marked up, moulaged, and dressed to look like a battlefield casualty. He has to lie there and exhibit the assigned symptoms and stay in character as much as he can. It takes thirty minutes or more in the moulage tent to get made up, and nearly that much time to get cleaned up. And being a patient is also a learning experience; the student caregivers learn to handle others as they would like to be handled.
The trauma lanes are a good preparation for the field paramedic and EMT internship duty. After the twenty-six-week combat medic curriculum, the 18 Delta students have a short break before continuing with the second half of their Special Forces Medical Sergeant Course. The second half is the independent practice portion of the training. It begins in the lab with blood work, urinalysis, pharmacology, and parasitology, with follow-up work in disease assessment and management. The trauma training continues with advanced work in treating multiple battlefield patients. The prospective Special Forces medics also receive training in surgery, anesthesia, nursing, and postoperative care. And since combat medics may be the only medical option in a primitive area, they receive training in dental anesthesia and extractions. They also train in veterinary medicine, herd management, and food inspection.
Far more than the other MOS trainees, the 18 Delta candidates work in an academic and clinical environment. The Medical Training Center has a modern medical library, and the students have a wireless network for access to classroom materials and the instructor staff.
“I thought the combat medic course was a grind, but the independent practice training is even harder,” Byron O’Kane, now Staff Sergeant O’Kane, tells me when he is two-thirds of the way through his 18 Delta training. “There’s a lot to learn in the surgery and anesthesia training. You have to learn it, demonstrate proficiency in the operating room, and you have to stand for your oral boards. After that, we’ll have another internship out in a civilian hospital, where we spend time in the operating room and clinical settings. It’s been a long slog, but I’m beginning to see the light at the end of the tunnel. I’m looking forward to getting finished and back out into the field.”
“On to Phase IV.”
“On to Phase IV.”
Of the three soldiers in my student ODA from Phase II who chose 18 Delta, Sergeant Byron O’Kane proved to be the superstar. He was the honors graduate in his 18 Delta class. Sergeant First Class Stan Hall graduated in the middle of the class, but without any recycle time. Only about half of those who start the 18 Delta training are able to go straight through without having to retake one or more portions of the course. One in five finds this MOS is not for them or is too difficult for them, and they are usually assigned to another Special Forces MOS training venue. Specialist (now Sergeant) Frank Dolemont, the combat veteran and tactically the most proficient of my guys in Phase II, had trouble with the academics and was recycled to a following class. He’s still working to become a Special Forces medic.
It is interesting to note that the 18 Delta Phase III MOS training is nearly three times as long as Phases I, II, and IV combined.
“We’ve trained you to save lives on and off the battlefield,” First Sergeant Gavin Haines tells them when they leave the Medical Training Center as Special Forces qualified medics. Haines is a twenty-two-year veteran who grew up in central Oregon. He is a Thai speaker who has spent most of his career with the 1st Special Forces Group. “You are a healer. Your job is to take care of your teammates and to cross-train them in combat casualty care. But never forget that you are a Special Forces soldier. When you put that Green Beret on, you are a warrior first and a medic second.”
THE 18 ECHOS—THE SPECIAL FORCES COMMUNICATIONS SERGEANTS
Perhaps next to the 18 Deltas, the 18 Echo communications sergeant MOS training is the most difficult. Technically, it might be the most challenging. Prior to 18 Echo Class 1-05, the communications sergeants, like the medical sergeants, had a longer Phase III than the other MOS curriculums. Through January 2005, the 18 Echo course was a month longer than the 18 Bravos, Charlies, and Alphas. The extra time was needed for the Echos to learn and drill in international Morse code. Morse code is no longer a requirement for Special Forces communications sergeants.
“Even without the code requirement,” First Sergeant Larry Blowers tells me, “we have a lot of information to get across in a very short period of time. Weapons, engineering, and even the medical requirements of MOS training change slowly. In the communications world, the technology changes every year, every class. Even if the radios don’t change, there may be a modification to an existing radio or antenna system or a software application that changes. Since we’re a part of an evolving military communications system, there are changes within that system as well. On the positive side, the systems ke
ep getting smaller, more reliable, and more user-friendly. Still, the 18 Echo communications sergeant has to learn each new system, incorporate this into his communications planning, and teach it to the other members of his detachment. So while the newer radios are easier to use, they do change, so the learning never stops. And this means we have to give our Echo candidates a thorough grounding in communication basics and computer technology. More and more, if you can’t use a computer or maintain a computer in the field, you can’t communicate.”
First Sergeant Blowers is a solidly built master sergeant who grew up on the Gulf Coast. He has just over twenty years in the Army and will return to the 3rd Group when he finishes training new 18 Echos. His current job description is first sergeant, Charlie Company, 1st Special Warfare Training Group. Blowers knows communications and has something of a facility for languages; he speaks French, Spanish, Haitian-Creole, and Korean, and can make himself understood in Serbo-Croatian.
“Our training here is a three-pronged approach,” the first sergeant continues. “Our students have to understand communication theory, computers, and, above all, be able to communicate in the field. A good commo sergeant is one who is out there at two a.m. with his radios, trying to establish or improve his commo link. A communications sergeant has to make comms anywhere, anytime, and under any conditions.”
The 18 Echo candidates are trained at two locations. The classroom work that relates to computers is done at Aaron Bank Hall at Fort Bragg. The fieldwork and the classroom work on radios take place at the communication training facility on the eastern side of Fort Bragg, a portion of the base known as Eureka Springs.
“The first thing we learned were computers,” Specialist Justin Keller tells me. The big man from Denver, the former college wrestler and bouncer, had been tapped for communications training. I note that a great many other X-Rays with college degrees, like Specialist David Altman, are in Echo training. “When most people think of Army communications, they think of a radioman in the field with a handset to his ear. There’s that, but the portal to most of our radios is through the computer. Everyone has some knowledge of computers. Some like me could just do e-mail and word processing. A few in the class were computer techs before they came into the Army. And you’d be surprised how many guys worked at RadioShack or Circuit City. We spent almost three weeks on computers, and working with the one we use in the field. It’s a ruggedized PC designated as the CF-18. We call it a toughbook. We learned field maintenance and how to take them apart and reassemble them, so they can replace components on deployment and make upgrades to components. We also learned how to set up work groups and local area networks, or LANs. The basic program is a version of Windows 2000 Professional. We all became very proficient at using a computer.”
The 18 Echo curriculum includes antenna theory and radio wave propagation. The candidates are introduced to a host of military radios, but focus on the care, maintenance, and operation of the radios that are currently in use in the Special Forces groups. Then there are the peculiarities of military communications that include message format, authentication procedures, operational procedures, common abbreviations, acronyms, and prowords. The 18 Echos must also master secure communications, which involves cryptographic coding and decoding—or, more simply, using crypto.
“We really learn and use four basic radios,” Specialist Altman explains. “The first, heaviest, and probably the most important is the AN/PSC-5D. We call it the PSC-5. It’s our primary satellite communications, or SATCOM, radio, and weighs about twelve pounds—eighteen with batteries in it.”
The PSC-5 can do a lot of things. It is a multiband, multimission backpack radio that can operate in the UHF and VHF frequency ranges and can be used for line-of-sight or satellite communications. One cadre referred to the PSC-5 as the king of radios. The 18 Echo candidates train on this radio and use it primarily to transmit text and imagery by satellite from remote locations back to the forward operating base.
“There are three other radios that we have to know,” Altman said. “Our primary HF or high-frequency radio is the AN/PRC-137F. The 137 is used for HF voice traffic and for ALE transmissions—automatic link establishment messages. The automatic link is kind of amazing. When you type up a long message and send it on ALE, the radio chooses the frequency, at the lowest power setting, and sends the message when it finds those parameters. It makes for a very secure transmission. Then we have the AN/PRC-148. We call it the ‘embitter,’ for MBITR, or multiband inter-/intra-team radio. It’s a handheld FM Motorola-type radio that’s very light, less than two pounds, and durable. This a great radio and can do a lot of things, including satellite communications, but we use it as a secure, line-of-sight radio for squad communications. And finally, we have the AN/PRC-119F. The 119 is a heavy radio like the PSC-5, and we use it for FM voice transmissions, often as a patrol base radio. We not only have to know how to use the radios, but we have to carry them, along with extra batteries. On a good day, I weigh a hundred forty-five pounds. Sometimes I think my combat load, with the radios, weighs more than I do.”
The Echo candidates not only have to know the radios, they’re also responsible for developing communication plans to support tactical missions and base camp operations. A deployed ODA may have several teams out in the field and must maintain secure communications with those teams as well as the higher command at a forward operating base. A communications sergeant also has to train the other members of his team in the use and care of the radios and in the execution of the current commo plan. And like his brother weapons, engineering, and medical sergeants, he will have to teach these disciplines to allied soldiers in their language.
Communicators and operational planners have long been indoctrinated in the PACE protocol when developing communications plans. PACE stands for primary, alternate, contingency, and emergency methods of communications. “That’s still a part of our planning and thinking,” one of the cadre sergeants told me, “and the students need to learn this. It’ll be part of their communications plan they’ll have to develop and brief their plan for every operation. But with today’s modern, secure communications, you really only need a primary and an alternate. And we often have secure satellite phones. I’ve been to some pretty remote places on the Afghan-Pakistani border, and my Iridium sat phone was clear as a bell. But then sometimes there’s no coverage or your phone just goes down. Or the guy you want to talk to has a bad phone. Then you better find another way to make commo.”
The initial part of the 18 Echo curriculum is focused on learning the theory, learning the equipment, operating the equipment in the classroom setting, and operating the equipment under field conditions. Toward the end of the course, the Echo candidates are spending a lot of time outdoors communicating. There are two outdoor exercises. The first is a mini field exercise in which the class bivouacs outside the Eureka Springs communications facility, and the candidates erect antennas and run commo drills with all four radios. The instructor staff is right there with them, to help and answer questions. It’s an opportunity to set up and use all the radios, and to lock down the procedures and operation of each one. The second is a field performance exercise and the final exam for the 18 Echos. The twelve-day exercise is called Max Gain.
During Max Gain, the candidates will have to communicate with each radio under tactical field conditions for an extended period of time. The exercise begins with full ruck, weapons, ammunition, rations, and a load of radios. They operate in five-man teams. Each team has two PSC-5s, two PRC-119s, two MBITRs, and one PRC-137—and a lot of extra batteries. They also carry two CZY-10s, or “Crazy Tens,” pocket-size crypto devices that are used to load crypto into all radios. The Crazy Tens are a very highly controlled item. The teams leave the commo facility with each man carrying between 90 and 110 pounds of gear. A few of them are even heavier. This burden is shared equally by weight, if not by the man packing the weight. At 150 pounds, David Altman carries the same load as Justin Keller does at 250; both shoulder a ruck
weighing a hundred pounds. They patrol under full tactical discipline for only a few miles, then set up in patrol base camps with eight commo teams per camp. While at the base camp and the outlying commo sites, the Echo candidates have to keep up tactical disciplines, just like they did in a patrol base back in Phase II. This means they live out of their rucks, observe the two-man rule, and never get beyond an arm’s length of their weapon. At night, the candidates take their rifles into the sleeping bag with them. At least two men are on security duty at all times.
One team will occupy the base camp while the other teams patrol out at least two hundred meters to set up team commo sites. There they string up field antennas for HF communications and erect the portable, ray-gun-looking antennas for satellite communications. Two men take up security positions while another two rig antennas and begin to set up their radios. The fifth man is an observer. I follow Justin Keller and his team to their comm site.
“We do a quick tactical setup and get ready to make commo. From here we will do SATCOM with the PSC-5 and high-frequency voice with the 137. With the SATCOM, the timing has to be precise. We each have designated fifteen-minute windows in which to get our message off and to receive a receipt for it. Then we rotate positions. Then the next guy has fifteen minutes to sanitize the radio and set it up for his transmission window. We call them block times—fifteen minutes to set up and fifteen minutes to make commo. Each of us will send two messages, which will keep us here at the team site for five hours or so. Then we pack up and head back to the patrol base. Back at the base, we will send an ALE message on the 137. We also have hourly FM commo checks with our forward operating base on the PRC-119 and intra-squad comm checks with the MBITRs. Tonight, we’ll be back out again for more SATCOM on the PSC-5.”
In the tactical configuration of the team commo sites, I note that they are always ready to move and fight. When they are talking, the radios are still in the rucks so they can shut down and leave quickly if required. I also watch as they set up two of everything, including two toughbook computers, so if a computer or a radio fails, the operator on the block time can quickly change out a faulty component.