Delta Force

Delta Force’s James Nelson Sudderth – Conan the Barbarian

Prologue:There a two men who I credit, or blame, for bringing me to the Delta Force from my state of uncertainty and lack of self-confidence: James Nelson Sudderth and Matthew Loren Rierson. Both are departed. Both deliberately approached me and asked me to come to Delta Force.

First it was Matt who asked me ‘when I was coming’, coaxing the gears in my head to turn and engage. From that I felt a distinct lean forward that I merely nursed for about a year. Then came James, who TOLD me with a knife hand to my chest to come. That’s how James conveyed messages of all sort, with knife hand to chest. The lean forward became a jog ahead, and then a run. I ran right into the Delta Force, never looking back, no longer just Jenny on the block.

Forward:
I’m an SOF Combat Diver by trade, or at least I fancy myself one. I was assigned to the Combat Dive Academy as a Senior Instructor/Writer from 1989 to 1991. One of the courses we offered to the SOF community in the day was titled the Waterborne Infiltration Course (WIC). I attended the very first pilot course of WIC as a student. It was quickly and unaffectionately nicked: ’Ranger School on Water’.

WIC was six weeks of, grueling, finning, Zodiac-driving, Klepper kayak-paddling, over-the-horizon navigating, ass-whipping training on every tactical aspect of SOF waterborne operations, with the exception of underwater events! Underwater operations were a completely different animal, and required a specially select man to perform them.

special-forces-dive-team — Special Forces in the WIC course; long range navigation and infiltration with a Zodiac F-470 Combat Rubber Raiding Craft (CRRC)

WIC only ran for several iterations, and then it was dropped from the Key West curriculum for ‘lack of support by the Special Forces Groups’. That is a polite way of saying guys didn’t want to come to the WIC because it was just plain TOO HARD!

I could go on about how much harder the pilot WIC I attended was, as it was executed to find out how much was too much for us mere mortals… but this essay is not about me; it is about a man that I only ever imagined I was as good as.

Helocast operations; Special Forces troops cast from the back of a CH-47 helicopter as it flies ~10 MPH, and ~10ft above the surface of the water.

Meet James Sudderth:
WIC students occupied the tarmac adjacent to the dive academy equipped with hoses and brushes, vigorously washing and rinsing salt water from Zodiac F-470 Combat Rubber Raiding Craft, and other personal and team equipment. These men had been dropped by CH-47 helos some 16 nautical miles from the shore of key west the night before.

At that distance you are ‘beyond the splash line’ or Over the Horizon (OTH); that is, you have traveled so far from shore that you can no longer see land due to the curvature of the Earth’s round service. With no visual reference, these men had to perform instrument approach back to shore using compass, and route calculations that they had done in prior mission planning, to defeat Mama Nature’s tides, waves, and ocean currents.

The men worked brilliantly on their post mission stand down. Some shirts off, some on, some in shorts, some combat fatigues, some sandals, mostly barefoot. I looked down at the bare foot of one senior student, who I recognized very early on as being an irresistible leader, and powerhouse participant in all aspects of the training. His foot had a big toe, a little toe, but was missing his middle toes; it looked like it was rendering a perpetual Vulcan salute—live long and prosper.

“Sergeant First Class…” I barked, and the student looked up at me: “Yes Sergeant?”

“You appear to be out of uniform, Sergeant.”

“How so, Sergeant?”

“Your foot…” I continued: “You are missing several of your digits; you are of course aware that you are required to report to training daily with ALL of your equipment?” I joked.

The student grin an obligatory grin, one that is frankly forced, but offered as a gesture of respect, though he was sick of hearing jokes about his missing toes. I was immediately regretted my pallid attempt at humor, but the damage was done. I’ll wake up in the middle of the night thinking of that one, dumbass!

Another Instructor who happened to be in earshot, Chuck “Chuckles” S., sidestepped and leaned in to say: “Hey, that Delta’s James Sudderth, lost his toes in a chopper crash rescuing Kurt Muse from Modelo Prison in Panama. If you want to go ahead and just open your mouth a little wider, I’ll shove your foot in for ya.”

Little Bird Helicopter — The MH-6 Little Bird helo wreckage that took James’s toes

Have you ever been walking along in public and suddenly tripped over your own feet, and tried to do that cool-guy recovery? You look back behind you at the imaginary thing that ‘made’ you trip, with a pissed-off and pensive glare? You do that not for yourself, rather for those that saw you, so they will understand that you actually had a Fred-Astaire-kind-of cool going on… but then some villain piece of unconscionable shit made you trip in front of all these nice people.

Well I didn’t do any of that. I kicked off my shoes and grabbed a hose and starting squirting down UDT Vests, paddles, and whatever.

“Hey, James… sorry that that last remark; sometimes it’s like my mouth is falling down the stairs.”

“Heh-heh… yeah, don’t worry about it.” And so it went.

Over the years it had been suggested to me time and again: “You should try out for Delta; you need to go to Delta…” Perhaps, but I wasn’t by far guilty of any pretense. I wasn’t fraught with typical excuses: “Well, I’ve got a bone in my leg, I just don’t want to live in Fayetteville, this trick knee of mine, allergy to sloped hills, my wife, my ankle, my toe… MY ASS!” I did not go, for my one lone survivor reason: I did not believe that I could make it.

At the end of every course at the academy, the students and instructors get together and treat themselves to an end-of-course party. Everyone migrates back to Sergeants’ and officers’ status, and just have a jolly ol’ time for a few hours over a cookout and brew-ha-has.

Invitation to try out for Delta Force Selection
“James Nelson Sudderth is headed my way with a beer in his hand, coming right at me so I’ll step aside. Da-fuq, he intentionally turned and is still coming right at me. There is going to be a collision if he does not alter his course! And with James, well, you can bet there are going to be some knife-hand pointing to the chest.

“Sergeant Hand I need to talk to you.” Just call me George, and sure.” James nudged me to walk about to the other side of the building where there was privacy.

“It’s that shit I said about his foot… aw man, I knew it!! He’s going to twist me like Chubby Checker!”

And so James began: “George, you need to try out for Delta. Now, listen to me…” and he wiped the beer from his mouth, walked a quick two steps away to set his beer down on the academy building’s front porch, and then closed back with me. I totally got it, he was distancing the beer from the conversations in a it’s-not-the-beer-talking gesture, demonstrating his attempt at honesty.

“I tried to follow the Unit’s published train up guide lines, and I am not capable of carrying the loads over the distances and times it indicates, James.”

“George forget about that paper; you really, you just have to go and try out.”

“How can I when I can’t pass the entry-level standards??”

“You can do it George, if you just go and try. Trust me, it is an-out-of body experience; your body won’t be able to do it, but your mind will.”

I was nodding my head and pursing my lips, and thinking about how I met Delta’s Matthew Rierson, with whom I attended the basic dive CDQC with years ago. “When are you coming over, George?” Matt matter of factly asked me, and expected and answer, but never got one.

Still nodding I finally: “I’m going to do it. But just one question…”

“Send it.” James challenged

“At the end of selection, do we really have to live lift a 200 pound caldron of red-hot coals with just our forearms branding them with a lion and a dragon?”

“James flash a genuine grin, and kept his face pointed toward me so I could keep seeing his grin as he retrieved his beer. “Yes, yes you do, mother fucker, but you WILL do it!”

We walked back about the building to join the brothers in the throes of rejoice for their accomplished six weeks of smoke on the water. James walked with his arm over my shoulder, like a big brother. James was three months younger than I was.

I trained for selection my fist time, grossly over doing it, and wrecked myself; I had to wave off West “BY GOD” Virginia for the time. I regrouped and refit, and trained my second time for selection, and by God I made it through the course my first time around, flaming cauldron, scary tattoos and all… ok, no Kwai Chang Caine test of manhood. But it was definitely time for me to leave the temple and hang my hat down the spine.

Geo sends

James Nelson Sudderth (far right) hunting drug cartel kingpins in South America

The time my Special Forces team accidentally burned down a Korean forest (Pt.2)

Note: This is part of a series. Read part one here.

Dawn cracks in the Republic of Korea (ROK) and 10,000 roosters crow. My auditory senses are awakened. I stare at the olive drab of the tent canvas above my cot. Visual acquisition and, wait for it…wait for it…ah, there it is—olfactory perforation by rotton cabbage, coupled with burning rubber and feces. Gooooood morning, ROK!

My Green Beret A-team is housed all together in a cramped, general-purpose medium tent, one each. Most of us are sitting up now in our cots; swaddled in poncho liners, we blink at each other by the dawn’s early light. By now the click-clack-click of jungle boots on wooden pallet sidewalks indicates that morning chow is afoot. The wafting of green eggs and ham from the land of the big PX confirms that chow is indeed on, Sam I am.

In the chow tent, our “team sergeant,” Buck, tells us that we will have an opportunity to conduct some live fire and demolitions training on one of the Korean range fire facilities. This would be a good day. Something to do besides watch massive formations of Korean soldiers performing synchronized Tae Kwon Do katas, or work out with the Fred Flintstone weight sets that were ubiquitous in the ROK military. They were large, #10 soup cans filled with concrete on each end of a five-foot pole, and served as curl bars. You could really feel the burn around repetition 900.

We loaded a few vehicles with weapons and other kit, drove to the field-expedient ammunition supply point (ASP), and loaded a respectable consignment of blow to take to the demolitions range. As we loaded ourselves for departure on the short drive to the range, it appeared I would not get away without giving one more singing performance of the Korean national folksong “Arirang” to the new group of soldiers my buddy Sgt. Park had herded up to hear me sing. Damn me for ever learning it in the first place. I had become a measure of novelty to the Koreans, the round-eye who could sing Arirang. That or a circus freak of sorts.

“Let’er rip and lets get moving, Elvis!” someone called out. I cleared my throat and belted out the first verse of the folk song, which was followed by a token golf clap and appreciative nods. I felt like Side Show Bob as I mounted our Range Rover. Off then, to rock down to Electric Avenue and shake the Korean countryside.

Our first order of business was some demolitions training. We had, among other sundries in our load of blow, quite a stack of block C-4 “plastic” explosive, a high-explosive charge that expanded at a rate of 23,000 feet per second, and was regarded as a primary steel cutting charge. We had no steel, but plenty of timber in the form of deadfall and standing trees.

Of course, we all wanted to wad it up into one big ball and recreate the Big Bang, but Buck wouldn’t have any of that; the Buck stopped here. “Just treat these timbers as if they were steel pipes and cut ‘em, guys. Come on, let’s see some diamond and half-diamond charges and other cutters.” We split into two-man teams and assessed our surroundings with the greatest of creativity in mind.

Our company commander, who was still back in Fort Lewis, Washington, was unaffectionately nicked “Squeakers,” a titled he had earned during his tenure as our company executive officer (XO) for his propensity to report our many minor transgressions to the then-incumbent company commander. “He’s a rat, boys. He’s a rat and he bears watching,” Chief Richard R., our team warrant officer, warned.

I chose a diamond steel cylinder-cutting charge, which I molded from C-4 and wrapped around a fallen log. As I crimped my blasting cap around the time fuse, I couldn’t help but notice that one of our engineers, Mikey G. had created what to all the world looked like a human figure molded of C-4, and was plastering it to a tree trunk. “Hey, Mike…what kind of charge is that?” I puzzled.

“It’s Squeakers,” he said, “and now I’m going to prime him,” he continued as he inserted the blasting cap into what was discernibly the rectum of the figure.

Ka-RACK! went the Michael G. Squeakers timber-cutting charge in a shower of splinters and dark, pungent smoke. “Clean cut!” Mikey bragged. “Hell, that’s the most work Squeakers has done all year!”

We progressed finally to the known distance (KD) automatic weapons fire range down the access road, and proceeded to riddle impromptu targets with our team’s M-249 Squad Automatic Weapons (SAWs). As bad luck would have it, we soon ignited brush downrange with the tracer rounds from the SAWs. “Just let it burn, guys!” Buck urged. We obliged.

Before long, though, we had a formidable conflagration chomping at the bit, fueled by dry tinder and deadfall. “Cease fire!” Buck eventually called out. “We need to get this under control so we can keep training.” We pounced on the fire with shovels and what little water we had. We fell back soon, opting to dig a fire break to the burn’s front, to snuff it when it arrived.

There was the distinct snap, pop, whizzzzz of tracer rounds igniting and crisscrossing to our front. We decided to distance ourselves and let the spreading fire burn to the break. The blaze broke as planned, and smoldered slowly in the opposite direction for a spell. “Well, we’re done here for the day; let’s load up and head back to the FOB.”

Back at tent metropolis, we click-clacked our way to dine at the Canvas Cabana. “I’ll have an 11-ounce prime rib with horseradish sauce, pan-seared potatoes, and a sprinkle of kosher sea salt,” I announced matter of factly. Dr. Suess, the cook, didn’t bat an eye; he imparted a load of Spam, instant mashed potatoes, and instant IDK WTF onto my plate. With the deadest of deadpan expressions, he replied, “11-ounce prime rib with horseradish sauce, pan-seared potatoes, and a sprinkle of kosher sea salt…next!” This wasn’t the cook’s first day at smart-aleck remarks. You had to have a sense of humor. GBs are good at that.

“Hey you guys, you might want to come out here and see this,” one of the boys suggested from outside the mess tent.

Outside the tent, he chin-pointed toward an orange glow emanating from the location of the ranges. “OK, George, Guy, and Ed come with me; we’re going to have to take care of that fire ASAP,” Buck directed. As we bumped along the range road, we heard an unwelcome sound coming from the general direction of the range—BOOM. We looked at each other but said nothing. As we feared, the fire had erupted from smoldering ash that we caused earlier.

Once at the range, we were not prepared for what we saw. Korean troops to the tune of nearly 100 men had already been directed to respond to the range fire. As we stepped out of the truck, we saw a wounded Korean soldier parallel to the ground, face down, being carried by no less than 10 other soldiers, five on either side, each with their own little pinch of the stricken troop’s uniform, and they were trying to run. It was an absolute melee.

“Looks like a 203 round (40mm high-explosive tube-launched grenade) cooked off in the fire and bit one of them,” Buck assessed.

Screaming Korean soldiers massed around us. “OK, let’s get back in the vehicle right now, guys.” We pushed our way back to our truck, vaulted ourselves in, and locked the doors. ROK troops swarmed our vehicle and it began to rock. “Fuck this!” Ed shouted from the driver’s seat. He put the truck in gear and we parted the yellow sea en route back to the feeble defense of tent city.

“You guys pack your stuff and get ready to leave,” the freshly informed FOB commander told us. He was arranging for a C-141 Starlifter to fly us back to the States. Overreaction is the first thing that came to my mind, but then I didn’t know the extent of the afflicted Korean soldier’s injuries. Well, this stinks, I mused…but if you wanna dance, ya gotta pay in the ROK.

The next time the 10,000 roosters cried out and the reek of the atmosphere began to set in, we were still in tent city, waking to the click-clack of the boots on planks. Standing outside our tent waiting for the rest of the team to get out so we could go to breakfast together, we noticed a Korean soldier standing just outside the door of the nearest barracks. His left arm was generously bandaged and propped in a sling. His face was pockmarked with fresh scabs, and his head and left eye were also bandaged.

Our junior engineer, Abraham B., laughed and waved to him, pantomiming a person swatting at the flames of a fire, then suddenly jumping into the air as from an explosion. The Korean cracked a big grin, nodding vigorously, and mimed his own version of the previous night’s event. We gave him a thunderous round of applause peppered with enthusiastic “HOOAHs.”

“What’s for breakfast this morning, George?” Buck drawled. “Ah, today, Buck, there are Eggs Benedict with Hollandaise sauce, pan-fried hash-browned potatoes with capers and salsa, fresh-squeezed orange juice, coffee ground personally by Señor Juan Valdez, and sherbet—flavor of your choice. Just tell Dr. Seuss I sent you.”

And that my friends, you cannot make up.

Geo sends

The time my Special Forces team accidentally burned down a Korean forest (Pt.1)

I was a grunt, a ground-pounder, a door-kicker, a knuckle-dragger, a dog face, and a devil dog. I’ve been dogged-out and dog-tired, I’ve rucked until my dogs were barkin’ while it rained cats and dogs. I’ve had a dog in the fight, lived a dog’s life, gone to the dogs, been in the doghouse, and doggone it I’ve seen the tail wag the dog. I’ve seen a barking dog bite, dogged-shut a submarine escape hatch, had a dog as a best friend, ‘cause every dog has its day. I’ve experienced the dog days of summer, listened to Three Dog Night, and I’ve seen a dog that won’t hunt in this dog-eat-dog world. You feel me, dog?

When I was a regular Army grunt, I was in a mechanized infantry unit. The only time I ever had to carry a rucksack of any appreciable weight was in some of the professional development courses I attended in hopes of catching a timely promotion. Still, occasionally I found myself at a grassroots level of basic Army life, living in tin huts in the Rocky Mountains and living out of a rucksack for days on end. For a young soldier of my intellect and experience, it was a praiseworthy undertaking, but I would not know what a truly heavy ruck or long march was until I transitioned to the ranks of the Green Berets.

U.S. Army Rangers are the daddies of heavy rucksacks; there is no disputing that. Having a former 2/75 Ranger as a team sergeant ensured that we Green Beanies would never wander too far away from appropriate respect for the very pinnacle of light infantry—Army Rangers.

Our team sergeant was not even an average Ranger, but rather a cut-above Ranger who had fallen on tough luck with physical injury during tryouts for Delta selection in West Virginia. Ironically, Sergeant First Class (SFC) Mark B.—who just went by “Buck”—was not even technically our team sergeant. Buck was just an SFC—team sergeants were master sergeants (MSG). We had MSGs on our team who came and went, but we always regarded Buck as our de facto senior sergeant. He was the voice of common sense and authority. Once the MSG of the team had finished spewing edicts, all eyes would shift to Buck for the earthly version of what had just been said. We ultimately would do what Buck told us to do.

Most of my time overseas in my years with the First Special Forces Group (Airborne) was spent in the cold-weather months in the Republic of Korea (ROK)—land of the little PX, land of rotting cabbage and burning tires in winter, land of Reebok tennis shoes and women with flat buttocks, land of endless rice fields and animal manure, land of one-eye buffalo and Kiamaster trucks. It was the land of Soju, Maekju, Bulgogi, Pibimpap, and the KATUSA.

The flights

Deployments to Korea were cheap. As long as we conducted a tactical airborne drop in-country, the Air Force would regard it as training for them and not charge the Army for the use of their aircraft. That meant a 16-hour non-stop flight with multiple in-flight refuels, and in-flight rigging for the jump. An hour or so prior to a tactical drop, an aircraft will drop to a very low altitude and fly a nap of earth (NOE) profile. That is, it will fly at a fixed low altitude above the contour of the ground in an attempt to avoid being ‘painted’ by enemy radar, so the aircraft is in a perpetual state of rising and falling.

Just prior to an in-flight parachute rigging under an NOE profile, paratroopers are required to consume monstrous amounts of Twinkies and vinegar. I’m just kidding, but for those of you who have never experienced the trauma of this event, let me paint the picture: Ambient temperature inside the aircraft climbs to around 98° F. No room to sit turns into no room to stand. Projectile vomiting seems to become some sort of morbid competition. No room to stand turns into no room to set down your barf bag.

Men stumble and stagger in place as parachutes and rucksacks are passed at treetop level over the stacks of (jump) sticks. No room to lay your barf bag down turns into no room to think or change your mind. The deck of the aircraft becomes moderately slick with the accumulation of sweat beads, spilled stomach linings, and water as men try to drink to stave off heat exhaustion. The temperature nudges up to around 105°. A slow death awaits the fool who suddenly realizes he has to pee. God spare the jumpmasters who have to inspect this load of paratroopers. Don’t bother declaring jump refusal; any of those would be sucked out of the belly of this beast when the green light illuminates.

Finally, you are doing that awkward quick-step waddle and falling head-first out the jump door. Once under canopy, the broad Nakdong Gang river becomes horrifyingly apparent. Water wing flotation devices were worn by us all due to the prominence of the expansive Nakdong Gang “water obstacle.” The distinct essence of an amalgam of feces and burning rubber wafts by. “My God, is that dinner cooking or a garage burning?” comes to mind. “Which rice paddy shall I land in?” comes as well.

We get a ride from this rice paddy to our forward operating base (FOB). At least it isn’t a forced ruck march with everything we own. FOBs were typically tent cities on the parade fields of Korean special forces (Tuk Su Bu Dae) compounds. The personnel activity associated with a tent city will immediately render the ground muddy. I don’t care if you are in the Gobi Desert, a tent city will produce a mud hole. The more affluent tent cities will have floors of wooden pallets in the tents, as well as along the walkways that connect the network of tents. It actually can become bearable in such a place.

On one rare occasion, the Korean special forces troops vacated their entire open-bay team room to allow us to stay indoors, while they subjected themselves to life in the tent city. That was a commander’s decision, not the enlisted men’s choice. As Green Berets, we understood the importance of establishing rapport. We would not be winning over any friends this way. We would have to affect the rapport thing some other way.

Playing catch with a football was one way. Have you ever seen a Korean person try to throw a football? It simply can’t be done. They would watch us, mesmerized as we sent the ol’ pigskin whizzing through the air, stable and spinning like a bullet. They tried and tried to throw it; we tried and tried to teach them. We would eventually use this technique to root out North Korean spies trying to infiltrate our lines: “OK, Mister…John Smith, is it? Take this football and hit me, I’m going long!”

The food of Korea

Our commander, being the skinflint that he was, recognized the frugality of these deployments, and furthermore the tranquility of sending us a few weeks early to Korea to live in tent cities and eat for free in the Korean military institutes of culinary grandeur. There was no cognitive separation between the three daily meals: It was rotten cabbage, rotten turnips, and rotten something else, washed down with “barley tea,” which was essentially tepid water with some dirt in it to give it that barley flavor.

“There sure isn’t an abundance of meat around here,” Buck observed one day.

“Yes, it will be great when HQ gets here and we can finally have MREs (military field rations),” another chimed in.

On one particular afternoon, walking back to the tent city from Bob’s Big Boy of Korea, our senior medic shouted to a couple of Korean soldiers cutting across the chow hall lawn, “Hey, stop walking across our dinner!” It paid to have a sense of humor. GBs are good at that.

The language of Korea

Green Berets are all required to be qualified in at least one foreign language by the Department of the Army’s Defense Language Institute in Monterey, California. I was qualified in six, none of which were Korean. In fact, none of the men on my team spoke Korean. Riddle me that, Joker! Still, I scrambled to pick up as much as I could.

My senior communications sergeant, Guy L., and I decided to go for a run to the back gate of the compound and back one evening. As we approached the gate, the two Korean guards exited the guard shack and stood at port arms facing us. “Here goes…,” I prepped. “An yong ha, shimnika?” I politely greeted.

“How do you dooo?” a guard replied. As we turned away and continued on our path, Guy pondered out loud, “I wonder if we sound as retarded to them trying to speaking Korean as they do to us trying to speaking English. How do you do…who the fuck even says that anymore?”

Another quip before I curtail: I was entering the compound one night with a brother GB. As we approached the Korean guard post, I fished my ID card from my breast pocket, ready to present, wondering why my bud was not doing the same. Within easy earshot, my bud gestured a lazy salute and proudly announced, “Cheap thrill,” and continued walking without pause. The guards chin-dipped to bid us entry. Out of earshot, I asked him, “What the hell was that? What was that all about…cheap thrill?”

He replied, “Oh, they know me. Cheap thrill is my badge number.”

“How so? What is your badge number?”

“Seventeen,” he replied.

I mentally counted up from zero to 17 in my head in Korean, and 17 is pronounced, “Sheep chill.”

And this, my friends, you cannot make up!

Geo sends.

Delta Force operator awarded Distinguished Service Cross for Mali operation

A Delta Force operator has been awarded the Distinguished Service Cross (DSC), the nation’s second-highest award for valor under fire, for his actions during a terrorist attack in Bamako, Mali in November 2015.

During the morning hours of November 20, 2015, approximately a dozen Islamists associated with the terrorist group al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb attacked the Radisson Blu Hotel, a luxury establishment in downtown Bamako, the Malian capital. They took about 170 people hostage, including a number of Americans.

According to the award citation leaked to the Army Times, the Delta operator was serving as team leader of an outfit supporting overseas contingency operations against enemy forces. The citation goes on to praise the operator’s “valorous actions, dedication to duty, and willingness to place himself in great personal risk for the protection of others,” concluding that his actions were critical in the success of the hostage rescue operation.

Alongside the Army commando, Gunnery Sergeant Jared Stout, a Marine Raider from the Marine Special Operations Command (MARSOC), received the Silver Star, the third-highest award for valor. Master Sergeant Stout was also named the 2019 Marine of the Year.

The awards ceremony for the unnamed Delta Force operator and Master Sergeant Stout—he was promoted since the action—was held in June 2018, but has only now been publicized.

In a statement to the Army Times, Lieutenant Colonel Loren Bymer, a United States Army Special Operations Command (USASOC) representative, stated that “Army Special Operations Forces are deployed to more than 60 countries around the world on any given day. Brave men and woman [sic] assigned to Army Special Operations units fight alongside each other and our allies and partners towards common goals across the globe.”

The American and Western SOF presence in Africa has been a poorly kept secret for years. Alongside Delta Force teams, the Navy’s SEAL Team 6 and the Army’s Intelligence Support Activity (ISA) are also active on the African continent, intended primarily to curb extremist influence.

“Previous to September 2001 until now, a plethora of valor awards have been bestowed upon ARSOF Soldiers showcasing the value U.S. Army Special Operation Command brings to each other and the Nation,” Lt. Col. Bymer added.

Although the U.S. government is often hesitant to broadcast an American presence in certain parts of the world, awarding valor awards for clandestine actions that took place or to units that weren’t supposed to be somewhere isn’t novel. During the 2012 Benghazi attacks on the U.S. consulate that resulted in the death of four Americans, two Delta Force operators took the initiative and flew from nearby Tripoli in support of the hard-pressed CIA compound that was under siege by scores of Islamists. Eventually, the two operators were awarded the nation’s second-highest awards for valor for their actions, the DSC and Navy Cross. (The latter was awarded as one of the operators was a Marine, which provides an interesting glimpse at the diversity of the Army’s elite counterterrorism unit.)

Feature image courtesy of the U.S. Army

This article was written by Stavros Atlamazoglou at NEWSREP

SERE School from the perspective of a Delta Operator: Surviving as prisoner of war

While taking part in a training course for a special mission, I understood that I would be attending SERE school at some point during the six-month course, though I didn’t really know when. Our SERE training was split into an administrative phase of classroom training, followed by a no-notice internment phase in a prisoner-of-war camp… but when?

Of the few rumored details of events while in captivity that were thrown out there for me to dispel or believe was the notion that there would be a constant barrage of ear-splitting music and other audio annoyances designed to wear down prisoners over time, lowering their ability to “resist.” Of the the various speculated details, I chose that one to embrace.

I recall in James Rowe’s book “Five Years to Freedom” how he had managed to stash away a piece of rubber from a tire during one of the bouts when he was punished by the North Vietnamese, his mosquito net removed for several nights. As the dusk settled and the vermin descended, James produced and ignited the rubber, generating a noxious black smoke that drove away the mosquitoes. James held them at arm’s length for several minutes until the rubber was burned, whereupon the mosquitos proceeded to swarm on him and mercilessly bite him for the rest of the night.

What’s the point you ask? As James put it, it was a small victory, ever so small, but he had robbed his enemy of their control of his discomfort, if even for just several minutes. Even a small victory such as that afforded him a much-needed charge of resilient energy. To me, that was the most memorable passage in his book, and I understood what he meant.

I knew I would hate the loud audio barrage, and I set out to orchestrate my small victory. I got pairs of earplugs, the soft, spongy, yellow kind, and, popping out several loops of thread from the cuffs of my combat blouses, compressed the earplugs and pushed them into the holes in the cuffs. Then I sewed them back up. If my blouses were not taken from me, this might work. I imagined our uniforms could be taken from us entirely and we’d be issued a separate uniform in prison, but I would have to deal with it if/when the time came.

I became caught up in the dynamics of the SMU training course. Mission after mission came and went. In the woods of North Carolina, we found ourselves on a patrol for a few days and nights searching for pilots who had ejected from their burning aircraft over “enemy territory.” This was a combat patrol like any other, with strict tactical discipline at all times, very little food, and almost no sleep. We found our pilots, and began an 18-mile march out of “bad-guy” country back to our home base.

We broke our march for rest at a small lake several miles from our compound to await transportation that would take us back home. A box cargo truck arrived on time and target, and we piled in. This is great, I thought, this hump will finally be over. The ride was somewhat longer than expected, and I found the pressure on my bladder was more than I could stand. I emptied the contents of my least-full canteen onto the floor of the truck.

“Hey don’t dump that in here, man!” one of my buds snipped.

“Really? Do you want to know what your alternative is?” I asked.

We came to a halt, the rolling rear door of the truck flew open, and bursts of automatic fire ripped through the air. Men in nondescript uniforms screamed and clawed at us, roughly pulling us off the truck. This was it; this was captivity, and the POW phase of SERE had begun.

Night was falling and we were forced to lie face-down in the dirt. Our hands were bound behind us and hoods placed over our heads. My hood was tight and made my breathing labored. I could feel oxygen deprivation-inspired panic trying to creep over me as I took a chance and turned onto my side. The enemy guards spat questions and commands at us in phony accents. I felt my clothes being stripped from my body until I was nude, and I was commanded to sit on the ground.

The ground in this case was a cold, concrete slab. It was winter, I was naked, and now sitting on a concrete slab. I shivered. Finally I heard, “Stand up, criminal!”

Was he talking to me?

“I said stand up!”

I was jerked up onto my feet. At that moment, I sensed that something was attached to my buttock; I reached with my hand and brushed off what turned out to be dry winter leaves from oak trees.

“What is that…what did you take from your rectum, criminal?!” the guard shrieked.

“Sir, it’s just some leaves that were stuck to my ass.”

“And so what else do you have in your rectum, criminal?”

“(Sighs and rolls eyes)…just the leaves, sir.”

I was allowed to recover my pile of clothes minus my boots. I was led into a building and stuffed into a wooden box. The door to the box was closed and latched shut.

“Take off your hood, criminal,” the guard barked.

I pulled the hood and saw inches from my head a square hole in the top of the box just big enough to poke my head through, which I didn’t dare at the moment.

“Place the hood on the top of the box, criminal.”

I did.

Now the guard covered the square hole with the hood. I began the unspeakably awkward challenge of getting my clothes back on in a box too small to change your mind in. I found that if I wedged my butt into one corner, I could just barely lock my leg out straight in the diagonally opposite corner. I pitied one of our class officers, Major Ben S., a man well over six feet tall.

And so it began, the audio stimulation. Piped through loudspeakers at tinnitus levels came recordings of morbid music, screams, babies crying…all measure of unbearable loudness. I bit at the thread on the seams of my blouse cuff until I popped the seam and extracted the ear plugs. WONDERFUL EAR PLUGS! I put them in and the fevered pitch of the shrill cacophony went dull. Of course it didn’t go away altogether, but this was my James Rowe victory, to be sure.

Even with my clothes on, I continued to shiver. I chanced to poke my head through the top hole of my box, just enough to clear my eyes and have a peek. I was in a room with two other boxes at either side of me, both with hoods covering the head hole. The door began to open and I sank back down.

“Do you wish water?” I heard.

Was he talking to me? The hood swept aside and a sour face filled the hole on top.

“Criminal, do you wish water?” it shouted.

“Yes sir, I do, thank you.” I responded.

When I looked up at him, I had made sure to not turn my head to either side, revealing my yellow ear plugs. As the door hasp rattled, I quickly pulled the plugs out and pushed them in a corner. The door opened briefly to allow the guard to push in a can of hot water. I got it: This was water for the sake of thirst, and the temperature was intended to keep our internal thermostats up. Every few hours, we were given a can of hot water. All that hot-water drinking quickly inflated my bladder, though, and I was eventually compelled to urinate in a number 10 soup can that was provided in a corner of my “cell.”

“Do you wish food?” the guard would ask from time to time. Despite my affirmative responses, the guard would laugh and walk away, never to impart food. It was a game.

After an indeterminate number of hours in the box trying to stave off the torment of the raucous tirade of noise emanating from the speakers, my door latch once again began to rattle. I plucked my plugs and corner-stashed them.

“Get out, criminal!”

I crawled out and stood long enough for the guard to cover my head with the hood. I was being led through the building and finally forced to make an awkward climb up some wooden stairs to an interrogation room.

I was put in a chair and my hood removed. The room was large. I sat at a small field table with a video camera on a tripod pointed at me. I momentarily combed my fingers through my hair for the sake of the shoot. My interrogator sat across from me, staring grumpily at the documents to his front. Behind him was a small window high up on the wall, which gave way to a blacked-out room.

“State your rank and full name, criminal.” the interrogator hissed.

“What about my serial number?” I joked.

“Get to your feet, criminal!” the guard growled as he groped at my lapel. Gripping me by the lapels, he slammed me hard against the plywood wall. The wall buckled in, easily absorbing the shock of my body, leading me to believe this room was quickly and temporarily constructed for this event.

“Criminal do you think this is a game?” the guard queried as he delivered several hook punches to my gut, dumping me onto the wood floor. Lesson learned: No attempts at humor with your interrogator, even if it is just a game.

Read Part 2 and Part 3.

Feature image courtesy of the Dept. of Defense

How two Delta Force jumpers collided at 24,000 feet in accelerated free fall and lived

“The sky, even more than the sea, is terribly unforgiving for even the slightest mistake.” (Author Unknown)

Let’s get one thing straight: I hate jumping. Don’t get me wrong, the whole concept and execution is sexy enough, but I was simply cursed with a wicked bout of acrophobia. Two or three days prior to an airborne operation I would start feeling anxious and preoccupied. That anxiety, however, kept me focused and safe; it kept my circle of awareness clear and well-defined. I should also add that I never missed an airborne operation during my entire 18 years on airborne status in the Army.

I attended the Accelerated Free Fall (AFF) high altitude parachute course with the Delta Force in 1990. Typically, we jumped three to four times a day accomplishing relatively simple tasks like falling flat and performing a proper ripcord pull sequence.

As the course progressed, the tasks became more and more complicated. Our typical altitude for a free fall jump was 12,500 feet. One of our requirements for the AFF course was to complete a jump from 24,000 feet. At that altitude, the atmosphere is too rarefied of oxygen to sustain life, so we each had to wear a self-contained oxygen (O2) system.

Here’s how a high altitude jump on oxygen (O2 jump) goes: Each jumper has an O2 mask fixed to his Gentex helmet, and a pouch on his right side fastened to his waist with a green O2 bottle inside. And folks, it is an axiomatic truth that the moment you put your O2 mask on your nose will immediately start to itch, and it will continue to itch until you are able to remove your mask.

Once inside the aircraft and seated, our parachute riggers connect us to an O2 console that stays installed in the aircraft. Prior to an O2 jump of that altitude, it is required to “pre-breath” pure O2 for at least 30 minutes. By breathing from the aircraft’s supply, we can save our personal O2 for the actual jump; our personal bottles only provided approximately ten minutes of breathing.

In the last few minutes prior to exiting the aircraft, the riggers disconnected us from the aircraft console and turned on our personal O2 systems. I could understand the logic of having the riggers handle the external equipment, the aircraft’s equipment, but I got an uneasy feeling about not being in full control over my personal equipment. I didn’t like the fact that I couldn’t see or manually identify my O2 supply lever.

The personal O2 bottles were actuated by way of a flat brass lever that flipped on and off. I reached my right hand down toward my O2 bottle to see if I could detect the configuration of the brass lever. I could not.

The command was given by the Jump Master, “Stand up!” We were signaled to move toward the rear of the aircraft and onto the ramp. The leader of my group of five began to grab arms and form us into a tight circle where we were holding onto each other’s arms. The intent was for us to all exit as a connected group called “taking a piece off of the ramp.” This had not been part of the briefed plan.

Let’s get one more thing straight: Master Sergeant (MSG) Hand only exits an aircraft with a head-first dive. He doesn’t poise off the ramp (where one steps off facing backwards, his head turned up to watch the aircraft race away), he doesn’t exit hanging onto people, and he doesn’t exit with people hanging onto him. But there was no time to argue as the Jump Master gave the next-to-last command: “Stand by!” As the final “Go!” command was given, our group leader shouted, “One!” Together, we rocked toward the rear of the aircraft. “Two!” We rocked toward the front of the aircraft. “Three!” We hurdled our group off the ramp in an amorphous mass of limbs.

And then it happened. My head was filled with a flash of white light as my bro, Jace B., and I collided hard immediately off the ramp. Our “piece” broke apart and gents when cartwheeling, flipping, spinning and rolling in all directions. I detected very quickly that I could barely breath, like someone was holding a cloth over my nose and mouth. I wasn’t getting any O2 through my mask.

In my collision with Jace B., my brass O2 lever and been flipped to the off position. I flailed my right hand down to where my 02 bottle should have been. That movement caused me to go unstable and flip. I looked out at the jumpers around me. All color was gone and the scene became something like a black and white cartoon. I knew I was blacking out.

Subject to our AAF training was a trip to conduct training in and altitude chamber. The chamber could be depressurized to simulate different altitudes to introduce students to the effects of a rarefied oxygen atmosphere. One of the drills consisted of a volunteer removing his oxygen mask and performing a simple puzzle, such as pushing different shaped blocks through their corresponding holes in a wooden panel.

My good friend Mac volunteered, dropped his mask, and commenced to plug away at the holes with ease, all the while reciting Steve McQueen lines from the movie Papillion, “I feel alright, but… how do I look?” Slowly, Mac began making mistakes. Eventually, he could no longer get a single block through a single hole. He suddenly stopped and lifted his head to a 1000 yard stare. The instructor quickly reconnected Mac’s O2 mask.

Then, we were all instructed to disconnect and drop our 02 masks. Within seconds the instructor passed out black and white maps to each student and told us to study them. We did and after a brief spell, we were told to reconnect our masks and continue to study the maps. Within seconds, my black and white map slowly started to reveal colors: violet, blue, green yellow, and red. I was fascinated. The exercise demonstrated how the oxygen-starved brain fails to process colors. If the starvation continues, the subject will lose consciousness.

My view darkened and went black. The next thing I remember was seeing the landscape below me slowly fade in, and it was in color! I shook my head and checked my altimeter. I was at about 5,000 feet, meaning it was almost time for my pull sequence, and I was sucking in hard to squeeze more and more air between my mask and face into my lungs.

As I quickly looked up to regain my circle of awareness, I was startled to see Sergeant Major C. M. flying three feet from my nose rendering a fierce, piercing stare. He had seen me falling and knew there was something wrong. He flew in close to watch me and, if necessary, pull my ripcord to save my life.

I gave Sergeant Major C. M. a quick and snappy thumbs up to assure him that my wits were recovered and I waved off. The wave off is an arm signal to other jumpers that you are starting your pull sequence. Once under canopy, I finally unhooked my O2 mask and sucked in six liters of oxygen-rich atmosphere. I studied the ground below to assess how far off I was from my landing target.

I was amazed to realize I was not at all off and would be able to land on target. It occurred to me that I fell more stable when I was unconscious than conscious; no back sliding or sideways crabbing. I performed downwind and crosswind runs and then turned into the wind for a soft standup landing.

I stood for a while and did nothing but contemplate how much I hated jumping, and the old cliche “when it rains, it pours” kept running through my mind. It dawned on me that both of my hands were stinging quite a bit. I pulled off my flight gloves to see that both of them were quite red, and in the coming days, the thin layer of epidermis covering my hands would flake and peel away. My hands had been frost nipped by the extreme cold and lack of movement.

Jace B. came jogging up as I gathered my hateful parachute. “George! Are you ok? Was that you I collided with?” he asked.

“I just want a beer, Jace,” I whined. “But you know Jace,” I continued, “I am going to count that as credit for a midair linkup for you and me!”

Sergeant Major C. M. was next in line to check on me. “Ok, so??” he shrugged. I told him my sob story and he had me go repeat it to the head rigger. In the end, my position was that, although it was easier for everyone to be coddled on the aircraft by the riggers, when it came time to turn on our personal O2 system, I didn’t like that we weren’t familiarized enough with our equipment to turn our own supply on and off.

Also, let’s keep one thing straight: I hate jumping! Geo sends.

(Edited by Cynthia G. Boutelle and Andreas Ulbricht)

Feature image courtesy of the D.O.D.