Chosen Soldier - Dick Couch [107]
This is not the case with the officers. They’re being trained and groomed to become detachment leaders—ODA team leaders. Captain Matt Anderson or Captain Miguel Santos might well find themselves leading an detachment in Afghanistan, Colombia, the Sudan, or Iraq eight months from the completion of their Phase III. They’ll be responsible for the operational planning and tactical thinking of their detachment’s operations. Chances are their first deployment as a team leader will be a combat deployment. Other SOF units, notably SEALs and Rangers, bring their officers along more slowly. They deploy these officers in assistant-team-leader or deputy-unit-leader roles. The officer in charge of a SEAL platoon—the Navy SOF equivalent of an ODA—may be on his third combat deployment as a SEAL before he is the team leader. Special Forces officers have only their previous branch experience, their maturity, and their Q-Course training to rely on. They’ll have no apprenticeship. These officers, when assigned to an ODA, are team leaders; they will sink or swim. In this wartime reality, they will perform or be relieved of command. The training of officers to qualify as 18 Alpha Special Forces detachment leaders will be taken up in chapter 7.
In Phase III, the enlisted soldiers will learn the mechanics of their specialties. They’ll learn to perform these duties in support of their ODAs and teach these skills to others. During this MOS training, they’ll continually be reminded that they are teachers as well as warriors.
THE 18 BRAVOS—THE SPECIAL FORCES WEAPONS SERGEANTS
Most Special Forces phase training begins with some form of a come-to-Jesus meeting with the senior enlisted member of the training cadre, usually a master sergeant serving in capacity of the first sergeant. Eighteen Bravo training is no different, except that playing the role of the first sergeant for my Bravo phase is Sergeant First Class Rick Blaylock. Blaylock runs the weapons MOS training for Bravo Company, 4th Battalion. This class of 18 Bravo candidates is designated as Class 1-05.
“All right, guys, listen up. This will be your orientation briefing for the training that will qualify you as an 18 Bravo Special Forces weapons sergeant. From my point of view, you are the most important man on the team. This is not the Peace Corps. The work of a deployed Special Forces detachment will almost always involve weapons systems. Since 9/11, that has meant getting rounds on the bad guys before he can get rounds on you. Or training others, your teammates or local forces, to put rounds on the bad guys. The Bravo curriculum calls for sixty-five days of training. Given holiday periods and weekends, you will be with us for three months. But out of that sixty-five days of classroom and range time, you’ll have to put in a lot of off-duty study time. There’s a lot to learn. Maybe some of you guys think being a Bravo is just being a gunslinger. Well, there’s that, but there’s a whole lot more.”
Blaylock quickly PowerPoints his way through the curriculum and weapons systems. Weapons systems include antiarmor rockets, antiair-craft rockets, a wide range of pistols, rifles, machine guns, submachine guns, sniper rifles, and grenade launchers, and indirect-fire weapons such as mortars and artillery. Within each of these types there are U.S.-made and foreign-made weapons. A Special Forces soldier has to be able to fight with his weapon, his ally’s weapon, or the enemy’s weapon. The first sergeant pushes on, slide after slide, weapons system after weapons system. Every pistol, rifle, machine gun, rocket, rifle, or mortar is considered a weapons system. Each one has to be mastered.
“As a detachment weapons sergeant, it will be your job to train your teammates,” Blaylock tells them. “You will be the primary weapons system trainer of foreign and allied troops, and you’ll have to be able to train them in their language. You’ll have to know how to set up and manage firing ranges—here and overseas. The maintenance and inventory of all team weapons are your responsibility.