Think Like a Green Beret

Think Like a Green Beret: Never Quit

One thing that all special units have in common is an aversion to quitting and quitters. The greatest sin, the one unforgivable error, is to quit, no matter what the obstacle. Only death can stop a truly determined man. You have to know that the man next to you will not break and run when things get tough.

While not a part of the Special Forces pipeline, the Combat Diver Qualification Course, or CDQC, at the Special Forces Underwater Operations School in Key West, Florida plays a big role in SF culture and lore.

I went through CDQC before it was a seven-week marathon. My hat is off to those guys who took the course after I did. The drills have changed, but the objective remains the same. If you have any trace of claustrophobia or fear of drowning, the clever instructors will find it. They will push that button again and again until you ignore it or quit. There is no try. Every man in my class who failed to graduate quit in pool week. In Ranger School, there were hours and miles between meals where you thought about nothing but how powerfully hunger sucks.

Here is my simple question to you: Would you rather go without a meal for a day, or without a breath for two minutes? The brain has special circuits to warn you that you are dying and cause panic. Key West teaches you to turn them off. That is what killed Chuck.

The first week, they issued full open-circuit gear, complete with twin 80-cubic-foot tanks. While we got plenty of experience donning and wearing these primitive behemoths, we did not turn on the air and use regulators until week two. My least favorite exercise was bobbing, where you jumped up from the bottom of the deep end with your fins on your hands, got your head above the surface, took a breath and went back down. Repeat until told to stop. The purpose of this drill was explained several times, but the story was never the same twice and none of them made any sense. I did this correctly only once, on test day. But that is not what killed Chuck.

There was another drill called crossovers. Half the class lined up on each side of the long axis of the Olympic-sized pool. At that point, there were about 25 guys still in the class. They pushed us into the deep end so everyone was crowded. Everybody wanted to get as far from the wall as possible, but when they put you in, you couldn’t move that way because you didn’t want to screw your buddies, so there was a natural rotation. If the cadre thought you were sliding down, they would direct you over to the wall.

With Twin 80s, BCD vest, mask, fins, and weight belt, we clung to the edge of the pool. On the cadre’s whistle, you let go, pushed off and swam underwater to the other side. One side went low and the other went high. The low guys tried to stay as high as they could so they used less energy. The perils of this drill included running head-on into an opposite swimmer, causing both of you to lose all momentum or having the guy next to you take your mask off with his push-off arm stroke.

The cadre with the whistle controls the pace. He could drive you as far into oxygen debt as he wanted. We almost cheered every time somebody lost a mask because they had to swim down and get it, and we all got an extra breath. The secret was to remain calm and breathe deeply with the time you had. Hyperventilation prior to diving depletes carbon dioxide in the system, leaving a diver susceptible to shallow-water blackout. There is no warning sensation, and victims typically drown quietly. The cadre were very familiar with shallow-water blackout and watched for it constantly. There was a designated safety officer who counted heads and made sure everyone came up.

Problem was, he didn’t control the whistle.

Staff Sergeant Chuck Gates was an active-duty Green Beret from 19th SFG in Utah. He was quiet and in great shape. He blew through the PT test and had no fear of anything through pool week. I overheard the cadre mention Chuck was a recycle. He recycled because of crossovers. I asked him about it. In a completely unemotional rendition, Chuck told me that in the previous class, they were in the officer’s pool at Fleming Key (this was before the school had their own pool). The water was hazy, and they could not see the bottom of the pool. That is where he died.

Chuck didn’t remember much about crossovers that day, so I got another version from one of the cadre I knew. As the class was crossing the pool, they somehow provoked the ire of whistle guy. Probably displaying too much affinity for normal breathing. He was blowing the whistle pretty fast. I am sure they had procedures and limits, but I never figured out what they were. Safety cadre guy missed a head count because the pace was so quick. The second count was one guy short, but the class was back underwater before he could stop them. Chuck died peacefully at the bottom of the pool. He had no breathing, no pulse, and water in his lungs. His airway was completely obstructed by a swimming pool full of water. They finally stopped the drill and pulled the lifeless body of Chuck Gates from the bottom.

If you have never worked with an SF medic, they are a wonder to watch. Cool under pressure, they move with no doubt that they can fix any medical problem from arterial bleeding to syphilis. Death was temporary, they had seen this before. With boring efficiency, they raised Chuck from the dead and got him breathing again. Just another day’s work. This is where Chuck starts telling the story again. He wakes up moving toward the bright light. Brought back from the dead, the first words he hears are, “Do you want to quit?”

Chuck said, “No,” but because he had pool water in his lungs, he didn’t get the second part of that speech.

“Well, get back in the pool.”

Say what you want about any other class anywhere in the world. There are plenty of other classes where they kill students. This is the only instance I know of, where the cadre killed a student through inaction, brought that student back to life to cover their mistakes and then asked him if he wanted to quit.

Chuck didn’t quit. You can’t beat a man like that; you have to kill him. Men like Chuck are exceptionally hard to kill, and Special Forces is filled with them. Be like Chuck.

Think Like a Green Beret: Surrender

When I went to Ranger School, I memorized the Ranger Creed and learned that “surrender is not a Ranger word.” I love that. As a student of military history, the Green Beret knows what happens after surrender. In Afghanistan, there were some very frank team-room discussions about capture. Short of being blown unconscious by an IED, there was no way I was going to be a prisoner. Surrender was not an option; nobody was going to put video of my beheading on the Interwebs. Fighting to the end was a better option than the possibility of a few more days of life.

As it happens, surrender is a Green Beret word. It is not an action verb, it is a command. While we never want to come under enemy control, allowing our enemies a humane way out gives us the moral high ground and saves lives. Our lives.

In ancient China, warriors were encouraged to build a golden bridge for the enemy to retreat across. The idea was to provide a route of withdrawal to avoid a desperate fight to the death with high casualties on both sides. If a Green Beret leaves the enemy a way out, it is probably a baited ambush with interlocking fields of fire. But not always.

On 20 December, 1989, at 1:00 a.m. local time, 27,684 U.S. troops rescued Panama. The AC-130s, Rangers, SEALS, the 82nd Airborne, and a lot of other soldiers secured the canal and neutralized 20 percent of Panamanian forces that night. Major Gil Perez, a Green Beret, took care of the the rest of them.

Perez was the commander of A-1-7 SFG(A), a Cuban-American, and a fluent native Spanish speaker. He was the mastermind behind what came to be known as Operation Ma Bell. The initial U.S. assault left about 80 percent of the Panamanian Defense Forces (PDF) untouched, safe in their bases. PDF commanders had all been hand-picked and promoted based solely on their loyalty to el Comandante Manual Noriega.

There had been attempted coups and many murders of less-than-loyal commanders. At this time, Noriega was not in custody and the Panamanian commanders were playing for high stakes. Major Perez was very persuasive.

It went down in a series of operations all across Panama, something like this: Perez called each PDF quartel (base) and spoke to the commander. After politely introducing himself, Perez told the commander that an AC-130 Gunship was overhead, and invited him to step outside to confirm it. The commander was also told that there was an infantry unit waiting in helicopters, ready to assault.

Of course, none of this was really necessary, because two reasonable guys can work this out over the phone. Words to the effect of, “That is a nice infantry battalion you have there, it would be a shame if anything happened to it.”

The PDF commander was then given conditions for surrender. Gather all personnel in the courtyard of the quartel, secure all weapons in the arms room, and come to a designated spot to be picked up for a helicopter ride. If the commander agreed, Green Berets moved into the quartel as the new advisers.

There was a procedure established if the PDF commander did not want to surrender: The AC-130 would be directed to fire one round outside the perimeter of the quartel. Another phone call would be made. If the commander still did not want to surrender, he would be told that the next round would land inside the quartel, and the exact location of impact would be given. The AC-130 would then fire the round and another phone call would be made. If the commander still elected to hold out, he would be told that the infantry was going to assault. I don’t think the AC-130 ever had to fire a round.

Accepting surrender has a lot of benefits. There are no piles of stinking bodies to bury, the captured equipment is in better shape, you know where all the trained soldiers are, and you can continue to pay them so they become policemen, not insurgents. In Panama we did a lot of things right. Big Army forgot those lessons in Iraq, but the future is filled with Green Beret ideas.

Green Berets believe in working smarter, not harder. When you can, give people a chance to do the right thing, but keep an AC-130 overhead as an incentive for cooperation. Sometimes, the threat of a good kick in the balls is more effective than the kick itself.

Think Like a Green Beret: Be Your Own Drill Sergeant

Think Like a Green Beret: Be Your Own Drill Sgt

In 3,000 BC, a Sumerian drill sergeant was tasked with training a ragged platoon of illiterate teenagers to defend their homeland. When his new charges faltered, he gave a speech to motivate them. In the last 5,000 years, that same speech has been given millions of times in every human language. It goes something like this:

Somewhere, a True Believer is training to kill you. He is training with minimal food or water, in austere conditions, training day and night. The only thing clean on him is his weapon and he made his own web gear. He doesn’t worry about what workout to do – his ruck weighs what it weighs, his runs end when the enemy stops chasing him. This True Believer is not concerned about ‘how hard it is’; he knows either he wins or dies. He doesn’t go home at 17:00, he is home. He knows only The Cause. Still want to quit?

Drill instructors are masters at motivation. The entirety of military training consists of instructing recruits to do a series of seemingly impossible tasks. As training continues, the tasks become more difficult. Eventually, the recruit realizes that he can do just about anything that doesn’t instantly kill him, and he becomes a soldier.

Never been to basic training? No problem. Find things that motivate you, books, slogans, movies, whatever. Remind yourself of who you are and where you are going.

In the Special Forces Qualification Course, the cadre is careful not to encourage or discourage. There are men who are great performers, but they require an audience. Without external incentives, they become disoriented and unmotivated. A Green Beret must be internally validated. He must be able to work as the only American for extended periods with no supervision. There is no drill sergeant to yell at him, no peers to encourage him.

In a joint environment, a Green Beret may work for a conventional chain of command that does not understand his methods or logic. Armed with nothing more than absolute confidence in himself and his training, the Green Beret must sometimes fight the enemy, coax reluctant allies, and co-opt a skeptical chain of command all at the same time. How can he do this? Because he knows that he is the best hope of stopping the True Believer from attacking his home and family. He can’t fail and he can’t quit.

Find your mission. Know why you are important. Be your own drill sergeant.

Think Like Green Beret: In Death Ground, Fight!

“In difficult ground, press on; On hemmed-in ground, use subterfuge; In death ground, fight” – Chapter 11 of Sun Tzu‘s The Art of War

For decades, Green Berets have been sent all over the world, often going into complex dangerous situations with host nation forces. The opportunities for disaster are obvious and frequent. How do Green Berets thrive in chaos? One priceless technique is the immediate action drill.

Immediate action drills are procedures designed to provide swift and positive reaction to enemy contact. They are simple courses of action in which all members of the unit are so well trained that minimum signals or commands are required to initiate action. Immediate action drills can help you recover from a surprise attack and gain the initiative.

There is no way to plan for every eventuality, but there are some simple guidelines which, when properly applied, can keep you and your recently trained non-English speaking friends alive.

When I was a kid, I loved the Roadrunner cartoons. They were great preparation for Special Forces and I still highly recommend them. The Coyote is a clever predator with access to military grade hardware and technology. The Roadrunner was a bird gifted with speed and intelligence. Every episode depicts Coyote setting up an ambush. Roadrunner never hesitates. He is never indecisive. He always gets off the X and lives another day. I always wanted to have the Roadrunner’s ability to see what was coming and stay one step ahead.

(Image courtesy of SimpleGaming YouTube channel)

By the time you realize that you are under attack by a competent enemy, you may well already have wounded and be in a poor position to defend or counterattack. What to do? After an excusable moment of distraction and profanity, you will take action or die. Green Berets don’t choose death.

The Army loves acronyms. They provide a template for quick orientation and decision making. If well chosen, they can be remembered under high stress and require few spelling skills. Below is a mnemonic that I learned in training. I never forgot it and still use it today. It can be applied in any dangerous situation, ambush or car accident.

Fight – What ever the threat, resist. Return fire, operate your equipment, stay conscious. Force yourself to size up the situation and formulate a plan. Some times the best medical care is to return fire.

Uncontrolled bleeding – When you can, check your self and your mates. If there is blood spurting, this will not last long. If it is not spurting, it is more a distraction than a problem. My medic used to say all bleeding stops eventually. Use direct pressure of a tourniquet to stop the bleeding before somebody dies.

Communicate – Talk with your comrades, tell higher your situation, call 911, get a MEDIVAC and air support headed your way. Figure out your situation then develop and share a plan.

Keeping moving – The place you are in is dangerous or you wouldn’t be using this mnemonic. The longer you stay here, the worse things will get. Move and take your friends with you. Escape or take the fight to the enemy. Live for another day.

It is said the action always beats reaction. I disagree. The race is not always to the swift nor the fight to the strong. Your reaction can protect you and astound your enemies. There is a process Tony Blauer describes as Predator Prey reversal. The attacker thinks he controls the fight. A counterattack can regains the initiative. A successful counterattack puts you back in your proper role as predator.

Think like a Green Beret. Be bold, save yourself and your friends. You have the rest of your life to talk and get moving.

Think Like a Green Beret: It’s Not Over

It came like clock work, predictable as sunrise, yet there were some guys who fell for it every time. We didn’t know it at the time, but they were the ones who wouldn’t make it.

The first time I saw the trick was on a run in phase one of the Special Forces Qualification Course. Our class went for a formation run. It went for three miles or so at a reasonable pace and came back to the start point. Every run I had been on in the Army had ended at the start point, but this was Special Forces.

We ran right past the start point without slowing. There were a few sighs. Two miles later, on a different route than the first three miles, we were back to the start point and past it again. More sighs, louder sighs. I was tired, but even more, I was intrigued. I figured that others would quit before me and I wondered how many more laps it would take to get to breakfast. We went 100 yards past the start and came to a halt. The cadre acted like it was just another event and we marched off to cold showers and a box of breakfast.

I came to think of it as the “it’s not over until it’s over” mind game. The only way to win is not to play. The end is not near. Don’t get your hopes up and no high fives. The man will tell you when to stop.

Then there was land navigation. After a long day of walking with a 50 lb ruck, I had already found four points. It was about 4pm and I come up to my next point. There was a truck parked a few yards away with a few guys in it. I identify myself and got assigned my next point. I plotted it out, it’s 15 kilometers (9 miles) away.

My first thought was a little mini-panic. These guys on the truck were done and I still had at least 15 Km to go. I would still be walking after dark and it would be tough finding points. Then my mammalian forebrain kicked in. There was no way these guys were hours ahead of me and there was no way this land nav course ended after dark. They had quit.

The SFQC cadre didn’t offer encouragement or discouragement, they just gave you the next point and checked the destination you plotted before you left. “You will be told what you need to know when you need to know it.” Those guys in the truck did the math and quit. The cadre probably had a very good idea who would quit and where, thus the truck.

So I showed the man where I was going on my map and filled my canteens from the water can. I wasn’t smiling because I wasn’t sure this wasn’t just a new kind of trick. I was ready for another 15 Km and I started walking on my azimuth. Around the next corner was another truck and I was told to get on it. It was the winner truck.

This may seem like a sadistic trick, but it was a valuable life lesson. If you don’t get your hopes up, they can’t be crushed. While it is important to set goals and claim small victories, you can’t stop until the fight is over. You can’t always be the one who decides when the fight is over.

Late one night in Afghanistan, my team arrived at a remote compound by helicopter. We were there to capture a certain individual and take away the heavy weapons he was using to threaten the community. We were supposed to be exfiled from the objective after 8 hours. We didn’t take rucks and carried mostly ammo. Two days later with no resupply and our commander finally pulled us off. Nobody on the team was surprised. There was a pretty busy war going on and if Green Berets can’t work without food for two days, they should turn in their berets. Nobody got excited, because we never believed we would be off target in 24 hours. The exfil bird comes when the man sends it, not a minute sooner and none of us are the man.

I have been deployed all over the world. Ingnorance, incompetence, mechanical breakdowns, bad weather and enemy action can not be avoided, but you can control your reactions. Confidence in your self and training can keep you calm when others panic. Sometimes the winner is decided by nothing more than who stays on the field.

It is not over until it is over. You cannot be disappointed if you don’t plan to stop until the fight is over. You never know how far you can go until you push beyond self imposed limits.

“If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’

If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!”

Excerpt from “IF” — Rudyard Kipling

Think Like a Green Beret: Small Victories

In the Special Forces pipeline, everyone goes to SERE school (Survive, Evade, Resist, Escape). One of the most powerful concepts they teach is winning small victories. If you can win even a small victory, you can stay motivated in an impossible situation.

SERE school starts with classroom training on the Code of Conduct, then continues with field training in evasion and survival skills. The finale is a simulated prisoner-of-war camp complete with beatings and interrogations. When you are being interrogated and can’t escape, things can quickly seem hopeless. By seeking out hacks or small victories, you can regain some sense of control. A small victory could be finding extra food, grabbing a few minutes of rest or the big one – successfully deceiving an interrogator.

Throughout all Army training, stress is progressively induced in increasing amounts. Just as an inoculation dose of a virus prepares your immune system for the disease, exposure to adversity in training builds confidence and prepares a soldier to deal with the stress of combat.

Army training consists of a series of increasingly frightening activities. If you progress beyond basic and advanced individual training to Ranger School and Special Forces training, you are dealing with complicated and highly dangerous situations. The culmination of stress inoculation is a simulation of the worst possible outcome: being captured and interrogated by professionals.

SERE school trains soldiers to avoid capture, but if caught, to survive and return home with honor. The man who conceived and built SERE school was Nick Rowe.

In July 1963, First Lieutenant James “Nick” Rowe was assigned to the 5th Special Forces Group as Executive Officer of Detachment A-23, a 12-man “A-team.” A-23 advised a Civilian Irregular Defense Group camp at Tan Phu in the Mekong Delta of South Vietnam.

Early on the morning of October 29, 1963, Captain Rocky Versace, First Lieutenant Nick Rowe, and Sergeant Daniel Pitzer left the A camp with one of their Civilian Irregular Defense Group (CIDG) companies. The Viet Cong (VC) were operating from the near by village of Le Coeur and Captain Versace decided to get rid of them.

When they arrived in Le Coeur, the VC was gone and the chase was on. Following signs, they tracked the VC. The good news was that they found the VC force at about 10am.

The bad news: they found the VC by walking into an ambush. They fought all day and called for reinforcements. By nightfall, Versace, Pitzer and Rowe were all prisoners of war.

In the sixty-two months which followed, Nick Rowe lived in the U Minh Forest, known as the “Forest of Darkness,” in southern Vietnam, He spent most of that time isolated from other prisoners, confined to a wooden cage three feet by four feet by six feet. In filthy conditions with poor food, he suffered dysentery, beri-beri and fungal diseases.

To make matters worse, he was tortured and interrogated. He woke up every morning with the realization that he might be executed, or spend the rest of his life in that cage, never again seeing home or his family. This was a guy who really needed a small victory.

Nick Rowe was damaged but never defeated. His first concern was protecting the mass of valuable information in his head. As an intelligence officer and the team executive officer, he knew details of his camp defenses and surrounding units.

Shortly after capture, the interrogations began. Conducted by English speaking professionals under conditions of chronic poor health, sleep deprivation and semi-starvation, Rowe was vulnerable.

Nick Rowe was a strong Christian, a real Green Beret and a West Point-trained engineer. Left with only the resources of his knowledge and imagination, he began to fight back.

Rowe invented a cover story that he studied engineering in a small liberal college. He had been drafted into the Army as an engineering officer who had been assigned to do civil affairs projects and build schools. He claimed ignorance of local military operations.

The Viet Cong asked the same questions over and over, They used torture to try to break him and catch him in a lie. They presented him with basic engineering problems. Imagine trying to do that in your head while living in a cage, eating garbage and being tortured. Fortunately, engineering courses were mandatory at West Point, and he spent his four years there living in a cramped dorm room running on little sleep with upperclassmen asking him to recite memorized knowledge at random intervals. Rowe was able to fool his captors.

Rowe’s cover story held up until a group of anti-war protesters visited to North Vietnam. The protesters asked to see some American POW’s so they could tell the American people of the lenient and humane treatment given them by the kind and generous North Vietnamese people. Their list included the name James N. Rowe, Army intelligence officer assigned to Special Forces.

Rowe won big and now he was going to pay. His once valuable information at the time of his capture was now stale and worthless. They beat him for hours then and staked him out naked in a swamp. He probably wasn’t smiling, but he won that round.

Rowe eventually escaped with another POW. Things were going great until his injured partner could not go on. They separated, hoping that would confuse their pursuers. Rowe heard the Viet Cong capture his friend. The VC began yelling that unless he surrendered immediately, they would kill the other POW. Rowe could have escaped, but he surrendered to prevent the execution of the other POW.

Rowe continued to resist and won one small victory at a time. He so infuriated his interrogators that they declared him of no value and received permission to execute him in December 1968. On Dec. 31, 1968, while moving between VC camps in the U Minh forest, the guards were distracted by a formation of American helicopters. Rowe knocked down his guards and ran into a clearing, where he signaled the helicopters. Rowe was wearing black pajamas, and the door gunner almost shot him until he saw the beard. Charlie couldn’t grow beards.

As a POW, Rowe kept a secret diary written in German, Spanish, Chinese, and his own special code in order to deceive his captors. He wrote an excellent book about his experiences, called Five Years to Freedom.

In 1987, Rowe was assigned to the Joint U.S. Military Advisory Group (JUSMAG) as an adviser to the Philippine military in the midst of a bitter guerrilla war.

In February, 1989, Colonel Rowe learned that the communists were planning to assassinate a high-profile figure. He figured he was second or third on the list.

Rowe was aware of the threat and varied his routes and schedule. But due to political considerations, he was prohibited from travelling armed.

On April 21, 1989, Nick was attacked by the communist New Peoples’ Army (NPA) while returning to the US Embassy in an armored limousine. The vehicle’s air conditioning had broken down, perhaps sabotaged. The driver had opened the vent window to allow fresh air in. The rounds which killed Nick Rowe came in through the vent window.

A legendary Green Beret, Rowe had so dominated his communist captors that years later they still sought revenge. It was a hollow victory. Rowe live on in the generations of Green Berets he trained, one small victory at a time.

In daily life, we can feel trapped. We may get married, caught in traffic, stuck in a dead end job with a bad boss or constrained by missed opportunities. You may not have the field position to make a touchdown every play, but if you can move forward just a few yards, you may get the first down that changes everything.

More importantly, by seeking small victories, you can keep a positive attitude and maintain forward momentum. It is said that football is a game of inches, and so too is life. If you can change your attitude, you can change your life.

You may have never heard of Morten Andersen. His nickname was “The Great Dane.” He isn’t a Green Beret, but he is the all-time leading career scorer in NFL history with 2,544 points. Anderson never made a touchdown, but in tough games, he made one point or three points at a time. Small victories. The top 25 NFL career scoring leaders are all placekickers.

Be like Nick. Green Berets know that “Small Victories” can sustain you through incomprehensible difficulties. Look for ways to win. You will be astounded and amazed at what you will find.

(Featured Image Courtesy: B-2 pilot in SERE training. SOFREP)